And, the pictures notwithstanding, could anyone really blame Bethany for being surprised to discover that a man with such thick arms as Joel Whitley could have such a faggy voice?
Not that there was anything wrong with that, of course. Bethany was a very modern girl.
She gave Paulette her biggest hug. “Will I be seeing you at the church service this Sunday?” Paulette asked.
“Of course.” Bethany elbowed Dylan in the side. He laughed and squeezed her hip. She said, “At least one of us should be there this weekend.”
“Are you going somewhere?” asked Joel, sounding surprised.
Dylan opened his mouth, hesitated.
Oh, Bethany thought. Joel didn’t know.
“I’m just going for a little fishing trip,” Dylan said after a beat. He hugged his mother without meeting Joel’s eye. “KT’s family got a place in G-town.”
Joel looked confused.
“Galveston,” KT Staler said, stepping over from the sideline with that little sneer he always wore these days. “Down at the coast?”
A flash of lightning broke through the glare of the halogen lights. Thunder followed a moment later, so close Bethany felt the field tremble beneath her feet.
Joel dug his car keys from his pocket, eyed his brother. “I was going to talk to you about something, D.”
“Don’t be out late, sweetheart,” Paulette said, glancing at the sky. “It looks nasty tonight.”
“We’ll be back Sunday,” Dylan told Joel. “I’ll text you in the morning, yeah?”
The brothers embraced again. “Drive safe,” said Joel.
Bethany almost felt bad for him.
When Joel was gone, Jamal said, “He seems chill.”
The four of them started back toward the field house. KT said, “His hair’s gay as fuck.”
“That hair probably cost more than your house,” Dylan said.
“Least my house ain’t gay as fuck.”
“Hey,” Bethany said to KT. “Is Kimbra okay?”
KT said nothing.
Dylan passed Bethany her Sharpie. He patted her ass, murmured, “You ready for tonight?”
Her heart fluttered. She touched her tongue to her lip. “As I’ll ever be.”
They stopped outside the field house. Even after everything this town had put them through, after all of the tumult and tears and baring of the heart, when Bethany felt Dylan focus his full attention on her, when he rested a hand on the small of her back in that easy way of his, she still went warm.
Her boy leaned down close. He parted his lips. Slowly, softly, Dylan slipped into Bethany’s ear the final words he would ever say to her.
“You’re a fucking champion.”
SATURDAY
SOMETHING YOU CAN’T FIX
JOEL
Friday night, the dreams began. As the storm finally burst, as the windows rattled with thunder, Joel lay in his old bed, his heart racing, his legs tangled in his bedclothes. He was running from something—something rotten, something old—that was chasing him through the hungry open country outside of town. He could it feel it, feel it right there behind him, snatching for his ankles, nicking the skin with a long cool nail. Getting closer. Closer.
When he awoke the next morning his mind was as cold and blank as a slab of marble. He was all but poached in sweat, one hand lost beneath his pillow, and when he checked his phone, he saw that he had slept for ten hours and was somehow more exhausted than when he’d gone to bed.
Joel struggled to recall his dream. A few vague impressions flickered, fast fading: a great black hole in the ground, a thudding in the earth. An ungodly stench.
And coursing through it all, his brother’s voice, calling to him from somewhere deep in the dream, shouting something that sounded a lot like run Joel run Joel RUN.
Dylan. Joel sat up in bed, unlocked his phone. No calls. No messages.
Where the fuck was his brother?
Joel chewed a Xanax, cranked out a few sit-ups, but the awful anxiety that had squeezed itself around his heart refused to relent. He felt queasy, light-headed, terrified for no good reason. If he didn’t move he’d be throwing up soon.
One thing at a time, Whitley. Shirt, pants, socks, sneakers, coffee. Breathe.
On his way to the front of the house, Joel stopped at his brother’s room and pressed his ear against the door. He listened to the way the silence inside seemed to throb like a swollen heart—
imissedyou.
—and pulled away. He tasted dirt on his tongue.
His mother was eating at the breakfast table, her elbows propped over a plate of toast, her phone in her face.
“Has Dylan called?” Joel said, fighting a tremor in his fingers.
“He mostly texts.”
Joel went to the kitchen for coffee. The mugs had moved.
“So he hasn’t texted?”
“Why would he text?”
“Because he’s been out all night. Because he’s seventeen.”
“Meaning he’s asleep.”
Joel slid the coffee’s carafe back into the machine. “I couldn’t take five steps at his age without you calling me.”
“I learned a lot of lessons from you.”
Joel heard the pat of soft footsteps from the hallway and looked up to see Darren, his mother’s boyfriend, in a tank top stained all over with mustard. Joel had met Darren only twice, on the family’s Christmas trips to the city. Like Paulette, he’d gotten older, though unlike her he’d grown narrow shouldered, paunchy, spry.
“Your mother told me you’d filled out.” Darren rapped his knuckles on Joel’s chest. “You must be beating off the boys up there with a stick.”
“I mostly use my hands.”
Darren laughed so hard he had to wipe his eyes. He’d always been alright with Joel.
“Some of us are eating,” said Paulette.
“Dylan hasn’t texted you, has he?” Joel said.
Darren headed for the refrigerator. “Dylan? Text me?”
“Joel’s afraid the boy’s dead in a pit somewhere,” Paulette said.
Joel’s coffee paused on its way to his lips. “What did you say?”
He caught the way her eyes narrowed, the way she looked away. Paulette delayed her answer with a bite of toast.