“Nah,” Nick said, throwing an arm around Tommy’s waist. “We got this.”
“Text me from the hospital?” Quinn said.
“Yeah,” Nick said.
* * *
Quinn had all the blood cleaned up by the time her dad got home. She was sitting in the chair next to Julius, rereading Nick’s texts from the hospital—Septal fracture. No football for 3 wks. Sry abt the blood on ur floor.—when she heard footsteps behind her. “Hey, kiddo.” A warm hand on her head. “How’d it go?”
“Shhh.” Quinn gestured to the couch. “He’s been asleep since six-fifteen.”
“Really?” Quinn’s dad glanced at his watch.
“What time is it?”
“Eight forty-two. Is he sick?”
“He’s fine,” Quinn said. “Long story, but he tried to set a Guinness World Record up on the roof.”
“What?”
“Yeah. Highest BASE jump. It was pretty crazy … How was your dinner?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Quinn’s dad said. He gestured for Quinn to follow him into the kitchen. When they were seated at the table, he said, “The whole story, please. From the beginning.”
Quinn didn’t want to tell the whole story, but she knew that she had to. So she told it. The only part she left out was Nick cold-cocking Tommy and leaving a gallon of blood on the living room floor, because that had nothing to do with Julius.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said. “I screwed up.”
Her dad shook his head. “No. I’m sorry. I never should have put you in that position.”
“I shouldn’t have let him out of my sight. I didn’t know … I had no idea he would pull something like that.”
“Neither did I.”
“How does Mom do it?”
Her dad shook his head again. “I don’t know.”
“Are you going to tell her you left him with me? That he ended up on the roof?”
“Yes.”
“She’s going to freak.”
“Maybe.”
“Can’t we just … keep it between us?”
“Q,” her dad said. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because your mom and I are a team. You know that, right? We’re in this parenting thing together.”
Quinn was just starting to roll her eyes when Julius appeared in the doorway to the kitchen, blinking in the light.
“Phil,” Julius said. His voice sounded croaky. “Where’s Mo?”
“Mo’s in Arizona. Remember, bud? She went on an airplane.”
Quinn could tell just from looking at her dad that he wanted to throw his arms around her brother and hold him for a good ten minutes. But this was Julius. Julius didn’t do hugs.
“I want Mo, Phil.”
“So do I,” Quinn’s dad said.
* * *
Later, Quinn’s dad knocked on her door.
“Q? You still up?”
“Yeah,” Quinn said. It was almost eleven o’clock, but she couldn’t sleep.
“Can I come in?”
“Yeah.” She clicked on her bedside light.
Her dad opened the door. He was back to wearing his Bon Jovi concert T-shirt and a pair of holey sweats. “Hi.”
Quinn waved from the bed. “Is Jules asleep?”
“Not yet. He’s in bed, reading.”
“What if he goes up on the roof again?”
“I don’t think he’ll do that. It’s dark out.”
Quinn nodded. He was right. Julius wasn’t a fan of the dark.
Her dad perched on the end of her bed. He didn’t say anything at first, just sat there, clearing his throat.
Quinn waited. This was definitely weird.
“So, I read your post on the … ah … Alopecia Sucks website.”
“What?” Quinn sat up.
“I wasn’t snooping,” her dad said quickly. “I just turned on my computer, and there it was.”
Quinn shook her head. Was that possible? Had she not logged out?
“Q.” Her dad squeezed her foot through the blanket. “Why didn’t you tell us what was going on with you in Boulder?”
Quinn shrugged. “Because you couldn’t have fixed it.”
“But your mom and I had no idea. How could we not have known any of this was happening? If you’d told us, we could have…” He hesitated.
“What, Dad? What could you have done?”
“Called the school. Talked to some parents.”
Quinn rolled her eyes. “Really, Dad? You would have called up Ethan Hess’s parents and said, ‘Tell your son to stop telling the world that my daughter gives new meaning to the word head’?”
