MY MOM PASSED the fuck out.
One minute, she was gaping at me, at Kale, at me, at Kale, and then her eyes just kind of rolled back in her head and she dropped like a sack of bricks.
Mike half caught her since everyone else was too busy doing the same thing my mom had been doing—big eyes darting from me, to Kale, to me, to Kale.
Fast-forward to Ryan rushing to call an ambulance, a swirl of red and blue lights flashing through our windows, a team of medics sprinting into our foyer . . . and, yeah, tonight was a disaster of epic fucking proportions.
“She’s going to be okay?” Kale asks the medic standing on our doorstep, guilt weighing down his words.
“She’ll be fine,” the EMT assures him. “Just keep her hydrated and make sure she takes it easy.”
I don’t watch the ambulance pull away—because Shawn is still out there somewhere. When my mom finally regained consciousness and we were waiting for the ambulance, Adam gave me a quick hug, told me Shawn is an asshole, and went out to stand by his best friend’s side. But Mike and Joel are still in my house, with Mike running his hands anxiously through his hair and Joel gnawing on a thumbnail, neither of them knowing what to say or what to do.
Tiny step by tiny step, Joel backs toward the front door. “I’m . . . just gonna . . . ” When he’s almost there, he stops to rub the back of his neck. “Do you need me for anything?”
I shake my head. “Go.”
“I’ll see you next practice?”
“Yeah,” I say, not sure if I’m lying to him or not.
Joel slips outside, and Mike sighs before wrapping me in a strong hug. He keeps me pinned tightly against him when he says, “Look, Kit, Shawn only told me what happened between you guys after I found you on the roof, and when he told me . . . it’s not like he was proud of it. He knows he messed up.” Mike pulls away to study me, concern coloring his deep brown eyes. “If I had known you didn’t know—”
“Don’t say it.” I know he wouldn’t have told me, and then I never would have known.
Mike frowns. “I’m just saying . . . ” Another sigh escapes him. “If you really do love him—”
“Mike.”
“You should give him another chance. That’s all I’m saying.” When I just stare at him, he adds, “I really do think you’re good for each other, and I really do think he cares about you.” When I open the door a little wider for him to leave, he takes the hint. But just as I’m about to close it, his hand wraps around the edge and his head pokes back inside. “Don’t leave the band over this.”
“I’ll call you.”
The frown he gives me says he isn’t satisfied with my answer, but he releases the door and leaves anyway, and then it’s just me and Kale standing helplessly in my foyer. I lean back against the door and close my eyes. “You didn’t have to do that.”
Of all the ways Kale imagined coming out, I’m sure that yelling “I’m gay!” at the top of his lungs in a room full of strangers wasn’t one of them.
“I know.”
“What are we going to do now?”
“Dad said we’re supposed to meet everyone in the den.”
I open my eyes, dead serious when I say, “Want to run away instead?”
“Only if we can be snake charmers.”
“I hate snakes.”
“Looks like we’re staying then.”
When I frown at Kale, he gives me a weak smile and pulls me into a tight hug—the kind that prevents you from breathing or thinking or feeling. I give him the same kind.
“I’m with you,” he says, and I tuck my face into the crook of his shoulder.
“I’m with you too.”
“Then we’ll get through this.”
“I know.”
“Are you ready?”
“No. Are you?”
Kale shakes his head against my cheek. “Not even close.”
Shoulder to shoulder, we cross the distance to the den and step down into it. My mom is lying on the couch, her head on my dad’s lap as he presses a damp washcloth against her cheeks. She sits up as soon as she sees us, batting my dad’s hands away when he tries to force her back down.
My brothers are camped on chairs and arms of chairs and the brick base of our fireplace. No one says a word. Everyone just stares and swallows and blinks and stares.
Kale sucks his lip between his teeth. I twirl the diamond in my nose.
“Why didn’t you tell us?” Bryce begins, and both Kale and I stare back at him. I don’t know who he’s talking to, since he’s looking at both of us, and neither Kale nor I are in a rush to answer him. “It doesn’t matter,” he continues. “So you like dudes, so what.”
When I gaze over at Kale, his eyes are already glistening. God, I want to hug him. I want to wrap him protectively in my arms. But Bryce beats me to it. He crosses the distance in no time, yanking my brother into a hug that brings tears to my eyes too. My hand lifts to my mouth, and I step away to give them space.
“You’re my brother,” Bryce says, and those three words say everything. When he pulls away, he smiles at Kale. And then he pushes his shoulder and crosses the room to sit back down.
Kale stares at everyone else—at our mom, our dad, at Mason, at Ryan. My mom slides her feet from the couch and pats the cushion next to her. “Come sit down.”
My brother does as he’s told, and my mom takes his hands in hers. “Before I say anything, tell me this isn’t just something you did to help Kit out.”
Kale silently shakes his head.
“And the reason you’ve been checking your phone for days . . . ”
“Leti,” Kale answers, and I hold my breath as I wait to see what everyone does.
