Five
“I talked to Garrett’s parents.”
Dad says it carefully, eyeing Emma and me for a reaction. We’re sitting around the dining room table, the leftovers from last night’s over-the-top dinner on our plates. Garrett hasn’t come home yet.
“Can he stay?” Emma blurts.
“It might be for the best.”
Emma yelps excitedly, not noticing what Dad isn’t saying. It might be for the best, like something is wrong with Garrett going home, like staying here is a solution.
Dad watches me over the top of his water glass, his eyes piercing through me. He takes a drink and sets it down. “What do you think, Enzo?”
I chase a piece of rigatoni around my plate with my fork. “It’s fine, I guess.”
“But you were expecting someone else. You’re not happy Garrett’s here.”
“He’s not a foreign exchange student,” I say. “We’re not his foster family.”
Dad is quiet for a second too long. “No,” he says. “We’re not. And you’re the one who will be living closest to him. If you really don’t want him here, I understand.”
“You’d send him home because I don’t want him here?”
Dad nods, and he and Emma go quiet, waiting for my answer, the unsellable grandfather clock in the hall filling the silence with its thudding pendulum.
If we were in a movie right now, pulsing strings would underscore a close-up on my face, the rest of the plot hanging on the next words out of my mouth.
Then I would smile and say something cliché like What the hell, let’s do this!
and the woodwinds and brass instruments would sail in, all playful and bright, before a montage would start rolling: Garrett unpacking in his room; our family walking down Main Street, ice cream cones in hand; Garrett and me striding into the senior hallway on the first day of school before he fist-bumps me on his way into calculus class.
The audience, swept away by the buoyant soundtrack, wouldn’t question why the characters are okay with a kid from Atlanta living in our house for a year.
My life isn’t a movie.
And yet everyone else seems okay with a kid from Atlanta living in our house for a year.
I don’t know why Garrett or his parents wanted this.
I don’t know why Dad and Emma like him so much.
And I don’t know why a weird part of me wants to fight with him about my pride flag again, wants to watch him dive into ultramarine waves of Lake Superior again, wants him to choose me over Evan Hegge.
I shrug. “Yeah.”
“Yeah, what?” Dad asks.
“Yeah, he can stay. I don’t care—it’s fine.”
A wide smile breaks across Emma’s face. Dad nods, sealing the decision.
Cue the brass! Cue the woodwinds! Cue the montage-inciting key change!
Cue footsteps in the kitchen and Garrett standing in the doorway, and cancel the montage because he is a real person about to live across the hall from me for the next year.
“Sorry I missed dinner,” he says, noticing our empty plates.
He’s been in the sun most of the day and carries some of it into the room with him, but his face holds a strained expression, and I realize I don’t remember hearing the back door open.
I wonder how long he’s been standing in the kitchen, how much of our conversation he overheard.
“Just leftovers,” Dad says. “Make yourself a plate.”
Garrett obliges, and as he passes Emma, he slides something onto the table next to her. He’s trying to be discreet, but as soon as she picks it up, she squeals with delight.
“The third book in the Centaurus Chronicles! Where did you get it?”
He shrugs, leaning over the table to pile his plate with salad. “One of the guys I met today just finished it and loaned me his copy.”
“Thank you!” She opens up the book, props it against the edge of the table, and begins reading.
I watch Garrett as he empties the bowl of rigatoni onto his plate.
There’s no way any of Tyler’s friends just finished book three of the Centaurus Chronicles, and that copy looks like it’s never been opened before.
He sits down and starts eating, staring at his food more intently than he needs to, which lets me look at him longer.
This—his going out and buying a book for my younger sister—is a new facet of the person sitting across from me.
Cocky golden boy.
Sci-fi fan.
Football jock.
And now a considerate gift giver.
Who is this guy?
“You didn’t have to do that,” Dad tells him softly.
Garrett shrugs again. “It’s whatever.” He swallows his food and takes a swig of water. “I appreciate everything y’all have done for me. Letting me crash here for a few days and everything.”
“About that,” Dad says, and the room gets awkward and still, as if he were a teenager about to announce an unexpected pregnancy during Thanksgiving dinner. “I talked to GYA and your parents today. Sounds like it was our fault for not knowing you were assigned here.”
Garrett’s fork pauses over his plate.
“I’m sorry for all the anxiety this has caused you,” Dad says. “We’re thrilled to have you with us for the year. Right, Enz?”
“Right,” I say, responsibility and guilt settling on my shoulders in equal measure, as if I’m part of the Thanksgiving pregnancy scare, too.
Garrett is silent for a half second, maybe less. And in that half second, disappointment and frustration flash across his face. But then he releases his one-third grin, and it’s almost convincing, before he asks, “Did my parents … did they say much else when you talked to them?”
Dad’s face is a mask. “No. Not much else. Just that they were glad you got here safe.”
Garrett’s eyes narrow. “That’s it?”
“Yep.”
“Nothing else?”
“Nope.”
For some reason, Garrett doesn’t seem to believe him.
He scrutinizes Dad as if he’s watching a sleazy talk show host who’s screwing with his emotions for the sake of ratings—like Dad’s ready to stand and proclaim You’re NOT the father!
while the audience whoops and hollers, and a smiling large-breasted woman delivers him a first-class plane ticket back to Atlanta.
When this doesn’t happen, we begin clearing the dishes, and Garrett is officially our domestic exchange student.
He excuses himself. “Tired,” he says, and goes upstairs to unpack in his new bedroom.
No driving soundtrack or happy montage, just heavy footsteps on our creaky stairs.
Once I get to my room, I plug my headphones into my keyboard and am sitting down to play when I hear a knock.
I pull my headphones off. “Yeah?”
