Chapter 2
Growing Distance between Us
Wyatt
“Pay attention, man. Pay attention. If you do that, I’m gonna kill you, and—okay, wow, you are such a fucking asshat.”
The remote slips out of my hand and onto the rug as I lift my arm off the cushion and let it fall back down. I sit up, grab my Coke off the table, and take a gulp. My hockey team’s playing on TV. The Aspen Snowdogs versus the Seattle Kraken. The first NHL game of the season, and I’m not there.
I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to remember what caused me to be sitting here now, unable to play, because every thought about it is a blinking red self-destruct button telling me what a dirty piece of shit I am.
All the same, two-thirds of the time there’s been nothing else in my head because I’ve been having to watch this really terrible hockey player named Gray fuck up my position as a forward.
He just scored a goal but with a high stick.
A high stick. That’s against the rules. He’s got to sit it out on the bench for two minutes, but on his way, he gets cut off by one of our forwards, and, man, that dude is pissed.
The front door opens. My sister Camila puts her keys down on the chest in the hall and walks in with two paper bags.
She looks over at the TV with a furrowed brow while slipping out of her butt-ugly UGGs.
I don’t understand why anyone would want to wear those things when slippers from Target look just the same but cost only ten bucks.
“Why’s Paxton going after the new forward?”
The neck of the Coke bottle fizzes as I put it back on the table. “He’s not the new forward. He’s a temporary replacement.”
“Whatever.”
I take the paper bags out of her hands and peer inside. Chicken wings from the ski hut.
“It’s not whatever. New would mean that I’m out. Temporary replacement means that I’m coming back.”
My sister rolls her eyes and sits down on her cushioned seat in the bay window. “Fine. Why is Paxton going after the temporary forward who will only be there until King Wyatt reclaims his throne?”
She mutters something under her breath in Portuguese, too fast for me to catch, but it sounds like trouble wrapped in cinnamon.
I hand her one of the bags. Camila slides out of her coat, drapes it over the back of her chair, and grabs the bag with greedy eyes.
She’s still wearing her work outfit, a long wool skirt emblazoned with the ski hut logo.
Also, socks with little sardinhas on them—those tiny Portuguese fish she says bring good luck.
“He made a goal that doesn’t count. He high-sticked it.”
“That was dumb. Get on with it and kick his ass, Paxton,” she says before biting into a wing. She cackles, then turns to me and says, “Av? would have called that a chicken dance.”
“Is your first shift going to be canceled tomorrow?”
Meanwhile, the ref has stepped in, and Gray has reached the bench.
Camila bends forward and picks the wool blanket off the sofa.
I wince. She always does stuff like that.
Her room is a disaster zone. Torn notebooks, snack wrappers, open soda cans.
I avoid that part of the house and keep the hallway window open.
It’s not enough, but I don’t want to go in there. Well, she’s a teenager.
“No,” she says, without looking at me. She stares at the TV.
“You wanted to talk to Dan about getting earlier shifts during the week.”
“You wanted me to talk to Dan, Wy.” My sister casts me an accusatory glance, which doesn’t quite land, what with half a chicken wing sticking out of her mouth. “I told you: I take the shifts that bring more tips.”
I can only think of one thing. RAGE, RAGE, RAGE.
If I don’t stop to hold my breath and count to ten, I’m going to get loud, and I don’t want to get loud because that just makes Camila bitchy and disappear into her cave where I think something could start growing legs and walking out on its own…
Okay, maybe that’s a bit much, but, as I said, she’s a careless teenager.
I don’t want her to be alone. And I don’t want to be alone, either. So I stand up, go into the kitchen, calm down, and come back into the living room carrying wet wipes.
“Mila,” I say, handing her a wipe, which she reluctantly accepts.
“This is your final year in high school. Old Clearwater said that you have to really make an effort in a few classes. You’ve got your SATs coming up.
Your results will dictate which college you can go to. You want to go to college, don’t you?”
My sister ignores me. She’s good at that, always has been, as if I was nothing but air. She nibbles on her chicken wing and draws in sharply when our right forward lets the other team’s forward slip past. “Body check, Caden, body check! Meu Deus! What do you have muscles for?”
“Mila.”
She gives an annoyed sigh. “Should I quit, Wy? No problem. Gladly. Then I’ll have enough time to spend bent over my books memorizing all that stuff. The only thing is, it’ll be a bit tough by candlelight and no internet.”
“What?”
“You’re not playing, so you’re not making any money. Mom and Dad left us the house, but with hardly anything to cover our bills. We’ve got to pay for stuff. Electricity. Internet. Groceries.”
Like always, whenever one of us mentions our parents, things immediately get heavy.
Our dad died when we were little. Avalanche.
Two years ago, Mom followed him. Cervical cancer.
I remember the day like it was yesterday.
Camila was trying to make caldo verde that day—half broth, half disaster.
The memory still makes me feel so…empty and lost. Every day.
“You’re seventeen, Camila. You’re not responsible for taking care of us. Tell Dan you’re quitting. I’ll get a job.”
“Ai, que saco,” she mutters, rubbing her temple.
“I am not a pain in the ass, sis.”
Camila snorts. “You are, because otherwise how could you even think I can just quit?”
“I’ll find a solution.”
“Sure. During the day you’ll concentrate on your PT, and at night you’ll go swing a hammer somewhere with your broken arm. I totally forgot about your superpowers, Wy.”
“I’ll ask Knox if he can lend us something.”
Camila tosses the gnawed wing into the paper bag and looks at me. From her eyes I can tell that she understands just how much her education means to me. She knows that it goes against all my pride to ask my best friend for money.
Her face grows softer. “Neither of us wants that. I’ll talk with Dan about the shifts, okay?”
“Pinky promise?”
My sister smiles. “Pinky promise.” She holds out her little finger to me, and I need that little finger so bad right now, I don’t even need a second to grab it with my own. She looks at me, and her smile disappears.
“What?”
Camila leans back and pushes the paper bag off her lap. “I’ve got to tell you something.”
I hate that sentence. Really. Absolutely hate it and have ever since Camila began to speak. I almost get a heart attack every time; I am so afraid of something terrible happening to my little sister.
“If you’ve got a boyfriend, I don’t want to know. That possibility simply does not exist in my head. Never will. If you bring him home, I’m going to ghost him. I’ll ignore him and try to walk right through him, get him up against the wall body check–style and…”
“Aria’s back, Wy.”
I sink into ice water. All the way up to the top of my head. Everything in me freezes. My blood is below zero. Am I still alive? No idea. It is so cold, holy shit, is it cold.
“What do you mean?” I mumble.
Camila begins playing with the leaves of the hanging plant above her head and looks out the window. The pane reflects her face. When she exhales, the glass fogs.
“She came back to help Ruth out with the B I just destroyed myself.
But I couldn’t stop, and the thing was I’d always get that heart-pounding adrenaline rush whenever she uploaded a new photo.
I’d get dizzy, and that’d make it tough for me to recognize the photo.
You see, Wyatt, this is torture, pure torture, and you deserve it, I’d think.
But then the image would solidify, and it’d just be something normal, like a picture of a sunset or her Starbucks cup or whatever.
One time there was even a smiley face on the wall.
But there was never any other guy. Not that I would’ve noticed, of course.
I mean, sorry, but Instagram isn’t real life, and she could’ve done whatever she wanted without me finding out 2,000 miles away.
Anyway, not a day goes by that I don’t think about her being with someone else, and I have to stop what I’m doing and catch my breath.
“She’s here alone,” Camila says. “And she’s here to stay.”