Prologue
Jack
I’m about to escape out the back door for school when Grandpa Giddy calls me from his bed. His voice is loud and commanding but I still hear the pain. Feel it tighten my chest.
With my backpack slung on one shoulder, I glance at the door, then force myself to go back to his room. Lit only by one small window covered by a torn shade, it’s dim and I try not to think, not to panic, while my eyes adjust to the dark.
“What is it, Grandpa? You need some water?”
He shakes his head and pulls on my sleeve.
“Sit. We nee
d to talk.” He clutches at my hand, and his breathing staggers as the familiar grimace of pain disguises his face. “This is the end.”
My heart lurches and then hammers like I’m on speed. It can’t be true. But I force myself to sit in the chair next to his bed, even when Mom comes into the room behind me and everything inside me pleads for escape.
I don’t bother turning. I can smell the alcohol on her, know she’s drinking already at seven in the morning. I’m not sure what to do. I pull my phone from my pocket and start to tap in the doctor’s number.
“Don’t bother calling anyone,” he says, pulling my phone from my hand, dropping it on the floor.
“Grandpa, you need—”
“I need you to listen, Jack.” His words are harsh. They usually are, but he’s all I have and I can’t comprehend life without him.
I should have accepted it by now. He’s been dying for months. Long enough so that I’ve kidded myself into thinking he’d last forever, or at least until I leave, kidding myself that the diagnosis of his cancer was a hoax.
“I have something to give you.” He reaches to the wooden stool serving as his bedside table and takes the silver cuff links in his shaky hands.
They’re his prized possession, given to him as a gift for hitting the game-winning homer in the last game of the season, the one year he made it to the majors. They were given to him by the manager of the Red Sox after the game.
The sterling cuff links were supposed to be the start of his sterling career. But not long after that game he was in a car accident that ruined his right leg and he’s never walked right since. The passenger died in the accident, but he never talked about it.
The old man is full of secrets. He always claimed it was best to keep things to yourself, especially things that would make a man seem weak or vulnerable. Like being poor.
He takes my hand and drops the cuff links in my palm.
“It’s all I have to leave you. You should sell them to pay the bills, because you’re in charge of the household now. You’ll have to work and earn money instead of going to college after graduation. Give up your dream of playing college football.”
He laughs a mean laugh and I want to vomit. My head spins.
He rasps, “But that’s the legacy of this family. Nothing comes from nothing.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Mom says, sounding almost sober. “He’s rambling and half crazy.”
She has a point, but his words are hard to ignore as they slice into me, carving a warped new reality.
Fuck it. I’m not going to give up my dreams without a fucking fight, not when I’m so close to getting a full ride to play football at St. Paul University.
This is the first time I remember agreeing with Mom since I was five years old, since that day she left me. But I can’t think about that right now. Because Grandpa Giddy is dying and the last thing he’s telling me is to let all my dreams die with him.
And that’s just fucking wrong.
“Don’t worry, Giddy, I’ll make it. I’ll get to college somehow.”
“That would be something.” He shakes his head. “It’s all over. Sorry I couldn’t last, couldn’t tough it out…” His voice fades and his face contorts with pain.
It’s too soon. They told us he’d have another few months. We thought he would last until graduation. Forever. They told us he should have hospice, but there’s no way to afford it, even after what the government covers.
“Leave us, Leyla,” Grandpa says to Mom. With a resigned sigh, she teeters from the room, taking her bottle with her. “She’s a no good—”
“Don’t say it.” I know what he’s going to say, that she’s a drunken whore.
He’s accused her of it often enough. She doesn’t argue with the label because it’s true. But I can’t stand to hear him say it about his own daughter. The words cut me to shreds every single time.
Grandpa and Mom never got along and I’ve stopped trying to keep the peace, given up my place in the tug of war between them long ago. They still pull at me from opposite sides, but I go my own way.
I’m a grown man. At seventeen. I have no choice now. Holding back the wild emotions, the anger inside me, I sit there holding the cuff links in my hand.
“The cuff links are all I have, Jack. I sold everything else I ever had that was worth anything. But there was always you. I had hopes you would be worth something, that you’d lift this damn family from the gutter…” His head lolls and he grimaces.