Her dad cringed. “No one has the right to spread rumors about you, Quinn. And no one has the right to touch you. Not without your permission.”
“I know that,” Quinn said.
“Do you?”
“It wasn’t a big deal.” She thought about Ethan’s hand, reaching out to grab her boob through her shirt. It had felt like nothing. He might as well have grabbed her elbow.
“I disagree,” her dad said.
“He didn’t force me to do anything.”
“It doesn’t matter if he forced you. He touched your body without your consent. And he tried to get you to touch him. That’s not okay. That’s—”
“Dad,” Quinn said. “I know. They covered this in health class.”
“They did?”
“Good touch, bad touch. No means no.” Quinn’s father was so clueless, she almost felt bad for him. “I didn’t tell you about that night because I didn’t want you to know. Because the whole thing was stupid. I thought that when we moved here…” Quinn’s voice trailed off.
“What?” her dad said.
“Nothing. It’s dumb.”
“I bet it’s not.”
“I thought I could start over. I thought if I wore the wig, no one would ever have to know, and now…”
Her dad’s eyebrows lifted.
“It fell off, when we were up on the roof. People saw.”
“Which people?”
“Nick and Tommy.”
“So … two people?”
“Three, if you count Julius.”
“Quinn.”
“What?”
“Sweetheart. Do you really think Nick and Tommy are going to shun you now? Do you think they’re going to run off to school and tell everyone you wear a wig?”
Quinn thought about this. She thought of Nick running off to school, literally, on his short prosthetic legs with training feet. She thought about Nick and Tommy in her living room, squatting, throwing punches, acting out their own family drama.
“No,” she said. “I don’t think they will.”
CHAPTER
18
WHEN QUINN CAME DOWN FOR BREAKFAST, the first thing she saw was the clock over the sink. “Nine-oh-five?” she said. “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You needed to sleep,” her dad said. He was standing at the stove, holding a spatula.
“School started an hour ago!” Quinn looked around the kitchen for her backpack. Usually she hung it on a hook by the door, but it wasn’t there. “Where’s my backpack?”
“Take a load off,” her dad said. “You’re not going to school.”
“Why not?”
“Mental health day.”
“For me or for you?”
“For all of us.”
Julius shuffled into the kitchen, hair sticking up, headphones dangling from his neck. “It’s fried Friday, Phil.”
“Yes, it is, my friend,” Quinn’s dad said. He gestured to the stovetop. “Fried eggs, over easy. Fried hash browns.”
Julius shuffled over to the table. He pulled out a chair. “With Heinz tomato ketchup?”
“What good are fried hash browns without Heinz tomato ketchup?”
“They are not much good, Phil.”
Quinn’s dad set a plate down on the table. Julius clamped his headphon
es to his ears and picked up the ketchup.
Quinn looked at her dad. “You’re following Mom’s instructions now?”
“I am.”
“What happened to Phil’s rules?”
“I’m choosing my battles.”
Quinn looked at her brother, squeezing half the bottle of ketchup onto his plate. “What are we supposed to do all day?” she said.
“Well,” her dad said, “in about three hours we’re going to go pick up your mom at the airport.”
“We are?”
“We are.”
Quinn nodded slowly. “You told her about the roof.”
“I did.”
“Did she freak?”
“She was concerned, yes.”
“Is that why she’s coming home today?”
“In part. But also because your uncle Andrew is flying in tonight.”
“From Australia?”
“Yes. He’ll be staying with Gigi for a few weeks.”
“Huh,” Quinn said.
“How about some eggs?”
“Okay.”
“Hash browns?”
“Sure.” Quinn walked over to the fridge to get herself some juice. That was when she noticed something on the wall. “Hey. You put up the whiteboard.”
“I did.”
Quinn read the words aloud. “Felix culpa.” She looked at her dad, who was transferring eggs onto a plate.
