Page 31 of The Boy Who Cried Bear
Oh no.
I barrel out of the door and take the stairs so fast I almost trip.
“I did this,” Carson is saying. “It’s all my fault.”
“Slow down and come in,” Dalton says.
Carson shakes his head. He’s still in the doorway, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, barefoot despite the freezing-cold morning. His hair is wild, his eyes even wilder, dark rimmed and shadowed. He’s breathing hard, as if he ran the whole way here.
“I did this,” he says.
“You did what, Carson?” I ask.
“Max. I did this.”
Dalton glances my way as cold dread seeps in.
“Come in,” Dalton says, hand landing on the boy’s shoulder. “Or we’re all going to freeze before you can explain.”
He guides Carson to the sofa, taking his time, giving Carson a chance to catch his breath.
Dalton settles Carson on the sofa and then murmurs to me that he’ll make hot chocolate.
When he’s gone, I say, “What did you do, Carson?” my voice as neutral as I can make it.
“Lied,” he blurts. “I lied.”
“About what?”
“Max. I was the last person to see him. I know why he went into the woods.”
Do not judge. Do not put him on the defensive.
“Okay,” I say. “Tell me what happened.”
“He came to my room. Before Mom got home. After he left Gunnar’s perch, I guess. He said he’d seen the bear guy in the forest.”
I stiffen. “The bear guy…”
“Bigfoot. Whatever. I was…” He meets my gaze with eyes red-rimmed from crying. “Max wanted me to come with him to get a closer look. When I said no, he wanted to tell someone. He was doing the right thing. He always…”
His voice cracks and his eyes fill, but he angrily wipes away the tears. “He’s always so good. He always does what he’s told, and I hate it. Everyone likes him. Everyone thinks he’s so cute and sweet, and I can’t even say he’s secretly a jerk because he’s not and—”
Carson takes a deep breath. “That doesn’t matter. I was the jerk. I told him to stop talking about whatever he thought he saw in the forest, that he was embarrassing himself. I even said I didn’t think he saw anything and Gunnar was humoring him, which isn’t true at all. I just … Sometimes, I start being mean to him, and I can’t stop.”
I think about April, how often growing up I’d felt like she was being mean to me. In her case, it’d been her brutal honesty, and she hadn’t done it to hurt me. But I remember what her seeming cruelty felt like. I’d been devastated.
Carson misdirected his anger at Max, and it felt good because it was cathartic. It’s just that, like April, he was too young to really see how much it hurt his younger sibling. I understand that, but I am the former little sister who cannot help but put herself in Max’s shoes and feel the devastation of a sibling’s harsh words.
“I understand,” I say.
I also understand exactly what Max would have done next. What I would have done if it’d been April telling me to stop being a baby, stop making up stories. I’d have stormed out, determined to prove her wrong.
Determined to get a better look at that creature in the forest.
“I was really awful.” Carson’s voice drops to a whisper. “I said other things, too. Things I should never have said. Things I don’t believe.”
“And then what?”
