Under the Lights
Page 40

“Will.” My brother’s voice startled me, and I froze. He hadn’t spoken to me in over six months. Even when I had called and written, he’d ignored me.
“Hey, Chance.” The happiness from hearing his voice felt foreign. I wasn’t used to that much joy anymore. It had been too long.
“Hey.” He sounded nervous, but there was happiness in his tone too. “How is Nonna’s?”
He barely knew Nonna. She hadn’t been around him much of his life. Our mother didn’t bring us to visit. Nonna had to save up to come visit us when we did see her. “She’s good. Still baking pies and working at the big house.”
“Cool. Um, so are you liking it there?”
I wasn’t sure anymore. If he had asked me yesterday, I’d have probably been able to say yes. But after today, and hearing his voice, I was now missing him and my life there badly. Maybe not my mom but the life I’d once had.
“Yeah, it’s good. I miss you though.”
He was quiet a moment before saying, “I miss you too.”
My chest ached for two reasons. One, because I did miss him terribly, and two, because he was talking to me again. I had feared I’d lost him. He only knew what he’d been told about that night. No one really wanted to hear the truth. Even though the truth wasn’t much better. In the end Quinn had drowned. That was the outcome of our mistakes. Mistakes we could never take back.
The image of Quinn’s small, lifeless body floating upside down in the deep end of the pool still gave me nightmares. I hated to remember. The reality of it chilled me to the bone.
“How’s school?” I forced myself to say as my throat tightened and my horror returned.
“It’s okay. Mom’s pregnant. She’s having a girl.”
Those words came out all rushed and nervous. Like he was almost yelling them before he lost his courage.
Our mother was having another baby. A girl. To replace me. Chance might not understand that, but I did. I was her mistake. The obstacle that stood in the way of the life she had dreamed of. I was never the child she wanted. She left me with her mother the majority of my life. I was a disappointment, much like she had been to Nonna. So she was having a redo.
“Tell her I said congratulations,” I told him. “I’m sure your dad is excited.”
“Yeah,” he replied, not sounding so sure. I wondered if they were fighting a lot in front of him.
“Are you excited about the baby?” I asked.
“I guess. Don’t they just cry a lot?”
Smiling, I remembered the little time I got to spend with him when he was a baby. I was amazed by him, but we never lived together until he was eight years old. I loved him though.
“You’ll love her. I remember how fascinated I was with you and how your crying didn’t bother me so much because when you were happy and laughing, you were the cutest baby I’d ever seen.”
“Really?” There was a smile in his tone.
“Yep. I thought you were great. Still do.”
He didn’t say anything right away. I gave him time to work through his thoughts. “I’m sorry I haven’t called you.”
He was a kid. With two parents who hated me. That wasn’t his fault. “It’s okay. I understand. I made big mistakes, and you not wanting to talk to me made sense. There were times I didn’t want to even look at myself in the mirror. But I’ve missed you and thought about you all the time.”
“I think about you too. I miss you reading Percy Jackson to me at night. Mom won’t do it.”
Chance was dyslexic and he loved books and reading, but it was so hard on him it took him hours to read a couple pages. So at night I used to read him a chapter from the new Percy Jackson novel he would get from the library at school. It was our thing. I missed that too.
“I miss reading to you. Have you been keeping up your own reading?” I asked.
“Yeah, I’m trying. I made an eighty-five on my literature test.” He was so proud of himself.
“That’s fantastic! I’m so proud of you.”
“I smoked pot with George Hasher last week,” he added, and my stomach dropped.
Shit.
“Chance,” I said slowly, trying to figure out what to say to him. After all that had happened to me, I thought he’d never touch the stuff.
“I wanted to understand why you did it.”
That hurt. More than he would ever know. I put a hand on my stomach and sat down in the nearest chair. My knees were slightly weak, and I was sick.
“Because I was stupid. That’s why I did it, and my stupidity changed my life. In a terrible, terrible way.” Not that I had to tell him this. He already knew.
“I know,” he said. “I just wanted to understand . . . things.”
He wanted to understand how Poppy and I could have forgotten about her little sister long enough for her to fall in the pool, hit her head, and drown. The autopsy revealed she’d been in the water for over an hour. There had been no saving her. Poppy hadn’t been able to live with the guilt and pain. So she’d done the only thing she knew to do. She’d taken her own life days later.
“Did it help you?” I asked while wanting to scream at him to never do it again. He needed to know how it ruined lives and ended them. It wasn’t safe and fun. It was evil. I learned in a way I never wanted Chance to experience.
“Yeah, I didn’t care about anything. I thought life was hilarious. It was freeing, but I get how that is dangerous. I won’t do it again.”
Good. Relief rushed through me. I didn’t want Chance to suffer what I would never be without. Regret, guilt, loss, emptiness. Those would follow me my entire life. Because I had wanted to be high and drunk with friends. We had so stupidly thought staying at home made us safe. We weren’t driving or in an environment that could harm us. But we hadn’t considered that a crisis could happen and we’d need to be alert enough to deal with it. Even at home.