“It’s fine.”
When Tean grabbed a Team USA windbreaker off the back of an armchair, Jem said, “You don’t have to do that.I’ll clean up my shit.”
Tean just gave a weary shake of his head and kept moving.
The click of nails from the patio told him Scipio was coming back.The dog snuffled at Jem’s hand, accepted a quick pet, and made his way over to Tean.
“Hi, boy,” Tean said and stepped around the dog and into the hallway.
Scipio trotted after him.Sometimes, Scipio had no fucking idea what was going on.
Jem locked up, heeled off his ROOS, and put them in the closet.He was going to start putting everything away.No more doing it later.He was going to do everythingright.Tean was already in the bathroom, the door shut, water running.
Flopping onto the sofa, Jem dug out his phone.For a while, he scrolled mindlessly.Instagram had been a godsend for when he wanted to turn his brain off.Ninety percent of the time, he didn’t have to read anything, and he could just look at pictures of dogs, pictures of clothes, and pictures of hot guys with nice clothes walking dogs.After a while, he flipped over to TikTok, which was even better in some ways.The first video up was a girl showing an amazing meal hack at McDonald’s—a double cheeseburger, plus nuggets, plus barbecue sauce—and then there was a video about a man who liked to go swimming with his fourteen-year-old Lab, because the water made the dog’s old joints feel better.Thatone he had to flip past quickly because he was fucked-up enough already, thank you.And the next one was a White girl who had to be all of twenty years old talking about quitting her job to follow her dream.
There wasn’t really anything useful in the video—she used the phrasework-life balanceat least four times—but a couple of videos later, he came across a young Black guy talking about what to wear for a job interview, and a few videos after that, a White guy giving salary negotiation tips.That one was kind of a bust, but the guy did have awesome hair, and Jem thought about leaving a comment to ask what kind of product he was using.
He closed the app without really thinking about it and brought up the browser.Writing was actually harder than reading sometimes, which was seriously messed up, but this kind of stuff he could do.He started with a single word:jobs.He had to blink and concentrate to read, and after the first four results, he was ready to give up because they were so bogus.
Then he went back and addedUtahto the results.This time, it was a little better.He passed up the link for jobs with the state government, but he checked out a couple of online recruiters and, obviously, KSL.
What he saw was…mixed.A job as a full-time server on a cruise ship sounded dope except Jem wasn’t a great swimmer, he wasn’t sure they’d let him bring Scipio, and oh yeah, what about Tean?Next was a concrete ready-mix driver, which was seriously badass, except he didn’t have a CDL B license, whatever that was, and he didn’t have any experience using an air brake, whateverthatwas.There were a bunch of people who wanted administrative assistants, and that actually sounded like it might be interesting—Jem was pretty sure he’d have to buy himself a pair of glasses—but it would probably be too much reading and writing.He spent a lot of time on the listing for a skid steer operator, which was apparently something they used to blow snow during a storm.
Tossing his phone on the table, Jem tried not to groan.At least, not out loud.He put his arm over his eyes and stretched out and—
It was just such bullshit.He was good at stuff; heknewhe was.Tean was always saying how smart he was, and that was nice of Tean, because Jem wasn’t any smarter than anybody else.But he was good at what he did.Which was, if you wanted to be specific, running games on people, and bullshitting, and general jacking around, but he could be responsible—ish—and he was a hard worker.Well, he wasn’t lazy.He’d get the job done—that was the important part.
The problem was—theproblemswere that you couldn’t puttricked people out of their money, 2015-2019on a resume.And if you made up jobs, people actually checked, something he’d found out the hard way.Which was so stupid, when you thought about it, because why would someone even make up something like that?And if you didn’t have a college degree, and you didn’t have any work history, most people didn’t even want to interview you.Which was how you ended up working at Little Dick’s Chevrolet, with fucking Little Dick getting in your face, making sure you knew he had you by the balls.
Sometimes, sometimes, sometimes—sometimes it made Jem want to scream.
And tonight, overlaid on this, Tean moving around the house, picking up the empty glass, the sneakers, the windbreaker.The silence as he moved off toward their bedroom.The closed door.I was going to pick all that stuff up.You didn’t have to do it.
How long now before Tean got out of bed, left the house, wandering the streets because he couldn’t sleep?He wouldn’t talk to Jem about it.He’d just say he was having trouble sleeping.Yeah, for a fucking year.Because of Jem.It was Jem’s fault; he knew that.But every time he tried to talk about it, he got an answer that didn’t actuallysayanything.Or he got silence.
The silence was the worst part.There had been so much silence.It had taken Jem a long time to realize what he wasn’t hearing.Those disturbing facts Tean seemed to have stored up for every occasion, statistics about horses injured in movies and the environmental impact of jockstraps and people getting mashed in industrial machinery.And what Jem thought of as doom spirals, when Tean cranked himself up and up imagining the worst possible scenarios.What he called catastrophizing.At first, after everything that had happened the year before, Jem had been on high alert.He’d waited for what he figured would be an excess of depressing shit.He’d listened for the signs of spiraling, sure that it would be worse, that it might even be out of control, and he couldn’t joke about it anymore, couldn’t help Tean by letting it be cute and funny, and that he’d have to step in anddosomething.
And then, instead, nothing.
No facts.
No stats.
No doom spirals.
Just silence.
Ammon’s arrest should have triggered a doom spiral.Tonight, with the state police jamming their bullshit down their throats, that should have triggered a doom spiral.Hell, before everything had changed, something as simple as an Egg McMuffin could have sent Tean to some seriously dark places.Tonight, he walked past the dog like he wasn’t there and went to bed.That’s it.The end.
More and more frequently over the last year, Jem had found it hard to breathe.He couldn’t say why, not exactly.It was like he was standing neck-deep in water, and his body had to work against all that pressure.And the water kept crawling higher, like someone was still filling the pool, and now it was lapping at the bottom of his chin, and he could still breathe, he could totally still breathe, except sometimes he forgot and then, when he felt it again, he had these lung-collapsing moments when he couldn’t.Fucking.Breathe.
He squeezed his eyes shut until sparks danced in front of his eyes.
A box of Cap’n Crunch.The torn cardboard flap.And the little white bowls, and the cheap spoons from Dollar Tree that bent every time you used them, and the vinyl tablecloth printed with slices of oranges and limes and grapefruits.It had been the third or the fourth or the fifth foster home.People always wanted him, because he was White and blond and he knew how to make adults smile.And then, after a few weeks, he’d be sent back.And the woman whose name he couldn’t even remember, standing over the box of Cap’n Crunch in a housedress and curlers, sobbing because she was off her meds or on her meds or who the fuck knew, screaming,You ruin everything!This is why no one wants you!
Jem sat up, scrubbing his face.He swung his legs off the sofa and sat, elbows on knees, until he could breathe again, and that invisible pressure shrank back down.After a while, he realized he was staring into the open mouth of the fireplace, and he blinked and leaned back.He hadn’t thought about that in years.Hadn’t really remembered it, because there had been so many homes after.Because there had been LouElla, and she’d been worse than anything, and then there’d been Decker.But for those flash-bulb heartbeats, it had all been there again, like he could reach out and touch that sticky tablecloth.The brain is a fucked-up place, man.
It was easy—it had always been easy—to shove all that junk to the back of his head.