Even If I Fall

by Abigail Johnson

Skating wasn’t all I did, and my mouth was open to defend myself—because Mom, Dad and Jason had all started talking over themselves at that point—when Dad’s raised voice drowned us all out.

  “I’m not hiring anybody to do a job when I have you to help me.”

  “You don’t have me, not this summer. I’ve got my own car and my own money. This is my decision. I would have tried talking to you about it, but you wouldn’t have listened.”

  “Jason, honey—” Mom started.

  “You have money,” Dad said, lowering his voice so that the hairs on my arms stood on end, “because I convinced Tom to take you on at fourteen even though you could barely lift a sack of feed by yourself, and now that you can, now that you’re strong enough to help out like a man, you’re telling me you’ve decided not to be one.”

  Jason lost some color in his face, but nothing else. “I’m being a man by making my own decisions.”

  At that declaration Mom slowly closed her eyes and all but shook her head at the stupidity of her oldest child. At least, that’s what it seemed like to me.

  “Being a man means taking care of your family and putting their needs before your own, you understand me?” Dad’s voice dropped to a normal volume, one that was infinitely more unnerving than the yelling of a moment ago. The tendons in his neck looked ready to snap. “The roof that your mom and sisters sleep under needs replacing, so you’re staying until it’s fixed.” He stabbed a piece of steak with his fork.

  I was looking at my brother and willing him to say Yes, sir with every fiber of my being. Not just because I thought staying to help fix the roof was the right thing to do but because I knew this moment would forever change things between Dad and Jason if he didn’t.

  “The roof will still be here to replace in two months,” Jason said. “The job on the rig won’t.”

  Dad stared at Jason so long that I started to squirm. Jason didn’t move.

  “I have the right to make my own decisions.”

  I don’t think Dad blinked for a full minute. “Maybe. But what you don’t have is the right to sit at my table and eat the food your mother made and—”

  “Then I won’t eat it.” Jason pushed back from the table and stood. “And I’ll leave right now.”

  “Sit down and eat.” Dad jerked his gaze down to the seat Jason had left even before the small sound of protest left Mom’s mouth.

  “No. Fix the roof with someone else or wait for me to come back after the summer, but I’m going.” He moved around to Mom’s chair and kissed her cheek. “I promise I’ll eat something on the way and I’ll call when I get to Mike’s.” He tried to catch Laura’s eye, but she wouldn’t meet his and instead ran upstairs. He found mine though, and silently tried to make me understand something that I never would.

  When Jason went upstairs to grab his bag, Mom reached out to squeeze Dad’s hand. “Go talk to him, please?”

  But when Dad left the table, he went downstairs instead of up.

  After Jason left, I thought that would be it. But two hours later I heard his car pulling up outside, and when I looked out the window I saw Laura sitting in the passenger seat. She’d snuck into the back seat of his car, and he’d made it halfway to San Angelo before she revealed herself. She’d used the drive back to try to cajole, bribe and plead with him to stay—tactics that had worked well for her in the past, only that time, they fell on deaf ears.

  He didn’t even get out of the car as he let Laura out.

  It took Dad twice as long to do the job with only my unskilled help. He had to overcompensate for my lack of strength and ended up straining his back so badly that we did have to hire people to finish it. Dad’s back still bothers him when he lifts anything much heavier than Laura.

  In Jason’s mind, everything worked out fine. He spent a summer hanging out with Uncle Mike and making real money for the first time in his life, and the roof got replaced before any real damage was done.

  * * *

  After dinner, I clear the table and load the dishwasher. I don’t ask Laura to help me, and she doesn’t offer. I hear Dad’s heavy footsteps upstairs, and a moment later the shower turns off. I hear his low voice saying something soft and indistinct, then Mom’s attempted response before she dissolves into further tears. I listen for the sounds that tell me he’s wrapping her shivering body in a towel and carrying her to bed even though I know it hurts his back.

  I go to sleep that night loving my dad.