A soft smile curls my mom’s lips. “But before Leti, you were still . . . ”
“Still gay,” Kale confirms, and my mom’s eyes drift to mine.
“And you knew?”
I swallow thickly. “Since sixth grade.”
She lets that sink in, but it’s Mason who barks out a response, his black eyes pinned on my twin. “Since sixth grade? You’ve been keeping this from us for . . . for . . . How many fucking years is that?”
“Ten,” Ryan answers, disappointment quieting his voice. “Ten years. Kale . . . why? Why would you . . . ” He chokes up and rubs his eyes, and Kale wipes the heel of his palm under his own thick lashes. “I don’t understand,” Ryan finishes.
My dad reaches over and pats Ryan’s knee, and Kale stares down at his feet. “I’m sorry.”
“What the hell are you apologizing for?” Mason snaps, and Kale just shakes his head at his socks.
In a quiet, broken voice, he says, “I don’t know.”
“It better be for waiting so long to tell us, and not for anything else,” Mason warns, and a tiny gasp leaves my mouth. He is furious—furious with Kale for not telling us and for hiding who he is. For nothing else.
Kale looks up again, his eyes trained on our brother until the tears start to slip down his cheeks. When I lift my fingers to my own, I realize they’re just as wet.
Mason curses and stands up, yanking Kale off the couch and breaking his back in a hug. “I fucking love you, Kale. Stop being a baby.”
Kale laughs through quiet tears, and my dad is the next to stand. He pulls Kale in for another bone-crushing hug, and one by one, my family accepts him. They forget about me until a sob bubbles out of my chest and all eyes turn my way.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake, Kit,” Mason says. “Get over here.”
It’s corny. It’s the corniest family hug in the history of family hugs everywhere. But it heals some broken part inside Kale, or at least I hope it does. Ten years of fearing this moment, and the only thing anyone is upset about is the fact that he spent ten years fearing this moment.
“So . . . Leti, huh?” my dad asks, and Kale blushes as red as Bryce’s sneakers.
“I knew there was something going on with you two,” Bryce chimes in, but Mason laughs and elbows him in the arm.
“Did not.”
“Did too!”
I’m smiling when my mom’s hand lands on my shoulder. “Don’t think we’ve forgotten about you,” she warns.
My heart sinks, and the quietness between us spreads throughout the room. Kale’s moment is up, and now it’s mine. And mine isn’t going to be nearly as Hallmark, because I’m pretty sure my family’s introduction to it involved me shouting the word fuck—a lot.
“Can we talk about it tomorrow?” I ask, taking a step backward, toward the doorway of the room.
“Sit down,” my dad orders, and I do as I’m told. “Now, the rest of you, out.”
My brothers begin to protest, but when his gaze is just as hard and stony as theirs, they groan and follow his orders. Even Kale has to leave, closing the door behind him and leaving only my mom and my dad sitting on the couch cushion next to me.
I swallow thickly.
“I’m not going to yell at you about what happened at dinner,” my dad says, and my brain takes a minute to process and then reprocess his words.
“You’re not?”
He shakes his head. My mom is holding his hands on her lap, in silent support of everything he’s saying. “Nope. I’m going to keep you in here for five minutes so your brothers think we handled it, and then I’m going to let you go.”
My mom stares at him over her shoulder, a soft smile touching her face. Then she turns back toward me and says, “Do you want to talk to us about anything though? Or just me . . . I can kick your dad out.”
I can’t help laughing a little despite the vise-grip squeezing my heart. “I don’t think so.”
“You sure, honey?”
I take a deep breath and nod. “I’m sure.”
“Okay. Well, then I’m just going to tell you this one thing, and then you can go.” I wait, and she pats my knee. “That Shawn boy is a fucking tool if he doesn’t see how special you are.”
I gape at my mom and the curse word she just blatantly said, and she nods to emphasize her point, absolutely serious.
“A motherfucking tool.”
And oh God, I can’t help it—I start laughing. Hard. And both she and my dad smile at the sound.
“Any boy who wants to keep you a secret isn’t one worth getting angry over,” she adds. “Kick his ass to the curb. But I will tell you this . . . ” She squeezes my knee before letting go. “I saw the way he looked at you tonight, and when you stormed away from the table, he didn’t seem to want to keep you a secret then. He was out of his chair even before your brothers, and do you know what he did? He chased after you. He didn’t hesitate.”
I chew on the inside of my cheek, the lightness gone from my broken heart. It’s heavy again—jagged, confused, bleeding.
“I don’t know exactly what happened between you two in high school,” she continues.
“Don’t want to know,” my dad tosses in.
“But . . . I just saw him, okay? I just . . . I saw how fast he ran.”
I don’t know what to say to that, so I say nothing. And when my dad checks his watch and says I can go, I go.
MY BEDROOM DOOR is locked that night when someone knocks on it for the thirty-millionth time. First, it was Mason. Then Bryce. Then Mason. Then Ryan. Then Mason. Then Mason again. Now . . .
