The First to Know

by Abigail Johnson

  “Yeah,” he said, not making a joke out of it at all.

  I traced a piece of window frame near my hip. Other people, other families, had lived in this apartment since Chase and his parents, and he’d told me he’d been very young when he and his mom moved, but he still felt connected to it and the father who’d deserted him. I was suddenly reminded that we barely knew each other, and yet he’d let me be a part of something incredibly personal to him.

  “Hey, why did you help me today?” I waited until he looked at me. “The smoothie, bringing me here? I wouldn’t even have seen you if you hadn’t called out.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?”

  “I was a girl crying by herself in a parking lot. I’m cute, but I’m not that cute,” I said, smiling a little, letting him know I was kidding.

  Chase walked toward me, holding my gaze. I was so used to the way Nick couldn’t maintain eye contact for more than a few seconds that I felt my face heating even before he said, “You are that cute. Plus, you needed something to break, and I needed not to do this by myself.”

  I was the one to break eye contact, dropping my head to look at the bat I had resting across my lap. “Well, thanks. I never knew how cathartic it could be to raze a building to the ground. Part of one, anyway.”

  “You too. I would have brought my cousin, Brandon, but people keep flaking at work. I can’t find a shift for us to both be off.”

  A different kind of tingling drifted over my skin at the mention of Brandon, overtaking the former. I closed my eyes for a second and leaned forward. All the thoughts I’d pushed away for the past couple hours raked over me. That ache, that empty dysphoria, settled heavy in my chest.

  Chase sat beside me. “You okay?” His hand barely brushed my back.

  I leaned away from his touch, speaking before I really thought about what I was doing. “You two are close?”

  “He’s more like my brother. We grew up together.”

  I glanced around the room we’d demolished, seeing it with new eyes.

  “Not here. Our parents, they’re siblings. They bought houses here in Mesa only a couple blocks away from each other after my dad left and his mom died.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Chase leaned his head against the wall. “I’m not. His dad was a better father than my own ever was. I don’t remember his mom, but mine loves him like he’s her own. We had it all right.” I felt Chase’s eyes on me and I met them. “Sometimes your family isn’t what you want them to be, but you end up with something better. I did.”

  I pushed to my feet, dusting myself off as much as I could. Chase stood too and we started picking our way out of the apartment and back down the stairs.

  “Sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  “No, it’s fine.” If I’d been crying over a lost grandfather earlier instead of a philandering father and secret brother—a brother Chase was deeply connected to—his words might have had their desired effect. “Maybe you’re right. Either way, this helped.” I looked up at him when we reached the broken window in the basement. “Really.”

  “Anytime.”

  I smiled a little and looked away. Just like with Brandon, I needed to stay away from Chase. If he knew who I was, he wouldn’t be offering me anything.

  “Or not.”

  “It’s just that between school and softball, I don’t have a ton of free time.” And you have no idea who I am, and the brother I just found wouldn’t want me and the bomb I represent anywhere near you, I added silently.

  “Ah.”

  “And I live in Apache Junction.” It was a lame excuse considering my house in AJ was only thirty minutes away, but I wasn’t able to tell him the real reason I was blowing him off.

  “Dana, it’s okay.”

  “Sorry.” And I meant it. I took the bat he held out to me and slid it and mine outside. Before I could consider the best way to get myself up and out, Chase knelt down and laced his hands together for me to step on.

  “Don’t be. It was a fun night. For what it’s worth, I hope you get to meet your grandfather sometime.”

  “Yeah. I’m rethinking that. I don’t think I want to know the answers to the questions I have.” What I really wanted was to go back and undo that whole day, the results, meeting Brandon, all of it. But I couldn’t.

  Chase boosted me easily through the window, then pulled himself through, being careful to avoid the glass that had cut him the first time. We walked toward our vehicles, which were mostly wrapped in the shadow of the apartment building. There were streetlights, but they’d either been broken or else forgotten along with the rest of the neighborhood, because they failed to turn on. The moon was shining, though, and it illuminated more than I wanted to see of Chase because I still had to walk away. I already knew I’d have liked to see more of him, which was all the more reason not to linger. Standing beside my car, this time under a star-pricked sky with my heart still hurting but my body no longer consumed by it, I reached for my door and looked one last time at Chase approaching his.

  “You kind of saved me tonight.”

  Chase stopped, keys in hand. “Well, I’d have been screwed without your bat.”

  I laughed a little and opened my door.

  “Take care, Dana.”

  “You too.”

  * * *

  I got home and went upstairs to my room with an excuse over my shoulder that I had a headache. The farther I’d driven away from Chase and the apartment building, the more real the day had become, until my head really was pounding. It got worse as I lay on my bed, sleep not even remotely attainable. I curled onto my side. Every part of me was aching to act, to do something, but for once I couldn’t bring myself to move. There was pain in every direction, and nowhere to retreat. I could hear my parents downstairs, working late, their voices dancing around each other with dips of occasional laughter. The sounds, so normal and carefree, spurred me from my bed. I stopped inches from my bedroom door, my hand wrapping around the knob, but I didn’t turn it. I couldn’t go downstairs and look Dad in the eye and tell him I knew. I couldn’t watch Mom’s face, because I knew, as much as she loved me, she wouldn’t believe it. I’d seen the results and stared into my brother’s face, and part of me still wrestled with disbelief.

