Now that that’s out of the way, I am happy to present Surrender Your Sons.
—Adam Sass
CHAPTER ONE
MOM’S ULTIMATUM
This war has gone on long enough, but not for my mother. Even though she’s been in an upbeat mood since she arrived home from work, I know better than to drop my guard. It’s a trap somehow. Her cheeriness lingers over our home-cooked meal like the Saharan sun—omnipresent and pitiless. She thinks I don’t have the guts to ask the question that will blow apart our fragile cease-fire—the question that has dogged me for over a week—but I very much do have the guts:
“Hey, so…when do I get my phone back?”
I ask calmly, without demands or tantrums. Nevertheless, the question ignites a fire in my mother’s eyes that has been kindling underneath our brutally pleasant dinner. Mom shoves away her plate of half-eaten chicken and asks, “Your phone?” My question is the scandal of the century, apparently. “Are you serious?”
I’m dead serious, but I shrug: it’s crucial that I project an aura of casual indifference, even though my heart sinks with each day I’m cut off from Ario and my friends. Mom would keep my phone forever if she could. Last Thanksgiving, my uncle scolded me, “You treat that thing like it’s your second dick!” He’s not wrong, but I’ve been phone-less for almost two weeks and this battle for my sanity has reached D-Day levels of slaughter.
“It’s just that…” I begin cautiously, remounting my defense,
“…could I get a time frame of when I’ll get it back?”
“Are you kidding me?” Mom’s conviction grows as every muscle tightens in my neck. “You are being punished, Connor—”
“I didn’t do anything wrong!” A reckless energy seizes me as I leap from my chair in a foolish attempt to intimidate her with my height (as of my seventeenth birthday, I’ve accepted the reality that I’m tapped out at five and a half feet).
“Don’t come at me with your trash attitude! And you’re not excused.” Mom grasps the silver cross hanging outside of her nursing scrub top and kisses it—no, mashes it to her lips; her typical plea to Christ to help her out of another fine mess her heathen son has dragged her into. She fans her hands downward for me to sit, and—with an extra loud huff—I oblige. Mom and I take turns sneering at each other, a performance battle to prove which of us is the more aggrieved party. She blows tense air through “O”-circled lips, and I pissily toss a sweat-dampened curl from my eyes.
Our clanking swamp cooler of an air conditioner doesn’t provide any relief from the latest heat wave tearing through Ambrose; however, the stench of hot July chicken shit from the farm next door manages to travel on the breeze just fine. I ladle peppermint ice cream into my mouth at a mindless speed until a glob of pink goo drips onto my shorts next to a hot sauce stain…which is from yesterday. It’s the same Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week-worthy outfit I’ve donned all summer: gym shorts and a baggy hoodie with the sleeves chopped off.