Something Like Normal(14)

“I’m going to kill him.”

Mom sucks in a snotty breath and pulls back. “No. It’s okay. I didn’t mean—” She smoothes her hand over the damp spot on my shirt. “I didn’t mean to put this on your shoulders. God knows you’ve got enough on your plate.” She looks up at me. “Travis, have you been fighting?”

“Not exactly. Long story,” I say. “Have you slept?”

She shakes her head and gestures toward a to-do list lying on the island. Grocery shopping. Cookies for the cheerleader car wash/bake sale. Dry cleaner. I crush the list. “Sleep first. And Dad can pick up his own dry cleaning.”

Mom’s eyes go watery again. “You’re such a good man, Travis.”

If she knew the pain I wanted to inflict on my own father, she’d know I’m not even close to being a good man.

“Go get some sleep, Mom.”

I finally reach my own room and collapse on the bed—too tired to think about Dad or Harper or even that the mattress is too soft. If I have any nightmares, they’re gone before I wake up again.





Chapter 4

There’s a ceiling fan revolving slowly overhead and I wonder why I smell oatmeal cookies. Then it hits me again that I’m still in Florida, and I wonder if the remembering will ever become second nature. I glance at the clock. I’ve only had a couple hours of sleep, but I’m wide-awake.

I swap my skivvies for a pair of swim trunks and go out to the pool. Most of us lost weight in-country. Because even though MREs are high in calories and designed to sustain a person through the day on just one or two, they can’t replace what you lose hiking around in 110-degree heat with eighty pounds of gear on your back. I was almost always hungry. But just because I can stand to gain a few pounds doesn’t mean I want to get lazy and fat on leave.

I’m about five laps in when I see a shadow at the edge of the pool. I surface and find my dad standing there wearing a pale blue golf shirt and matching plaid Bermuda shorts.

“Hey, champ.” He sounds like a tool. Champ is an old nickname from when I was still drinking the Dean Stephenson Kool-Aid. He alternated it with sport, tiger, and killer. I guess the latter is the most accurate now, but they all come off as used-car-salesman phony. We’re not buddies because he’s deemed me worthy again.

I hang on the edge of the pool and wait for him to say whatever it is he wants to say, my eyes pinned to his. His Adam’s apple drops as he swallows nervously and I feel a surge of satisfaction. For so long I was afraid of him, but now I’m bigger and stronger. “What do you say we go hit the gun range?” he says. “Get out of your mom’s hair so she can get ready for tonight’s dinner.”

“What dinner?”

“We’re having Don and Becky Michalski over.”

My friend Derek’s dad, Don, is the guy who coaches loudly from the stands and gets mad when the players, coaches, and referees don’t do what he says. He gets in fights with other parents. He’s been banned for life from Ida Baker High School after punching their soccer coach. My mom hates him, and his wife is embarrassed to be seen with him in public, so I don’t know why Mom would agree to cook for him. Unless… it’s not about Don. It’s about Becky.

“I think I’ll hang out here,” I say. “Give Mom a hand.”

“You sure?” Confusion flickers across his face. “I’d like to see you in action.”

I’ve never voluntarily hung out with my mother, but right now it beats this lame attempt to show me he’s a cool dad. Also, I scored top marks in boot camp for marksmanship. It’s probably for the best if he doesn’t see me in action.

“I’m positive.”

He stands there as I swim away, and I can see his shadow on the water for a while, as if he’s waiting for me to change my mind. It takes everything in me not to pull myself out of the pool and beat the shit out of him. Instead, I swim.

I’m a hypocrite after what happened last night with Paige, but me hooking up with my ex-girlfriend behind my brother’s back is not the same as my dad cheating on his wife. Paige and I have used each other this way for years, stretching away from each other and snapping back like a rubber band. The only person who stands to get hurt is Ryan, but it’s not as if he’s going to marry Paige Manning, either.

Down in the kitchen, Mom is her pulled-together self again, except for the tiredness lurking at the corners of her eyes. Her purse is looped over her arm, the crumpled list in one hand and the keys to a brand-new Suburban—one of the perks of being married to the owner of a car dealership—in the other. “Want to ride along?”

“Sure.”

She looks surprised. “Really?”

“Really.” I jam my foot into one of my tan combat boots. On the outside it’s scuffed and worn from continuous wear, a spatter of rusty bloodstains across the toe. Inside it smells like shit, but I don’t have any other shoes except my running shoes, and I hate those. I bought a pair of Sambas when I graduated boot camp but didn’t lock them up at infantry school and someone stole them. “So what was Dad’s excuse?”

“He says Steve Fischer invited him over for a drink. He didn’t want to drink and drive, so he spent the night,” she says. “He called to tell me he was okay before he went to play golf.”