Chapter 12 #2
Dabbs laughed so hard, he woke up the dogs. He handed the cards to Ryland. “Your turn.”
Huffing out a breath, Ryland selected one from the middle. “What profession does the cartoon character Tintin have?”
“Fuck if I know.” Dabbs tossed his hands up. “I never watched cartoons as a kid.”
“How come?”
Those shows will rot your brain more than it already is. Turn that off and do something useful. Can you handle mowing the lawn or do I have to hold your hand like I had to hold your sister’s? She couldn’t figure out how to set the dishwasher, for Christ’s sake.
Dabbs shook his head, forcing his dad’s words out of his thoughts and the feeling of them out of his heart. The former was easy enough. The latter?
Why was it that the emotions words caused lasted longer than the words themselves? Even the echo of the emotion, diluted by years of distance, was enough to transport him to the past, to when he’d been a little kid living under the constant verbal abuse of a man who was never satisfied.
“My dad wouldn’t let us,” he told Ryland, keeping it simple.
“What did you watch instead?”
Ryland didn’t know it, but that question was about to open a whole can of worms. “Nothing. My dad was less the lazy-Saturday-mornings type and more the get-off-your-ass-and-do-something-productive type. Of course, that didn’t stop him from watching the baseball game while the rest of us made dinner or cleaned the house or did the yard work or whatever, and it certainly didn’t stop him from telling us everything we were doing wrong. ”
Ryland’s eyes clouded. “Right. You mentioned your mom took you and your sisters away from him when you were kids.”
“I was ten.” Dabbs leaned back against the couch and stretched out his legs under the coffee table. “My sisters were eight and six.”
“That must’ve been tough,” Ryland said, wrapping strong fingers around Dabbs’ ankle. The touch was grounding, keeping Dabbs in the present.
“It was . . . an adjustment. We lived with my grandparents—my mom’s parents—for a few months before we moved into a tiny apartment in North Bay.
My grandparents helped a lot. They didn’t have a lot of money to spare, but they babysat us whenever my mom had to work.
They were great. Living with my dad, though .
. . ” Dabbs looked out the front window, where the sky was an inky pool of darkness, remembering the shame and inadequacy that had settled on his young shoulders when his dad had torn up his seventeen-out-of-twenty math quiz and smashed his hockey stick.
“It was ten years of listening to him tell me that nothing I said or did was good enough. For years I went through life thinking that every adult was going to find something wrong with me.”
Ryland squeezed his ankle. “I’m sorry. That’s no way to go through life.”
“Hockey was my outlet. I was a quiet kid, but I was angry too, and I took my aggression out on the ice. I was lucky that I had a youth hockey coach who was all about building confidence instead of tough love. Coach Pete.” Dabbs smiled softly.
“He pointed my mom toward free mental health resources for youth, and I swear to god, the therapist they assigned me and my sisters was the most overworked therapist I’ve ever met.
” He let out a little laugh. “But she always made time for us. Without her, we never would’ve worked through our shit, and without Pete, I never would’ve realized that I could. ”
“That’s why your social media is full of posts advocating for better mental health resources for children and youth,” Ryland said in a very ah-ha! tone. “That’s really cool of you to do that.”
“I don’t know if it’s cool so much as it’s a way for me to use my platform for good. There’s a lot wrong with social media, but there’s a lot good with it too. And if just one person gets the help they need because they saw something on my feed, then I’ll count that as a win.”
Ryland’s thumb swept back and forth over Dabbs’ ankle. Dabbs wasn’t sure Ryland was aware of it, but Dabbs certainly was, his skin prickling at the sensation.
“Have you considered partnering with a charity to raise funds or participating in awareness programs?” Ryland asked. “To help reduce stigma and encourage others to seek help?”
“No, but . . . ” Rolling his lips inward, Dabbs regarded Ryland for a long moment. Long enough for Ryland to cock his head and lift a questioning eyebrow. “If I show you something, will you promise not to laugh?”
“No.”
Dabbs was the one who laughed then, both surprised and not by Ryland’s quick reply. “Asshole.”
