Oh, but they’ve got their drama. They’ve got their views. And now coaches and scouts will have their reasons. And nobody will want me on their team! Is that what everybody wants? To see me lose everything? Well, they’re in luck ’cuz it’s gone. I can hang up going to the league after my first year of college. That dream is dead along with everything else.

Exhausted, I sit for long time, looking at the broken glass on my floor and the scattered beetles in between. When I was little, I used to stand on the ottoman to get them down from the top shelf in the living room. Then I’d hold them close to my chest while taking baby steps to the sofa, where I’d look at them for hours. I’d imagine Mom looking at them with me, telling me which ones were her favorites.

I look at a crack in the iridescent one’s blue shell (her favorite). At the bright green beetle (her second favorite) and its thin, broken wing. At the purple-and-orange striped one who’s now missing its antenna. At the black beetle on its back with only half of its jointed legs in the air.

Damn, after all these years, I can’t believe I just messed up Mom’s beetles, all because I got mad. Me. Not some kind of body snatcher who appeared out of thin air. Not the homie from way back when. I did this.

Never Would’ve Imagined

REX

After school I get back in bed. I’m rereading one of Mom’s books about this dope landscape architect named Water Hood and listening to her Otis Redding album (trying to keep Carli, basketball, and the beetles out of my head), when I hear a knock at my door.

“Rex?” My father’s soft voice slips under the door into my room. Just like it slipped in Sunday after he got home from the hospital, yesterday after school, last night before I went to bed, and this morning before school.

But my father isn’t the only one who can ignore somebody. Who can stay in his room and pretend the person they live with isn’t actually there. Who could care less.

“Rex?”

I don’t answer.

“Rex?” My door opens slightly. Widens. My father takes a step into my room in his green scrubs. And another one. And another one until he’s standing in the middle of my room looking around at all of Mom’s things.

As if on cue, the record finishes and the needle lifts.

He looks over at me.

I look back at my book like he’s not even there.

“What are you reading?” he asks.

I hold up my book so he can see for himself.