Conviction (24 page)

I
t’s when Maddie tells me nine days before prom that she got her dress that I realize, way too late, that I don’t have anything to
wear. When I ask Colin where he’s going to get his tux he looks surprised and tells me he did it three weeks ago and I better get my ass in gear, and then I worry I’ve waited too long
and I’ll ruin it for her. This is the one good thing I’ve been counting down toward, and I want it to be perfect. Since she doesn’t like how flowers don’t last I ordered
something else for her, something that won’t wilt and die—a flower necklace, gold-painted petals with a blue glass stone in the middle on a thin gold chain. There’s going to be a
party at Chase Singer’s after and then a bunch of the guys on my team (at least the ones who are good at lying to their parents) booked rooms at the Woodmont Hotel; this would be an awful
time to mess up like that, so I’ll skip that part, but if her parents let me I’ll take her to the party for a little, and maybe after, if she wants to, out to the lake again. In the
moonlight when it’s quiet there, you could be the only people in the world.

I bike to the nearest tux-rental place four miles away, and the man there measures me—it’s uncomfortable having him get that close, wrap his tape around my hips and chest—and
tells me to come back and pick it up the day of. As I bike back home, cold and tired in the dark, the headlights from the passing cars make me feel weirdly lonely. I think how preordering a tux is
something my dad would’ve known I was supposed to do. And I think how I hope he’d be happy for me, how I hope it wouldn’t hurt him that I’m doing all this without him
here.

Trey’s birds are making noise when I come inside, but he’s not in the kitchen. Since the night I heard him with someone over, it hasn’t happened again, although he’s gone
more at night now. I kept trying to figure out who it might have been, but he shut it down when I tried to ask and he doesn’t leave any clues. I can’t imagine him calling up people he
used to know, and I wonder if he’s the kind of guy who picks up random girls online. I can’t see it, exactly, but then so much of his life feels unknowable to me.

He’s not upstairs, either, but I see him through the window, out in the backyard smoking, which I didn’t think he did. He sees me when I come back downstairs and waves me outside.
When I open the sliding door, I realize it’s not a cigarette.

“This isn’t great,” he says, “but come share it with me anyway.”

“Uh—” I glance around, wondering if any neighbors can smell it. Good thing the houses are far apart. “Nah, I’m good.”

“When’s the last time I asked you to do something for me?”

Well. There’s not much I can say to that. I settle down next to him, and when he hands it to me, I inhale as shallowly as I can.

“Come on,” he says, amused. “Is this your first time? That won’t do much.”

I inhale again. I hope God won’t hold this against me; I can’t afford to screw anything else up right now and give God any more reason to punish me. But it would’ve been worse
to not do the one thing Trey’s asked me to do when I know full well what I owe him. We sit there for a little while, and I track each heartbeat, waiting for something to happen. I don’t
like the idea of something else controlling my body. Even if I weren’t a Christian, I probably still wouldn’t do drugs or drink. I say, “You do this a lot?”

He shrugs. “Sometimes you get too wound up.”

I’m not brave enough to ask him why he feels that way. After a while, I say, “Hey, Trey?”

“Mm.”

“I, um—I don’t really—I know this isn’t much, but I’ve been meaning to say—thanks a lot for coming back here. It’s really…It’s been a
lot better with you here.”

He doesn’t answer. But then I guess it’s arrogant to assume your thanks is real reward for someone, so maybe I shouldn’t have said it.

I think something might be happening—I’m starting to feel weird. When I make a walking motion with my index and middle finger, you can see the tendons arc and curve mechanically on
the back of my hand and the veins underneath. I feel floaty and kind of loose, too, like maybe I’m not completely in control of what I might say.

Trey says, “You know Kris Blaine?”

He was a senior when I was a freshman. “I know who he is. Why?”

“He’s the guy I bought from. Turns out his dad’s a cop.”

“Maybe he shouldn’t be selling you drugs if his dad’s a cop.”

“He’s probably safer that way.” Trey licks his thumb and runs it along the side of the rolled paper where it’s burning faster. He smokes again, offers it to me, then sets
it down on a plate he’s using as an ashtray when I shake my head. He says, “I heard the guy has an older brother.”

“What?”

“The one—you know. The cop. Reyes.”

“Oh.” He means Alex’s father. “Yeah. I guess.”

“Blaine said they’re ten years apart.”

“What difference does it make?”

He puts his hands behind his head and stares up at the sky. “Ten years, I mean—probably watched the guy grow up.”

“So?”

“If I had reason to think anyone ran my brother down with a car like that, I’d want to see whoever was responsible put to death. While I watched.”

We sit like that for a while. The pounding gets heavier in my temples, and everything sounds a little too loud. “Well, I guess you’ve never liked getting over things.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

He snorts. “I’ll bet nothing.”

“Okay, fine, I just—I just think whatever it was you and Dad fought about isn’t worth hanging on to all these years. I think it’s time to let it go.” The expression
on his face is like a door slamming, but I say, “You know how Dad is, Trey. He gets mad and says stuff he doesn’t really mean, but it shouldn’t be forever.” My dad and I
understand each other, but Trey was never like that. I don’t say this part, but Trey’s a different person than I’ve ever known how to be; there’s something cold and
immovable at the core of him, the same place where in me whatever’s there shifts and jostles like tectonic plates. “What’d you even fight over, anyway?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“You won’t even say what happened? Was it something you did?”

“That’s enough, Braden.”

“All right, well, whatever it was, you’ve taken it way too far. You won’t even go see him. You won’t even talk about him. You won’t even let
me
talk about
him.”

“Jesus. I shouldn’t have tried to get you high. I was trying to help you relax.”

Relaxed is definitely not how I feel. “Don’t you ever miss him? Even a little bit?”

“What part am I supposed to miss, exactly?”