My stomach turns and the weight of his words crush my chest like oversize barbells, only I have no one to spot me for help.
“Leyla is your responsibility now.”
I snort. “As if you care.”
He cuffs me across the face.
“What the fuck?”
“She’s yours, damn it. You take care of her. Don’t let her live on the street, don’t let her go back to the drugs—”
“What do you care? You hate her—” He would have cuffed me again, but I catch his hand and easily push it aside.
His strength slips now as he heaves a rattling breath. I’ve never seen anyone die before, but I know that’s what I’m looking at now. There’s not one damn peaceful thing about it.
Of course not. Nothing is easy. Haven’t I learned that by now?
“I don’t hate her. She wouldn’t be living here, I wouldn’t have sent her to rehab, if I hated her.” He shakes his head, sad and desolate bloodshot eyes bore into me.
I want to hold him, to shake him, to beg him not to leave me alone.
“I’m not ready, Grandpa,” my voice scrapes. I’m not ready to lose him, the one stable force in my life.
“Get ready then, boy.” His voice is harsh and raspy and pained, his teeth grind and he claws my arm, eyes angry, breathing shallow.
His face looks so fierce that I don’t realize at first when it all stops. When he dies with that pained look leveled at me like a curse.
It’s a while before I get to school, but I get there. Because I can’t stand being in my house. Now more than ever.
* * *
Joni
Later that day
The second I walk out of the girls’ locker room, he smirks. His blue-green eyes lock on mine, looking colder than the ocean, and I shudder. Something is terribly wrong.
He’s a year ahead of me—a senior—and he shouldn’t be in this class, but the gym teacher is his football coach and lets him alter his schedule, of course. I don’t know the reason, but I do know he’s in a nastier mood than usual.
He’s taller and bigger and better than everyone at whatever game we play, so the prospect of having him here excites everyone into high-pitched murmurs, surreptitious looks, and open ogling, especially by the girls.
Even beyond the fact that he isn’t supposed to be in our class, I can tell something isn’t right with him. There’s a rawness to his animosity today. Tension grips the outsize muscles of his body.
I notice everything about Jack Hunter. Call it self-preservation.
Blending into the crowd standing near the folded bleachers, I hide behind the taller guys as the gym teacher blows the whistle.
“Coed volleyball today. Who wants to pick teams?”
“I will,” Jack says.
Oh my God. Of course. My stomach churns and I hope I don’t vomit.
“Okay, you and Haley will pick teams.” Coach blows the whistle again, forgetting we’re inside the gym, and the sound screams through me.
I hunker down behind my friend Stacy, not easy to do since I’m five ten. For a second I’m tempted to sneak back into the locker room or go to the nurse’s office.
“What’s wrong with you?” she says as Jack and Haley separate and stand in the middle of the floor.
“I’ll pick first,” Jack says, his voice sharp and uncaring that he’s breaking with the tradition of ladies first. I hold my breath, staring at Stacy to keep my eyes from facing his.
“I’ll take Joni Dowd for my team. Let’s see if the Dowd Disappointment can redeem herself today.”
Some kids snicker, some—his friends—complain with loud groans, and Stacy elbows me in the ribs.
“Did you hear that?”
I heard it and it makes me dizzy. I make no move to join him on the floor while Haley names her first team member. Coach waves me onto the floor.
All eyes are on me as I straighten. It’s Jack’s turn to pick another teammate, but he doesn’t. Instead he stands, all statuesque muscle like he’s posing as Hercules for a comic book cover, waiting for me to join him.
Emerging from behind the snickering guys, I know I have to do this, that I can’t run away and hide. Evil desperation lights Jack’s glare, aimed at me as though he needs to make me miserable in order to survive.
Walking to him like he’s my executioner, I reassure myself that he couldn’t—wouldn’t—do anything terrible to me in front of the teacher and the whole class. Names and words can’t hurt me, right?
Not unless I let them. So, I won’t let them. I’ll turn myself to stone and refuse to hear whatever comes from his mouth.
Except what if he’s right? My knees quake and halfway to him I almost fall. More snickering turns my face hot. I bow my head, allowing the curtain of my hair to hide me.
