We Told Six Lies(5)

She kissed the top of my head, and I popped the first doughnut into my mouth.

“Says here this seventeen-year-old just got a scholarship to Duke for shot put. You could get something like that with your weight lifting, I bet,” my dad pressed, though I hadn’t been awake fifteen minutes. “If you joined that team, you could—”

“Bruno,” Mom warned, though she already had her nose buried in her phone. “I have to leave early this morning. They need someone to cover the early shift.”

Mom worked at a center that supported social workers. She couldn’t stomach working with foster kids directly, but she did all she could to support the people who did. Sometimes I thought she did too much, especially when she had two sons of her own that hardly saw her.

She quit her paying job when I was a kid. When I got sick.

So I guess it was kind of my fault.

She kissed my dad on the crown of his head. “Go easy on him. Actions speak louder…”

Dad stared at her.

She stared back.

“I’m not finishing that,” he said.

“I’ll remember that.” Mom gave Dad a flirtatious look that made me want to vomit doughnuts everywhere.

Mom grabbed her purse and looked at me. Stared in my direction for a moment too long.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing.” She shook her head. “Just miss you.”

“You could stay,” I mumbled.

Mom’s smile faltered. “I can’t. They really need—”

I waved my hand and grabbed the second doughnut from the plate.

As she walked toward the door, I made my way toward my bedroom.

“Cobain?” my dad called, but I kept walking.

I pushed the door to my room open then jumped when I spotted movement. When I realized it was only my brother digging through my closet, I grinned and kicked my discarded pillow at him.

“Oh, go on and help yourself to my crap,” I said.

Holt abandoned his search and fell back on my bed and, after flicking a pair of my boxers away with a disgusted face, smiled. “Miss me?”

I went to my closet to rummage for my bag. “It’s been a while.” I glanced at him sideways. “When did you get in?”

Holt shoved his hands behind his head. “Somewhere between last class and last call.”

I rubbed my foot into a pink stain on the carpet, wishing, once again, that I were more like Holt. Smart enough to go to college. Thin, because he’s not compensating for being socially awkward. He’s twenty-one to my eighteen, only three years older, but it feels like more than that. Always has.

“Hey,” Holt said, pushing up on his elbows. “Remember when Dad took us to that amusement park when you were like, I don’t know, eight, and we dug those wristbands out of the trash? I was thinking about that mess the other day.”

I grinned. “We rode almost every ride until that lady ratted us out.”

“I’ll never understand how she knew we’d snuck in,” Holt said.

I thought about all the times my dad brought me with him to repair rides. We didn’t have the money to go on the Zipper and Tilt-a-Whirl and Gravitron, and we had to eat crap from home instead of the sticky, fluffy, overpriced snacks offered there. As Dad worked, I could only listen as kids passed by, laughing and linking their arms and running ahead when they saw a ride they’d been looking for.

But one day, instead of hanging out with his friends like he always did, Holt came along. And I said, I wish I could ride the stupid rides. Just once.

And Holt looked at me and said, Then, why don’t you?

As if it were the easiest thing in the world.

I thought about that park, then, and how I’d love to bring you there, Molly, with your white-blond hair and green eyes and mouth that said, There you are.

I’d thought about it for days but hadn’t yet summoned the courage to ask you out. But I would. I just needed to figure out where I would take you since I didn’t have more than five bucks to my name, or the words to keep a conversation going. What did a guy like me have to offer?

That’s what I had to figure out.

“What’s going on there?” Holt said, drawing a circle in the air, referencing my face. And damn it all, I grinned, because Holt always knew exactly what was in my head. “You grow a third nut? Or a third nipple?” he asked. “God, which would be worse? Nipple, for sure. A third nut would be like a magic source. You think anyone has one?” Holt pulled his phone out of his pocket, probably to check.

“I met this girl,” I said, maybe to surprise him. Maybe so he wasn’t the only one with something interesting to talk about.

“Hot?”

I laughed. “She’s weird as shit.”

“Weird and hot. That’s a good combo. Honestly, little brother, weird outweighs hot. I’ve dated pretty girls, but if they don’t come a little crazy, I get bored.”

“Cobain?” Dad’s voice echoed down the hallway.

Holt stood up. “I’ll go. I should tell them I’m here. Is Mom going to shove food into my mouth hole the second I get out there?”

“She’s already gone,” I said. “And I’ve got to get going, too.”

“In that case…” He flops back on the bed and gives an exaggerated smile.