Twelve
“There’s a chance he’s just not into you.”
A week after Garrett came out to me in the Caving Grounds, I’m walking home from marching band practice with Katrina and Trevor on what might be the last nice day of October. Dappled sunlight paints the tree-lined sidewalk, a warm breeze crackling the autumn leaves like old paper.
Katrina’s statement is harsh but true.
Garrett has been friendly yet distant, our interactions limited to brief snatches of witty sarcasm before he moves on to other people and activities.
He spends his school hours with the football team, and when he is at home, he’s watching ESPN with Dad or playfully chatting with Aunt Liz or arguing with Emma about whatever sci-fi book she’s reading.
I feel superfluous in these moments, an observer of the relationships he’s building with my family.
I’m jealous of the rhythm they’ve developed with him, their inside jokes and easy ways of being together.
Meanwhile, Garrett and I are like an oboe and trombone attempting to play a duet—two instruments that can’t seem to blend and were maybe never meant to.
And why would he act differently around me after the Caving Grounds? He’s always known I’m gay, has had the chance to develop feelings for me all along, could have used his abundance of cockiness to flirt with me, safe in the knowledge that I might reciprocate.
But he hasn’t, and he isn’t.
Which leads me to agree with Katrina’s horribly blunt assessment: He’s just not into me.
“I was thinking of inviting him to join us for Mario Kart tonight,” I say.
Trevor groans. “You want us to be your wingmen so you can get with your exchange brother? I want to beat your ass at Kart, not watch you flirt with Garrett.”
“Enz doesn’t know how to flirt,” Katrina says dismissively. “So you don’t have to worry about that. And Georgia is probably too busy to hang out with us.”
She’s right. Garrett has an exceptionally vibrant social life.
When he’s not at school or football practice, he’s grabbing dinner with Ryan Beltrami and the cross-country team or chilling at Tyler Jorgen’s place or keeping up with his Atlanta friends on video calls.
I think of what he told me on our walk home from Dana’s party: “There’s a lot you have to give up to make everyone like you,” and I realize I haven’t seen him hanging out with Evan since then.
“It doesn’t hurt to ask,” I say, pretending I don’t care either way.
Trevor sighs. “Fine. Invite him. But if he makes fun of how good I am at Mario Kart, we’re sending him back to the football team.”
To my surprise, Garrett joins us, canceling a call with his older brother Charlie.
I find myself crammed between him and Trevor on my bed, each of us holding a controller and furiously maneuvering our characters on the small TV perched on my dresser.
Dad went to Blue Harbor with Aunt Liz, and Emma is reading in her bedroom, so the house yawns dark and silent below us, making my bedroom feel like the warm blanket forts I used to make as a kid.
Garrett’s arm presses against mine, and I hazard a glance at him. His eyes are bright, a competitive glint in them as he mashes the buttons of his controller. On the screen, Trevor’s character hurls a volley of shells at Garrett’s and passes him to win the race.
“Fuck you!” Garrett says, grinning. He holds out a fist and Trevor bumps it.
Over the victory soundtrack blaring from the TV, I think I hear a noise downstairs and figure Dad is probably home.
The doors are locked, though I can’t remember if I turned the porch light on for him.
It’s getting late, but I hope he doesn’t tell us to wrap up.
A tenuous thread of friendship seems to be growing between Garrett and us, and I don’t want the night to end.
“You know, Georgia,” Katrina says, tossing a piece of popcorn into her mouth, “maybe you missed your calling. Maybe instead of football you should be playing e-sports or something.”
I get up and move to my desk to grab my water bottle.
Trevor cues up another round, Garrett and Katrina banter about something stupid, and the TV is louder than it should be.
I glance out the window and notice that Dad’s truck isn’t in the driveway.
I think I hear a crash from below us and wonder if Emma finally knocked over the porcelain urn that roosts on a small table near the front desk.
But the new round is beginning, and I settle back onto the bed, preparing to lose another race.
After the first lap, my bedroom door creaks open, and Emma slides into the room. She wears pajama bottoms and a baggy T-shirt and her face is white. She opens her mouth, then closes it.
“Emma,” Garrett says, pausing the game, plunging the room into sudden silence, “what’s wrong?”
Without the TV, I hear it: heavy footsteps, moving quickly.
“There’s someone downstairs,” Emma whispers.
Trevor and Katrina stare at each other, frozen in their seats. My body grows hot and rigid, my brain skipping like an old scratched record. Someone’s downstairs, it says. What if they come upstairs? What if they have a knife? What if they have a gun?
We’re being robbed.
Call the cops.
Robber.
Cops.
Like that old game, I think dumbly. Cops and robbers. I almost laugh.
“What do we do?” Katrina whispers.
But Garrett has already leaped off the bed and is rushing out of my bedroom.
He’s only wearing socks, my brain notes. The intruder might have a knife or a gun, and Garrett has only socks and shorts and a sweatshirt.
Katrina has her phone out, forcing her trembling hands to dial 911, and Emma is shouting Garrett’s name, and Trevor is up and peering through the window.
I jump off the bed and chase after Garrett.
