“I would never.”
“Because I’m reporting back to Luciatonight.”
“Is it her fault they keep running my father’s letters to the editor?”
Andi makes a face and kicks a rock, which only makes it sink further into the squishy ground. “Yes and no?” she says. “It’s her commitment to free speech and journalistic integrity, mostly, which means she thinks everyone should have a voice, and sometimes that voice—” she stops for a moment, like she’s considering. “Isn’t great.”
“He asked her for an op-ed column once,” I tell Andi, something I’ve only just remembered. “Eight or nine years ago, maybe. She said no.”
“Lucia’s not really a fan of your dad,” Andi admits.
“How much of an understatement is that?”
Andi doesn’t answer right away, and when I glance over, she’s scrunching her nose.
“Some?” she says, and it’s obvious she doesn’t want to answer truthfully, so I let it go and we walk in silence for a while and I try not to think about everything that’s going to be waiting for me at the bottom of the mountain.
“Hey,” Andi says, suddenly, as the trail swerves around a collection of boulders and away from the creek. “How long has Reid lived with you?”
There’s a brief, complicated descent over some knotted tree roots, and I wait until it’s done to answer her.
“Five years,” I say, and then answer the next thing she’s going to ask, too. “Since he was fifteen.”
“Oh,” she says, and takes a few more steps. “Oh.”
I wait, the trail widening, and come up next to her.
“That’s longer and younger than I thought,” she says.
“It’s been a while,” I say, because when did it become five years since Reid moved in with me? From the way he leaves his shoes around it feels like he’s still brand new.
There’s another silence, and this one feels a little complicated. I can see her thinking from the corner of my eye, her back straightening while she does.
“Did they kick him out?” she finally asks.
“Not technically,” I say, and she goes red in my peripheral vision, her jaw tight, and I think it’s safe to assume that Andi doesn’t like my parents, which is fair. It’s their fault that her dad and Rick got outed twenty years ago, their fault that Andi’s maternal grandmother went to family court and tried to have Andi taken away from her dad because of it, their fault that the Burnley County School Board fired him from his job teaching eighth grade science for “poor performance” after fourteen years of stellar reviews.
Of course, it’s my fault that my parents knew at all.
“He had a rough time when he was younger,” I say, my eyes on the trail ahead of me.“He started getting in a lot of trouble at school. Skipping, failing classes, acting out, mouthing off at home. I think they caught him drinking a couple times. Their solution was to be extra-strict.”
I pull the GPS out and check it, because I need something to do with my hands and also a second to think about how to phrase all this.
“My parents kept …punishing… him because he wouldn’t act the way they wanted him to,” I say. “He cut all his hair off, so they grounded him and made him go to church every day. They’d throw away all his pants and make him wear dresses, so he’d sneak out and walk to my house in jeans he stole from Jacob.”
Andi frowns, still staring straight ahead. “How far is that?” she asks, sounding like she already knows the answer.
“Eight miles, give or take. I told him to call me and I’d come get him but most of the time he couldn’t use a phone,” I say. These are memories I hate to think of: coming home after work, or in the dark, to find my baby-faced little brother sitting on my porch, looking like shit. Knowing how many times I talked him into going back, only for the pattern to repeat.
“Did they ever come looking for him?” she asks, softly, and she doesn’t need to sayI think your parents are monstersfor me to understand what she means.
“Once,” I say, my voice surprisingly steady. “The first time. They called to ask if I’d seen him. I convinced him to go home.” There’s a heavy silence, nothing but the sound of footsteps. “I convinced him a couple more times, after that. And then I stopped, and he stopped going back, and my parents stopped asking if he would. I don’t think he’s talked to them since then.”
I don’t tell Andi that I could have been a better brother to Reid back then. I let him live with me, got him to school, let him look how he wanted, but I also thought it was just a phase. I didn’t even know he wanted to be called Reid—at home, at least—until Sadie told me. I made him too nervous. I still wish I could go back and be someone he could tell himself.
My parents ask me about him, sometimes, in their own way. My father will sayeverything going all right at home?and he’ll meandoes Reid still live with you. My mother will set her jaw and narrow her mouth and askHow’s everyone doing?and pretend she means my friends or my animals, but she wants to know if Reid’s changed his mind yet. I always answer the unasked questions aloud because I don’t know what else to do.
“Has he been afraid of the cat the whole time?” she asks, and she’s obviously changing the subject, and I’m grateful for it.
