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“Be careful, Dean. I don’t want you ending up in the hospital too.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say, as if I’m worried about Troy. I’m not. I’m looking forward to finding him so I can beat the shit out of him. “I’ll check in with you later,” I tell Brook before ending the call.
“I can’t believe you’re getting married next summer,” Sean says. “You used to say you’d never get married.”
“I said a lot of things back then.”
“Did you ever think you’d go to college?”
“When I was in high school? Fuck no. I thought I’d be in prison by now, like my dad.”
“For what?”
“Who the fuck knows? Probably doing something stupid like Troy did. Getting in a fight and stabbing a guy.”
“Sometimes Troy reminded me of you. I mean, the old you, when you used to beat people up just for looking at you the wrong way.”
“Yeah, that’s why I told Jake to stay away from him. Even when Troy was younger, I could tell he couldn’t control his anger. Because I was the same way. When you feel that kind of rage, it builds fast and you lose control of it. I used to not trust myself around people, even Jake. When our mom took off and Ihad to raise a teenager when I was still one myself, I almost lost it. More than once.”
“Did you ever hurt Jake?”
“No, but I came close. I’d get out of there before something happened. I’d leave the house. Sometimes I’d go to the gym, hit the punching bag.”
“What if you couldn’t leave? Like if you were at school?”
“I got in fights, which you already know about.”
“Yeah, everyone heard about those. It’s why people were scared of you. Even Troy was scared of you.”
“Good,” I say, smiling to myself. “Just wait until he sees me now. I’m a lot bigger. A lot stronger.”
“Would you kill him?”
I glance at Sean. “The old me would.” I pause. “I almost killed Danny.”
“No shit? He’s your best friend.”
“Yeah, which just shows you how messed up I used to be. Danny said something that set me off and I almost strangled him to death. Something came over me and I couldn’t stop.”
“So what happened?”
“I snapped out of it and let him go. That’s what I mean when I say I didn’t trust myself around people. It’s why I didn’t trust Troy to be around Jake.”
“Troy never did anything tome. We’ve been in fights, but they didn’t end with me in the hospital. But with Jake…”
“Yeah? What about him?”
“Troy never liked Jake. He was jealous of him.”
“He was jealous of Jake?” I ask, surprised because Jake was kind of a nerd when we lived here. He was into science and computers and spent a lot of time coding video games.
“He was jealous that Jake was good at school without really trying,” Sean says.
“He did good at school because I made him study and do his homework. He worked hard for his grades.”
“Well, Troy didn’t see it that way. And then Jake got to move to Texas while the rest of us were stuck here. That’s when Troy really started talking shit about him. And it got worse when we found out Jake was going to college.”
“So finding out Jake was dating Tara was his breaking point.”
