The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (best novels for teenagers .txt) 📕

was used to Mom being angry with Ricky, but I wasn’t used to hearing her cry. Whatever Ricky had done this time, I knew it was a different kind of bad. I sat cross-legged on my bed, listening to the barely-controlled fury in Mom’s voice, absorbing the fog of anger and disappointment that permeated the air.

Ricky slammed out of the house and I snuck into the kitchen. Mom pasted on a smile, but her eyes were still red-rimmed and puffy. I made myself an Eggo waffle in the toaster, being careful not to use too much syrup. While I was eating, Mom sat at the table with her hands wrapped around her coffee mug, staring past me at a spot on the wall. When I was done, I carried my dishes to the sink and went back to my room. I sat on the floor and began sorting through my bins of hand-me-down Lego. Most of it used to be Ricky’s. The day he gave me all his Lego stands out in my mind as one of a few golden moments.

“Hey, Zoe,” he’d said, stopping at my bedroom door. “You want my Lego? You like building stuff, don’t you?” He set a large grey bin on my floor saying, “I have more. You can have all of it.”

His generosity that day made me feel like floating. I ran over and hugged him and he patted my back awkwardly.

The morning that he slammed out of the house, as I raked my hand through one of my bins, the sound of the Lego pieces jostling together distracted me from the hollow silence in the rest of the house. I organized the pieces by size, creating neat piles in a circle around me.

While I sat on my green bedroom carpet, focusing on finding all the square two-by-twos, Mom called her friend, Linda. Through my open door, I overheard enough of their conversation to understand why she was so upset.

“It was his friend’s dad’s car. They were racing it down the Old Canal Road and a rabbit jumped out of the bushes. I guess the dog was right behind it.” Pause. “No! Neither of them has their licence yet. I know. I know.” A long, shaky inhalation. “Linda, he could have been charged! That poor man. He comes around the corner and there’s his dog, lying on the road.” Another pause. “Yes, it was dead.”

My heart was hammering. Ricky had killed a dog? He’d driven a car down Old Canal Road? It was more of a dirt track than an actual road, but still. I’d ridden my bike down it many times and could easily enough picture a rabbit and a dog appearing out of nowhere. One of the things I didn’t like about the road was that it was lined with overgrown shrubs that in the summer held swarms of mosquitoes. Whenever I was biking down it, I felt closed in, hidden from everything that was safe.

As Mom continued talking to Linda, I climbed onto my bed and buried my face in my pillow. What was happening to my brother? I pictured the owner of the dog sinking to his knees on the dirt road while Ricky and whatever friend he’d been with — although I suspected it must have been Darius — stood by helplessly. I couldn’t stop the sobs that shuddered from my small body, and I ended up biting my pillow just to muffle the sound of my anguish.

Later, I tiptoed around the house, putting away my toys, trying to avoid doing or saying anything that might upset Mom. I became invisible, drifting in and out of rooms on noiseless feet. I put on my pyjamas without being asked and brushed my teeth. When I went to Mom in her reading chair beside the living room window in order to say goodnight, she held me for a long time, not saying anything. Her breath smelled like lemons, from her after-dinner tea, and as I hugged her, that lemon-scent seemed to me to be infused with a desperate sort of sadness.

MOM MAINTAINS THAT DURING THOSE years Ricky was simply going through a difficult period when he didn’t know how to handle the emotions of losing his father. She still makes excuses for him, but then, I guess I do too.

Just more reluctantly.

CHAPTER FOUR

•

JASON DOESN’T HANG AROUND LONG after we get back from The Crow’s Nest. When he leaves, the remaining evening hours loom before me. I briefly consider calling Mom and telling her about Dee Dee — it would serve Ricky right and she’d be hard-pressed to make excuses for him this time. However, if I really wanted to destroy her image of her precious first-born, there are other, much worse, suspicions I could divulge. It’s better to keep quiet. Better for all of us.

I waver between watching Netflix and heading downstairs to my darkroom. Amir built the darkroom for me, turning one corner of my unfinished basement into a sanctuary where hours can slip by unnoticed. When I’m in the darkroom, bathed in a soft red glow, breathing in the scent of developer, watching my photos slowly take shape, I am at my most relaxed. Whatever stresses exist outside of that room seem to dissipate the minute I step inside.

Recently, I’ve been working on a collection of ten-by-ten black-and-white prints for Parker. It’s his birthday next month and I’ve tried to capture all the places around Dunford he loves: the park, the baseball diamond, Ice Cream Island. My goal was to take each shot from a unique perspective so while the place itself is identifiable, the viewpoint is unexpected. One of my favourite photos is the baseball diamond. I shot it through the chain-link fence, using a wide-frame angle, and it just has this endless feel to it. The bases look so stretched out, like the diamond has warped and expanded, but in a good way. It makes me think of long, lazy afternoons.

Before I make up my mind