A World Without You(83)

Bo was at St. Lucy’s for almost a week so that they could keep an eye on him and do an MRI and some other scans. Mom was there every day, but Dad stayed in his office, working. When the hospital was ready to release Bo, they sent him straight back to Berkshire Academy. Dad didn’t even have to drive up; the hospital sent Bo in an ambulance.

It’s been two weeks now, and he’ll be home in two days, and I don’t know how all of this is going to play out.

Mom cleans. Dad works. And I . . .

I just sit here.

? ? ?

At seven, there’s a knock on my door.

“Yeah?” I call.

The door budges a crack, then Mom pushes it open. She’s meek about it. “Dinner’s almost ready,” she says. She could have yelled for me from the base of the stairs like a normal mother, but she didn’t.

In the distance, a faint beeping rises up from the kitchen. “Oh!” Mom says. “The tenderloin! Go get your father and come on down, okay?” She dashes down the hall—passing the office where Dad is—and runs down the stairs toward the kitchen.

I push up from my bed, tossing aside the book I’d been reading.

The floorboards creak under my feet, and when I reach Dad’s office, I knock on the wooden door three times with the back of my knuckles. “Dad,” I say loudly from the hall. “Dinner.”

He grunts in response.

I start down the stairs, but something holds me back. I turn around and head back to Dad’s office, the door cracked open from when I knocked.

He’s standing by the window, but the curtains are closed. In his hands is a child-sized football, the kind Bo used to play with when he was in elementary school. Bo wanted to quit football in middle school, but Dad kept him in. But when Bo made the team at James Jefferson as a freshman reserve, he dropped out during the summer practice before school had even started. He made sure that Dad couldn’t reenroll him either, by flipping out on the coach and nearly getting himself suspended. I guess he actually got kicked off the team. But he did it on purpose.

Dad tosses the ball up, spinning it in the air before catching it again. The motion is repetitive and hypnotic. Maybe Dad didn’t really hear me when I told him about dinner. I raise my hand to knock on the door again—

And then a sliver of light from between the curtains passes over Dad’s face, illuminating the tear tracks on his cheeks.

I lower my hand, pressing my face against the small opening in the door to get a better look at Dad. I’ve never seen him cry before, and now he’s just standing there with big fat tears rolling down his face. His fingers fumble, and the ball drops to the floor, toppling end over end under his desk. Dad kneels down to pick it up, and I hear a sob escape him. I can’t see him anymore, not really, just his hands and feet and the tops of his legs as he crouches under the desk to pick up the ball, but that shaking sob guts me.

It’s the sound of defeat. No. That’s not right. Defeat implies that there was a fight, that you stood a chance of winning but just happened to fail. No. That sound was more hopeless than that. It’s the sound a man makes when he realizes that there’s no way to win because there’s no way to fight. Things just are, and nothing can change them.

I want to throw open this door and run to him, wrap my arms around him. I don’t want to tell him it’ll be okay, because neither one of us would believe it, but I just . . . I want to tell him I understand.

But I don’t move.

I need school as my place to pretend that everything’s okay. Maybe Dad needs his office. He’s just trying to survive this too.

From under the desk, I can see Dad’s grip on the little football tighten. I wonder what he’s thinking about. This whole situation—Bo being the way he is—it’s hard on Dad. Maybe harder on him than on Mom and me. Everything’s one way or the other with him: black or white, this or that, here or there.

But Bo? Bo is elsewhere.

Dad’s phone rings. He lets the football go, and it rolls silently across the expensive rug in his office toward me. Dad moves to get up from under the desk, and I jerk away from the crack in the door, my back pressed against the wall. A moment later, Dad answers the phone.

His voice is clear and rich, no hint of tears or sorrow as he answers. “Hey, Tim,” he says cheerfully. “How ’bout them Patriots?”





CHAPTER 57




I can’t sleep. I was up at dawn, and from my window I could see the Doctor leaving the academy. I scramble for clothes and race out in the early morning light. Dew still clings to everything, and a chilly sea breeze swirls around me as I burst through the door.

Maybe if I get far enough away from Berkshire, Ryan’s powers won’t be so strong. Maybe if I can talk to Dr. Franklin outside of Ryan’s influence, then we can break through the illusions and figure out a way to stop him once and for all.

Dr. Franklin was heading north, probably to take a walk around the grounds. I pass the camp ruins—the Doctor’s not there—and then I veer toward the boardwalk.

I find Dr. Franklin sitting in front of the ruined remains of the chimney. He looks incredibly small and vulnerable, sitting cross-legged in the sand, staring into the blackened bricks as if they could still provide him warmth.

“Hello, Bo,” the Doctor says, turning his head toward me as I approach.