Chapter 17
MASON
Mason
We need to talk.
Mason sighs as he sets his phone down on his bedside table.
All night, he dreamed of Callum, and he woke up thinking of him. It’s like his brain is set on a film reel of all memories and fantasies of Callum he’s had over his lifetime and decides to play it on the silver screen in his mind.
Mason rubs his face as he stares around his room.
It’s something foreign for him to consider it his childhood room now. That this room watched him read books under the covers with a flashlight to solving quadratic equations to getting accepted to Montgomery, and now he’s back in it and feels dread instead of nostalgia flood through him.
His parents are likely wondering why it’s taking him so long to get out of bed. Mason looks at his analog clock as it reads 9 a.m., so he finally decides to face the day. He swings his legs over the side of his bed and stretches.
He isn’t necessarily chomping at the bit to see the rest of his family.
If his parents are bad, then his relatives are only worse when it comes to prestige and expectation.
As if it isn’t enough for his mother to be a renowned editor and his dad to be a bestselling author, the other relatives have to be just as competitive and expectation heavy, especially when all of it is put onto him.
Mason rubs his face. He wishes he could crawl back into bed and wake up when the weekend is over and he could go back to being himself again, but who is that?
Someone who avoids his childhood best friend like the plague? Who pretends to be someone who he knows he isn’t and writes article after article about things he doesn’t care about? Lies to his parents over and over?
It can’t go on like this. Something needs to change, and that familiar feeling in his ribs is telling him that Callum has something to do with that change. If there’s anyone who can understand, it could be him, even if they come from two different worlds now.
His phone vibrates, and he snatches it up.
Callum
Now?
Mason grips his phone in his hand and bites his fingernails. He can’t, not now. His parents would know something was up and wouldn’t allow him to just slip out without getting all their questions in.
Mason
Later? After dinner?
Mason sighs and watches as the text bubbles appear and disappear. He thinks about what it must be like in Callum’s house. Quiet dinners, with his explosive father and his placating stepmother.
Callum
I’ll see if I can sneak out.
Mason puts his phone in his sweatpants pocket and gets up from his bed. There’s something dangerous yet familiar at the idea of talking to Callum. They aren’t talking to have an argument or to hash things out. They aren’t forcibly speaking for the sake of The Goldberg.
They’re just going to try to get on the same page, which hasn’t been the case in nearly four years.
Four years of guessing and wondering how the other is feeling and why they’d become so distant from each other.
How much Mason had wondered why he deserved to be dropped by his best friend, and why it still seems to sting so much so long after the fact.
Mason puts on a sweater and stalks down the stairs to the dining room, where his mom and dad sit at the island, their breakfast completed with remnants scattered across their plates.
“Well, look who finally decided to wake up,” his mother says as she smirks at him before taking a final sip of her coffee.
Mason gives her a placating smile. “I never get to sleep in at school, so I took my chance to.”
His mom takes a sip of her coffee. “I thought maybe you were trying to avoid us.”
Mason scoffs and shakes his head as he opens the fridge and takes out the cream.
He pours himself a cup of coffee into his favorite mug and sits down with them.
His dad raises an eyebrow. “Only coffee for breakfast?”
Mason shrugs. “It’s all I live on. Gotta keep the creative juices flowing somehow.”
He hates how he lies and how good he sounds at it. He’s become a lie; he isn’t even just a liar anymore. His entire life is a lie to his parents, and he’s not sure if he should even feel guilty about it.
“How is The Goldberg going? You’re still doing sports I can see,” his mom says, patting a stack of newspapers on the coffee table.
“It’s been going really well.” He takes a sip of his coffee and hopes it will give him some courage.
“It was all they had left, but I would be lying if I said it wasn’t entertaining to write about. It gets a lot of attention, and in the end, I like a lot of eyes on my writing. Everyone wants to read about the team… especially Callum,” Mason says, his voice quieting at the mention of Callum.
His mother nods, her lip jutting out like she’s trying to understand, but she clearly doesn’t. She cares about using her pen as a weapon, and she probably wants Mason to use his writing abilities in the same way.
“But you’re not going to be doing sports forever, right?” she asks, more as a demand than a question.
