And as soon as the next sentence left her mouth, I knew why.
“So you’re Dylan Sebring’s son.”
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even nod. But that didn’t stop Miss Boswell.
“I’m a big fan of your father’s work,” she said. “I’ve read every book he’s ever written — many times. He’s one of the best suspense writers this country has ever produced. You must be very proud.”
I stared at her in disbelief. Proud? That wasn’t exactly the word that came to mind. Hurt, humiliated, angry and confused maybe. But certainly not proud.
A couple of the kids nearby had stopped writing. I could feel their eyes drilling into me. Any second now, Miss Boswell was going to say something about my dad’s suicide, and then I’d be a freak all over again. I willed her to stop talking but the vibes didn’t reach her. She kept on going.
“From your school records, it would seem you’ve inherited your father’s gift. According to your last English teacher, you’re extremely talented.” Miss Boswell put a hand on my shoulder. “I look forward to reading your work.”
Then she smiled and continued her tour of the classroom. And that was that.
At least it was until Tess swiveled around in her seat.
“Your dad’s a famous writer?” she croaked, barely able to keep her voice to a whisper. Then without waiting for me to answer, she demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me? This is great! Now for sure you’ve got to join the newspaper club. We could interview your dad and do a super fantastic article. Maybe even a series. Hey, wait a minute! I’ve got a better idea. Your dad could come and talk to us — you know, explain the ins and outs of the publishing industry. That would get everybody so inspired. Do you think he would do it?”
“No,” I said bluntly, avoiding Tess’s eyes and focusing instead on dating my paper. I was pressing so hard it was more like an engraving than writing.
“How can you say that?” Tess sounded offended. “You haven’t even asked him.”
Miss Boswell shot us a get-to-work glance, and Tess reluctantly turned around. But as soon as Miss Boswell looked away, she was back again.
“How do you know he wouldn’t do it?” she pressed.
“Because.”
“Because why?”
I blurted the first thing that popped into my head. “Because he’s not writing anymore.” It was the truth — as far as it went.
Tess’s gasp made me look up, and right away I felt myself being cross-examined by her eyes.
“He quit?” she squeaked.
“You could say that.” I frowned and tried to look away. All I wanted was a little privacy. Why couldn’t Tess turn around and mind her own business?
“Why would he do that?” she said.
“Could we talk about this some other time?” I turned back to my paper, hoping she’d take the hint, but the journalist in her was too strong. She started firing questions at me, and with each one I felt more and more cornered.
“Why would your dad stop doing something he’s good at? Did he get another job? Did he run out of ideas? Did he get terminal writer’s block? Did he get so rich that he just decided to retire? Did he … ”
Something inside me exploded.
“He died! Okay?” I growled into her face. “He put a gun into his mouth, and he pulled the trigger. That’s why he isn’t writing anymore, and that’s why he’s not going to come and talk to your newspaper club. So could we please drop the subject?”
I looked up, expecting to see the entire class staring at me. Everyone was still hard at work. I was sure I’d been yelling, but the only one who seemed to have heard me was Tess.
I looked back at her. Her eyes had stopped dancing.
“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled and turned around in her seat.
Chapter Four
I dug the ball up, then tore around the net and dove to retrieve my own bump. My hip bones cracked as they collided with the hardwood. I knew my bruise count had risen again.
“Where the heck does Mr. Hudson get these killer drills?” I asked Jai as we gulped water from the fountain during a timeout.
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and shrugged. “A million years of coaching volleyball would be my guess. But you can’t argue with success.” He pointed to the banners hung high around the gym wall. “Dakota’s volleyball team has a habit of winning. In the last ten or twelve provincial tournaments, we’ve gone all the way to the final four — or farther. It doesn’t seem to matter who’s on the team. Once Mr. Hudson gets hold of them, they turn into volleyball players.”
“Or they die trying,” I grumbled. I examined a welt on my forearm.
“You’re just out of shape, you wimp,” Jai teased. “You should be happy you made the team.”
I was happy. During the two weeks of tryouts I’d become totally wrapped up in the sport. Not only did it push me physically; it was also a good way to meet people. But most important of all, it kept my mind occupied.
After practice, a bunch of us leaned against the bleachers while Mr. Hudson gave us pointers on how not to shank the ball.
“It’ll come. It just takes practice.” The comment was harmless, but the gleeful little half-smile that went with it wasn’t. I instantly had visions of more torturous drills. Mr. Hudson headed across the gym to his office. “See you fellas Wednesday.”
“Yeah. See ya,” we replied, pushing ourselves away from the bleachers and starting for the exit. Then the guy in front of me stopped.
“Darn! I forgot my hat,” he groaned, doing a quick about-face and jogging back to the change room.
I reached into my jacket pocket for my car keys.
“Hey, Brian,” I yelled after him, “while you’re in there, tell Jai to hurry up. I want to get going.” Jai’s house was between my apartment and the school, so I usually gave him a ride to practice.
