“What are you even doing here? You pick today of all days to act like you care? Where have you been for the past year? The past five years? Trying to start a stupid band like you think you’re my age? Hiding out in your fucking cave, forcing me to clean up your mess—forcing me to take care of Gwen. I’ve made the two of us dinner, driven her to school every day. Cleaned up the horrible shit that people wrote on our fucking garage.” Bile rises in my throat at the thought of the garage and who those people were. I refuse to cry in front of my father. Instead, I grab my phone. Stand. “I can’t deal with this right now.”

“Zach—” He reaches for me again, but I move too fast. “C’mon. Zach!”

He’s still calling my name as I walk out of my bedroom, down the staircase, and out the front door.

—

A short while later, I pull up to Conor’s. I texted him on my way over, and he’s waiting outside as promised, holding a brown paper bag by his side. The house looks worse than the last time I was here. The weeds in the front yard have all grown back since we pulled them out a couple months ago.

He waves as I pull to the end of the cracked asphalt driveway and park. I slowly get out of the car, the weight of everything pressing down on my shoulders.

“Hey.” He chin-nods in my direction and hops onto the hood of my Jeep. Usually I’d yell at him, tell him to stop denting my car, but right now I’m too exhausted to care. He opens the bag he’s holding and pulls out a six-pack.

“Stole these from my dad.” He sounds younger than usual. He always does when he’s at home. It’s like the magnetic field of his house tears away the persona he’s created.

I raise my eyebrows and glance over at the front door but know better than to ask any questions, like Is your dad passed out on the couch? We’ve been through this before.

I climb up onto the hood of the car and settle in next to him, wincing as the metal dips beneath my weight. He hands me a beer.

“You okay, man?” He nudges me with his shoulder. After the assembly, he found me staring into space, slumped against a wall of the emptied auditorium, and forced the whole story out of me. The jail visit, May’s disappearance…what she said to me right before she was pulled away by the resource officers.

I take a long sip from my can. The beer tastes terrible. I swallow it and take another gulp.