Twenty-Three #3
I curl my hands into fists, hiding the scratches. “They’re fine,” I lie, and shift to a question I really care about, though I suspect I already know the answer. “What did your parents say about Ellison?”
He huffs out a mirthless laugh. “It didn’t go well.” He runs a hand through his dripping hair. “My dad went ballistic. He screamed at me for a while, then told me that if I go somewhere other than Ellison, I’m not welcome back home again.”
I didn’t know I could hate someone so much. “Just because you don’t want to go to the college he chose for you?”
“It’s not about the college,” Garrett says. “Not really. He kept saying that I can go live my ‘fag lifestyle’ as long as it isn’t under his roof.”
“What the actual hell,” I breathe. The thought of Garrett being stuck with his abusive parents for the next four years sparks a protective fire in the pit of my stomach.
“So you’ll take out loans. Tyler’s dad can help you figure things out.
You could get away from your parents, make your own choices. ”
The drizzle patters on the soft leaves above us while Garrett frowns at the crumbling staircase.
“I think that’s easy for you to say,” he eventually says.
“You get to go off to school, and at the end of the year, your family and home will be right here waiting for you. You have a home, Enzo. You have a town you love and a family who loves you. You have a place you belong. But what would I have? I would have nothing. If I ran out of money or ended up in the hospital or failed all my classes, I would have nowhere to go.” He closes his eyes.
Opens them. “I wouldn’t have a home anymore. ”
“Home is more than a place to sleep at night.”
“Jeez, Enz. You think I don’t know that?
For the last few months, I’ve felt like I finally had one.
You’ve never had to question your place in your family, and I’m so glad for that.
You have the wonderful problem of loving them so much that you don’t want to leave.
But my real home is fucked up, and the best I can do is figure out how to get an education so I can do what I want with my life. ”
I sit with that statement for a few minutes.
His parents have given him an impossible choice, and I was blind to it because of how lucky I’ve been to be a part of my own family.
All year, I’ve been trying to imagine the possibility of building a home somewhere outside of Irontown, as if it would exclude or replace the home I already have.
But that’s not how home works—it’s not a piece of music with a single melody line.
There can be different textures, layers of harmony, multiple melodies overlapping, coexisting.
They don’t cancel out the original melody; they enhance it.
My home is beautiful, but it isn’t stagnant; it doesn’t have to be my only home.
Garrett’s father wants to steal his son’s ability to build his own life, to add that second layer of music to his original melody. What Garrett’s father doesn’t know is that Garrett has already had to build a new home for himself. He already has a place he belongs outside of Atlanta.
“Stay with us,” I say. “After graduation. For as long as you want. If it’s about needing a place to live while you figure out college, you’ll always have a home here.”
He looks away into the dimness of the forest for a long time. “You make it seem so uncomplicated,” he eventually says.
“Maybe it is.”
“You don’t think what’s happened between us complicates things? Or the fact that your dad can barely afford to support you and Emma, much less a charity case from two wealthy parents?”
“You’re not a charity case.”
“And my parents aren’t as bad as I made them sound,” he tells me. “They’ve always paid for everything I’ve needed—”
“After everything they did? Garrett, your dad beat you. They’ve manipulated you, controlled your life—”
“And they’ve loved me.” There are tears slipping down his cheeks now.
“I don’t expect you to get it, but, Enz—I miss them.
They’ve done some really shitty things, but they’re still my parents.
They raised me. Sure, things have been awful for the last year.
But I miss the way things used to be. Believe it or not, we were close up through middle school, doing the kind of dumb shit happy families do.
We’d go for walks after church on Sunday.
I’d watch football with Dad, go shoe shopping with Mom. Things were good most of the time.”
“They’re making you choose between being who you are and returning to that version of your family. A version that doesn’t really exist anymore.”
He stares at his hands for so long that I think I’ve lost him. Then he looks up at me, eyes red but with a glimmer of hope in them. “Do you think … Would your dad be okay with it? If I—”
But before he can finish, the whoop-whoop of a siren and a burst of red and blue lights flash up at us from the old cracked pavement of the Caving Grounds. A cop car is blocking our exit, and the officer stepping out of the driver’s seat doesn’t look happy.