“That’s what you get for not telling me what you said in French.”
Dabbs shook his head and rose to his feet much more smoothly than he had just a day ago. “Come with me.
“So, one of the problems I have with social media,” he said on his way up the stairs, Ryland behind him, “is that it’s fleeting.
You see a post and forget all about it in the next few seconds.
I want to bring awareness about mental health resources for youth in a way that’s steady, but also in a way that brings in steady revenue for a charity. ”
Inside his bedroom, he took a deep breath and picked up a coil-bound manuscript from his dresser. “I wrote this.”
But Ryland was too busy looking around to pay him any attention.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t snooped in here already.”
Ryland scowled at him playfully. “I have not. Give me some credit.”
“It’s not all that interesting.”
“Are you kidding? It’s the secret life of Dabbs. Oh my god! Shannon!” He scooped the crocheted ice cream cone off the bookshelf and brought her up to his face, peering at Dabbs with big eyes from behind her. “You kept her.”
“Of course I did.”
“And she has a special spot on your bookshelf.”
“She has a spot on my bookshelf.”
“A special spot.”
“A spot.”
“Excuse you, I don’t see any other stuffies on your shelf.” Ryland hugged her close. “She’s special. Admit it.”
Dabbs would do no such thing.
Amused by him, he planted a hand on his hip. “Do you want to see what I’ve been working on or not?”
“Sorry, yes. Of course. I’ll stop squeeing about the fact that you obviously like me.”
Dabbs made a choked sound that was vaguely embarrassing.
Sure, he liked Ryland. That wasn’t the problem. The problem was . . .
What again?
“Is this it?” Ryland gestured at the manuscript. “What am I looking at exactly?” He moved closer to Dabbs, still clutching Shannon, and read off the front cover. “The Hockey Diaries, Book 1 by P.N. Leeds. Who’s that?”
“It’s me,” Dabbs croaked, distracted by Ryland’s scent. He cleared his throat and tried again. “It’s me. It’s, uh . . . I wrote a trilogy of middle-grade books, sort of plugging away at them over the past few years.”
Ryland appeared more impressed by this than he had by the French thing. “You write?”
“Since I was a kid.” Dabbs sat on the end of the bed and held his manuscript almost reverently.
“My therapist tasked me with writing my feelings in a journal, and eventually that morphed into me writing short stories about a kid going through the same things I was. Putting my problems on someone else—even if they were fictional—helped me process my own baggage.”
“So you wrote a book,” Ryland said, sitting on his right.
“Three,” Dabbs corrected. “I don’t have the second two printed though.”
“Why this one?” Ryland set Shannon aside and took the manuscript from Dabbs, handling it in his good arm with as much care as Dabbs had. As though he understood that this was Dabbs’ heart and soul in paper form.
“Because I wanted to see it laid out like it might look once formatted. It helped me see where I might be able to fit in an illustration.”
Ryland’s eyebrows flew up to his hairline. “You draw too?”
“Oh god, no. I have no artistic ability whatsoever.”
Snorting a laugh, Ryland paged through the manuscript. “Doesn’t one of your teammates illustrate children’s books?”
“Yeah, but his style isn’t what I’m looking for. He’s given me the names of a few artists he knows though.”
“This is awesome,” Ryland said softly. “What’s the trilogy about?”
“A group of three friends who play hockey together and who all have difficult home lives for different reasons. They’re meant to show kids that they’re not alone and that help is available if they need it.
Plus I plan on donating all of the proceeds to a charity in Canada that helps kids struggling with difficult home lives. ”
“Wow. Kyle, that’s amazing. Think of the difference you’ll make.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Except . . . ” Flipping back to the cover, Ryland ran his fingers over it. “What’s with this P.N. Leeds thing?”
“That’s the pen name I chose.”
“Yeah, I figured that part out. What I want to know is why.”
“Well, the P and N are my sisters, Penny and Nicole. And Leeds is our mom’s maiden name.”
“Okay, that’s ridiculously sweet, but not what I meant.” Ryland shifted on the mattress and faced him. “What I mean is, why a pen name at all?”
