“You were here?” I ask in surprise and open my door.
She nods. “We want to talk to you.”
“It can’t go on like this,” Dad says, but his voice is hard and cold, as usual. Just like his gaze. Everything about him is cold.
“It won’t,” I say, but I’m pretty sure I mean something different than he does.
He doesn’t answer, and his eyes narrow as his gaze bores into me. His eyes remind me of Sam’s.
“Can we come in?” Mom asks before either of us can say a word. They don’t want to have this conversation in the hallway, of course, and to be honest, I’m not exactly thrilled about the idea either. But I don’t want them in my room.
“We want to talk to you, and to apologize,” Mom continues. Something in her tone of voice hurts like hell. I laugh and watch as Dad’s hands tighten into fists. He probably imagined this differently, but I’m sick of these games. I just want peace and quiet.
“You want to apologize? For what?”
“This is ridiculous. We aren’t going to have this conversation in the hall,” Dad interjects before Mom can answer my question. He pushes past me into my room.
I see red and suddenly lose control. “Ridiculous? Is that what I am to you? Ridiculous. A joke.” I follow him into my room and grab him by the shoulder. I try to turn him around and send him back into the hall, but Mom is standing in the door, blocking the way.
Her eyes are shining with tears. It’s clear by looking at her that she expected this to go differently.
Dad doesn’t reply, just stands mutely in front of me. His jaw clenches. He’s fighting for self-control.
“We can easily shorten this conversation. I’m not going to Harvard, and if it’s up to me, we’ll never speak another word to each other.”
“Jase, please,” Mom begs. “We’re a family.”
“No. We’re not a family anymore, not since Sam died. You would have preferred it if I’d died instead, and you know what? Sometimes I wished the same thing!”
I hear Mom gasp, but I’m concentrating on Dad. I see a flash of pain in his eyes that’s all too familiar to me.
“That’s not true, Jase.” Mom comes into the room, and the door closes behind her. The room suddenly feels too small.
I can’t breathe, and my heart cramps painfully. This is all too much. I don’t want to talk; I need them to leave. But for reasons I don’t understand, I continue.
“Ask him what he said when I said the same thing at your party,” I demand. My voice sounds hollow, not like myself.
Dad goes pale. “Jase, that wasn’t—”
“I don’t care,” I say. “I’m not Sam. I will never be Sam, and you can’t accept that. Not my wishes, not my dreams or who I am.” Dad opens his mouth, but I’m not done yet. “It wasn’t Sam’s death that destroyed our family. It was you! And no apology in the world can undo that. I don’t want to hear it. Do you understand? I—”
“Sam died in a football game,” Dad says, interrupting me. His voice cracks with anger and pain, and there’s a grimace on his face. “He was an athlete, and he died.”
“And?” I say between clenched teeth.
“And the same thing could happen to you!”
It takes a few seconds for the words to reach me before I understand what he’s trying to say. I laugh in disbelief and push back my hair. “Are you serious? Is that supposed to be an apology? You don’t want me to dance because I could die like Sam? That doesn’t even make sense!”
Dad glares at me. “Not everything has to make sense.”
“For you it does! Always. And that’s the worst bullshit I’ve ever heard.”
“It’s still the truth.”
“Then why are you only telling me this now? In the last five years, you’ve been treating me like your biggest disappointment. I could never do anything right for you.”
“I made mistakes,” Dad admits. But it’s not enough.