“Happy fault. An apparent disaster that ends up having surprisingly positive consequences. I thought it was apropos.”
“Why?”
“We’re working on goal-setting with Julius,” her dad said, putting the plate on the table. “Granted, BASE jumping off a three-story house with no safety equipment is an incredibly dangerous, poorly thought-out goal. But your brother deciding, on his own, to set a world record? That’s…”
“Crazy?” Quinn offered.
“I was going to say remarkable. Setting a world record is a remarkable goal, for anyone. But especially for Julius.”
Quinn pulled out a chair and sat down.
“We just need to help him choose something a little less…”
“Crazy?”
“I was going to say hazardous.”
Quinn took a bite of eggs, chewed, swallowed. “The world’s biggest pile of marshmallows?”
“Something like that.”
* * *
From the curbside pickup lane, which they’d already driven through three times because the airport police kept telling them to move, Quinn finally spotted her mom’s denim jacket and red wheelie suitcase.
“Mom!” Quinn stuck her head out the window—her bald, cue-ball head, wearing nothing but her ratty Colorado Rockies baseball cap. “Mo!”
“Mom. Mo,” Julius repeated, even though he wasn’t looking anywhere but down at his book. “Mom. Mo.”
“Did you miss us?” Quinn asked as soon as her mom had put her suitcase in the trunk and slid into the front passenger seat. “I feel like you’ve been gone forever.”
“Me, too,” Quinn’s dad said, leaning over the gearshift for a kiss.
“Me three,” Julius said.
They all turned to look at him.
“Did he just say ‘me three’?” Quinn’s dad asked, ignoring the airport police officer blowing his whistle.
“Me four. Me five. Me six.” Julius tapped out a little beat on top of Guinness World Records 2017. “Mom Mo Mom Mo Mom Mo.”
“Mom,” Quinn said. “He’s saying he missed you.”
“Buddy.” Mo turned in her seat to look at Julius. “I’m—”
“MOVE OUT!” The officer was now banging on the hood of the Subaru. “MOVE OUT NOW!”
“Sheesh,” Quinn’s dad muttered, nosing the car forward. “We’re having a moment here.”
“Bud,” Mo tried again. “Julius … Could I have some eye contact, please?”
Julius lifted his head and looked, from Quinn’s vantage point anyway, at Mo’s ear. Ear contact.
“I missed you so much,” her mom said. “I missed you to the moon and back.”
“The youngest moon rocks date back some three point two billion years. They are a type of volcanic basalt, originating from the dark lunar seas. They are not dissimilar to the age of the oldest datable rocks on Earth.”
Mo nodded, smiling. “That’s a very cool fact.”
“It’s not cool, Mo. It’s hot. Very, very hot. It takes higher than two thousand two hundred degrees Fahrenheit to make moon rocks.”
“Like a kiln,” Mo said.
“Like a kiln,” Julius said. Then his head snapped back down and the headphones went on.
* * *
When they got home, Quinn’s mom asked Quinn to come upstairs with her. “Keep me company while I unpack,” she said. But Quinn knew what this really meant. It had nothing to do with unpacking.
“I’m sorry,” Quinn said as soon as she walked into her parents’ room, before her mom could say anything. “The roof was my fault. It was my job to watch him, and I let him out of my sight. I know it was bad. Trust me, nothing you say right now could make me feel any worse than I already do.”
“We’ll talk about that in a minute,” her mom said.
“What?”
“I want to talk about something else first.” Quinn’s mom sat down on the bed. She patted the space beside her. “It’s important.”
“Okay…,” Quinn said. She didn’t like the sound of this, something more important than her brother’s safety and well-being. She sat down next to her mom. “What is it?”
Mo was wearing her serious face. “Did he hurt you? The boy?” For a second, Quinn assumed that the “boy” she was referring to was Nick. Maybe some of the blood from Nick punching Tommy was still on the living room floor, and her mom saw it and thought the blood was Quinn’s. But then her mom said, “From the Valentine’s party.”
