Chapter 1

I’m sore from sitting in this pew.

There’s a crick in my neck from staring at my lap. But I can’t look at the coffin, can’t look at the pastor drawling on. So I stare at my knees, focusing on the crease of my black slacks, fiddle with the end of the tie choking air from my lungs.

After, I hear them. Voices, hushed murmurs, everyone’s two cents about my younger brother, talking as if they knew him, talking as if they had any idea what he was like.

“Such a sweetheart, that one. Quiet - but always with that big smile.”

“I remember when he won that math award a few years back, his parents were so proud! I think he tripped on his way up the stage, but then he gave a peace sign to the crowd and everyone was laughing. He knew how to keep things light… What a kid.”

“Didn’t he give your boy his baseball glove last summer? Once he knew- I mean… once he was no longer able to play?”

Sugar-infused punch washes down my throat. I’ve never wanted to be drunk this badly, but alcohol would never be allowed at the funeral. Never be allowed anywhere, so long as Dad’s in the vicinity.

“Poor Cameron… first her man, now her little boy… at least Jon-Luke got that scholarship. That’s something to be thankful for.”

I’m not a violent person.

I’m not a violent person.

I will not be a violent person.

In the car, Mom turns to me. Her eyes are red. The wrinkles lining her forehead look a thousand times deeper.

“Let’s go home,” she says, patting my knee.

Her voice is like sandpaper.

I nod, because that’s all I can manage, and we pull out of the gravel parking lot. The tie comes off on my third attempt. Staring out the window, I massage my neck.

“He was sixteen,” I say. Townhouses rush by in a blur.

Mom says nothing.

“Everyone keeps calling him a little kid. He would hate that.”

Blue sky shouldn’t be allowed today. This is a day for rain, for drenching rain, maybe some thunder. Not some stupid, bright, open expanse. Sunlight turns our car into an easy-bake oven.

“Some happy-go-lucky kid. A good sport, a generous boy, a sweetheart.” Cranking the AC, I look at her. “Do you remember him like that?”

She’s crying again. Soundlessly, tears slipping down her cheeks.

“None of them saw him angry. The way he never shared his game console with the cousins. None of them had to listen to him crying and yelling and pulling what was left of his hair out.”

“Jon-Luke.”

My throat obstructs.

Wiping her nose, Mom asks, “Did you talk to Dad?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“He was at the back of the church. Got there on time and everything. You should have talked to him, he’s taking this hard too.”

I look out the window again.

Is a man who walked away allowed to take this hard? A man who only now slunk back into our lives after six years of absence, bringing his addictions and spineless ways with him?

“He hated him. Vyvian.” My brother’s name weighs on my tongue. “He hated dad.”

We drive past a park, its empty slides and swing sets staring back at us.

I think about burning the tie in my hands. Digging Dad’s old cigarette lighter out of the drawer in Mom’s bedroom and turning the piece of silk to ashes. How would it smell? Sweet? Bitter?

Like plain old smoke?

Mom turns onto the highway. Her knuckles are white on the steering wheel.

“Vyvian didn’t know how to hate anyone,” she says.