Hiya Readers
Here’s another chapter! Leave me a comment at the end. 🙂
xoxo Dana
Chapter Three
Noah
Inside the oven, the crescent rolls rise slowly. They should start to brown in a couple minutes.
Christmas morning has never been a big deal to us. Dad attends the Christmas service at church. As kids, we’d go with him, but I never cared. Now, he only thinks Christmas is important since both Ethan and Cliff made time in their busy schedules. Ethan took leave specifically for the holidays, and unless things change drastically once he’s a Raider, he only gets thirty days off a year.
The pan sizzles when I pour in the bowl of scrambled eggs.
I don’t cook much, but I have more experience than anyone else in the house. Dad buys freezer meals and shoves them in the oven for dinner. If we have a sit-down dinner.
“How’s it going?”
When I glance over, Ethan leans against the fridge.
“Food should be ready in five.”
“Need any help?” He joins me by the stove. “I’m not completely helpless, you know.” He says it like a joke—he could kill me in seconds, after all—but it’s not particularly funny.
“Nah.” I nudge the eggs around the pan so they don’t brown.
Ethan snags the nearby plates and grabs clumps of hot bacon with his bare fingers. “I can divvy everything up.” Hopefully, he washed his hands.
The eggs are bright yellow now with flecks of black pepper throughout, and I lean down to check on the crescent rolls, finally starting to brown. The oven beeps obnoxiously as I turn off the heat—I silence the timer. When I pull the rolls out after dividing the eggs, they’re perfectly golden brown.
“Dad’s back, right?” I glance over my shoulder.
Ethan nods absentmindedly as he drops the paper towel, glistening with bacon grease, into the trash under the sink. “Yeah, he and Cliff are watching the Christmas Day Parade.” He washes his hands in cold water and wipes on a fresh towel.
I frown. “I guess we’re eating in the living room, then.”
We distribute the crescent rolls and carry the plates out.
In the living room, I settle on the armchair, and Ethan takes the open spot at the end of the couch. Much like Monday night football, I am completely out of place. They devour their food without dragging their attention from the screen; I pick at my plate’s contents.
If this is what we’re doing for Christmas, why am I here? I’d be better off in my room.
By the time I finish, everyone else has been done for a while. I gather the empty plates and head for the kitchen.
There’s no point in staying. No point in striking up a conversation. They’re watching a parade that was taped a month ago, and we’re not talking.
Like I’d be interested if we were.
I rinse the plates and utensils and slip them into the dishwasher. It’s not half full yet—we can run it after lunch. But if all they’re going to do is watch a dumb parade, I’ll be in my room.
I dry my hands on a towel, glancing around to make sure I haven’t missed anything. The pans can be hand-washed later, no big deal.
“You going somewhere?” Ethan again.
“Upstairs.”
He cocks a thick eyebrow, lips pursed—unamused.
“That’s not in the spirit of Christmas.”
I give a noncommittal shrug. “Does it matter?”
“Don’t you want to hang out with us, String Bean? We haven’t been together since—”
“Since Mom died, I know.”
Ethan assesses me, and I squirm under his stern gaze. Still, he doesn’t speak.
I scoff. “Figures. You don’t care.” I march past him, but his strong hand latches onto my arm.
“Why do you say that?”
I shoot him a quick glare. “You have to ask, Ethan? The three of you only care about food, beer, and a stupid parade. You haven’t brought her up since you got here…three days ago.”
He doesn’t meet my gaze. “What’s there to say?”
I grit my teeth.
If he thinks there’s no point talking about what happened, if he has nothing to say about Mom, I can’t change his mind. His reaction—their reaction—to her death is to carry on as if nothing changed, to pretend it didn’t happen. But she’s still dead.
“Come back to the living room, Noah.”
I tug away, and he releases me. “I’m tired.”
He doesn’t often call me by my name. Ever since I was little, I’ve always been “String Bean” or “little bro” or some other infantalizing term.
“You can read a book or something while we watch the parade. We’re supposed to spend Christmas as a family.”
Are we a family now that Mom’s gone?
I trudge down the hallway. “Maybe in a little while.”
A hard knock sounds on my door, but I barely lift my head as it squeaks open. “Noah, what are you doing in here?” Dad’s firm voice booms through my small bedroom. His dark-brown eyes narrow at the sight of me.
Why?
Because all I’m doing is lying on my bed in the dark. The latest Stephen Hawking lays next to me, but I haven’t even cracked the spine in my few attempts to read it. It was the last book Mom gave me before she went on her final mission. I haven’t been able to finish reading it.
Dad flips on the light as he steps inside. “Why is it so dark in here? Are you sleeping the day away again?”
I purse my lips.
No, I wasn’t asleep.
I wish I’d been asleep.
There have been so many days where I lie in my bed, waiting for sleep to come because sleep is one of the few opportunities to escape my thoughts. I expected the accident to haunt my dreams, but sleep is one of my few reprieves.
The sleepless nights are the real torture.
“Noah—”
“What, Dad?”
His jaw clenches, fingers tighten into a fist. “Come downstairs. We’re going to open presents.” He doesn’t give me a chance to argue before marching out.
What presents?
Like every year, the beautifully wrapped boxes under the tree are for show. We rarely exchange gifts during the holidays. Our Christmas decorations were painstakingly applied for the sake of other people.
When I unlock my phone, I still have the Archer Collins student homepage up—focused on the Trustee Scholarship. I bite my lip. “Hey, Dad?”
In the distance, the footsteps pause, then return, and he pokes his head through my doorway. “What?”
“Can I ask you something? Something important?”
Dad frowns. “What’s going on?”
I brandish the phone toward him, but he doesn’t come closer. “I got accepted to Archer Collins. There’s this great opportunity in February to apply for a huge scholarship, but I have to go there for the weekend—”
“When in February?”
My stomach clenches—could we actually make this work? “It’s the second weekend.”
He shakes his head, his voice heavy. “Noah, I have work. I can’t take you all the way to Pennsylvania because you decided you need to go there for the weekend on a whim.”
My breath quivers. “It could cover a large portion of my tuition, Dad. I really want to go here.”
He crosses his arms. “There are plenty of excellent schools nearby—including ones that don’t cost an arm and a leg because it’s in the Ivy League. We cannot afford to pay for you to attend Archer Collins.”
“Cliff is going to one of the best football schools in the U.S.”
“He got a full ride. Don’t demean your brother’s talents because you’re having a difficult time.”
“But Dad, this scholarship could pay for me to go to Archer Collins. Please, this is important to me.” I hesitate. “It’s where Mom went to college.”
He swallows, shifting his gaze away, and the sound is thick in the otherwise quiet room. “I’m going to a conference that weekend, and you’re not traipsing across the country by yourself. This discussion is over. Come downstairs.”
I drop my phone on the bed as he walks away.