  And hating my brother just a little bit.

  CHAPTER 16

  “Hi,” I say, smiling at the unexpected sight of my sister sitting on my bed when I come back from the shower the next morning. My clothes used to steadily migrate to her closet—or more accurately the floor of her closet—and Laura herself used to spend so much time in my room that I started keeping an extra pillow and sleeping bag for her under my bed. But it’s been so long since she’s been in here. I’d rather she be waiting to ambush me into going swimming with her or trying to convince me that the mustard stain on my favorite tank top was there before she borrowed it, but the sight of her here for any reason is enough to make me the best kind of nostalgic.

  “Whatcha doing?” I dressed in the bathroom but I’m still rubbing a towel through my wet hair as I draw closer to her. “Hey, I’m going to pick up Maggie to hang out if you want—” I break off with a swallow, seeing our grandmother’s quilt bunched up next to her. I know I tucked it away before heading to the bathroom.

  Laura fingers one corner of the quilt. “Why do you have this?” Her face contorts a little. “Why would you want to?”

  I take another step, my hand already reaching out to take the quilt, but Laura pulls it closer to her. “Why were you digging under my bed?”

  She doesn’t flinch, which means she knows that in this case, my defensive question is just that. “I needed my other pillow.”

  “Just give it back, okay?” I turn my outstretched hand up. “And don’t say anything to Mom.”

  Laura gazes down at the quilt. “Mom hates this,” she says softly. “It’s the only thing she has from her childhood, otherwise she’d have let Dad burn it when he asked.” Mom’s much estranged older sister had sent her the quilt a few years ago along with a note that said she couldn’t keep it in her house anymore and that Mom could do whatever she wanted with it. It was remanded to the attic that very day, and no one had touched it since. Or they hadn’t until I brought it down.

  I can feel Laura’s bewilderment, but more than that I can see censure in the tightness of her mouth. I drop the towel from my hair. “I’ve been looking at it, okay?” But I dodge her gaze when I say this.

  “You could have looked at it in the attic. If Mom knew you had it in your—”

  I whirl on her. “But she doesn’t. And I’m pretty sure Mom has enough problems worrying about—” I’d been going to say worrying about Jason, but I bite back the words at the look of panic that darts across her face. I soften my voice. “She’s not going to find out, okay?” Laura’s left eyelid twitches, but she doesn’t resist when I pull the quilt from her fingers. She stands and watches as I fold it and tuck it back underneath my bed.

  “It’s not the same,” she whispers. Her arms wrap around her middle. Her lip trembles, and even though her eyes have barely moved, I can tell she’s not looking at me anymore. “What you’re doing and what I’m doing.”

  Still kneeling by my bed, I press down the lump in my throat. “What are we doing?”

  There’s an old touch of defiance in the lift of her chin when her eyes refocus on me. “You’re trying to hurt her, and I’m trying not to.”

  Laura’s lip is still trembling and mine is far from steady. What does she think I do every Saturday when she’s up here hiding behind her closed door? If anyone is hurting Mom, intentionally or otherwise, it’s not me. But I can’t say that, not when this is the most she’s opened up to
me in a year. “You know there’s one thing you could do that would make her truly happy...”

  She backs away a step, blood rushing to her cheeks.

  “You could start small, maybe just write him a lett—”

  “Hey, so my mom—Oh. Hi.” Maggie swings into my room only to draw up short when she spots Laura and takes in her blotchy face. “I passed your mom running when I came up the driveway and she told me to just let myself in.” She glances back and forth between Laura and me. “Should I maybe wait for you downstairs?”

  “Just for a minute,” I say, at the same time Laura shakes her head.

  “No, we’re done.” She turns to slip past Maggie out into the hall.

  “Laura, wait.” I catch Maggie on the arm as I hurry after my sister. “I’ll be right back.”

  “Yeah, go. I’ll just snoop around in your room while I wait.”

