I told her to let me know when she was back in town, and I bent to kiss her – one quick, barren kiss. Nothing like she deserved. Nothing of what I felt. I said goodbye and walked away.

24

Landon

I knew I wasn’t the only student in the school without a computer, but it felt that way. I usually logged in at the library, or during my programming lab, or at Hendrickson’s. I didn’t have lab or work hours today, though, so I was using the prehistoric computer at Wynn’s Garage.

‘Buy a cheap laptop already,’ Boyce urged. ‘You work all the f**king time so I know you’ve got the cash, and I sure as hell know you aren’t smokin’ it or shootin’ it any more.’

After pulling up the site where I hoped my SAT scores would finally materialize, I waited for the computer to wheeze its way to the login page where I tapped my password. Boyce watched for his father through the plate glass window, grimy from fingerprints, Scotch tape bits, blotches of who-knows-what and decades of no one thinking to buy glass cleaner.

‘Saving for tuition.’ I gave the excuse I used every time I refused to spend money on something. ‘And I never shot up.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ He squeezed my bicep. ‘Your big, hard, virtuous arms are reserved for tattoo needles only.’

I shrugged him off. ‘Shut up, man …’

Almost unattainable scores on the SAT were my only hope of scraping my sorry ass into college past the pathetic GPA I could only raise so much. Not even a straight 4.0 this year would be enough. I’d made use of every free online pretest and every study guide in the library for the past eight or nine months. If my scores on this goddamned entrance exam weren’t ridiculously high, I was screwed, and there would be no string Heller could pull to change that fact.

I hit enter, the screen flashed several times, and then there they were: the numbers that determined my future. I sat back in the chair, staring, my heart rate hurtling higher.

I’d done it.

‘Ninety-eighth percentile?’ Boyce’s brows arched and he hooted. ‘Does that mean what I think it means? Shit, man. I knew you were a brain, but holy f**k.’ He grabbed my shoulders and shook them, laughing. Boyce was the only person – Heller aside – who knew how badly I wanted this escape. How much I needed it. ‘Dude, you did it.’

I nodded, still stunned.

‘Oh, man.’ He shoved me. ‘This sucks. I’m going to be stuck in this crap town while you run off and f**k tons of college girls.’

I shook my head and smiled. Leave it to Boyce to zero in on the only part of college that might have appealed to him.

Belatedly, we heard a truck door slam. ‘Shit,’ we said in unison.

The bell over the door jangled right after I cleared the history, shut the computer down, and bolted from the chair, but Boyce’s dad wasn’t a complete idiot.

‘You jackasses looking at  p**n  again on my computer?’ he roared, not even waiting for the door to shut behind him. Thinning hair stood straight up on his head, as though he’d received an electric shock.

Technically, we’d only watched  p**n  on his computer once, though I was pretty sure Boyce still did it whenever he could. We’d come to an unspoken agreement that watching it together was too weird.

‘We were looking up college entrance exam scores,’ Boyce said, tracking his father’s movements. I didn’t even know he could string those words together.

‘Lyin’ sack of shit,’ Mr Wynn growled, lunging. We slid out of his way, Boyce ducking the meaty fist that flew at his head, halfheartedly, the way you’d wave a hand at a fly to shoo it away. His dad cursed us all the way out the door.

Boyce and I had bonded over defective fathers and absent mothers, but that’s as far as the parallels went. His father was an abusive f**k, where mine was silent and detached. His mother left his father – and her two sons – when he was almost too young to remember her. He’d never seemed to hold her desertion against her. I would’ve ditched his ass, too, if I was her, was all he’d ever said about it.

‘Time to celebrate, my man.’ He steered me towards the Trans Am as his father cursed him from the door of the shop.

‘Quittin’ time is at six!’ he bellowed, ignoring the fact that he’d closed up for two hours mid-afternoon to visit a ‘lady friend’ in the next town – a person Boyce and I weren’t certain existed. How any woman could find Bud Wynn attractive was beyond our powers of imagination. ‘You worthless piece of –’

We slammed wing-wide doors shut on the familiar tirade and Boyce turned the key, igniting the stereo, while I grudgingly acknowledged the sounder fact of my father’s muteness.

LUCAS

Jacqueline would be moving home in two days. The space between us was magnetized – I couldn’t think of another way to describe it. I fought her pull every second of the past twenty hours. I knew exactly where she was, and I wanted to be there. I hoped that once she was gone, once she was further from me, I would get a respite.

Carlie and Caleb were in my apartment, playing video games. They were in that zone – the one where school has let out for two weeks, and there’s nothing but eating and sleeping late and getting presents as far as you can see – because at sixteen and eleven, you can’t see all that far. You think you can … but you can’t.

I can’t say their perspective was contagious, but it was fun to watch.