  Underneath all the horror and denial, Brandon and I had said basically the same thing to each other: how could this be true? The facts went against everything I knew, everything he claimed to know too. So how?

  I’d told Chase I didn’t want answers, and I didn’t, but my insomnia meant I needed them. My insides were tearing themselves apart, flinging emotions at me faster than I could process. I had to talk to Brandon again. He had to be feeling the same emotional schizophrenia, he just had to.

  I opened my laptop on my bed, logged back on to DNA Detective and clicked on Dad’s results. Brandon’s match was gone. Dad’s highest match was now a predicted fourth cousin. My brows pinched together as I checked again, then a third time. There was no record of Brandon at all. I dove for my purse, upended the contents on my bed, then froze, remembering that Dad’s results weren’t there. Brandon had left with them still crumpled in his fist. My only hard copy. And he’d deleted the rest.

  Chapter 10

  Wednesday morning I slept in for maybe the first time in my life. And by slept in, I mean hid in my room waiting for Mom to drag herself down the stairs and into the steaming mug of coffee Dad always had waiting for her.

  It was hard hearing him up and moving around downstairs. Most days, I’d be up with him—at least, when I wasn’t frantically finishing homework from the night before. We’d always been the early birds in the family, while Mom and Selena were the night owls. Dad and I never did much in the mornings. We never had deep father-daughter conversations, but we’d make breakfast and we’d sit together at the kitchen table grum
bling at whatever ESPN was talking about. Eventually, Mom would stagger in like she’d just woken from a coma and Dad would start her coffee IV. Halfway through her second cup, she’d blink at the pair of us as though seeing us for the first time and join our grumblings. It was nice, routine. And I didn’t know if I’d ever have that again.

  I waited until the last possible minute to go downstairs. Mom was mostly awake by then, not enough to articulate words, but she pointed vaguely in the direction of the toaster when she saw me. I grabbed an English muffin and a paper towel, acutely aware of Dad’s back as he refilled Mom’s swimming pool–sized coffee mug.

  “That headache knocked you out, huh?” Dad’s voice made my eyes prick. It was normal, completely normal.

  “Yeah. It’s fine now. I gotta get to school.”

  “Hang on.” Dad turned and faced me, causing my stomach to plummet into my feet. I started backing out of the room. “I need you to come straight home after practice today. Selena is driving down and she has some news she wants to share.” He could barely contain his grin. Dad thought it was good news—which for him meant something softball related. For once I didn’t squirm with resentment that he’d never have beamed like that over me. Whatever it was, I knew she wasn’t reconsidering playing again. I also knew I wouldn’t be coming home right after school.

  * * *

  I found Nick outside the door of my first class when it let out. He smiled as soon as he saw me, which layered guilt into the slurry of emotions sloshing inside me. “Nick. Oh, I’m sorry. I should have texted you not to wait for me this morning.” I remembered what Jessalyn had told me the day before about him having to sprint to class. “I hope you weren’t late?”

  “It’s fine. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “Yeah, it was just one of those mornings.” I started walking, Nick keeping pace beside me. He had to slow his stride so as not to outstrip me.

  “And everything else is...okay?”

  He meant with my nonexistent grandfather, but Nick would never come right out and ask. I could have shown up carrying a severed head, and the most direct thing he’d ask was if I’d had a tough night. He was trying to be thoughtful by not prying, I knew that, but I wished he’d just say what he was thinking so I wouldn’t be able to dodge him. I’d gotten too good at doing that with him.

  “Yep.” I half turned and took a few steps sideways. “Oh, you had that job interview at Mostly Bread after school yesterday, right? Did you get it? You did, didn’t you?”

  Nick shifted the bag on his shoulder and dropped his eyes to his feet. “I think so. I’m supposed to hear soon.” He swallowed. “But did you—”

  “Jessalyn probably gets to tell you in person. Have you seen her yet?”

  “Um, no, but—”

  “I bet she tells you at lunch.” We reached the end of the hallway. It split left toward my next class and right to his. I turned without stopping. “I’ll see you then, okay?” Our lunch group consisted of half my softball team—no way he’d be able to ask me anything then even if he worked up the nerve. I didn’t doubt Jessalyn’s ability to help Nick loosen up more in mixed company, but I didn’t think one conversation was going to do it.

  “Dana.” Half the people in the hallway along with me turned to look at him. Nick could be heard when he wanted to. Whatever he was going to say to me withered under all the eyes trained on him. “I was just—I mean—”

  “Tell me at lunch, okay?” Then I disappeared into the crowd of students around me.

  * * *

  I met Jessalyn in the pizza-cart line in the quad outside. I’d made better time than she had, and I let a couple people cut in front of me so that we could stand together.