  I come to a halt in my hallway, halfway between my room and Maggie and halfway between Laura and her room. I want to go after my sister so badly, but I can’t leave Maggie alone in my room. There are way too many things she might see and too many questions she might ask. I don’t even like having her in the house if I can help it, which usually I can. My face scrunches as Laura slams her door a second later.

  “Pissy much,” Maggie says from behind me.

  “Um,” I say, still staring at Laura’s closed door with a heart so heavy that it feels impossible for it to still beat.

  “Hey, sorry about just showing up. My mom wanted to drop me off at the last minute so she could meet your mom. Guess I should have called first.”

  “Our moms are outside talking?” My leaden heart tries to explode in my chest and I spin to face her. “Right now?”

  Maggie frowns. “Well, no. They basically just said hi, nice to meet you, that kind of thing. My mom didn’t want to hold up yours in the middle of a run.” Her frown deepens. “Why?”

  My lungs exhale in relief. “It’s just that she doesn’t like it when I spring people on her.”

  Maggie’s eyebrows lift instead of narrowing. “Ohhh. Is that where you get it from—I mean, is your mom the same about people and places like you?”

  My heart rate is still much too high, so I only nod and head back into my room, stopping to pick up the towel I dropped.

  “She did seem a little—” Maggie shrugs. “Not rude or anything, but five minutes with my mom and you know her entire life history. Yours was more on the reserved side. I just thought she was out of breath, but this makes more sense. Anyway, my mom didn’t notice anything—Oh wow. This is beautiful!” She heads straight for my wildflower inlaid sleigh bed.

  “My dad made it for me. Everything that’s wood in here is him.”

  Maggie does a full spin, her eyes going wider with every second. “So he’s like the Michelangelo of furniture. I mean look at these nightstands. They look like actual giant sunflowers. Does he hand carve everything?”

  “Those he did, but he uses power tools mostly. Didn’t you hear him down in the basement when you came in?”

  She nods absently, still looking at my nightstands. “I’m glad you didn’t paint them.”

  My half shudder in response is automatic. “My dad would sooner put a nail through his hand than paint good wood.”

  Her mouth lifts on one side and she plops onto the bed beside me. “Well, it’s amazing.” She gestures around my room. “Are your brother’s and sister’s rooms like this too?”

  I hesitate at the reference to Jason, and because I don’t want to widen the already massive gulf between our two fathers. “Not the same, but he made everything.”

  She stands. “Can I see? I know you and your sister were having a moment, but what about your brother’s room?”

  I stay sitting. “Um, maybe later. I don’t want to push with Laura right now, and I don’t really think Jason would love me bringing people into his room when he’s not here.”

  “People?” Maggie asks with mock effrontery. “Since when am I people?”

  “I just meant—”

  She waves me off and moves toward my dresser. “So is this him?” She picks up the framed photo of Jason, Laura and me from his last birthday—his last free birthday.

  As casually as I can, I join her and take the photo from her, as though I’m looking at it closer myself instead of because I’m uncomfortable with her touching it. “Yep, that’s my brother.”

  “He’s really cute.”

  “Thanks?” I say, setting the frame back down.

  She laughs and bends down to see his face again, though thankfully she doesn’t touch this time. “Look, I wasn’t going to say anything, but I know he’s not at college.”

  All the air in my lungs turns to ice, but Maggie is still looking at Jason and doesn’t see me freeze from the inside out.

  She sighs and straightens. “My mom asked yours which college your brother was at and your mom—” she turns to face me “—yeah, she looked about like that.”

  Even though I know I need to snap back to life and contradict her, I can’t. I couldn’t move in that moment if I wanted to.

  “We do that too, my mom and me, when people ask about my dad. It’s okay,” she adds seeing the tension pulling at all the muscles in my face. “You don’t have to tell me unless you want to, I just wanted you to know that I know. You don’t have to lie about him, okay?”

  “Maggie, I—” I never said he was at college, but that’s what I let her believe.

