20. Easton
Chapter Twenty
EASTON
My face heated so much that I believed it would burst into flames at any moment.
After Jace had slammed the door on his way out, I stood in disbelief.
His venomous words were worthless, but Dad couldn’t see it.
His eyes were murky and tearstained, although I doubted he was mourning the mistakes he had made.
Once again, Jace had flared like a brilliant shooting star, showing me just how unprepared I was. Once again, he saved my skin when I was ready to fold.
“My boy,” Dad cried. “Don’t listen to him.” How kind and gentle he was; how sweet and wonderful. So long as we could paint Jace the nastiest colors, our hands were clean. We loved each other so dearly for as long as Jace was outside our circle.
I realized now, in the moment when Dad stepped toward me with open arms, that I hated him.
It was abrupt and as powerful as galaxies colliding.
This man, who had picked me out of a hundred and given me a chance at a decent life, was not a good person.
The debt I carried to him for adopting me was something he had planted into me.
“You see, Easton, we chose you because we want to help you.” He’d spoken those words in the car on our way home.
He’d put me at his mercy and made me grateful.
I had watched other kids get picked. I had seen their tears of joy.
The older they were, the more powerful those reactions were.
Most of us that turned five or six knew we didn’t stand a chance.
Our cuteness had long faded, and our lives were much better defined.
We would stand in corners, not even compete for the attention of the couples that visited us.
The older I was, the more it felt like a pageant, and the stupider I felt when they didn’t pick me.
Until the Harpers came and snatched me for the very trait that my defense mechanism had given me: the ability to be quiet, invisible, and agreeable.
“He’s rotten, Easton,” Dad told me now, snapping me out of the memory.
“You know this, son. He’s always been a jealous child.
He hated you.” Dad shook his head, still moving toward me with his arms open, expecting a grateful hug from his only boy.
“How did you even…? But no. It’s not important. We make mistakes, son.”
I looked up, my eyebrows curving into a deep frown. “Jace wasn’t a mistake.”
Dad winced at the sound of his name. He knew.
He knew how badly he had failed with Jace that even the mention of the name filled him with terror.
His arms dropped to his sides. “You’re confused, Easton.
He does that. He schemes and manipulates.
I remember this better; you were just a child.
There is something wrong with that boy. We should have called the cops and had him locked up in an institution, son.
But we only wanted to be free of him. Don’t you remember?
You nearly died, Easton. And we released him into the world. ”
I pressed my lips into a tight white line, my fists clenching until my nails dug into my palms and pain screamed up my arms. I could feel the bones and tendons of my hands strain under the pressure of my folded fingers.
“We’ll protect you. We will…Easton, we will forget this ever happened,” he said, only vaguely gesturing at the coffee table.
Dad had used the spare key to enter the apartment after Mrs. Johnson had told him about some loud and ungainly noises coming from the apartment.
She had informed Dad of a very rude young man who maybe belonged to a gang living with his sweet, polite son.
It was her duty as a neighbor and a responsible adult who had raised three children and made them into successful people to inform Dad if she suspected her son was being dragged down the wrong path.
She wouldn’t stand for it if it were her child, and she knew that Dad would rather know the truth.
Without a beat, Dad had driven here and entered the apartment, searched the rooms, and discovered a terrible sight on my bed.
The embarrassment of having my father see the tools that would have given me pleasure on any other night was such that I had remained stunned and silent for several minutes.
But then, Jace burst into the apartment, and my world shattered.
“How’s that, son?” Dad asked, hoping to strike a bargain without the need to discuss anything.
That was so like him. If he didn’t benefit from it, he wouldn’t talk about it.
He wouldn’t want to face the fact that his son was gay, that he had fallen for the bad boy they’d once called his brother, and that he liked it.
It was easier to imagine that Jace had somehow tricked me into it. “Forget about that arsonist, Easton.”
The evidence on the table was proof enough that I was just a prisoner in Jace’s fantasies. Why else would there be blindfolds and handcuffs if not to take my agency away?
But Dad didn’t understand one crucial thing.
I had never had any agency in my life. Everything had always been done to me.
