Chapter 12 Chase
Chase
“I don’t feel good. I don’t want to go.”
Stella flops back on her bed, curling into the fetal position. Sweat shimmers on her hairline. Groaning with misery, she tugs an ashy blue quilt up to her chin.
Mom sighs with exhaustion, clinging to her last rope, as she yanks the blanket off my sister. “The scouts are going to be there. You don’t have a choice.”
“Mom, please. My head is absolutely killing me.”
“Take some Tylenol. It’s just a headache, Stella.” A firm hand presses to her shoulder, squeezing. “This is your dream, everything you’ve worked so hard for. You’re a Rhodes, honey. We see our dreams through.”
I watch from the hallway, leaning back against the wall, my arms folded. She’s so pale. Trembling, in pain. Her eyes find me through the threshold, begging for me to intervene.
But there’s nothing I can do.
The backdrop shifts into a carousel of noise, color, motion.
Water splashes at my feet.
Two weary eyes find me from the edge of the Olympic-size pool. Light, light brown.
No light at all.
She sends me the barest smile, then jumps in, making her laps.
Minutes tick by. People scatter, distracted.
My father cracks a joke, nudging my shoulder with his fist as he guffaws. I turn to face him. We share a smile, a few words. A few minutes.
I don’t remember the joke, but I remember the moment after.
The screaming. Commotion.
A blur of frantic movement, pitching voices, bodies scrambling in and out of the water.
And there—
My sister.
Floating.
My feet move. My brain shuts down. My voice splinters with agony.
I dive.
But there’s nothing I can do.
***
By day, I shape the unshaped.
In a hollow warehouse that reeks of sawdust and varnish, I skim my hands over coarse slabs of wood, studying their imperfections. I carve, sand, and stain, coaxing each piece into something valuable.
Tables that will hold family dinners. Bookshelves for cradling stories. Beds where people will dream.
It’s honest work. The kind where effort equals outcome with every pass of the chisel, every stroke of the brush.
By night, I build something else entirely.
I trade in sanders for soldering irons, chisels for circuits. My living room workbench becomes a different kind of warehouse, scattered with wires, pickups, and polished wood waiting to be transformed.
I mold guitars that don’t just play music. They breathe it. Instruments with bodies carved from exotic woods, necks reinforced with carbon fiber, touch-responsive LED fretboards that glow beneath my fingertips. Sound that doesn’t just echo but bends, warps, evolves.
Each one is a puzzle. Pieces of a dream that becomes more whole as the weeks sail by.
By day, I build for others.
By night, I build for me.
And on a lonely Saturday evening in early June, I finally build for something bigger.
I text her.
Me: Hey. It’s Chase.
Me: I think I might be in.
Ten minutes later, I hear my phone ping as I’m mopping up a puddle near Toaster’s water bowl. My head pounds, chest squeezes, and my nerves multiply.
Toaster races past me, leaps onto the couch.
Watches.
I reach for my phone, swiping open the message.
Annie: See you at midnight. ??