“Before all of this happened? I thought they were cool, like any normal parents. Always holding hands, coming to the football games together, that kind of stuff. I never would have guessed that his dad . . . I don’t think anyone saw that coming. Especially Brett. The guy practically worshipped his dad.”
“He hasn’t said anything to you about his family?” I asked again.
“Brett’s private, I guess. I tell him he can talk to me about this stuff but he won’t. At this point I just figured if he wants to talk, he will. I won’t push him. We’re here.”
I nearly flew out of the car before we were even parked. “Thanks for the ride,” I said, then ran up the driveway. I knocked once. Took a deep breath in. Blew it out. Knocked again. I was beginning to think no one was home when the door pulled open and Brett was there, standing in front of me, staring into my eyes in that way that made my fingers shake. My first thought was, Wow, he looks different. Stubble lined his jaw, and he looked like he had just rolled out of bed. His eyes went from my face to the hoard of textbooks in my hands.
“Becca.” He said my name slowly. “What are you doing here?”
“You’re failing English,” I said.
His eyebrows scrunched together. “How do you know that?” Then he spotted Jeff’s pickup in the driveway and put the pieces together. “Of course he told you.”
I had to remind myself he was going through a lot right now. Yelling out of frustration would not make this any better. “You should have told me,” I said, trying to sound as calm as possible. “I know you said you needed space, Brett, but this seems like the kind of emergency that takes priority over that.”
“It was one essay. I’m working on rewriting it.”
“Do you want some help?” I asked. I was shifting on my feet, waiting for him to say no, shut the door, and go back to his separate little world.
He opened the door farther. “Sure.”
I headed straight to Brett’s kitchen and slammed my textbooks down onto the table. I took out my notebooks and pens and rearranged them into a neat little row. “Grab your essay,” I called, assuming he was listening, “and bring it here so I can read it over and see what needs to be fixed.” I waited to hear footsteps or some sign of movement. There was nothing. I turned around. He was standing in the doorway, watching me. “Brett? What is it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing.”
“Then would you sit your ass down so we can get started, please?”
“Did you just say ass?”
“Sit down.”
He held his hands up in surrender and took a seat. Sliding his laptop across the table, Brett pulled up his essay and let me read it. I could understand why Miss Copper gave him an F. It was terrible. The ideas were all over the place and the quotes weren’t even properly cited.
I looked up at him. “How long did it take you to write this?”
He thought about it for a second. “An hour?”
“It shows. This makes zero sense, Brett. You don’t even have a thesis.”
He shifted in his seat, drew up the hood of his sweater until it covered half his face. “I kind of forgot it was due. And I was up all night with my mom so I didn’t have time to write it.”
Then I felt like a complete jerk. “Right, of course. Sorry. Forget I said that.” I kept scrolling through the essay, noticing how Brett was really quiet. I snuck a peek at him. He was staring at his hands on the table. I shut the laptop and pushed it aside. “We don’t need to study right now,” I said. “We can talk about your family if you want.”
Brett lifted his eyes to mine. “I’d actually rather study,” he said.
So we did. I printed out Brett’s essay and we went through it line by line. I started to highlight the parts he needed to change and suddenly three-quarters of the pages were yellow. We came up with a new thesis, found good quotes, and outlined his arguments. An hour later he had rewritten the introduction while I watched over his shoulder. I could tell he was starting to get antsy; he was writing slower and slower. His attention kept slipping and eventually he opened a new browser tab for a pizza place nearby.
“I’m starving,” he declared. “You in?”
We spent the next ten minutes concocting the perfect pizza. Brett was a meat-lover’s kind of guy, which, for some reason, was not all that surprising. All I cared about was pineapple being on it.
“Do we want garlic sticks?” he asked. I gave him a what-kind-of-insane-question-is-that look. He changed the quantity to two.
After the order was placed, we went back to studying. I was flipping through my English notebook absent-mindedly while Brett continued typing out his essay. Then something caught my eye. There were numbers written on the back cover. It was my countdown to graduation. Only I had stopped counting one day without realizing it. When did I stop keeping track?
Brett slid the laptop over to me. “Does this make sense?” he asked.
He was the answer, the reason I stopped counting the days. Brett gave me something better to look forward to.
“Why are you smiling at me like that?”
I cleared my throat, quickly shoved the notebook into my bag. “What? Nothing. Let me see.” I scanned the paragraph and told him that yes, it made sense.
We kept working in silence for another few minutes before Brett’s mind was officially elsewhere. He had deleted and retyped the same sentence five times. Thankfully the doorbell rang, the pizza arrived, and we both took a break. I chewed on a slice, watching suspiciously as Brett picked off all the pineapple pieces.
“If you don’t like pineapple, why agree to order it?” I asked.
“Because you like it,” he said easily.
“You wouldn’t eat the cotton candy ice cream,” I pointed out.
“That happens to be where I draw the line, Becca.”
“Right.”
The smallest of smiles began to crack through his unnaturally stony face.
“I’m wondering,” he said, grabbing another slice, “where you’ve been eating lunch this past week. I looked around the entire school and couldn’t find you.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You were looking for me?”
“I was.”
“But you said you wanted space.”
“That,” he said, taking another bite, “was a mistake. Coincidentally, you happen to be the one person I don’t want space from. So, where were you eating?”
I forced myself to swallow. “Behind the football field.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You walked that far to get away from me?”
“As I said, you wanted space. Not me. I was simply obliging.”
“Do me a favor, Hart. Next time I tell you I want space, ignore me.”
“Noted.”
Brett stood up and walked to the fridge. “Hey, where’s your mom?” I asked.
“She’s staying with my aunt for the night,” he said, walking back with two water bottles.
“And your dad?” I asked slowly, not wanting to push too hard.
“He’s been staying at a hotel for the week.” Brett sat back down, this time in the chair directly beside me, and handed me one of the bottles. “We’ve been going to family counseling.”