16. June
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JUNE
Mom and I are in the kitchen. She’s at the island with her reading glasses on, reading a book, with a mug of chamomile between her palms. I walked in here pretending I needed a sandwich but now I’m just hovering with the fridge door open, staring at all the food but not moving.
“Talk to me,” she says without looking up.
I sigh and pull out the stool across from her. The wood creaks. “I got another nasty message, but before you ask, I really don’t want to tell you what it said.”
She closes her book and sets it down gently, then folds her hands on top. She doesn’t say anything, which is a very therapist thing to do.
I start worrying my hands together in my lap. “Anyway, I have reasons to believe, I mean, I’m worried that the person spreading rumors is one of my friends.”
She pushes her reading glasses up into her curls and reaches across the island. Her hand touches mine. “Who?”
“Aubrey.”
Her eyes are shocked but then her brow furrows and I can tell she’s really considering it. She doesn’t try to defend Aubrey, just nods.
Her lack of defense creates an even bigger pit of worry in my stomach. If she’s thinking Aubrey is a likely suspect, then…
It hurts too much to think about. How could one of my friends betray me like this?
“Have you thought about talking to her?” she asks. “Directly. Not just accusing her. I think you need an open conversation about what’s going on.”
I squeeze her hand and pull away. “That sounds like a therapy exercise.”
She smiles. “Because it is.”
“On adults, Mom. Not on twenty-year-olds with minimal impulse control. You know how many hormones we have raging through our bodies? We’re all emotional disasters and you want me to just sit down and have a calm conversation?” I’m half joking but, yeah, kind of serious.
She laughs, and I actually needed to hear her laugh because it makes me feel better.
But she doesn’t stop insisting that I talk with Aubrey.
She walks me through it: start with how you feel, not what they did.
Use “I” statements. Listen even when it makes you angry.
Name one specific thing you need from the conversation. Have an exit plan if it goes sideways.
I file every word in the part of my brain that hoards my mother’s advice, like a squirrel hoards acorns, but I know a conversation like that wouldn’t go as calmly and rationally as she suggests.
“You’ll be okay,” she says.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know you.” She stands to move around to my side of the island, and brushes a strand of hair from my face. “You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for.”
I lean against her, just into her warmth that’s always here for me. “Thanks.”
“Well, I should start on dinner. Anything specific you want?”
“Ask Carter since he eats most of it before anyone else gets a serving.”
She laughs. “You’re in luck because he’s not home right now.”
“Oh.”
Actually, I haven’t seen Carter in three days. He hasn’t texted a dumb meme or shown up for our nightly cereal ritual. He’s been leaving super early in the morning to go to the gym, and then he comes back really late at night when I’m already in my room getting ready for bed.
I’m concerned that nasty text about him—about us—affected him more than he’s admitting.
Mom opens the fridge, then turns to look at me with pursed lips, telling me she’s thinking about something. “Wait. He did come home. I’m pretty sure I heard him and Dorien. They’re probably in the basement. Why don’t you go ask what they want to eat? Maybe Dorien will actually join us for dinner.”
Hopefully not.
He’s someone I’ve been actively avoiding—even skipping Mixed Media after our critique went badly—because I’m still irritated by things he’s done recently. Like invading my privacy and saying insensitive comments around Cinna.
Or I’m using my irritation as an excuse because being around him makes me… unstable.
My heart aches around him, and I can’t have that feeling inside me.
I can’t have feelings of wanting him to touch me.
But it was dumb to skip Mixed Media since my GPA has been sliding in all classes.
Morrison gave me an extension on a Visual Studies paper and her thin-lipped generosity screams disappointment louder than any grade could.
And the gravesite visit is a little over a week away, pressing on the back of my skull like a migraine that hasn’t fully arrived yet.
Mom nudges me out of the kitchen. “Go on. Go ask what they want for dinner. I was thinking lasagna, but I could also do chicken.”
“Fine.”
The basement is Carter and Dorien’s territory. Basically, a sacred man-cave. It might as well have a sign that reads “No Girls Allowed.” But three days of silence from Carter is too much. I need to see him to make sure he has the same dumb smirk as always, even if it means Dorien is there.
Without knocking, I open the door and go down the basement stairs.
The bare bulb is on, lighting up mostly the sectional, coffee table, and braided rug. The TV is off, and two people are sitting on the couch. Neither of them is Carter.
Dorien is on the far end. Aeron is on the other. And my brother is holding a glass bong in both hands, lips pressed to the rim and sucking up smoke. Smoke curls around his face and my entire body goes numb.
I stop filtering all thoughts and simply react. “What the fuck, Aeron?! Put that down!”
Aeron’s eyes open and he sits up. He’s coughing and hacking as he sees me on the stairs. His face cycles through surprise, annoyance, then the careful blankness he retreats to when he decides he doesn’t owe me a reaction. He sets the bong on the coffee table as his coughing lessens.
He sighs, tips his head at me, and just stares, making a point of how unbothered he is that I found him like this.
I’m in such shock that I stumble for words. “Why… how are…” I finally step off the stairs and my hands flail in his direction. “You can’t be smoking that!”
“Why the fuck not? It’s legal.”
“Yeah, if you’re twenty-one. You’re barely nineteen.”
I’ve seriously pissed him off now because his bloodshot eyes narrow to mere slits. His body is so tense I have a second of fear he might break something.
“You know,” he says, standing, “there’s a word for people like you. It starts with a B.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Oh, don’t you even go there.” I point at the stairs behind me. “Get out.”