“What’s the password?” I yell to the closed door, and Kale yells back, “Bangarang!”
I can’t help cracking a weak smile as I drag myself off my bed to let him in. I have no idea why he yelled “bangarang,” but I kind of love him for it. The password thing is a game we’ve played since we were little—there never is a password and never has been, but for years, we had my brothers convinced that I made up a new one every day, and that Kale was the only one who ever knew what it was.
When I swing open the door, he slips inside before any of my brothers can careen down the hallway to barge their way in. I’ll talk to them eventually. Just . . . not tonight. Tonight, I don’t need their personal brand of psychosis. I have enough of my own.
“Hey,” Kale says as I engage the thirty-dollar lock I bought with the money I got for my eleventh birthday. When you have four brothers and are starting to wear training bras, you have priorities.
“Hey.” I plop down next to him when he makes himself at home on my bed.
“So tonight was pretty epic.”
I force a fragile smile. For him, tonight will always be the night his heart became whole. For me . . . tonight will be the night I threw mine outside. “Have you told Leti yet?” I ask.
“Not yet. I wanted to talk to you first.”
“About what?” I ask a dumb question, and he gives me a dumb answer.
“Oh, I don’t know. Did you hear the Patriots beat the Packers last week?”
He meets my flat stare with a flat stare of his own, and I sigh.
“What did Mom and Dad say?” he asks, and a little chuckle escapes me.
“Mom called Shawn a tool.”
“She did not.”
I nod with a breakable smile on my face. “She totally did.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Her exact words were, ‘motherfucking tool.’ ”
Kale gapes at me a moment before barking out a loud laugh that simmers into belly chuckles. “Oh my God, that’s perfect,” he says, and I force a half smile that makes him lose half of his. “What else did she say?”
“You know Mom,” I say as I rub my finger across a worn part of my blue comforter. “Always trying to get me a boyfriend.”
Kale places his hand over the worn spot to reclaim my attention. “What did she say?”
“She said Shawn didn’t seem like he wanted to keep me a secret tonight . . . She said . . . ” Kale waits patiently when I trail off, and I let out a bone-weary sigh before I continue. “She said she saw how fast he ran to catch me.”
Kale’s dark eyes hold mine for a long moment before dropping to that worn-down spot on my bedspread. His fingers follow, fidgeting with the same threads he pushed mine from seconds earlier. “Everyone saw it. I did too.”
We sit like that for a while, both lost in some imaginary place, when Kale says, “Kit, I need to tell you something.”
I look up at him first; he looks up at me second.
“I know why Shawn never called you.” My nose wrinkles with confusion, and he gnaws on his lip before rattling off the last part. “I told him not to.”
I hear him, but I can’t understand a word coming out of his mouth. He told him not to? He told him not to call me?
Kale starts pacing my room. “I couldn’t believe he took you upstairs and just . . . that he used you liked that. He was a senior, for God’s sake, and some kind of rock star, and you . . . you’re my sister, and you’d always had such a crush on him, and he just . . . ” When Kale glances at me, guilt eclipses the blacks of his eyes. I see a flash of it just before he drops his gaze back to the floor. “I only let a day pass before I found out where he lived. I went over there, and . . . ”
Kale trails off on an exhausted breath, and I scoot farther toward the edge of my bed. “And what?”
My twin’s eyes are full of more regret than I’ve ever seen in them when he says, “I told him to stay away from you. I told him if he ever tried talking to you after what he did . . . that Mason Larson was our older brother, and he’d break every one of Shawn’s fingers. I told Shawn he’d never play the guitar again.”
I stare at him. And stare. And stare. Something in the pit of my stomach is simmering to a boil, and I can feel it in the way my blood starts to sizzle under my skin.
“I thought I was helping. I thought—”
“You thought you were helping?” I hiss, and Kale cracks.
“I didn’t think he cared about you . . . But, Kit, I saw how he was with you tonight, and—”
“Get out,” I order, my voice a cold chill that punches through the room.
“Kit—” Kale pleads.
“Get out!”
My anger knocks him back a step. “Please. Just let me—”
“GET OUT!” I launch off my bed and fly straight at him. “GET OUT, GET OUT, GET OUT!” I’m all up in his face, forcing him toward the far side of my room and reaching behind him to unlock my door. It hits him in the side as I swing it open, and I shove at him until he’s in the hall, screaming at him to get out, over and over and over again, until the door is slamming between us. I throw the lock and glare where I’m sure Kale’s face is probably still staring at the other side, knowing the rest of the house is probably already on their way upstairs to demand that I open up and explain. But then I’m at my window, throwing it open and climbing over the sill.
I don’t think. I just jump. And on the ground, my socked feet race desperately across the lawn—into the dark, past houses, past trees, past borders I’ve never crossed.
I run until I can’t run anymore. Until I can’t breathe or think or feel. I run until I’m lost.
And then, I fall apart.