“He always missed you. Whatever it was you did, he still misses you. I’ve caught him in your room just sitting there, you know that? Whenever he washes the sheets, he always washes
yours, too, like he hopes maybe one day you’ll just show up. And every year on your birthday, he gets really drunk. But you just never—”

“You know I’ve been sending him checks every year and he never cashes them?” Trey interrupts. “I want to settle whatever he paid for college and whatever he spent on me
growing up so I don’t owe him anything. But he won’t cash them. I work a hundred hours a week, my apartment’s the size of a closet, I own a fucking restaurant and at home I eat
instant ramen so I can pay it off, and he hasn’t cashed a single one.”

“God, Trey.” I lean back against my seat. I feel sick, kind of. Dizzy and sick. If this is what it’s like to be high, then I hate it. “You send him checks for
raising
you? That’s one of the cruelest things I’ve ever heard.”

He half laughs, but not like he finds anything funny. “You think I’m cruel?”

I know him well enough to see that got to him, so I tell him no. But I think he knows me well enough to know that might be a lie, too.

I’m doing laundry the next afternoon while Trey’s out and when I go downstairs to get it, I see Trey’s found those checks somewhere. He must have gone looking.
He must have figured my dad wouldn’t have just ripped them up and thrown them out—that he’d hold on to them because they were all he had of Trey. The checks are creased and lying
on top of the washer, like Trey stuffed them in his pocket. There’s six of them, each one dated a year apart, and I picture my dad seeing mail from Trey and getting his hopes up only to find
a check inside.

I throw my laundry onto my bed and go into the kitchen. My heart is pumping with anger at him, at his callousness. He has no idea how it feels getting cut out of someone’s life that
way.

His birds are sluggish and swollen, but when I open the box and let the light in, they chirp like crazy. I cover the box with a napkin and pick it up carefully, holding the napkin down so they
can’t fly away, and I take the box outside and then flip it over, very gently, so they get out. They’re slow at first, waddling around on the ground like they can’t quite believe
it, then two of them go off in different directions and the other two fly away.

Trey doesn’t notice until that night. I hear him grinding up the grain to feed them and then I hear him say loudly, “What the fuck?” He comes pounding up the
stairs and into my room before I can leave. He’s holding the empty box between his thumb and forefinger. “Did you do this?”

I say nothing. What felt right when I did it feels dangerous now that he’s here in front of me. Why did I do that? Was I testing him? Was I punishing him? Did I think I was proving
something? I say, “Yes.”

He lets the box drop to the floor. “Where are they?”

“I let them go.”

He swivels his head around as if he thinks for a split second he can find them and get them back, and then he quits doing that and lasers his gaze at me instead. “Why the fuck did you do
that, Braden? What the hell were you
thinking
?” His voice is dropping lower and lower. “Braden, do you not even realize how hard this is for me to be here? Or how much I’ve
put on hold for—
God
.” He smacks his hand against the wall and the whole room shakes.

I shrink back. I don’t know what I’m expecting him to do—he’s never hit me; he’s never even really yelled at me—but what he actually does is stoop over and
swipe the box up and walk away, and a couple minutes later the door slams and then I hear the garage door open and then shut itself over its new emptiness.

That’s worse, actually. At least if someone screams at you or fights with you, you’re in it together; this way, you’re both alone.

In the kitchen the next morning he pretends I’m not there, and when I get home from practice he turns away when I come in.

But that night, he knocks on my door around ten thirty while I’m getting ready for bed. When I open it, he’s holding a plate. On it there’s a sandwich: grilled cheese with
something else in it, too, something dark. He says, “Here.”

“That’s for me?”

“Fontina. With figs.”

“Oh.” I can’t read a thing on his face. “Uh—okay. Ah—thanks.”

I take the plate. He’s already a few steps down the hallway when he says flatly, “The figs were for my ortolans, so. Enjoy.”

W
hen the bell rings for lunchtime and everyone in Precalc zips away their binders to leave, I slip away from the stream of people pouring outdoors
for lunch and duck into Kevin’s classroom a few doors down the hall. He’s doing something on his phone when I go in, but he puts it away when he sees me. When I ask if he has a minute,
he says, “Absolutely. What’s up?”

“I had a question.”

“Of course.” He motions for me to have a seat. “What’ve you got?”

“It’s church stuff.”

He smiles. “I won’t tell.”

“Okay. Uh, well…” I shift my gaze to the Roosevelt poster he has on the wall. “You know before the crucifixion how Peter was going to deny Jesus and Jesus knew about it
before he did it and told Peter it would happen?”

Kevin nods. “Sure.”

“Well, then when Jesus comes back after he’s alive again and he goes to Peter and asks if he loves him and Peter keeps saying yes and Jesus keeps asking—what was that
about?”

“Ah. Good question.” He sets his elbows on the desktop. “That’s my father’s favorite Bible passage, incidentally. Do you remember how many times Peter denied
Jesus?”

“Three.”

“Three, right. And how many times did Jesus ask Peter if he loved him?”

“Also three.”

“What might that mean?”

I know that feeling you get when you know you’ve let someone down, how you want tear off every inch of your skin and step into someone else’s, pretend you’re someone else a
while. “I don’t know, I guess he was calling him out for all three times?”

Kevin kind of laughs, like he thinks I’m joking. “Jesus wasn’t particularly passive-aggressive, Braden. When God calls you out, it’s not subtle. You know.”

Making sure someone knows he messed up doesn’t exactly strike me as passive-aggressive—because what are you supposed to do, just pretend it never happened?—but whatever.
“Then what was the point of all that?”

“It was a restoration. Jesus came for the sinners and the broken, and he wanted to transform Peter and redeem him into his better self. He was letting Peter redo the times he denied Christ
before. Erasing his sin.”