Chapter One
Christmas morning
Almost three years earlier
My sister Caitlin screams—I can hear her all the way up in my room on the second floor.
She stayed out all night, again. Now, she’s back in the house and the endless arguments within my family, mostly between Dad and Caitlin, rage. It’s another battle in their ongoing war, but I seem to be the only casualty.
Once Dad stops, Mom takes over. I leave my room and move to the top of the stairs.
“We were so worried,” Mom says. Her words bounce around the high ceilings.
“Don’t lie to me,” Caitlin shouts back. “Nobody in this house cares about me.”
I want to shout from the top of stairs, ‘I care, Caitlin. I love you!’, but say nothing.
“What’s this morning’s melodrama, Caitlin?” Carol asks. The contempt in her voice rises like stench from the garbage. Unlike me, who tries to clutch onto Caitlin as she slips away, Carol kicks her to the curb.
“If you want to stay here, you’re going to do things our way!” Dad yells. He’s shorter than me, only five eight to my six one, but he yells with the fury of a man over seven feet tall.
“I’m not perfect like Carol. I’m just a fuck-up!” Caitlin shouts. “So I do what I want and there’s nothing any of you can—”
Dad cuts her off. “You need to leave now. That’s enough. Caitlin, you need to leave.”
Loud. Firm. Final.
“Tossing your daughter out on Christmas,” Caitlin says.
“Your actions, your consequences,” Mom says.
“I messed up. I want a second chance,” Caitlin says.
“You’ve used up your second chances,” Mom says.
And now Mom and Caitlin are at it, with Carol adding snide comments like a dog lifting his leg. “Seriously, Caitlin, you are such a cliché—the messed up middle child, I mean—”
“And that’s what I hate the most!” Caitlin shouts back. And it’s on between the sisters.
“I can’t live like this anymore,” Dad says, his words fading, followed by heavy footsteps.
“Daddy, where are you going?” Caitlin shouts. More steps, a door opens, closes.
“Caitlin, we ground you. You ignore it,” Mom says. “We show we love you and you look at us with such hate. I don’t know what else we can do since you won’t change.”
Caitlin mumbles something in return. I hope they are words that save her, save us.
“If we can’t love you or control you, then we can’t have you live here,” Mom says.
“I’m so sorry, for everything,” Caitlin says, I think through tears. “This time I will change.”
“But you don’t change. You say you will and you don’t,” Mom says. “There are—”
But her words are cut short by the sound of the door opening, then heavy footsteps. Dad’s probably back. It’s his last chance to say something or do something to save his family, but the only noises are shouts from the women. Mom’s the loudest.
“Oh my god, James, no,” Mom yells. “What in God’s name are you thinking?”
“Daddy, what are you doing?” Caitlin asks. Carol yells something similar.
“Caitlin, here’s my pistol. Take it from me,” Dad says in a stone cold voice. “We can’t live with you out of control like this. Take the gun and end this! Either kill yourself or kill us.”
Then there’s silence for ten seconds.
I hear nothing except the beating of my heart.
Twenty seconds.
I want to run downstairs, save my family, but I’m frozen in the heat of the moment.
Thirty seconds.
The silence of a life and death decision is the loudest sound in the universe.
Finally Caitlin screams, “I hate you,” and there’s the metallic clicking sound of a trigger against an empty chamber. I hear the sounds, I can’t see the faces. I can only hear questions spinning in my head one after another. Who was Caitlin speaking to? Who held the gun? Did that person know the gun wasn’t loaded? Who pulled the trigger? Where was the gun pointed?
Seconds later I hear another loud clicking sound—that of Caitlin’s always high heels against the hard floor. A door slams, and I worry I’ll never see the sister I love so much again.
* * * *
Friday, October 8th
Evening of Fenton High homecoming football game
“Welcome home, Carson,” Dad says as I walk in the front door.
I mumble a non-response, then quickly scale the family photo-free stairs as my head spins with the simple significance of that compound word—homecoming.
Homecoming is no ordinary word. I should know because as a future bestselling, award-winning novelist, I’m good with words. Tonight, homecoming means the football game that I watched to report on for my school paper. Tomorrow will be the homecoming dance, which I won’t attend. I’m glad not to be attending a school dance, thanks to my prom fiasco with Thien. As I walk up toward my room, I’m not thinking about last spring’s prom, but of that Christmas morning when Caitlin ran away.
Every morning I Google her name, ‘Caitlin Banks,’ but she remains a mystery, like a haunting memory or elusive mirage. My parents gave up searching, mentioning her name and even having her photos in the house. I pray they still have hope. I do.
In seconds my dependable four-year-old MacBook Pro comes on and I start clicking away at the keyboard and mouse, the sound echoing in silence. I see on the screen that I’m not the only one in front of a computer instead of a keg. It looks like many of my friends—National Honor Society all-stars and newspaper nerds—are online as well. I chat to fight the loneliness that a weekend like this magnifies a million times. Finishing the football story for the paper comes easily, so I quickly transition into the online pursuit of seventeen-year-old boys everywhere. Every time I look at porn I feel guilty, but I’m not sure why. It’s free. It’s exciting, and nobody gets hurt. Besides, one-hand fantasies and wet dreams are the extent of my sex life. Given how things ended with Thien at the prom, that’s probably just as well for me and all Fenton High girls.
I sit alone in my room in my parents’ soon-to-be-foreclosed-on house in suburban Flint, Michigan, surfing worldwide porn when I see a thumbnail of a white guy and a black guy, between them a young blonde girl with nice, natural tits. I click the image. The picture gets larger while my world grows smaller. The naked blonde girl on the screen is my sister Caitlin.