By the time I tumble down our steep stairs onto the second floor, Garrett is halfway down the main staircase, hurling himself into the darkness of our store.
I hear a man’s voice and the sound of running and then Garrett is shouting, calling him a fucker, telling him to get the fuck out of our store, that he’ll beat the shit out of him.
Glass shatters.
I reach the staircase as Garrett bolts through our front door into the night.
Dear God, don’t let him have a gun, I think with each step. Don’t let him have a knife.
The window of our front door lies in shards across the entryway. I skirt around the glass and out onto our front porch in time to see an SUV screeching down the street. When I reach Garrett, he’s standing at the end of our pathway, chest heaving, eyes wild.
“That fucker got away!” he says.
Relief floods through me. He wasn’t hurt. Our store just got robbed, and Garrett is able to be angry about that because he isn’t lying on our path with a bullet in his stomach. Emma is safe and Trevor is safe and Katrina is safe and everything will be okay.
Then I notice the dark trail of blood dripping onto Garrett’s white socks.
Dad clutches Emma and me against his chest in the flashing lights of the police car. He arrived after the ambulance, rushing from his truck without bothering to kill the engine or close the door. Trevor, Katrina, and Aunt Liz stand nearby, speaking with a police officer.
Dad releases us and turns to look at our front door hanging open into the gaping darkness of our entryway. He steps onto the porch, and Emma and I follow. Our Packers flag hangs limply in the still night air, our chairs and potted plants resting pleasantly in their usual places.
We move inside, avoiding the bits of glass scattered across the parquet floor, and Dad flips on the overhead light.
I’m shocked at how ordinary everything appears.
Aside from the glass, there seems to be no evidence that someone broke into our shop.
Then I notice that the glass cabinet housing our small collection of old jewelry is hanging open, its contents missing.
My brain begins calculating the loss. Several of the rings and lockets from that case were worth hundreds, which means we lost thousands of dollars. For a larger business, this would be bad but manageable. For us, with our razor-thin profit margin, it’s devastating.
But Dad’s focus is not on the jewelry case. He stands at our front desk, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose.
The cash register. It’s gone.
“How much was in it?” I breathe.
“We had our biggest sale of the year today,” Dad says quietly.
“Scott Makela is turning that old apartment building on Iron Street into a bed-and-breakfast. He bought the dining table and chairs from the basement. And two mahogany cabinets, along with a set of hand-painted china. It was right at the end of the day. He paid with cash, but the bank had already closed, so I thought I’d go tomorrow…
” He trails off, his voice pleading and defeated.
“How much?” I ask again.
“Five thousand. Give or take.”
That’s several weeks’ worth of profit.
“Our insurance will cover the jewelry,” Dad says. “But not the cash. God, I’m so stupid.”
We stand in silence for a minute, the loss soaking in. Then Dad’s head jerks back. “Why is there an ambulance here?”
Emma and I look at each other.
“Garrett,” Dad says, panic surging into his voice. “Where the hell is Garrett?”
We lead Dad down our front path, and I notice dark splotches of Garrett’s blood staining the cement. When we reach the ambulance, a paramedic hops out.
“Your son will be fine,” he tells Dad. “We removed the glass from his hand and wrapped it, but he’ll need stitches. Are you okay driving him to the ER?”
Dad nods and doesn’t bother telling the paramedic that Garrett isn’t his son. Then Garrett himself climbs out of the ambulance, his hand wrapped in a thick layer of gauze, a dark red blossom stretching across his palm.
He throws his killer grin at us. “I nicked an artery,” he says. “I grabbed the door when I chased that asshole out of the house and caught my hand on the broken window. I hope that dude—”
He breaks off because Dad has pulled him into a crushing hug. Garrett blinks at me over Dad’s shoulder, taken aback. “You idiot,” Dad says into his hair. “What were you thinking? Whoever broke in could have been armed! They could have killed you!”
Garrett tries to downplay what he did. “They weren’t armed. And I’m fine.”
Dad releases Garrett. He asks Aunt Liz to take care of Emma and the shop, and ushers Garrett toward his truck. I follow, and soon we’re driving the dark road to Blue Harbor and the regional hospital.
“Sorry about the ambulance,” Garrett says. “I didn’t really need it. My parents can pay for it.”
“You chased a burglar out of our shop,” Dad says. “You don’t get to apologize for anything.”
I sit in the back seat and say nothing. I’m the one who panicked and called the ambulance, adding another massive expense to the damage already done tonight.
Guilt floods my chest as I think about how I was too busy having fun with my friends to notice someone robbing our shop, how I should have reacted sooner to the sounds I heard, how it was Garrett and not me who chased the intruder off.
I think about Burton-Clark’s website bookmarked on my computer.
All the money we lost tonight—the amount pushing Dad’s business closer to the ever-present precipice of financial ruin—adds up to only a tenth of the cost of a year’s tuition.
Hot shame flushes through me at the thought of asking Dad to pay for flights, books, room and board, and everything else that comes with the cost of college.
We lost so much. I can’t possibly ask my family to sacrifice more.