He must see that I don’t approve because his eyes tear up and his face flattens into what I recognize as shame—familiar in the most terrible way.

“Dad,” and I wrap my arms around him. It feels weird at first, but I force myself to hold him and keep holding him until it doesn’t feel weird anymore. Hold him and keep holding him until I can feel my anger for the ways he’s wronged me start to seep out. “I think we should sell the house.”

CARLI

It’s Saturday afternoon and I’m lying on the sofa in the living room, trying not to feel the ghost of Rex (his arms around me, my face sunk into his neck) or the nothingness of my walls (its weight like concrete on my chest) by slipping further down into the YouTube abyss.

I’m home alone. Better than being at work with Mom. She tried to get me to go with her this morning, to get me out of the house, but I’m tired of looking into her sympathetic eyes. And I swear to god I’ll go apeshit if I hear Are you okay? one more time.

Better than playing basketball with Jordan, too. After I told her about Shannon, she forgave me. But now all she wants to do is ball. Says she needs to step up her game since I’m not playing next year.

And definitely better than being at Daddy’s. He’s supposed to have the talk with Cole. No need for me to go through all that again.

I’ve been watching random videos for over three hours. So long I swear I can hear my brain yelling, Help! Get me out of here! And I’m trying, but “The World’s Funniest Family Feud Fails” is putting all ladders and ropes out of my reach.

Steve Harvey is standing between two women, both with one hand behind their backs and the other hand flat on their respective red buzzers. He says, “Name a number that all men exaggerate.”

Not the number of extramarital kids they have, I think before the lady in the purple dress presses the button and answers, “One hundred!” A red X flashes on the screen and Steve Harvey confusedly points to the other lady, who says, “Sixty-nine?”

I mean, how stupid can they be. I swear these women are even more clueless than me. I seriously didn’t think that was possible. No, I take that back. Daddy is definitely more lost than I am. He’s like a five-year-old trying to read a road map.

I go off hunting for the boost, the boost I thought judging Daddy would give me, but there isn’t one. There’s only his history—of being an eight-year-old boy whose mom died and whose dad never came back, of being a man who had a family and lost it—and the path stretched out before him.