Page 44

Twenty

Colby

“Welp,” Meg reported miserably when she called him late that night, Colby’s phone vibrating wildly across the nightstand, “turns out Rebecca Latimer Felton was a giant white supremacist.”

“Wait, what?” Colby shifted around on the mattress as gingerly as possible. His ribs were bruised, according to the ER doc; every time he breathed it felt like someone was stomping on his lungs. “Who?”

“Rebecca Latimer Felton!” Meg repeated, like if she said it enough times he’d somehow magically know who she was talking about. He could hear her typing angrily away in the background. “The first woman in the Senate! I’m doing my independent study about her, remember? Or I was, at least.”

“Oh,” Colby said, wincing. “Yeah. Whoops.”

“Yeah, Colby, whoops.” Meg sounded aggrieved. “I read all these scholarly sources about her, I had a freaking children’s book, and it wasn’t until I looked at Wikipedia of all places that anybody even thought to mention the fact that she owned slaves and was, like, very much in favor of lynching.”

Colby grimaced. “Shit.”

“That’s what I’m saying! My project is due in six days, and it turns out she’s basically the poster woman for the most awful, racist, violent kind of white feminism.”

“I mean, I keep trying to tell you that about politicians,” Colby said, leaning back against the pillows. His head throbbed. They’d only just gotten back from the hospital a little while ago; his mom had gone directly into her bedroom and slammed the door loud enough to rattle the whole house. “They’ll let you down every time.”

Meg made a strangled sound. “It’s not funny, Colby!”

“I’m not joking,” he countered immediately. “This lady sounds like she was hot garbage, which is a good example of why you shouldn’t, like, put all your faith in—”

“Okay, okay,” Meg interrupted. “I get it. But can you just feel bad for me without telling me why it’s stupid to believe in government altogether?”

“I do feel bad for you,” Colby promised, though truthfully he wasn’t super surprised there’d been gaps in her research. Meg meant well—Colby knew that now—but still he got the feeling she only knew what she was talking about, like, half the time. “I mean, I feel a lot worse for all the people she thought she had the right to own, but—”

“I mean, yes, obviously. Thank you.” Meg sighed. “Are you okay?” she asked a moment later. “Your voice sounds funny tonight.”

“I’m surprised you can hear me at all, the way you’re pounding on those keys over there,” Colby informed her. “Whenever I picture you working, I imagine that gif of Kermit the Frog slamming away on the typewriter. Arms flying all around, clouds of dust everywhere...”

Meg laughed at that. “Oh, that’s how you imagine me?”

“It is,” Colby said immediately. “A very sexy Kermit the Frog.”

“Perv.”

“Prude.”

“That’s what you think,” Meg shot back immediately. Colby smiled, then winced as the butterfly on his cheekbone pulled his skin. His voice sounded weird because there was gauze shoved up into his sinuses: Matt had broken his nose, which Colby guessed was fair enough considering the fact that Matt had needed seven stitches in his lip.

“What are you up to this week?” he asked Meg now, wanting to change the subject. He didn’t tell her about his fight with Matt. It felt too complicated to explain, even to her, on top of which he knew it would just underline the stuff she already thought about his family, the idea that they were too dumb or backward to settle their disagreements with SAT words and civilized debate.

To be fair, he didn’t know if she actually thought that.

Also, he was a little embarrassed.

After they said good night, Colby lay on his back on the mattress for a long time, trying not to jostle his busted self too badly and also not to think about what Matt had said that afternoon in the backyard. Part of him had meant it when he told his brother he was full of shit—it was fucking absurd to think his dad had just periodically wanted to die for Colby’s entire childhood while Colby strolled stupidly around playing PlayStation and eating Little Debbies. He would have known. He would have to have known.

Still, the other part of him kept replaying that week at Rick and Alicia’s—they’d gone on a hayride, he remembered suddenly, all of them drinking hot apple cider out of Styrofoam cups—and felt like he was going to throw up all over his bed.

It didn’t matter, Colby told himself, clicking the light off and trying to put the whole thing out of his head. It ended the same either way, didn’t it? All roads led to Rome, or whatever the expression was. He thought Meg would probably know, not that he had any intention of talking to Meg about this. Not that he had any intention of talking to anyone.

After all: What was the point?

He had to go to the pharmacy the following morning to fill the prescription for heavy-duty Tylenol the ER doc had given him: “You shouldn’t need anything stronger,” she’d said as she’d handed it over, like she half expected him to grab her by the lapels of her white coat and demand a year’s supply of Oxy. He was heading back to his car when someone called his name from across the parking lot.

“Hey,” Joanna said, lifting a delicate hand in greeting. She was wearing a shiny purple blouse and one of those skinny knee-length skirts, her legs long and tan even though it wasn’t summer yet. Her hair was a tidy yellow knot on top of her head. “I thought that was you.”