Brian pushed open the change-room door. As he disappeared inside, I heard him holler, “Hey, Dhillon, you homo. Hustle your ass or your date is going to leave without you.”
It was the sort of smart-ass comment guys are always making to one another. It didn’t mean anything. I knew that. But it bugged me just the same. As I headed to the parking lot, the adrenaline that had been racing through my veins from two hours of physical activity began to evaporate. By the time I got home, it had disappeared altogether. When my mom spoke to me, I realized I was in a lousy mood.
“How was practice?”
I dropped my sports bag onto the floor and shrugged off my jacket. “It was okay.” Then I headed for the kitchen.
“Don’t leave that there, Shaw.” Mom pointed to my bag. “One of us will trip over it. Put it away.”
“Can I get in the door first?” I snapped back. Even I could hear the attitude in my voice, but surprisingly, my mom didn’t get on my case. She just gave me a dirty look and turned back to the television.
I opened the fridge and peered inside. I wasn’t really hungry, but checking out the contents of the fridge was something I had to do. Call it force of habit. And since I was there, I figured I might as well make it worth my while. I took a swig of milk from the carton and grabbed an apple. Then I picked up my gear and started for my room.
My intention was to hole up in there for the rest of the night, but Mom stopped me before I could escape. She gestured to my schoolbooks spread out on the dining-room table. I figured she was trying to tell me to put them away too.
She wasn’t.
“I see you got an English essay back,” she said. “The mark’s not too impressive.”
I instantly saw fire. “What are you doing poking through my stuff?” I demanded.
Mom raised an eyebrow. “Well, aren’t you Mr. Congeniality? I wasn’t snooping through your things. It was sitting on the table in full view. If you didn’t want me to see it, maybe you should have put it away. The point is, it’s not very good. You were lucky to get a C.”
“What’s the matter with a C? There are a lot of kids who would giv
e their eyeteeth to get a C on an essay.”
“I’m sure there are, but you’re not one of them. You wrote better than that when you were in Grade 4. So what’s the big idea?”
“I didn’t like the topic.” I scowled.
Mom tossed the remote control onto the coffee table. “Since when has that ever mattered? You’ve had some pretty bizarre assignments over the years, Shaw, but you’ve always managed to turn them into something interesting.” She paused. “That’s because you’re a writer.”
“No!” The word leaped into the air between us. “You’ve got the wrong Sebring! Dad was the one who was the writer!”
“Then it would stand to reason that’s where you get it from, don’t you think?” Mom replied calmly. “Your father was a writer. So are you.”
I shook my head fiercely. “No!” I said again. “You’re wrong. I’m not a writer. Dad just wanted me to be one.”
Mom frowned and sat forward on the couch. “Shaw, you’re not making any sense. You love writing. From the time you were old enough to know what books were, you’ve been making up stories. I can’t remember when you wanted to be anything but an author like your dad. You have no idea how thrilled he was about that. And how proud. He couldn’t wait for you to grow up so that the two of you could write the novel to end all novels. Don’t you remember? You used to sit with your heads together for hours planning it.”
The vision of my dad as I’d last seen him flashed into my brain in brilliant, gory detail. For some reason, the memory didn’t seem to know it was supposed to fade. I winced. And then suddenly I started to tremble, as if an earthquake had started up deep inside me and was working its way to the surface. Already my knees felt weak, and my hands were starting to sweat.
I picked up my bag and threw my mom a parting glare. “Well, in case you haven’t noticed, the plan has changed,” I snarled.
Then I stomped off to my room.
Chapter Five
One minute you’re standing on solid ground; the next — you’re falling. Write about the experience.
I shook my head. Where did Miss Boswell dig up these lame writing themes?
I glanced at the clock. It was ten to eight. Mom would be back from her dinner meeting in an hour. I wanted to have the assignment out of the way before then. Otherwise she’d ask to see it. After our run-in the other night, I wasn’t all that anxious to share.
I took a deep breath and read the theme again — out loud. It didn’t help. The topic was still awful. I tried to think of some story possibilities anyway. Avalanche? Trap door in a floor? Earthquake? Falling off a cliff? Yeah, right. Like every kid in the class wasn’t going to write about those things.
What do you care? I argued with myself.
As long as I completed the assignment and got a passing grade, it shouldn’t matter what I wrote. Of course, thinking that and actually believing it weren’t quite the same thing. My father had trained me better than I realized.
It was kind of ironic how that had worked out. While my dad was alive, I’d wanted to be just like him. But since his death, I was working all the time to prove we were entirely different.
To anyone besides me, and maybe my mom, that would probably seem really dumb. After all, my dad was a great guy. Everyone liked him. He was smart, passionate about his work and family, and he loved life.
At least I always thought he loved life. But according to the note he left, he’d had problems that were too big to handle. Problems I hadn’t known anything about.