I was the unimportant figure in the passage of time.
Life grabbed me by the balls, not the other way around.
Things happened and placed me on paths I had never chosen for myself.
I never left any proof of my existence in the world; the world left its tracks on me.
The Harpers adopted me, and I went with it.
Jace tormented me in that insufferable way you taunted your crush to make yourself noticed.
Piano lessons were given to me.
My team elected me, then got rid of me.
Kyle outed me before I had the balls to come out on my own terms.
And Jace had come into my life without an invitation, cashing in a favor he’d given freely. No. I didn’t make my choices. And that was no way to live. For once in this pathetic life of mine, I needed to call the shots.
“It wasn’t him,” I whispered, every part of my cowardly being wanting to turn away and not see Dad’s face.
Dad was confused. He had just seen Jace here in person. Of course it had been Jace.
“You and Mom were too busy building trenches between us to see it, but I was in love with him even then. I was in love with the boy you forced me to call a brother. And it made me sick, Dad.”
But Dad shook his head, refusing to accept it.
Why change the order of things when we could all sweep them under the rug and never think about them again?
We could live our lives quietly, suppressing everything about ourselves until a blood vessel burst in our brains or an ulcer ate away our stomachs.
And even then, we wouldn’t think back on our deeds because it didn’t matter.
Things had just played out the way they were supposed to, huh?
“I couldn’t be there anymore,” I said, my voice cracking.
“I could live with myself when Jace was around because I spent every waking moment wanting him. When other boys and girls held hands in school, I begged God to force Jace to take my hand in his. When they learned to kiss, I cried myself to sleep because he wasn’t kissing me. ”
“He led you on,” Dad accused.
“Bullshit,” I snapped. “He couldn’t stand me.
I was a sniveling mess, and he tormented me because of it.
But I saw what you did to him. On every Christmas morning and on every summer break, I saw how you separated him, and I came to hate that house, Dad.
I wanted it gone. Me. I wanted it gone, Dad. ”
The darkening color of Dad’s face told me he understood, but the disbelief in his eyes was still strong. “No, no, no. You remember it wrong, Easton. It was Jace. He was always playing with the matches. I had to beat him, son, to make him stop.”
I snorted. “Do you remember what we did the morning before the fire? Mom took us shopping. She bought me four new T-shirts and a button-down shirt for the summer. Jace wanted a hoodie, but Mom yelled at him that he couldn’t have it because it was hot outside.
We returned home with my new clothes, and Jace got nothing. Nothing.”
Dad latched on the wrong thing, as always. “Why should she buy him a hoodie in July? It’s silly, son.”
“But I saw how it made him feel to be yelled at at fifteen years old,” I said.
“I saw how she embarrassed him in front of all the other kids at the mall. And I set my closet on fire. I didn’t even know I was doing it until the flames spread, and I ran into the bathroom, locking myself up like it couldn’t get to me there. ”
Dad shook his head. The version he had told the firefighters was that it had been an accident. The version that our family held on to was that Jace had been jealous of my new clothes and set them on fire to get back at me. But the truth was that I had hated us all.
To this day, I remembered little of it, except the moment after the fire, when Dad dragged Jace to the car, and Jace caught my gaze.
He had a fascinated little smile on his lips, eyes glowing, almost as if he was proud of me.
He didn’t think I had it in me. I’d surprised him for once—the predictable, boring, old me.
He could have protested, but I suspected that he knew nobody would believe him. Perhaps he didn’t want to be believed, anyway. Perhaps the fire was one of those events that gave such unexpected new possibilities that Jace wanted to see where the events would take him.
“You,” Dad whispered, beginning to believe me. Here was his boy, finally capable of doing something.
I had expected anger, perhaps even the buckle of his belt, but Dad stiffened, color draining from his face and taking all the hints of emotions with it. Something died in his eyes just then.
“We never adopted children,” he said flatly. “We adopted snakes.”
I didn’t argue with him. What they adopted was not the same as what they put out into the world. There were years of smithwork until they forged these fucked-up creatures from the raw helplessness of what they’d brought home.