Dare You To

Him—silence. Me—crunch, crunch, crunch.

“What happened to you?” he asks in a soft voice.

I swallow what’s in my mouth, put down the spoon, and push the bowl of half-eaten Cheerios away. “What do you think happened?”

Scott—the master of long silences.

“When did he leave?” he asks.

I don’t have to be a mind reader to know Scott’s asking about his deadbeat brother. The black paint on my fingernails chips at the corners. I scrape off more of it. Eight years later and I still have a hard time saying it. “Third grade.”

Scott shifts in his seat. “Your mom?”

“Fell apart the day he left.” Which should tell him a lot, because she wasn’t exactly the poster child for reliability before Dad took off.

“What happened between them?”

None of his business. “You didn’t come for me like you promised.” And he stopped calling when I turned eight. The refrigerator kicks on. I scrape off more paint. He faces the fact that he’s a dick.

“Elisabeth—”

“Beth.” I cut him off. “I go by Beth. Where’s your phone? I’m going home.” The police confiscated my cell and gave it to Scott. He told me in the car that he tossed it in the garbage because I “didn’t need contact with my old life.”

“You just turned seventeen.”

“Did I? Wow. I must have forgotten since no one threw me a party.”

Ignoring me, he continues, “This week my lawyers will secure my legal guardianship of you. Until you turn eighteen, you will live in this house and you will obey my rules.”

Fine. If he won’t show me the phone, I’ll find it. I hop off the chair. “I’m not six anymore and you aren’t the center of my universe. In fact, I consider you a black hole.”

“I get that you’re pissed off I left….”

Pissed? “No, I’m not pissed. You don’t exist to me anymore. I feel nothing for you, so show me where the damned phone is so I can go home.”

“Elisabeth …”

He doesn’t get it. I don’t care. “Go to hell.” No phone in the kitchen.

“You need to understand….”

I walk around his fancy ass living room with his fancy ass leather furniture looking for his fancy ass phone. “Take whatever you have to say and shove it up your ass.”

“I just want to talk….”

I lift my hand in the air and flap it like a puppet’s mouth. “Blah, blah, blah, Elisabeth. I’ll only be gone a couple of months. Blah, blah, blah, Elisabeth. I’ll make enough money to get us both out of Groveton. Blah, blah, blah, Elisabeth. You’ll never grow up like me. Blah, blah, blah, Elisabeth. I’ll make sure you have some fucking food to eat!”

“I was eighteen.”

“I was six!”

“I wasn’t your father!”

I throw my arms out. “No, you weren’t. You were supposed to be better than him! Congratulations, you officially became a replica of your worthless brother. Now where the fuck is the damn phone?”

Scott slams his hand on the counter and roars, “Sit your ass down, Elisabeth, and shut the fuck up!”

I quake on the inside, but I’ve been around Mom’s asshole boyfriends long enough to keep from quaking on the outside. “Wow. You can take the boy out of the trailer park and pretty him up in a Major League Baseball uniform, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the boy.”

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. “I’m sorry. That was uncalled for.”

“Whatever. Where’s the phone?”

Noah told me once that I have a gift that borders on supervillain status—the ability to push people past the edge of sanity. The way Scott releases another breath and rubs his forehead tells me I’m pushing him hard. Good.

Scott tries for that obnoxious, level tone again, but I can hear the edge of irritation in it. “You want trailer park, I can go trailer park. You are going to live in my house with my rules or I’ll send your mother to jail.”

“I broke out the windows of the car. Not her. You have nothing on her.”

Scott narrows his eyes. “Wanna discuss what’s in your mom’s apartment with me?”

My body lurches to the left as the blood seeps out of my face, leaving behind a blurry and tingling sensation. Shirley already warned me, but hearing it from him is still a shock. Scott knows what I don’t want to know—Mom’s secret.

“Push me, Elisabeth, and I’ll have this same exact conversation with the police.”

I stumble as I try to stay upright. The back of my legs collide with a coffee table. Losing the battle, I sit. Right beside me is a phone and as much as I want to, I can’t touch it. Scott has me. The bastard traded my life for my mom’s freedom.

RYAN

I LEAN AGAINST the closed tailgate of Dad’s truck and listen from two parking spots away as Dad recounts to a group of men loitering outside the barbershop every detail of our meeting with the scout last night. Some of them heard the story at church this morning. Most of the listeners are generational farmers and this kind of news is worth hearing again, even if it means standing in the type of August heat where you can smell the acrid stench of blacktop melting.

In my peripheral view, I notice a man stop on the sidewalk and assess the ring of listeners and my storytelling father. I don’t pay attention to tourists and if he were a local, he’d join the group. It’s better to leave the tourists alone. If you look at them, they talk.

Groveton’s a small town. To appeal to tourists, Dad persuaded the other councilmen to call the old stone buildings dating back to the 1800s Historic then add the words Shopping District. Four B-and-Bs and new tours of the old bourbon distillery later, and the city folk brave the fifteen-mile winding country road from the freeway. It can make parking a bitch on the weekends, but it gives lots of good people jobs when money gets tight.

“What’s the local gossip?” the man asks.

He’s speaking and I didn’t even make eye contact. That’s bold for a tourist. I fold my arms across my chest. “Baseball.”

“No kidding.” There’s a drop in his tone that catches my attention.

I turn my head and feel my eyes widen in slow motion. No way. “You’re Scott Risk.”

Everyone in this town knows who Scott Risk is. His face is one of the few to peer at the student population from the Wall of Fame at Bullitt County High. As a shortstop, he led his high school team to state championships twice. He made the majors straight out of high school. But the real achievement, the real feat that made him a king in this small town, was his eleven-year stint with the New York Yankees. He’s exactly what every boy in Groveton dreams of becoming, including me.

Scott Risk wears a pair of khakis, a blue polo, and a good-natured grin. “And you are?”

“Ryan Stone,” Dad answers for me as he appears from out of thin air. “He’s my son.”