Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
Casey is silent for a long time. It’s a long enough silence that Will starts to edge into feeling awkward about it, wondering if perhaps he’s crossed a line.
What line he isn’t sure, and it would be maddening to try to guess, but he tries a little, anyway, combing frantically through the last few minutes for anything potentially offensive as his lack of reply stretches away from being a pause and towards being a genuine crisis.
Should Will say something? Do something?
Selma told him once that the first person who speaks in any interaction, or after any weighted pause, is automatically the loser, but she’d been several drinks deep at the time.
And, now that Will thinks of it, several drinks later, she had told him it was something her own dreadful parents used to say, before weepily insisting that he shouldn’t listen to her at all, and then that he wasn’t truly a friend to her if he did not have, on his person, a taco.
“You know what’s weird?” Casey says, in the very final seconds before Will’s mouth opens to release some version of this thought, which would have been a disaster.
His tone is thoughtful, and he, thankfully, doesn’t seem to notice when Will deflates like an untied balloon in relief as he continues.
“I know the opposite of nearly all of that. I mean some parts were a little too familiar, but others… In some places, it was like seeing the negative of my own life. Not in the sense that it was ne gative, just—like with film, you know? It’s not showing the picture, and it’s not quite the reverse.
” He runs one hand through his thick blond hair, and Will’s eyes can’t help but follow the motion, the way the sun subtly shifts the shade of each strand as it slides over them.
He’s so absorbed in staring at it that he almost misses it when Casey sighs heavily and says, “I do know one thing, though. God. I owe you a hell of an apology.”
Will blinks, trying to process this. He blinks again. Confused, he says, “Wait, you owe me an?—”
“Apology,” Casey says, nodding, “yes. And an explanation. For why I was the way I was. When you got here, and…before.”
“Oh,” Will says, not remotely sure how to reply to this. “I mean, you don’t have to?—”
Casey holds up a hand, but it’s less that than the pained expression on his face that dries up the words on Will’s tongue. “The thing is, man, I do. After the story you just told me? If I want to live with myself, anyway. There’re rules.”
“Sorry,” Will says again, even more confused than before, “there are rules ?”
“Oh, I don’t mean for you .” Casey makes a frustrated little noise, and then says: “Look, okay. I try to live by a certain code. I didn’t have a lot when I was a kid that was…
consistent, right? Or mine.” He clears his throat, kicks his feet, and reaches a hand around to scrabble next to him in the truck bed.
When he turns up a few twigs and pebbles, he starts tossing them towards the end of the parking spot; it seems to relax him as he continues, “I grew up on the festival circuit with my mom; she got pregnant on the road, had me on the road, just kept on going. And because I was always hopping from state to state, no permanent address, it took everyone a long time to cotton on that I wasn’t, you know, going to school, for example.
” He catches Will’s slightly stricken expression, and laughs.
“Don’t worry, it’s not as bad as it sounds.
Two of the people in the group we traveled with were ex-Montessori teachers; they made sure I learned to read before the window closed and everything.
It wasn’t like I was in the forest with wolves. ”
“Still,” Will says, with a sympathetic grimace. “Sounds like it wasn’t an optimal growing environment.”
Something about this seems to amuse Casey; his expression softens after a second into one that warms Will, for all he hesitates to let himself believe what he sees in it.
Then Casey shrugs, and looks away, and says, “Eh, it could have been worse. Parts of it were fun, you know? I ate a lot more pizza and ice cream than the average kid gets to, I’ll tell you that, and genuinely saw some musical history happen in real time.
That’s unreal, you know? And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
But parts of it…” He frowns, his eyes going a little hollow.
“Some of the stuff that happens at those shows isn’t for kids.
What people get up to when they’re really wasted, or on a lot of drugs, or what happens to them when they’ve had too much—I shouldn’t have been managing that. I should have been…somewhere else.”
“I think,” Will says, very carefully, “that is maybe a bit of an understatement, but: true. I’ll give it to you. No doubt there.”
Casey shrugs, like he can’t quite look this sentence in the face, and changes the subject.
“Anyway, around my twelfth birthday, somebody must’ve cottoned on, or CPS caught up with Mom, or whatever really happened; nobody wanted to talk about it.
After that, I lived with my aunt until I finished high school.
