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Chapters (47)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Notice
  3. Dedication
  4. Epigraphs
  5. Prologue
  6. Part One
  7. ONE
  8. TWO
  9. THREE
  10. FOUR
  11. FIVE
  12. SIX
  13. SEVEN
  14. EIGHT
  15. NINE
  16. TEN
  17. ELEVEN
  18. TWELVE
  19. THIRTEEN
  20. FOURTEEN
  21. FIFTEEN
  22. SIXTEEN
  23. SEVENTEEN
  24. Part Two
  25. EIGHTEEN
  26. NINETEEN
  27. TWENTY
  28. TWENTY-ONE
  29. TWENTY-TWO
  30. TWENTY-THREE
  31. TWENTY-FOUR
  32. TWENTY-FIVE
  33. TWENTY-SIX
  34. TWENTY-SEVEN
  35. TWENTY-EIGHT
  36. TWENTY-NINE
  37. THIRTY
  38. THIRTY-ONE
  39. THIRTY-TWO
  40. THIRTY-THREE
  41. THIRTY-FOUR
  42. THIRTY-FIVE
  43. THIRTY-SIX
  44. THIRTY-SEVEN
  45. Acknowledgments
  46. About the Author
  47. Newsletter Sign-up

He headed straight for Ed, who was pulling beach towels and tattered folding chairs out of the back of the Buick wagon. Ed didn’t look anything like Mr. Gordon the history teacher from Riverside High. At school, Ed wore polyester shirts with wide ties and kept his hair pulled back into a scraggy ponytail. But here he was, a family guy on vacation in his old Marquette Warriors T-shirt and ratty sandals. His curly salt-and-pepper hair, what was left of it, whipped around his head. They’d left Milwaukee two days ago and already his scruffy black beard was beginning to show. He said he never shaved in the summer. Michael thought about giving up shaving for the summer, too, but puberty hadn’t kicked in all the way; it took him weeks to establish anything thicker than peach fuzz.

“Forget something?” Ed asked.

Michael shook his head. His lungs felt the way they did at the end of a race, like they were filled with broken glass, and his spent quads twitched.

Ed looked at him with concern. “Hey man,” he said, doing his best to blunt a crisis with casual talk. “What’s wrong?”

What’s wrong? Michael didn’t know where to start. He was a thousand miles from everything that was familiar to him. He missed his mom. All of the Gordon rituals and inside jokes and easy familiarity made him feel even more alone. The girls didn’t know how good they had it with their two parents and two houses. He was jealous and angry. He didn’t understand how the cosmic scales could get so tipped. What’s wrong? He’d never been good at putting his feelings to words. He wanted to lash out when he felt like this.

“Speak your truth,” Ed said.

His truth? He wanted to be with them and he wanted to leave. He wanted to be them, or rather, he wanted to live the way they did, free of dents. But he couldn’t trust the happiness he felt with the family, couldn’t believe anything good could ever last.

The parking lot was packed full of cars. Michael looked at the little shack in the distance where a teenager in a red tank top checked for beach stickers. Beyond that was the road they’d taken to get here, lined with scrubby pine and oak trees. Michael thought about taking off. The problem was that he had no idea how to get back to their house.

“Michael,” Ed said. “Talk to me.”