“Ethan Hess? Oh my God, Dad told you about that?” Quinn flopped back on the bed. “The stupid message board?”
“I don’t think it’s stupid,” her mom said.
“Yes, it is. I told Dad, the whole thing was ridiculous. I just want to forget it ever happened.”
“Did Ethan hurt you?”
“No, he didn’t hurt me. God.” Quinn groaned and pressed a pillow to her face, which made her words come out muffled. “And if he’d tried to, I would have squeezed his nuts until they shriveled up like raisins.”
Quinn’s mom let out a hoot. “Excuse me?”
“I read this article once.” Quinn flung the pillow off her face and spoke to the ceiling. “If a guy tries to attack you, you’re supposed to grab his testicles with all five of your fingers and squeeze as hard as you can. You should really dig in, too, with your nails.” She sat up to demonstrate. “Then you twist and pull. It’s supposed to be extremely painful.”
“Yes. I’m sure.” Quinn’s mom shook her head, smiling a little. “I had no idea you knew that.”
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me.”
“Honey … why didn’t you tell me what was going on in Boulder? Why didn’t you talk to me?”
“Because,” Quinn said slowly. “I told you. It was stupid. And you’re always … you know…”
“What?”
Quinn sat there on the bed and thought of a million different ways she could say it. Her mom was just looking at her, eyebrows raised like she had no clue.
Finally, Quinn said, “You’re always busy with Julius. And I know his problems are bigger than mine. I know they are. So I never want to bother you with stuff. I just try to figure it out on my own.”
“Quinn.”
“Yeah.”
“Look at me.”
“I am.”
“I’m your mom.”
“I know.”
“I love you as much as I love your brother. Your problems are no less important to me than his are. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“You are just as importa
nt to me. I love you just as much. You can talk to me anytime. About anything. I will always make time for you.”
Quinn willed her eyes not to roll. “Okay.”
“Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Is there anything else you want to tell me about you?”
“No.”
“Okay,” her mom said. She nodded a few times. “Now I need to ask you about Julius.”
“Do you have to?”
“I do. Yes. I don’t blame you for what happened, Quinn. Believe me. Julius could have gotten up on the roof even if Dad and I had been home. But since you were the one who was here, I need you to step me through exactly what happened so I understand. I need to know what to tell his teachers. Okay?”
Quinn let out a breath. “Okay.”
* * *
When Quinn and her mom came back downstairs, Julius was sitting at the kitchen table and Quinn’s dad was unloading the dishwasher. “I’ve been thinking,” he said, hanging one of Mo’s ceramic coffee mugs on a hook. “We should thank Nick and Tommy for their help yesterday.”
“I already thanked them,” Quinn said.
“I didn’t. Neither did your mom.”
“Well, I did. So … they’ve been thanked.”
“I’d like us to do it together,” Quinn’s dad persisted. “As a family. I’d like us to drive over there.”
“To their house?”
“Yes.”
“You want us to just show up on their doorstep?”
“We could call first.”
Quinn stared at her dad. This didn’t sound like him at all.
“I agree,” Quinn’s mom said. “I’d like to thank Nick and Tommy, too. And I’d like Julius to thank them.”
Quinn glanced over at Julius, clamped into his headphones, mumbling at his book and paying no attention whatsoever to this conversation.
“Do you have the Strouts’ phone number?” Mo said.
Quinn shook her head. There was no getting out of this. That much was clear. “I’ll text Nick and find out if they’re home.”
“Sounds good,” her dad said.
Quinn went up to her room to get her phone. She’d had it powered down since she went to bed last night. When she powered up, there were four new texts, all from Nick.
We’re home. Mom flipping out abt T’s nose. Dad thinks I was justified but says if I hit him agn I’m grounded for life.
How is Julius?
Hello? U there?
How We Roll Page 14