Maybe Dad had been right. Maybe all of this had always been about raising me to be the man he thought I should be.
I sniffled and wiped my nose again with my sleeve. “We should get to class,” I muttered.
Ricky looked at Molly, then at Laura, before bringing his disbelieving gaze back to mine. “Are you serious? We have to figure this out. We have to do something. We—"
“Iwill. I’ll figure it out,” I said, knowing it was a lie. “But I can’t do anything from in here, so we might as well leave and go to class before we get in trouble.”
The restroom was eerily quiet as the three of them stared at the one of me. I was outnumbered, and I worried they wouldn’t relent easily.
But then Ricky sighed and nodded. “Okay,” he grumbled. “You should see the nurse about your ear though.”
I lifted my hand, touched the drying fluid oozing from my ear. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”
He turned to unlock the door when he quickly shifted gears and barreled toward me. Instinct told me to flinch and back away, afraid he might hurt me somehow, more than I already was. But then his arms were thrown around my shoulders in a tight hug.
My breath caught in my lungs. I couldn’t remember anyone outside of my sisters hugging me. Not ever my mother and certainly not my father. It felt warm, it felt nice, and I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep myself from succumbing to another round of tears.
I wrapped my arms around him, letting my chin touch his shoulder, and he said, “We got you, man, okay? It’s gonna be all right.”
It was a nice thought, and I leaned into it, believing that he could be telling the truth. But we werekids. We were only eighteen. What the hell did we know?
Not enough—that was for damn sure.
***
I got home after school and made dinner. Lucy and Grace were careful not to talk to me, not to upset me. Afraid they’d find me crying again, the way they’d found me the other day. I never wanted them to see me like that again—weak and helpless—and they never would. Not if I had anything to do with it.
Dad came home as I was putting the roasted chicken on the table. Lucy and Grace were quick to greet him, keeping his attention on them and not on me. But we all knew who his sights were set on—always—and after he blandly asked them how school was, his focus was on me.
“Maxwell,” he said, laying a napkin on his lap.
“What?” I grunted, cutting up my portion of chicken.
“Have you put any thought into what you’re going to do after graduation?”
Irrationality wrapped its iron grip around my mind as I wondered if he’d heard my conversation with my friends in the school restroom—or had one of them said something to someone? No, no, they wouldn’t do that, but … had he found out somehow? Was he aware of my plans to get out of this hell in four years? Did he know I was going to take my sisters with me?
“No,” I mumbled.
“Why not?”
I shoveled a forkful of food into my mouth and shrugged, keeping my gaze on the other side of the table and never on my father.
I never wanted to look at him again.
“Not sure what the point is when you demand so much of me here,” I said, a frosty bite to my tone.
He huffed a thoughtful sound. “Well, that’s not how this arrangement works.”
“Guess you failed to share the details of the contract with me then.”
He was silent. From the corner of my eye, I saw him watching me. Staring, working his jaw from side to side. I was wedging myself beneath his skin like a splinter, deep and prickly, and if I had my way, I’d remain there to fester until an infection spread so fast and wicked that he died before he knew what had happened.
“After graduation, I am no longer responsible for your life,” he stated. “It would’ve been wise for you to make arrangements, but since you’ve been so irresponsible as of late, I took it upon myself to collect a bit of information I thought you’d find useful.”
Without waiting for my reply, he threw what appeared to be a pamphlet onto the table in front of me. I leaned forward just a bit to read the words emblazoned across the front and slowed my chewing at the realization of what he was suggesting.
“The Army,” I said.
