Chapter 2

A week passes.

I’m supposed to go to school, to finish my last night of grade 12 with a bang. To don the wine-red cap and gown, ascend the stage with my classmates, shake hands and get my diploma.

I sit on the back porch and smoke.

It’s the stupidest thing to do, really; Vyvian would be furious if he saw it.

“Want to wreck your lungs?” He’d ask. “Get cancer on purpose?”

I’m not being fair. But the thought of him being angry with me is better than the reality of him not being at all.

Dad smoked for years, since before he and Mom met. He quit when Vyvian was diagnosed the first time.

“Don’t want to make the kid sicker than he is,” he’d said, like his smoking hadn’t been a contributing factor.

He left soon after that.

The screen door slides open.

“They’ll miss your speech,” Mom says. I hear the intake of breath when she spots the cigarette between my lips. “Jon-Luke, get that filthy thing out of your mouth right now.” She grabs it from me, throws it to the porch, stomps it flat with her slipper.

“It makes you look like your father,” she says. An angry flush crosses her cheeks. “It’s a disgusting habit, and it kills”-

Her voice breaks.

The sun is setting behind the mountains, throwing shadows over the lawn. I kick my feet over the edge of the porch, imagining a smaller pair of sneakers swinging beside me.

“Sorry,” I lie. “I won’t do it again.”

The wood creaks as Mom sits beside me.

“I’m not the valedictorian. Just the class historian. They won’t miss me.”

She crosses her legs, charcoal smeared across the bottom of her slippers. “Everyone misses you, Jon-Luke. Your friends have been calling, saying they can’t get ahold of you.”

My cell phone is in the back of my closet. Same place I threw it when I got the news.

Mom runs her hand over my hair. “Don’t disappear, okay?”

Her touch is too much.

I pull away.

Summer brings heat, sunshine, the smell of mown grass and the taste of lemonade.

My hands turn rough and blistered from blue collar work. It pays well. I might enjoy it, too, if not for the fact that it leaves my mind free to wander.

September nears. The boss calls me into his office.

“Crew treating you well?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. You’re a good worker, Jon-Luke.”

He leans back in his swivel chair, turns it slightly. “I’d like to have you stay on, if you’re interested. The job’s got good benefits, and you’ll be set for years if you keep up the way you have been. What do you say?”

Mom pinned my university acceptance letter to the fridge. Stuck the email confirming my scholarship right next to it.

“I’ll have to think about it.”

He nods. “Take the week to decide. If you still want to leave, you’ll get a good reference letter.”

Letters, letters, letters.

My boots send up little dust clouds as I cross the worksite back to my post, slip my fingers back into a pair of the gloves, stiff and new. My second pair of the summer. First ones were old anyway - Dad’s, leftover from past winters of loading firewood. Holes in the end of a few fingers. It didn’t take much work to see how useless they were.

Fitting.

Mateo looks down at me from his ladder as I pass, neon orange hard hat flashing in the sun. He’ll take that thing off the second he’s on the ground, wipe a brown arm over his sweaty, receding hairline, crack a grin at anyone nearby and suggest getting a new company policy for supplying ice-cold beer on site. I’ve seen him do it a dozen times.

It was the first thing he said to me after the funeral. You look like you need a drink, kid. Too bad the union doesn’t supply IDs, eh?

Ingrid pulled me aside later. Said it was in bad taste, that Mateo should’ve been more respectful, and the clap she gave my shoulder was lighter than I’d thought those massive hands could manage. As though I needed to be “handled with care”.

I avoided her after that.

Being treated differently is just a reminder that everything is different.