I'll Stop the World (10)

“I know what it is, son.”

Shawn swallowed, his throat thick. “So you don’t have to worry about money for college. The award will cover all of it.”

Finally, his father looked at him, his expression inscrutable. After a long moment, he spoke, his tone icy. “So even after our discussions about what you would do after graduation, you went ahead and applied for this award anyway. Behind my back.”

“I wanted it to be a surprise,” Shawn said, his heart thunking down into his stomach. “It was a long shot anyway, so I just thought—”

“Did you?” his father interrupted. “Think, I mean?”

“I—I mean, you said you weren’t going to pay for college, so I figured—”

“I said you didn’t need to go to college. Not when you have a perfectly good career waiting for you right here. Or is what I do for a living not good enough for you?”

Shawn took a deep breath, willing himself to remain calm. Getting emotional only ever made his father angrier. He didn’t know why he’d allowed himself to hope that the award might make a difference, no matter how impressive it was, or how hard it had been to earn. Gabe Rothman had only ever seen one acceptable path for his son: his own.

It doesn’t matter, Shawn told himself. Who cares if he doesn’t approve?

After all, with the citizenship award, he didn’t need his dad’s blessing. He could go wherever he wanted, far away from here, and there wasn’t a damned thing his father could do to stop him.

Still, Shawn couldn’t bring himself to let it go. Not yet. “Dad, just because I want to go to college doesn’t mean I don’t respect what you do. I have a lot of respect for you and your business. I just feel—”

“Listen to you, all I want and I feel. That’s the problem with kids today. You think it’s all about your feelings. No consideration for anyone but yourself.”

“I just think that—”

“You don’t think. You just do whatever you want to do, and then when it doesn’t work out, you’ll expect me to come in and fix it all for you. Well, I’m telling you now, son, I won’t do it. Once you leave this house, you’re on your own. Don’t come crawling to me when things don’t work out the way you want.”

Shawn fought the urge to ball his hands into fists. “But, Dad, I don’t—”

His father held up a hand, cutting him off. “Just stop, son. You’re only embarrassing yourself. This conversation is over.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, exhaling slowly out his nose. On the stove, the bacon was starting to smoke. He nodded to the pan. “You’re burning your dinner.”

“I made enough for both of us,” Shawn said quietly.

“I’ve lost my appetite.”

Shawn stood frozen in the kitchen as his father ascended the stairs. He waited until he heard the bathroom door close and the shower turn on, before driving a fist into his leg, over and over, biting back the urge to yell until the throbbing in his thigh drowned it out. He’d have a bruise later, but it didn’t matter. No one would see it.

For a second, he just stood there, relishing the ache in his leg, breathing in the sharp stench of burning grease as smoke stung his eyes.

Ten more months.

Forty-three weeks.

Three-hundred-something days.

He could make it ten more months. Then he could leave.

Taking a deep breath, Shawn turned off the stove, picked up the spitting pan, and threw it in the spotless sink.





Chapter Five


JUSTIN

“Why’d you say you’d go if you didn’t want to go?”

“To piss Dave off,” I say, dropping my keys on the kitchen counter and opening the fridge, then the pantry. Ugh. How do we never have any food? Grabbing a pad of Post-its off the counter, I start making a list of things we need from the store.

“You know what would piss Dave off even more?” Alyssa says as I add milk, bread, peanut butter to my list. “Actually going.”

“Yeah, but then my night would suck.”

Pasta sauce

Vegetables???

Aluminum foil

“You don’t know that. It could be fun. Besides, we’re seniors. This is the last bonfire we’ll ever have.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

The door to the basement opens and Stan emerges, balancing a stack of dirty dishes in one hand as he leans heavily on the railing with the other. “You’re home from school,” he announces gruffly, as if I didn’t already know.

“No shit,” I mutter under my breath. I cross vegetables??? off the list and replace it with ramen.

“Hey, Stan,” Alyssa says with a smile, taking the dishes from him and depositing them in the sink.

“Hey there, sweetheart,” Stan says, grinning at her like the creeper he is. “Draw anything new today?”

Her eyes light up, and a second later, her sketch pad is in her hand. She flips through it to her assembly sketch of me and holds it out for Stan’s evaluation. Alyssa has always thought Stan is charming. It’s the one thing she is consistently wrong about.

Stan is kind of hard to explain. He’s my grandfather’s cousin, or cousin’s cousin, or something, and the only member of our family who still talks to us. My grandmother—Mom’s mother—was an only child, whose parents died just a couple of years before she did. That left my grandfather’s side of the family, who took Mom in and raised her after my grandparents died in the high school fire. But they cut off all contact with her after she got pregnant with me, the result of a one-night stand with some guy she met at a party her sophomore—and final—year of college.