“Because this book—” Dabbs took it back. “—this trilogy . . . it’s not about me. I want the books to stand on their own without me, without who I am, getting in the way.”
“Admirable. But can I play devil’s advocate?”
Dabbs couldn’t help but smile at him. “I suppose.”
“These books—” Ryland tapped the one in Dabbs’ hands.
“—are a great idea. If you want to publish under a pen name, then that’s your prerogative, of course.
But weren’t you just saying that you want to use your platform for good?
Think of the difference you could make if you used your existing platform to publish, market, and advertise them.
A hockey player writing books about hockey players?
You could raise so much more money for your charity.
You already have the following. Use it.”
That was . . . incredibly insightful.
Dabbs shouldn’t be surprised. Although his initial impression of Ryland as someone who was flashy and loud and thrived as the center of attention wasn’t inaccurate, it also wasn’t the whole picture.
Ryland was smart. Capable. Dedicated. Considerate. Thoughtful. Attentive.
And he’d gotten so far under Dabbs’ skin that he was beginning to think it would be impossible to ever get him out.
“The problem with publishing under my own name,” Dabbs started, “is that someone will inevitably ask why I chose to write about these topics. And the reason has everything to do with my own childhood, but it’s not something I’ve ever talked about publicly before.
And I don’t relish telling complete strangers about the hell that was my home life until I was ten. ”
Ryland nodded. “Understandable. And after that jerk told your whole class about your dad and everyone gossiped about you, you probably want to minimize any more gossip.”
Dabbs blinked at him, taken aback.
Shit. Was Ryland right? Had he opted for a pen name to protect himself?
Dabbs wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he didn’t have time to reflect on it because Ryland continued.
“Consider this.” Ryland turned fully to face him, folding one leg under himself.
His knee nudged Dabbs’ hip. “Your target market is middle-grade readers, but middle-grade readers don’t have any money.
Your audience is actually parents, guardians, teachers, librarians.
People who will buy these books or recommend them to kids they know.
If someone asks why you chose to write these books, you’re not obligated to tell them anything.
You can vaguebook as much as you want, give an abbreviated version, or tell them the whole story.
It’s up to you. But if people find out that you wrote these books based on your own experiences .
. . if they recognize that a kid they know will see themselves in these books because you’ve been there, you’ve lived it .
. . that will only help sell more books.
What kid going through a tough time doesn’t want to know they’re not alone? ”
Was Ryland thinking of himself? Of the kid he’d been after his parents’ divorce, metaphorically waving his arms, hoping someone would notice his struggles so he didn’t have to go through them alone?
Could Dabbs help more kids like the one Ryland had been if he published under his own name?
“You’ve given me a lot to think about.”
Ryland rose and stretched his left arm over his head, elongating his toned body and making Dabbs’ mouth water. “Whatever you decide, there’s no wrong answer. And it’s not like you need to decide right this second. You’re not having cover art done, like, tomorrow, are you?”
“I don’t have an illustrator to name on the cover art yet, so no. That’s a down-the-line thing.”
One of the dogs barked, either wanting to be let out to pee or at something they heard outside.
“I’ve got that,” Ryland said around a yawn. “I’ll see you in the morning.” He left, but almost right away he popped his head back into the room. He pointed at the manuscript. “Can I take that so I can read it?”
Dabbs looked down at it in his lap, at this paper version of himself that was held together by hope and fortitude and the first ten years of his life. “Maybe not just yet.”
Ryland’s smile held nothing but soft understanding. “’Kay. Night, Dabbs.”
“Night, Ry.”
“Don’t forget to put Shannon back in her special spot.”
Shaking his head, Dabbs chuckled. Once he’d put Shannon back in her spot on his bookshelf, he brushed his teeth and went to bed, leaving the door ajar for the dogs despite knowing they’d probably bunk down with their new human best friend again tonight.
And when he dreamed, he dreamed of paper-versions of himself and Ryland playing hockey with Castle and Cosmo as an audience of two.