His mother’s mouth dropped open. “How dare you speak to me like that? How DARE you think you can –”
“Candace –” his father said, trying to stop her as she rose from her chair.
“You can’t possibly think you’re going to see him again.”
“Just try and stop me,” Seth said, his eyes burning.
“Enough!” his father shouted. “Both of you!”
There was a moment of stand-off as Seth and his mother locked eyes, but she eventually sat back down.
“Seth,” his father said, “I’d like you to think about maybe taking some antidepressants, or even something stronger –”
His mother let out a cry of exasperation. “That’s your answer to this? Disappear into oblivion like you do? Maybe you can both do silent DIY projects for the rest of your lives.”
“I’m just saying,” his father tried again, “Seth is obviously struggling with something –”
“He’s not struggling with anything. He’s crying for attention. Can’t bear that his little brother needs more care than he does, so he goes and does something like this.” She shook her head. “Well, you’re only hurting yourself, Seth. You’re the one who’s going to have to go to school next week, not us.”
Seth felt a twisting in his gut. She’d nailed exactly what had been worrying him.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” his father said. “Not until this blows over. Or we can change schools –”
His mother gave another exasperated gasp.
“I don’t want to change schools,” Seth said. “And I’m not going to stop seeing Gudmund.”
“I don’t even want to hear his name,” his mother said.
His father looked pained. “Seth, don’t you think you might be a little young to be taking decisions this enormous? To be doing these . . . things with . . .” He trailed off again, not quite able to say “another boy.”
“And all this when you know how much we’ve got to deal with for Owen right now,” his mother said.
Seth rolled his eyes. “You always have to deal with Owen. That’s what your whole stupid life is. Dealing With Owen.”
His mother’s face hardened. “You have the gall to say that? You, of all people?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Seth spat back at her. “‘Of all people’?”
“All we’re saying,” his father said, talking loudly over them both, “is that you could have come to us. You can come to us with anything.”
And there was another long silence that none of them bothered to fill, as perhaps they all wondered if that was true.
Seth looked down at his feet again. “What’s wrong with Owen now?” he asked, unable to stop himself from putting all his anger into the last word.
His mother’s answer was to rise quickly to her feet and leave the kitchen. They heard her stomping upstairs, heading straight for Owen’s room, heard him start an excited explanation about the new video game he’d gotten at Christmas last week.
Seth looked at his father in confusion. “What’s she so mad about? How does any of this hurt her?”
His father frowned, but not at Seth. “It’s not entirely you. Your brother’s scans came back.”
“The ones because of his eyes?”
Owen’s eyes had started a strange twitching a few weeks back. He could see something when it was directly in front of him, like his computer games or his clarinet, but walking anywhere had become a wild hazard of knocking things over or simply falling all the way down to the ground. He’d given himself four bloody noses in the past ten days.
“The neurological damage,” his father said. “From . . . from before.”
Seth looked away, almost automatically.
“It was either going to get worse or better as he grew,” his father said.
“And it’s got worse.”
His father nodded. “And will continue to do so.”
“So what happens now?”
“Surgery,” his father said. “And cognitive therapy. Almost every day.”
Seth looked back up. “I thought you said we couldn’t afford that.”
“We can’t. Insurance only covers so much. Your mum’s going to have to go back to work to help with the costs and it’s going to eat badly into our savings. We’ve got rough times ahead, Seth.”
Seth’s mind was reeling, for his brother, for their money troubles, for the fact, he was ashamed to think, that he had college tuition payments starting in the fall that were going to need some of those very savings and if they weren’t there –
“So, this whole thing with you and your friend?” his father said. “Not the best timing in the world.”
Laughter rang down the staircase. They turned to look, even though there was nothing to see. Seth’s mother and Owen, sharing something between the two of them, just like they always did.
“When is it ever good timing?” Seth asked.
His father patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “I really am.”
But when Seth turned back around, his father had broken eye contact.
24
It’s raining again the next morning when Seth wakes, though it takes him a few minutes to notice because of how the dream is still ringing through him.
He lies motionless on the settee. He still hasn’t slept in any of the beds upstairs; his own in the attic is far too small for him now, even if he wanted to use it, which he doesn’t, and sleeping in his parents’ bed just feels too weird, so he’s stayed on this dusty couch, under the terrified eye of the horse above the mantelpiece.
Dreaming.
The weight in his chest has grown heavier, almost too heavy to move.
The greatest thing with Gudmund had been the secrecy of it all. When they were together like that, they had been their own private universe, bounded just by themselves, a population of two. They were the world, and the world was them. And no one deserved to know, not his mum and dad, not his friends, no one, not then, not yet.
Not because it was wrong – because it definitely wasn’t that – but because it was his. The one thing that was entirely his.
And then the world found out, his parents found out. Those two photos Gudmund took, painfully innocent compared to what some of the boys at school sent their girlfriends, but so private, so something that no one else should have seen, that Seth burns even now with anger and humiliation.