Page 28 of The Surprise
It’s kind of been my brand, to be honest, but not by my choice.
When I was six, my dad bought new computers for the school. And then he used that purchase to force the school into some kind of shady deal to buy our cattle for the ground meat in the school lunches. I only found out because I overheard the principal complaining to one of the trustees.
Then when I was nine, he got into some huge fight with the car repair shop, refused to pay them, and we started having to drive into Green River every time our car needed something.
I was eleven the first time I overheard him blackmailing someone at a PTA meeting. It didn’t make a lot of sense to me, but I was smart enough to understand that my dad was threatening the guy at the Division of Water Rights. The guy wasn’t pleased.
And I was twelve the first time I saw my dad shoot and butcher one of Jedediah Brooks’ cows—the brand was plain as day.
“Dad, that’s not our cow,” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Don’t be such a goody two-shoes,” he said. “Do you have any idea how many of our cows Old Jed has kept over the years?”
“Didn’t he call yesterday to tell you he had three of them that just came down off the mountain?”
“He lives right at the base,” he said. “So all the neighbors’ cows wind up at his place if they get lost. Do you really think he always calls?”
He called us about two or three times a year, and it felt like it was probably a hassle for him to catch our cows, call us, and coordinate pickup. If he didn’t do it, how would we ever even know?
But he did do it. Regularly.
“Why’d you steal his cow?”
Dad gritted his teeth. “I didn’t steal it. It accidentally wound up with ours after the drive home, and I didn’t bother calling him to tell him that he lost it.”
That’s when I noticed another cow he was about to butcher had a different brand, one I didn’t immediately recognize. I knew it before, deep, deep down, but that was the moment when I realized that my dad may not have blue skin, but he really was a villain.
Worse, it probably meant that I was doomed to be a villain too.
When I wake up the morning after my beer walk with a splitting headache, the events of the night before streaming back in fits and starts, I bolt up in bed and cradle my pounding head. Did Dad really throw a mug at the wall? Did he yell at me because I was upset about what he and Aunt Donna are doing to the Brooks family?
Did I really steal that beer I found anddrinkit instead of dumping it all out?
And most importantly of all . . .did Ethan Brooks really almost hit me with a car and then walk me home? I cringe inside. I remember myself as being really cute and funny, but was I? I’ve seen my mom when she’s drunk, and she does not look cute. She’s definitely not funny.
I do remember Ethan laughing a lot, but there’s a big difference between laughingatsomeone and laughingwiththem. I’m terribly afraid any laughing he did was the former.
I groan audibly as I force myself to the edge of my bed so I can search for my phone. When I find it, the battery’s at four percent, and I have a text message unread. My heart leaps into my throat, but thankfully it’s not from Ethan.
It’s from me.
I do that sometimes, if I’m worried I’ll forget something. It’s easier than trying to open up a note and leave myself a message there, and it’ll remind me too, because I leave the text unread.
But as I start to read my reminder to myself, I want to curl up in the corner and die. Because it really doesn’t look like something I typed to myself. It reads more like somethingEthanwould have typed.
DEAR BETH. I’M JUST REMINDING YOU THAT WHEN YOU WAKE UP TOMORROW, YOU SHOULD TEXT ETHAN. YOU MAY NOT REMEMBER THIS, BUT YOU GOT DRUNK LAST NIGHT. THEN YOU STUMBLED IN FRONT OF HIS CAR. HE NOT ONLY DIDN’T HIT YOU, HE SAVED YOU. AND THEN HE WALKED YOU HOME SO YOUR DAD WOULDN’T KNOW. YOU OWE HIM. SO LET HIM TAKE YOU OUT FOR ICE CREAM. HE’S A GOOD GUY, AND YOU ALREADY TOLD HIM HE’S HOT AND THAT HIS FAMILY IS SHINY. CHECK YOUR PHOTOS AND MAYBE YOU’LL REMEMBER.
My photos? My heart races. What’s in my photos?
I swipe and see Ethan’s smiling face, washed out horribly because of the flash of the camera in the pitch dark night.
That was definitely a message from Ethan, and he says I told him he was hot. Also, that his family’s shiny.
I wonder what else I told him. If I mentioned something about my dad and aunt, my dad’s going tokillme. That smashed mug will be like a fond memory of a happier time, I know it.
I wrack my brain, but can’t recall anything I might have said about the ranch. Hopefully that’s because I didn’t say a word about it. But I definitely can’t go for ice cream with him now. You donottry to come back from something like almost getting killed while stumbling drunk into the street in front of some guy, or having him walk you home so your parents won’t find out what an idiot you are.
Shiny, beautiful boys should run very far and very fast when they see someone like me coming.