  “You were supposed to let me cut in line with you, not the other way around.” She smacked her palm lightly against my forehead, but she smiled. “Ugh, I despise cold pizza.” The pizza was never piping hot since Barro’s delivered it ten minutes before lunch started and the insulated delivery bags they were kept in could do only so much. Two people ahead of us weren’t going to make much of a difference, but Jessalyn enjoyed complaining, even when she didn’t have a reason. I thought it had something to do with her being an only child, and a late-in-life one at that. I wouldn’t call her spoiled, but I wouldn’t call her not spoiled either. She leaned toward me, frowning, and pointed at my eyes. “I’m guessing you didn’t get to sleep much last night. Damn, did your dad make you cry? Because you know there’s no crying in baseball.”

  “Or softball,” we said together.

  I smiled a little. “No drills last night. I had a headache.”

  “Is it better?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her about Brandon, but the words stuck in my throat. I didn’t want to say them out loud yet to anyone. “I’m fine today.”

  She swept her braids over one shoulder. “So where’s your boy?”

  I rose up on my toes and glanced around for Nick but didn’t see him. “He’s probably grabbing food from the cafeteria. Also, please don’t.”

  “What did I say?”

  I eyed her sideways.

  “Fine, but don’t you want to know if he got the job?”

  “I already know he got the job or you wouldn’t be smiling.”

  She stopped immediately, though that might have been because we’d reached the front of the line and the cheese had visibly started to de-melt on the pizza. She pointed two fingers at her eyes, then at the pizza-cart guy, and kept repeating the gesture until I pulled her away.

  We took our slices of slightly warm pizza and made our way to the grass knoll by the far end of the auditorium. Some of the other girls from our team were already there—Ainsley, Ivy, Monica and Sadie, along with a couple boyfriends and guys who fell into the want-to-be-boyfriends category. Nick was there too, having very obviously saved me a spot on the ground beside him. My steps slowed, but Jessalyn came right behind me, urging me ahead.

  “If you like him, don’t stop now.”

  I sat next to Nick, tugging Jessalyn down with me. Nick glanced at me, then looked away. I bumped his shoulder with mine. “Hey. You don’t have to sit on the grass,” I told him. There was a bench right next us, and though most of our group preferred the grass, I knew Nick didn’t. He’d risk being late to his next class because he’d need to pick off every stray blade of grass from his jeans. “Come on.” I started to stand to move to the bench with him, but he shook his head.

  “I’m fine. You like the grass.”

  I did, but I liked it even more that Nick said so outright instead of shrugging and looking away. He did look away, but the words still counted. I smiled at his profile. “Thanks, Nick.”

  Beside me, Jessalyn was mopping grease from her pizza with a napkin, almost like she was angry at it for not being steaming hot. I bit into my own slice—lukewarm, but pizza was pizza.

  When she got to the crust, Jessalyn dropped it and leaned around me. “So, Nick, you’ve been to all our games this season. Are you really into softball or are you just really into Da—”

  I tackled her to the grass. She laughed around the hand I used to smother her mouth. “What is wrong with you?” I hissed in her ear. “You can’t corner him like that!”

  One of the guys asked Nick a nonmortifying question, distracting him enough for me to let Jessalyn up.

  “Why not?” she said, savagely tearing off a chunk of pizza crust and chewing it. She gestured with the remains at Nick’s back, then at me. “He says how he feels, then you’re forced to face how you feel. Rip-the-Band-Aid-off relationship advice—it’s the only way to go.”

  “Thanks but no thanks.” I returned to my own pizza, which had gone completely cold. We both knew Nick wasn’t a rip-anything-off kind of guy. After yesterday with Brandon, I wasn’t either. Slow and steady was the way to go, especially when there weren’t a
ny other options.

  “Fine,” Jessalyn said in my ear, then louder, “By the way, Nick, you got the job.”

  Chapter 11

  I was used to seeing my coach and not my dad when we were on the field, which was the only thing that got me through practice that day—that, and he kept us so busy that there was rarely time to think about anything besides how exhausted we were.

  Coach was big on conditioning drills during practice. Beyond baserunning, hitting, bunting and rundowns, that day we did running lap tosses, where we paired off and ran while throwing a ball back and forth. Next was Z drills, where we lined up in two facing rows and threw one ball as fast as possible, zigzagging down the line until it ended with me. And we finished with dirty drills, which again paired us off to throw ground balls that forced the other player to drop down or even dive to catch.

  Normally, practice ran only a little longer than sixth hour for the rest of the school, but we had a game the next day against a team that had solidly beat us the year before. No one wanted a repeat performance, so it was after four when I waved bye to the other girls and lowered my exhausted body into my car in the school parking lot. I was glad for the physical weariness, because it helped distract me from how weary my heart felt.

  It had been barely twenty-four hours since my world imploded. I checked the website on my phone, but I wasn’t expecting Brandon’s account and results to be back. They weren’t. There also weren’t any messages from him. I did have a text from Selena, though.

  Selena: What time will you be home? I can’t wait to tell you what’s going on!!!!!

  I rocked my head back against my headrest. Five exclamations points was excessive, even for Selena. If she was already trying that hard, it couldn’t be good.

  Me: Dad thinks your big news is joining the softball team.

  Selena: Did he say that?

  Me: He didn’t have to. So?

  Selena: So...what?

  Me: What is it?

  Selena: I’ll tell you at dinner.