Page 20 of Across His Line

“About what?”

“About Tuesday.”

“It was two minutes.”

“It was a roughing penalty against a school nobody’s heard of, on a stream that anyone with a Wi-Fi password could watch. I don’t pay for you to be there so you can embarrass this family in the second period of a game that doesn’t matter.”

I look out the windshield at the back of Corvin. Most of the windows are dark. Three of them on the third floor are lit, and I don’t count which ones.

“Your mother told you about next weekend.”

“I have a game Saturday.”

“You’ll miss it. I’ve already cleared it with Berwyn.”

I sit there.

“You talked to my coach,” I say, “about pulling me out of a game.”

“There’s something we need to discuss as a family. In person.”

“What?”

“In person, Rafferty.”

“You didn’t ask me.”

“Because I don’t need to.”

And that’s my father. He picked my school, my car, the color of my car, the camps, the tutors and the summer I spent in his office learning to shake hands, and he’ll pick the next thing and the thing after that, and if I ever ask him why nobody asked me, he’ll look at me like I’m ungrateful, because look at everything he’s given me. Look at all of it.

“A car will pick you up Friday at four,” he says.

He hangs up.

I sit in the car with the engine off until the windows start to fog. I don’t hit anything. I want to put my fist through the dash, but I don’t, because it’s a nice car.

Eventually, I go back up.

The room’s cold. The window’s open. Kennebeck’s bed is still unmade from this afternoon. Kylie’s makeup bag is on his chair. I stand in the middle of it with my jacket still on.

I’m not going to go over there.

I’m going to the bathroom. That’s what I tell myself when it’s almost midnight and when I open my door, and it sticks the way it always sticks. I yank it, and it slams behind me the way it always slams.

The hallway’s empty. Every door on the floor is shut. The lights are on that dim night setting that makes everything look like a hospital.

I don’t go to the bathroom.

One door.

Two.

Three.

There’s a thin strip of light under hers. Low and yellow. Not the overhead, a lamp. Kylie’s at a party with Kennebeck. The light’s on for somebody else.

I stand there.