Chapter 12: Chapter Twelve
Friday, November 5th
“Big day tomorrow, right?” Dad asks as I walk through the back door into the kitchen. I wonder if he can tell from my almost bruised but smiling lips that I’m studying Gabby more than I’m studying my test-prep guides. Tim’s due over in a bit so I can stop lying and start learning.
“ACT,” I say.
“You deserve this. I know you’re juggling a lot with school, the newspaper and now this test.” Dad hands me a cold bottle of Miller High Life. It’s like a TV commercial, I feel like I’m in a dream. It’s great to see Dad sticking to one nightly beer. The only good thing about Caitlin leaving is Dad’s drinking discipline.
“Thanks, Dad.” He motions me to follow him to the kitchen table. Once we’re seated, he offers up his bottle to me. The glass bottles click together and the beer tastes great.
“I talked to Carol today,” he says. “She’s not coming home for the holidays.”
“Why not?” Normally I would’ve known that from Facebook. Carol updates her Facebook more often than Lil Wayne drops the f-bomb. Her status should say ‘Carol is changing her status again’. But to avoid porn, I’ve been offline for two days and out of touch.
“The economy’s still bad in some places, not just here in Michigan,” Dad says.
I let the silence chill the beer and the conversation, then ask, “Are we going to lose the house?” I’d overheard how they’d done a second mortgage to help pay for Carol’s college.
He stalls with a long sip, then smiles. “Not if your mom can sell it first.” He laughs, but there’s a dark tone that undercuts the light joke. When Caitlin left, she took part of Mom and Dad with her. They don’t fight as much as they did when Caitlin was here, mainly because they don’t talk as much. It’s hard to fight with someone when you’re rarely in the same room and don’t sleep in the same bed. Their marriage was collateral damage from Caitlin’s path of destruction.
“What about college?” With the ACTs tomorrow, college is on my mind. Not as much as it should be, or as much as Caitlin, or Gabby, but it’s there nonetheless.
“Son, just trust us. It’s going to work out,” he says, trying to sound confident. Sadly, it’s the same tone I heard in his voice about GM rehiring experienced workers and about Caitlin coming home that first year after she ran away. My dad lacks credibility as a fortune teller. His promises are not really lies. They’re just unanswered prayers.
“Thanks for the beer,” I say, then finish it. The micro-buzz from the beer makes me think about Caitlin. It would be so easy to blame everything that happened on drugs, alcohol or bad influences. And I was the worst of them all in some ways. I was a wreck my freshman year, making new friends, losing old ones and hating myself. Caitlin whined about how my parents didn’t have time for her because they were dealing with what she called my ‘immature shit’.
“Good luck on your test tomorrow,” Dad says
“Tim’s coming over to study for a bit. Is that okay?”
Dad nods. But he looks like he wants me to stay, wants to say more, wants just not to be so sad. I wonder, if I bring Caitlin home, if it would change anything, or if the Banks family machine is permanently broken.
I go up to my room, grab some clean clothes then head to the shower, where thoughts and images of Gabby rather than Charlotte fill my mind and occupy my right hand. By the time I return to my room, Tim’s there waiting for me. He’s staring at my blank computer screen.
“Hey, why is your Mac shut off? If I had a machine like this, I’d never leave it!” Tim says. “You’re never online anymore. And I know it’s not because you’ve been studying.”
I stare at Tim blankly.
“Carson, what’s with you?” he asks, interested, not angry.
“I’m just trying not to be online as much,” I say, hoping I don’t need to explain the real reason for my Internet avoidance. I start saying, ‘I’m looking for Caitlin,’ but that excuse only fools myself for so many photos. I’m not addicted, but I’m detoxing my mind and Mac anyway.
He laughs. “So this is why you didn’t answer an IM for the past two days.”
“I’m just a call or text away.”
“I hate talking on the phone, and you know I don’t text,” he reminds me. “How will I ever split the atom if my hands are all messed up from text-related injuries?”
I just laugh. The real reason Tim doesn’t text is the reason he doesn’t do many things—his size. Fact is, while his stubby, fat fingers work fine for typing, they fail at texting.
“Your Mac is your life. I would kill to have a machine that fine,” he says. While my Mac is older, I got it when Dad was working, so it’s loaded with every option, including Tim’s envy.
“Well, maybe I need to change my life,” I crack.
Tim readjusts his glasses, but not his thoughts as he says, “I don’t believe you, Carson.”
“Well, that’s the great thing about being friends, Tim. We trust each other, so we don’t need to tell the truth,” I say. Like I let him lie about why he doesn’t text, it allows me to not feel bad about hiding Gabby from him. We’d never say this out loud, but underneath, it’s understood.
“Well, let’s hang out together some time like we used to, okay?” he says, a little hurt.
“Quality time, like this.” I reach over for the ACT study guide.
“So, what’s really going on with you?” Tim asks as he pulls out his study guide.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re never around,” Tim says, sounding sad.
“Like you, Tim, I’m just really busy.” Tim and I have a shared past, but we both know, yet never say, we will probably have a hard time staying friends after he leaves for college. The distance between two points is a catalyst. It remains the same, but it changes everything.
“Okay,” he says. I bet that if we were girls, we’d have some teary-eyed declaring of our best friends forever status. Instead, we say little, accept a lot and move on with our lives.
I let ‘okay’ be the last word and open the study guide. The ACT shapes my future by testing what I’ve learned in the past. As I read the first practice ‘define this word’ question, I wonder what explains a person most—their past, present, or future? Thinking about Caitlin, I know the answer is simple. It’s not what you’ve done that defines you, but what you dream.