  “I know it’s nothing like what my dad did.” She nods her chin at the frame on my dresser. “I mean, you don’t see any pictures of him in my room, so... I know your brother’s not a philandering dirtbag who tried to steal all your money.”

  The money bit is news to me, but she doesn’t give me a chance to open my mouth before she goes on, and when she does, it locks shut.

  “I supposed he could be a murderer or something, but I’m guessing that would ixnay the photo too, so...” With another big sigh her brows draw together in concern. “I’m thinking it’s drugs.”

  My eyes are focused on my brother’s laughing face and the small bit of icing left on his chin from when he let Laura and Allison smash his face into his birthday cake.

  “Yeah,” I say. “It’s drugs.”

  * * *

  I dream about the murder again that night. I see Jason and Cal meeting in the woods near the high school, the same area that is full of kids after Friday night football games during the season. It would have been deserted that night, empty save for the charred remains of the bonfire pit that could blaze taller than me at its zenith. The ground was damp, still sodden from the rainfall earlier so that it captured footprints in the mud—Cal’s and Jason’s—and skids and handprints. Fingers clawing into the earth, pulling, dragging. The imprint of Cal’s body and Jason’s knees.

  In my dream I imagine the fight they had, the reasons that slip like water through my fingers when I try to grasp them. They’re shouting, shoving hard enough for Cal to skid backward in the mud then regain his balance enough to push Jason. There’s more yelling, more words I can’t get close enough to hear. And then Cal is saying something so horrible that Jason’s face goes white as Cal’s contorts in rage. Cal turns, looking for something—the dream blurs, and he’s not looking anymore; it’s something he already has with him, something that will hurt Jason. Fear flickers over Jason’s face. The expression is alien on him, because he’s always so brave.

  He’s shaking his head; his hands are raised, and he tries to talk Cal down. But he can’t; Cal is going to hurt him. I can’t see how, but he has to be trying to hurt Jason. That’s the only reason for the knife that materializes in Jason’s hand, the only reason he plunges it into Cal’s back—

  I wake up with a scream strangled in my throat and my body tangled in sweat-damp sheets. And then I’m thrashing, desperately kicking to free my arms and
legs, almost knocking my lamp over as I panic to find the switch and the light that proves the sheets aren’t damp with blood.

  CHAPTER 17

  I don’t go to the tree the next day because of Heath. I don’t. My shift doesn’t start on Friday until six and Maggie is busy with her mom all morning. I know I’ll go mad sitting at home with only Laura’s closed bedroom door for company. I also don’t have the gas money for a Walmart trip or anywhere else I might go.

  That leaves the tree by Hackman’s Pond. Even if it did rain the night before. Even if it means I might not be the only one there.

  He’s sitting on a low branch but he stands when I approach.

  “Hi,” I say.

  “Hey.”

  It takes me a few seconds to realize that I’m looking at him and it’s not pain I feel, or at least not only pain. I don’t want to look too closely at what it is. I lower my head to gaze at the grass. My latest dream flickers back to me.

  “I didn’t know if you’d be here,” I say. It didn’t start raining until late the night before and kept raining almost until morning. The earth was still wet when I walked across it, my feet leaving shallow footprints in the ground.

  “Yeah, me neither.”

  But we both came.

  “I’m not working until tonight but I have to meet my friend Maggie in a little bit,” I say, keeping the time vague in case I want an excuse to leave. We have plans to watch a few YA book-to-movie adaptations that she swears will turn me into a sobbing mess of feels—the good kind, but I still have hours until I’m supposed to be at her house.

  A humid breeze toys with the hem of my sundress around my thighs, even slipping one thin strap down my shoulder. His gaze rests on me, following the movement and making my skin warm as I right it with one hand. His gaze skids past me to settle on the gently rippling surface of Hackman’s Pond, swollen high from the rain.

  “That’s fine.” He says it with such indifference that I’m almost bothered.