Seth looked away, almost automatically.
“It was either going to get worse or better as he grew,” his father said.
“And it’s got worse.”
His father nodded. “And will continue to do so.”
“So what happens now?”
“Surgery,” his father said. “And cognitive therapy. Almost every day.”
Seth looked back up. “I thought you said we couldn’t afford that.”
“We can’t. Insurance only covers so much. Your mum’s going to have to go back to work to help with the costs and it’s going to eat badly into our savings. We’ve got rough times ahead, Seth.”
Seth’s mind was reeling, for his brother, for their money troubles, for the fact, he was ashamed to think, that he had college tuition payments starting in the fall that were going to need some of those very savings and if they weren’t there –
“So, this whole thing with you and your friend?” his father said. “Not the best timing in the world.”
Laughter rang down the staircase. They turned to look, even though there was nothing to see. Seth’s mother and Owen, sharing something between the two of them, just like they always did.
“When is it ever good timing?” Seth asked.
His father patted him on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, son,” he said. “I really am.”
But when Seth turned back around, his father had broken eye contact.
24
It’s raining again the next morning when Seth wakes, though it takes him a few minutes to notice because of how the dream is still ringing through him.
He lies motionless on the settee. He still hasn’t slept in any of the beds upstairs; his own in the attic is far too small for him now, even if he wanted to use it, which he doesn’t, and sleeping in his parents’ bed just feels too weird, so he’s stayed on this dusty couch, under the terrified eye of the horse above the mantelpiece.
Dreaming.
The weight in his chest has grown heavier, almost too heavy to move.
The greatest thing with Gudmund had been the secrecy of it all. When they were together like that, they had been their own private universe, bounded just by themselves, a population of two. They were the world, and the world was them. And no one deserved to know, not his mum and dad, not his friends, no one, not then, not yet.
Not because it was wrong – because it definitely wasn’t that – but because it was his. The one thing that was entirely his.
And then the world found out, his parents found out. Those two photos Gudmund took, painfully innocent compared to what some of the boys at school sent their girlfriends, but so private, so something that no one else should have seen, that Seth burns even now with anger and humiliation.
His mother had been right. Going back to school had been a nightmare. The whole world changed in an instant, collapsed to a place where Seth almost didn’t even live. After Christmas vacation was over and he’d stepped back onto school grounds, there had been only him and everyone else. Far away. Beyond reach. The school tried to clamp down on the worst of the abuse, but they couldn’t catch it all. And the whispers were everywhere; his phone vibrated constantly, even throughout the night, with jeering texts. Nor did he dare look on any social networking, where the picture – and accompanying comments – seemed to be everywhere. His private universe exposed to the egged-on scorn of all.
But he couldn’t leave. Gudmund was still out of school while his parents decided what to do about him. And Seth had to be there, for whenever he came back. He had to bear it, alone.
“Self-contained,” Gudmund had described him, but what that really meant was that it felt like he’d had a private burden to shoulder for as long as he could remember, and maybe not all of it even to do with what happened to Owen. Worse, it had been accompanied by an equally hard lifelong yearning, a feeling that there had to be more, more than just all this weight.
Because if there wasn’t, what was the point?
That had been the other great thing about Gudmund since that surprising spring night at the end of junior year when they had become more than just friends. It was suddenly as if, for the briefest of moments, the burden had been lifted, like there was no gravity at all, like he had finally set down the heavy load he’d been carrying –
He knows he should stop this thinking, knows he should get moving, keep himself occupied with simply surviving this place, but he feels like he’s at the bottom of a well, with sunshine and life and escape all miles away, no one to hear him, even if he could call for help.
He’s felt like this before.
He lies there, listening to the rain, for a long, long time.
Eventually, biology again forces him to get up. He has a pee, then stands at his front door. The rain pours, rivulets coursing everywhere through the mud. He wonders for a moment why it doesn’t just wash away, but he sees that the street is slowly becoming a stagnant flood, great ponds forming at blocked drains, everything swirling together in a muddy mess.
It’s nearly as warm as it was yesterday, so he gets the block of dishwashing liquid, leaves his clothes in a heap, and uses the rain as a shower right there on the front path.
He lathers himself up, making a soapy mop of his buzzed-off hair, then closes his eyes and lifts his face to the rain to let it all rinse off. Almost idly, he tries to see if playing with himself will have any results, but the weight on his chest is too heavy, the memories of everything too much. He gives up and just crosses his arms, letting the soap slowly wash off him, the suds slopping down to the brown water gathering on the footpath.
Have I done this? he thinks, pulling his arms tighter around himself. Have I brought this rain? Have I made this place even more miserable?
He stands there, motionless, until he begins to shiver.
The rain isn’t that warm after all.
It rains all through the day, the flooding on the street getting bad down at one end, but most of it near his house draining slowly into the sinkhole before it gets too deep. He hopes the fox and her kits are all right.
He heats up a can of potato soup. While it cooks, he looks out to the back garden, watching the rain come down on the deck and the now-soaking pile of bandages. The sky is a uniform gray, impossible to separate out any individual cloud, just solid rain from horizon to horizon, however far away those horizons might be. When the soup is hot, he takes two mouthfuls before losing his appetite and leaving the rest by the switched-off camp stove.