Garrett leans against my doorframe, examining me, chewing his tongue. “Why did you tell your dad you wanted me to stay?”
“What?”
“When your dad asked you at dinner. You could have told him you didn’t want me here, and GYA would have sent me a ticket home.”
“I’m not the one who talked to GYA and your parents. That was all my dad.” And maybe because he’s somehow mad at me for all this, I double down. “I don’t want you here. You’re not supposed to be here.”
“Then why the hell didn’t you tell your dad that? It’s been clear from the second I stepped off the plane that you don’t want me here. But when the time comes for you to do me a solid and get me sent home, you decide you want me to stay?”
Technically I didn’t ever not want him here. He just wasn’t the person we expected him to be, even if he’s likable and smart and athletic. I obviously wouldn’t tell him this, so I instead say, “I told you: I don’t want you to stay.”
He arches his eyebrows in furious helplessness. “Well, I am! So now I get to spend my senior year at a podunk high school, in a backwater town, rooming across the hall from a tight-ass clarinet player.”
“Oboe,” I correct. “And you’ll be fine. It seems like you found friends.”
“God,” he says, disgust in his voice. “Evan was right about you.”
“Oh yeah?” My stomach clenches. “What the hell did he say?”
“That you think you’re better than everyone else. That you don’t have time for people unless they play an instrument or scored high on their ACT. Not that anyone in this town seems to be kicking ass on standardized tests.”
Evan is an asshole, which also makes Garrett one for believing him. Instead of defending myself, I focus on Garrett’s newest slam on Irontown. “You have a lot to say about Irontown for someone who grew up with gap-toothed, shotgun-toting hicks waving around Confederate flags.”
He lets out a derisive laugh. “You actually think that’s what Atlanta is like?”
I lift my shoulders. “It’s the South.”
“Dude, if any of my friends from home saw the people I’m surrounded by right now, they’d be worried about me being the victim of a hate crime.”
“Hate crime?”
“Never mind.”
“No, really. Tell me: What problem do you have with me and my dad and everyone else you’ve met here?”
He lifts his hands. “I don’t have a problem with anyone. I just don’t want to be here. I’m not into the rural vibe y’all have going on.”
His eyes flick to my clothes, and despite myself, I look down at them. My jeans used to belong to Dad, and I’m wearing a band camp T-shirt from several years ago beneath a flannel with a hole in the armpit. I don’t look out of place in Irontown.
And then I glance at Garrett. Even in his shorts—which are way shorter than any that the people in this town would wear—and his T-shirt with a brand-name logo, he’s more put together than every teenager in Irontown.
He shops at the kind of stores we don’t have, spending the kind of money we don’t have.
“Then go back to your city, asshole.”
“I actually can’t, thanks to you.”
“Fuck you,” I say.
He glares at me from the doorway, his eyes fire and ice. My own eyes are stinging because I’m the kind of loser who cries when I get angry.
His eyes narrow, and I’m positive he sees the waterworks building. Then he shakes his head in disgust and steps away into the semidarkness of the hall. A second later, I hear his door close.
I go back to my keyboard and start plunking out the “Concerning Hobbits” theme from The Lord of the Rings soundtrack, but I turn all the chords minor. Fuck you, Garrett, in D minor, then G minor, then A minor.
A half hour later, when I pull my headphones off, I can hear Garrett’s voice drifting through the half-closed door of his room.
“… so many hicks,” he’s saying. “A dude showed up to the ice cream shop on a fucking four-wheeler.”
I hear teenage laughter. Through the crack in his door, I see Garrett propped up on his bed, holding his phone at arm’s length. He’s on a video call.
“And the dude I’m staying with … he took me to this place where everyone just jumps off these rocks into a lake. It was hella lame, but at least I met some guys who seem cool.”
A girl’s voice, still carrying the final notes of laughter from his last comment, responds. “I thought you liked swimming?”
“Yeah, but he acted like it was this big deal. And so did everyone else. Like, I think it’s literally the only thing the locals do around here for fun. That, and getting wasted and fucking their cousins.”
More laughter.
“Seriously,” Garrett says, “there are seven bars on one street alone, and I bet no one gives a shit if I’m underage.”
“Oooh, can we come up for Christmas and do a bar crawl?” This time a boy’s voice.
Garrett laughs. “I care about y’all too much to let you set foot in this shitty town. But I suppose you’d at least understand the unique hell I’m about to live through.”
“Any closeted rednecks for me to hook up with?” the boy asks seriously.
“Rednecks? They’re everywhere. But I’m pretty sure there’s a total of one gay boy in this town.”
“And?” the boy’s voice prods. “Verdict?”
“You’re way too good for him.”
I get up and close my own door, then slide to the floor with my back against it and sit there for a while. For some reason, Garrett’s comments about the stark differences between his home and mine make me think of what my life will look like next year.
Because, other than the School of Mines in Blue Harbor, the nearest university in a real city is six hours away. There’s no in-between option: Either I move far away from everything I care about, or I go to the nearby school I have no interest in.
I feel a sudden resentment toward people like Garrett who live in big cities with big opportunities, places that have a dozen fantastic colleges within arm’s reach.
He’d never have to make a choice like this.
He could go to any number of nationally ranked schools and still be close enough to home to see his family and friends on the weekends.
So maybe I should go to the School of Mines like Dad wants me to.
I’d be there with a lot of people from Irontown.
I’d live at home. I’d still work at the shop.
No life-altering seismic shifts, no need to move away from my family.
The thought is consoling and safe, though it also fills me with a strange sense of emptiness I don’t understand.
This future is good, I tell myself.
It’s comfortable. Feasible. It makes sense.
I’m not stuck in Irontown, I tell myself. You can’t be stuck in a place you love.