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Noah
Fuck you, Gabriel.
I bury my foot in the floor and yank the wheel, throwing the car around the corner at an irresponsible speed. The wind whips my hair across my face, and my chest squeezes tight. Red welts dance in front of my eyes, but I don’t lift my foot from the accelerator until I see our house up ahead.
The wind does nothing to ease the heat of my rage. My fingers grip the steering wheel so hard they’re numb. I wish I was numb.
I slide the Lambo into the garage beside Dad’s Aston Martin and click the button to lower the doors. A breeze blows in from outside, fluttering the edge of the white cover that hides my brother’s car. Dad gave him the keys to a Bugatti Veyron Vivere when he got his acceptance letter to Harvard – the dream car to go with Felix’s full-ride athletic scholarship.
Now, the Veyron sits in the shadows, hidden beneath a shroud. Not unlike my brother.
I fling off my books and gym bag. They hit the wall with a THUMP and drop into a messy pile on the tiles – out of place, out of order. Like me. I don’t stop to pick it up. Who cares? Some maid will be along to arrange my things in the neat little rows my father demands.
My shoes squeak on the tiles as I wander through the hallways, peering into the rooms, half-desperate to see another person, half-dreading what would happen when I do. The grandfather clock ticks in the foyer – the sound ricocheting like a gunshot through the silent rooms. When Felix was around, he made this house fun – we stood on either side of the grand staircase and tossed a football to each other and wrestled on the furniture until we broke expensive things and Mom yelled. But Felix’s easy smile would always get us off the hook in the end.
Without that smile, this house is a Pharaoh’s tomb – a shrine to a dead king. Everything and everyone inside made of shards of precious gems. Pretty to look at but broken, and liable to make you bleed.
I find my stepmother Grace in her drawing-room (she likes to call it that, says it makes her feel like the heroine in a gothic romance novel). She’s curled up in a puddle of mink blankets on the window seat, one of her romance novels clutched between her fingers. Around her, the buttercup yellow walls and pastel-pink furniture pulse in my vision. Today, even this cheery room has a sinister quality.
Grace reminds me so much of my mother, with her dark curls falling over her soft features in a curtain. It makes sense that she does, since she’s my mother’s younger sister. My dad married her only two years after Mom died. I might’ve been angry about that, like I’m angry about most things, but having Grace around is one of the only things that keeps me sane. Sometimes she smiles my mother’s smile at me, with the dimple in her left cheek, and the pain in my chest twists – a knife cutting deeper. I’d worry about it slicing out my heart, but I have no heart left.
I hover in the doorway, watching Grace read. I battle with the words I need to say. She senses my presence, looks up from her book. The smile that tugs at her dusk-pink lips is the only genuine thing in this house. “Noah, you’re home.”
I shrug off my backpack and slide in beside her, wrapping her into my arms. She’s so small, so fragile. It feels like she might shatter into pieces at any moment. In reality, Grace is the one holding things together – she pulls Dad’s rage and my darkness into herself, and gives back only light. But even her light gets lost in the void where my heart used to be.
Sometimes, I forget that Grace lost everything too.
“How was school?” she asks.
“Fine. Track trials are next Thursday. I’m going to work with Eli on my 400m every day after school.”
“You don’t have to make track, Noah.” She squeezes me extra hard. “You could go back to swimming—”
“No.” The word comes out harsh, final. I’ll never get back in the water again. Not after it took my mother.
“—or something different? As long as you have something on your college application. It doesn’t have to be track—”
“I enjoy track. Well, not the 400m,” I try to smile, but I’m pretty sure it comes out as a grimace. I haven’t smiled in so long I don’t think the muscles work any longer. “Don’t worry about me. I’m fine.”
“It’s my job to worry about you. Tell me something happy.” She peers up at me with my mother’s eyes. “Are there any girls after you?”
Mackenzie’s face flickers in my mind. I stiffen.
I swallow. “Is Dad home?”
She nods. “I saw him head into the reception room.”
Of course. The grand sitting room where Dad receives foreign dignitaries and state officials, where he introduced Felix to all the important people who were going to help him succeed. Dad’s never far from that room now. Sometimes, when I sneak down to his study in the night to steal his alcohol, I see him sitting on the sofa in his boxers, staring up at the portrait, mourning his shattered dreams.
I know I have to tell him. I don’t want to; fuck, I’d rather stick my hand on a hot stove than tell him. But if I don’t, he’ll find out anyway, and then he’ll be pissed at me for not telling him.
I slink away from Grace. I can’t bear to feel her warmth with Mackenzie’s face in my head. “I need to talk to him.”
“Don’t upset him. It hasn’t been a good day.”
I stiffen, my hand on the door. It hasn’t been a good day. I know what that means.
I’m worse than useless. I can’t help Grace. I can’t save my father from himself. Grief takes many shapes – Grace’s grief follows her like a friendly ghost, touching her hands with kindness. Mine is a noose around my neck and a red mist that shrouds my vision before I throw a punch.