She was fine, but my uncle was a jerk, and he was never around much, anyway.
I never knew my dad—I’m not even sure my mom knows who he was.
Anyway, I’m not trying to give you my whole sob story or anything.
I’m… Ugh.” Casey makes a low, frustrated sound, and then says, “I’m trying to explain why, when I got here, Bill was…
God. This is all going to sound so stupid to you, you’re his son ?—”
“I mean, right,” Will says, and offers Casey a crooked grin. “I’m Bill’s son, so you know I have to be fairly comfortable with stupid ideas.”
Casey stares at him for a second. Then, covering his mouth with his hand, he lets a few snickers escape before he shakes his head and, obviously trying not to be mirthful at all, says, “I feel bad, I shouldn’t laugh, it’s just—Christ. The man really did have some godawful ideas, didn’t he?”
“Some of the worst,” Will says cheerfully. “I once watched him try to light a firework with a road flare. So whatever you’re going to say, probably, by my standards, it’s going to be fine.”
“That’s oddly comforting,” Casey admits, and takes a breath.
“Okay. I just, I never really had a father, or anything. Obviously, Bill wasn’t my father, he was your father , this isn’t like—stolen father valor, which, Jesus, is a sentence I never thought I’d say.
” He runs a hand over his face and laughs, briefly and not very happily.
“God. This is ridiculous, the whole thing is ridiculous , but I wasn’t from anywhere, you know?
And didn’t have any people. My aunt and uncle are whatever, it’s fine but not exactly warm and fuzzy there.
After high school, I started—driving around, and then I ended up here?—”
“Wait,” Will says, blinking, “hold on, you skipped a bit, I think. Unless—you didn’t end up here right out of high school, did you?”
Casey makes an incredulous face, then laughs.
“Are you kidding? No, God. I was way too jumpy to settle for even a year or two back then. I couldn’t make myself stay anywhere longer than a couple of months.
I’ve been here—God, six years now? Wild.
” Distantly, and in a hollow tone of voice that makes Will wonder if it’s only occurring to him now, he adds, “Longest I’ve ever lived anywhere. Beats my aunt and uncle’s by a year.”
“I…see,” Will says, doing the math in his head. “And you’re in your thirties, so, I mean—must have been at least six or seven years on the road, right? Unless you took a detour for college somewhere in there?— ”
Casey whistles, but offers Will what seems to be a genuine grin.
“No college, but I’m not in my thirties.
” When Will’s mouth drops open, he laughs.
“People always look so scandalized; you’re not the first person to make that mistake, and I’m sure you won’t be the last. Don’t sweat it.
I’m twenty-eight, so the big 3-0 isn’t far off or anything, but technically … ”
“God,” Will says, abruptly embarrassed on a few different levels. “I mean, sorry for uh, thinking you were older—it’s not that you look old, that’s not?—”
Casey laughs again. “I didn’t take it that way, man. Chill. I’ve always heard it—that I seem a little older than I am. My theory is I had to grow up young, and it confuses the vibe.”
“Huh,” Will says. He’s always thought of himself as someone who had to grow up young, but: “When I was twenty-eight, I wasn’t capable of much of anything, outside of very specific academic parameters.
I certainly couldn’t have done all this , everything you’ve managed here—I could have kept it how it was before, if that, maybe , but improved it?
Brought it back to turning a real profit?
No way. Maybe because college sort of didn’t end for me until I was older than you are now, but I didn’t really have a lot of the, like, basic personhood stuff down?
Not until I was at least thirty-one, and, honestly, it’s still a work in progress.
I was kind of… I mean, okay, so first imagine your average totally useless undergrad was bitten by a radioactive textbook?—”
Snorting, Casey says, “Sorry, sorry. Just—you do sometimes sound like you’ve been bitten by a radioactive textbook.”
“I wish,” Will mutters. “All the powers of a textbook? I’d be unstoppable. Plus, it would get me out of the aging process, because the written word is forever?—”
“You’re not getting out of it that easy,” Casey says, amused, shaking his head. “Not enough time to find a radioactive textbook, for one thing: It’s your birthday next week, right? Daphne told me—the town’s spooky Halloween baby. ”
Will, abruptly distracted from absolutely everything, stares at him. “ What? ”