Mason shrugs. “Considering how much people like what I write, I might get put on something more coveted next year, but I kind of like doing sports in all honesty,” he says, surprised that he’s admitting it to them.
“You do?” his father asks, his eyebrows raised.
Mason nods once, with his mouth forming a thin line.
“I’d prefer you put your writing to good use, Mason. While sports gets a lot of readers, it’s better to have acclaim,” his mother states.
“I know,” Mason says. He already predicted exactly what she was going to say two sentences ago. He’s surprised she had enough patience to wait to say it.
“Especially when you have to keep reporting on Callum and how much he wins,” his dad says, rolling his eyes.
Mason sighs and wants to get up and leave. He never expected his own parents to resent the Browns, but after Callum dropped Mason and how cruel Mr. Brown had been to them after Mrs. Brown’s passing, they became protective over him and bitter towards Callum and his family.
It was Mason’s fault for telling them anything; otherwise, he could have lied and said they just grew apart. But he just had to tell them about their drama.
“And how are your classes going?” his mom asks, quickly changing the subject.
Mason twists his mouth. “They’re going well.
My classmates treat me a bit differently since I’m the only freshman on The Goldberg, and they probably don’t like that, but it’s nice to know I have an edge over them.
My Modern Physics class is going well too.
I have an A+ now and probably will finish the semester with the same,” Mason adds at the end, more to brag for himself, as if his parents would ever care.
His mom furrows her eyebrows at him. “You’re taking physics classes? That’s not part of a journalism degree, is it?”
She asks as if it’s a question, but she knows the answer. She took the same major herself.
“It’s an elective. I was thinking about doing it as a minor since I know it’ll boost my GPA.”
Mason clenches his mug harder at how convincing he sounds. It’s an airtight alibi for taking classes. They know he’s good at physics, and that he needs a good GPA, so why would they stop him from taking classes that only lead to more prestige and success?
“Hmm,” his mother says, clearly wanting to say something but since he planned out his lie so well, she has no place to argue, and Mason sips his coffee in triumph.
“Well, I guess it’s time to start cleaning the house since Elena and Aunt Josie will be here in the afternoon,” his father says as he gathers their dishes and stalks to the kitchen.
“Is anyone else coming for dinner?” Mason asks, hoping to hear the least amount of people.
“Just Elena’s new boyfriend… I forget his name, but he’s coming along. Apparently, he goes to Montgomery too,” his mom says.
She gets up as well, hurrying around the kitchen, the usual thing she does before she goes into full panic mode.
“I have some reading to do, but call me down if you need my help for anything,” Mason says as he gets up from the table.
“Alright, honey,” his mom says and goes into cleaning mode as she whips out the vacuum from one of the kitchen cupboards.
Mason nods and pads back up the stairs and into his room, closing it behind him.
He thinks about Callum and if his parents are telling him the same things. He wonders if football is what he wants to do or if he still dreams of another life like they did as kids.
Mason crashes into his desk chair, opens up his mechanics textbook and flips through it, landing on one of the problem set pages. He turns on his desk lamp and takes one look out of the window at the familiar towering oak tree.
Its leaves have turned scarlet. On the precipice of change. Just like him.
He cracks his neck and gets to work on his problems. At least there is one thing he can control, and that is his ability to solve physics problems.
“So, Mason. Have you already become the chief editor of your school paper?”
Mason sighs and takes a sip of his apple cider as he mulls over his answer. If he says yes, it’s a lie, and his mother would likely appreciate the lie. She wants to keep up appearances for everyone too, and she wouldn’t mind it if he did. But if he told the truth, it would only make him look bad.
It was a lose-lose situation. There’s no way he can win against them.
“Not yet, but my section of the paper is the most popular,” he says to his Aunt Josie.
“Well, hopefully you’ll get it soon. If you want to follow in your Mom’s footsteps, you’ll have to climb up that ladder faster,” Josie says, in a tone that implies that she’s gloating and disappointed at the same time.
Mason hums and takes a handful of chips from one of the bowls.
“When are Elena and her boyfriend showing up?” his mom asks, likely trying to change the subject.
“They said they’ll be here in five minutes. She got caught in some traffic on her way back from picking her boyfriend up from Montgomery,” Aunt Josie says as she takes a long gulp of wine.