He rolls his eyes at Dorien, as though he’ll commiserate with his woes, then he approaches me. As he’s passing, he brings his mouth close to my ear and forcefully says, “Bossy.”
“You’re being a smart ass,” I bite out. “Just go.”
He bumps my shoulder as he leaves, and I catch the sour sweetness of the smoke on his clothes. My stomach lurches.
Aeron stomps up the stairs and then slams the door.
It’s just me and Dorien.
He hasn’t moved; he’s just been observing in that neutral way of his. Well, if he thinks he’s going to explain his way out of this, he’s wrong.
“He’s nineteen,” I say, moving closer and staring down at him relaxed on the couch. “He barely knows what he’s doing on a good day, and you’re down here getting him high?”
“He’s an adult, June.”
“He’s my brother.”
“He’s an adult,” he fires back.
I move closer so my shadow falls over him. His eyes have turned hard, all light from them dimming, but he’s still way more calm and collected than I am. “He’s easily influenced. He’s sensitive. And he’s not your damn project.”
His arms cross and he gives a bitter laugh. “Oh, right, I forgot. He can’t be my ‘project’ because he’s already yours.”
“You’re the worst.”
“I’m not, but you can tell yourself that.”
This man.
This man is so infuriating.
My legs are shaking but my voice isn’t and I cling to that.
“Are you trying to drag him down into your shit? Is that what this is?” The words keep piling up then spilling out.
“He’s at such an impressionable age and you can’t make him your pot buddy just so you can feel better about numbing your brain with that shit.
You are just so insensitive. You don’t even realize you hurt Cinna’s feelings, do you? ”
His shoulders relax a fraction. “What are you talking about?”
“At the food trucks. You made a comment about your work being so amazing that teachers don’t care if it’s late. Then you basically said her work needs to be better.”
His eyes dip as he searches his memories. When he finally finds the right one, and realization hits, his arms fall limp in his lap. “That wasn’t…”
“Yeah, I know you weren’t trying to be mean and it was a joke, but you know she’s sensitive about her art.”
He gets off the couch and grabs his jacket from the recliner. “I’ll apologize to her. But I won’t apologize for tonight. Get off your brother’s back and let him make his own goddamn decisions.” He takes a step to leave but I step into his path and glare up at him.
“He looks up to you. Are you trying to ruin another kid’s life?”
The room goes still.
Before I can take my next breath, I realize what a terrible thing I’ve just said
Dorien doesn’t show the hurt on his face but I can feel it. I can feel the wound I just reopened.
“That’s not fair,” he says quietly. His voice is stripped bare, leaving a boy who made a terrible choice at nine and never stopped paying for it.
My throat closes. The anger breaks apart inside me and what pours out is the truth underneath. “I’m scared.” My voice cracks. “I’m scared of losing him, Dorien. I can’t lose someone again.”
He moves past me toward the stairs until only his back is facing me. “You think I’m not scared of losing people too?” he asks.
“You don’t act like it.”
“Acting like it and being it are different things. I’m terrified every damn day.”
We’re the same in this. I hold too tightly and he just doesn’t hold on at all, but neither strategy is working, and we both know it.
But knowing just confirms what I’ve believed since we were children: that we’re cursed.
That being in the same room, on the same side, will end with someone getting hurt.
“Stay away from my brother,” I say. “Please.”
He walks to the bottom step and then stares at his boots.
His voice is too gentle in comparison to the adrenaline coursing through me.
“He can make his own decisions,” he says.
“And I say this not to be cruel, but to wake you up to what you’re doing.
If you lose your brother, it’ll be because you pushed him away by trying to control every last thing in his life. So stop.”
His footsteps on the stairs are slow. The basement door creaks open. Then he’s gone.
I press my palms against my face and cry.
Mom finds me a few minutes later in the hallway, after I tried reaching my room, only for my body to give out.
She sits next to me and pulls me into a hug. “I heard shouting and Dorien looked upset when he left. Honey, what happened?”
“Dorien, obviously.” I wipe my face with my sleeve. “He can be so insensitive sometimes.”
But that’s not the full truth. I’m awful too, just in a different way.
She puts her hands on my shoulders and studies me with her whole attention.
“You know,” she says, “the reason we learn to ride a bike is because someone we trust stays close once the training wheels are off. They stay close, just in case we fall, until they know we have the strength to ride on our own.” She pauses.
“That’s been Dorien with you. In his own clumsy, stubborn way. He stays close.”
It’s a caring thing to say, but she doesn’t know about the bong. She doesn’t know about Aeron. She thinks this is our usual friction. In any other moment her words might land gently.
But all I can think is: he stays close, and people get hurt.
I say goodnight then climb the stairs to the attic studio.
The skylights show a dark sky. I pull a fresh canvas from the stack against the wall and squeeze paint directly onto it from tubes: cadmium red, burnt umber, titanium white.
I lay into the surface with a palette knife.
Slashing. Dragging. Scraping in long, violent streaks that leave ridges of thick paint standing up like welts.
I don’t think about composition or value. I paint the way you scream—whole body, no technique, no intention beyond getting it out. Half a tube of vermillion gone. There’s paint on my hands, my forearms, specks on my neck. Red on the canvas bleeds into brown, white cutting through both.
When I finally step back, the canvas is a mess of furious color. And in the center of it, barely recognizable but unmistakable, is the shape of an ice cream truck.