Fadeaway by E. Vickers (sight word readers TXT) 📕

Through the crack in the door, I see him step forward, like he’s ready to yank the box right out of their hands. For all his faults, he’d do anything to protect me. Her. Us.

“You’re going to need to back off,” Officer Vega says.

“Not until you tell me what it is you’re looking for.”

It’s time to face what I’ve done. I push the door open, sick and scared, and they all turn toward me.

“Drugs, Dad.” I hope they can’t hear the panic in my voice as I walk toward them. “They’re looking for drugs. Painkillers. The ones that were stolen from the pharmacy.”

Coach is so stunned that he forgets to fight as the other officer raises the lid. Even from the hallway, I can see the stash and hear the sharp intake of breath of everyone in the room.

Then my mom looks at me and Coach with so much pain in her face that I know she’s put it all together.

But Coach. Dad. Whoever he is, I’m pierced by the hate in his eyes.

“How could you?” he asks. “How could you do this to me? To us?”

I don’t answer. I can’t. I have no words for this.

Officer Vega takes the cuffs from his belt. “Seth Cooper, you are under arrest,” he begins, and there’s a part of me that’s floating above the whole scene, surprised that it really is the same words you hear on TV. “You have the right to remain silent….”

What would have happened if I’d remained silent? I wonder, that same floating feeling taking over. How long could I have kept this secret?

But it’s too late now. The cuffs click into place, and no one speaks as Officer Vega follows us down the stairs.

We stop for a moment by the door. “Seth,” my mom whispers, and I think she’s speaking to my dad. The man I’m named after. The man I’ve spent my whole life trying to live up to.

But no. She’s looking at me.

“It will be okay,” she says. There are tears in her eyes, but she won’t let them fall. She will be stronger than any of us. Always is.

Officer Vega agrees. His face softens for a moment, and I remember that he and my dad played ball together, that they won a championship of their own for Coach B. “This isn’t the end,” he says to my dad. “Just the part where we turn it around.”

Then he takes Coach by the shoulder and walks him out to the waiting squad car.

I sink to the steps as they drive away. My shoulders shake; I can’t breathe.

My mom pulls me against her shoulder, and I hate myself for letting her, because it’s all wrong. She should hate me right now. Or at the very least, I should be holding her, comforting her. I’m the one who found his stash, who made this happen. Our family has been splintered and broken for a long time, but I’m the one who tossed a match on top of it all when I called the cops from the sketchy pay phone down by the gas station, because I was too afraid to use my own phone or my own name.

“I’m sorry,” I tell her between gasps. “I’m the one who called the cops. I’m so sorry.”

“This is not your fault,” she tells me again and again as her tears fall like rain on my hair, my neck. “I should have seen it. He struggled off and on for years, but he told me it was okay.” She smooths my hair, and I feel her strength as she hugs me close. “You did the right thing, Seth. And it will be okay.”

I shift on the cold concrete steps, and my mom rests her head against my shoulder. We stay there like that, not saying a word, until headlights cut through the night and Daphne’s car pulls up. I should have known telling her not to come over would make her do exactly that.

“You should tell her,” Mom says, standing up and waving Daphne over. “She’ll find out soon whether you tell her or not, and it’s better if she hears it from you. I’ve got a couple of phone calls I need to make anyway.”

Then Mom goes inside, and it’s just the two of us out here.

“Hey,” I say to Daphne. “I’m still not feeling so good.”

But when she steps into the porch light, her eyes are red. “Me neither,” she says. “I think we need to talk.”

Not tonight, I beg. I can’t lose you tonight too.

But then she rises up on her toes and pulls me down with one hand behind my neck and she kisses me. “Can we go out back?” she asks.

So I get the same quilts and we go out to the clearing and we look at the stars, surrounded by a dark halo of trees. Then we lie on our backs and, after a false start or two, we tell each other everything. Jake, my dad, Kmart and Kolt. All that’s happened between us, including what I witnessed in the training room—what it meant, and what it didn’t mean. Maybe it takes an hour, or maybe four, but finally there’s something like peace in the clearing.

“I never lied,” I say. “I really thought it was Kolt in the truck. Does this mean I have to apologize to him?”

“Yup,” Daphne says. “Even though I think he’s forgiven you already.” She pulls the blanket closer; I feel the heat of her side against mine under the stars.

“Sodium,” she says with a little laugh. “After all that, somehow my mind goes back to potato chips and Luke and sodium and space.” She props herself on her elbow and looks right into my eyes. “Everything is going to be okay,” she says.

Once two of the people you believe in most have told you something, you kind of have to believe it.

So I do.

As soon as the other car disappears around a bend, Jake’s reading the papers: Daphne