Woooff! Like a gasoline explosion, the blistering vision of his death began to burn the back of my eyes. I squeezed them shut, trying to extinguish the fire.
Why wouldn’t that memory leave me alone?
“Go away!” I growled through clenched teeth.
And then, as if all I’d had to do was ask, the blood-soaked bedroom began to dissolve. It slid down the walls of my mind as if it were being hosed into a storm sewer. I watched with fascination. I felt the tension in my body drain away with the dirty water.
Gradually I became aware of a gentle rocking. And then the lazy lapping of waves on the hull of a small boat. My body melted deeper into the molded seat of the runabout and I squinted at the sunlight winking on the water. Dad, wearing the old, threadbare sweater he kept strictly for fishing, was stretched out on the seat across from me with his feet propped on the gunwale. His eyes were closed, and his long, lean body was swaying with the rhythm of the boat. His fishing rod lay across his lap, its line dangling idly in the water, slack and then taut as the current tugged on it. My line was hanging out the other side of the boat. But Dad and I weren’t really fishing. In fact, we hadn’t checked our bait in over an hour. It was enough that we were sharing the morning in that secluded cove.
After a while Dad sighed, and without opening his eyes, he said, “I wonder if it was times like this that inspired Ernest Hemingway to write The Old Man and the Sea. That book was really something. Almost the entire story was set in a tiny boat with just one character — two if you count the fish. Must’ve made dialogue a bit of a challenge.” He opened one eye to see if I was listening. Then satisfied that he had my attention, he shut it again and went on talking. “He was quite the outdoorsman, Hemingway was. Learned to fish in the rivers and lakes of Michigan with his dad.” He opened his eye again and smiled lazily. “Kind of like you and me.”
I put the memory on pause and stepped back to look at it. It was so real. I felt like I was living that morning all over again. Part of me wished I could drift in the boat with my dad forever. That’s how I wanted to remember him — alive and in my life — fishing, skiing, playing golf, pulling practical jokes, sharing books and writers and writing.
Though he’d had to travel to promote his books, my father had been a homebody at heart. Early morning and late night were when he did his writing. The rest of the day was for living, so that he’d have something to write about — that’s what he used to say. And anyone who ever met him knew he meant it. My dad squeezed as much out of a day as a person possibly could. It wasn’t so much that he was always on the go; it was just that he savored everything he did. For Dad, morning coffee on the deck was as special as a tropical cruise. And because he got such a kick out of everything, Mom and I did too. You might say his way of looking at life was contagious.
I felt my throat tighten. But it hadn’t been real. He hadn’t been real! The life he’d lived with Mom and me was a huge lie — loving husband, devoted father — all a lie! He’d said so himself.
I thought of the note he left on the dresser. It was the shortest thing he’d ever written. But it was also the most powerful. Just three sentences. C losets are horrible places — small, dark, and crowded with secrets and lies. After a while you just can’t seem to keep the door shut. I’m sorry.
Then he took a gun and blew his life to pieces. Mine too. With one little bullet, he managed to shatter his skull and turn me into a walking box of mismatched puzzle pieces. Nothing fit anymore.
Rage and frustration began to swirl inside me like a hurricane whipping itself into a frenzy. Faster and faster it whirled, slashing at my guts and slamming my heart into my ribs. I wanted to yell it out of me, but there were no words for what I was feeling. And besides, the person I needed to yell at wasn’t there to hear me.
Why, Dad? Why did you dump this on me and then leave? I believed in you, but you lied to me. So now what am I supposed to think? What am I supposed to believe? You were gay, and you killed yourself. Should I hate you for that? Or am I supposed to feel sorry for you? You should have told me.
I picked up my pen and started to write.
Chapter Six
League volleyball started the next day.
The junior girls played first. After them it was the junior boys, then the varsity girls and finally us. With each match, the bleachers filled up a little more. By the time we took the court, the gym was packed.
The noise was incredible. We were playing Glenlawn — our longstanding rival accor
ding to Jai — so their fans were trying to out-scream ours. And just in case that wasn’t enough to clean out a person’s earwax, there were horns and kazoos and warm-up music bouncing off the walls too.
I was pumped, but because I was playing a new position, I was also a little nervous. In the past, I’d always been a weak side hitter, but Mr. Hudson said my long arms were great for blocking, so he’d switched me to middle.
His theory was put to the test on the very first rally. Glenlawn served a floater to the back line. Bump, set, smash — we returned it. But Glenlawn dug it up and their setter made a perfect pass over to power. The hitter took his approach and I slid toward Paul, who was playing weak side. As Glenlawn’s hitter went up, so did Paul and I. Slam! The ball ricocheted off our arms, back onto the hitter and out of play. Point, Dakota.
The next three points went to Glenlawn. We took the two after that. And on it went — seesawing back and forth the whole match. No sooner would one team go on a run than the momentum would shift, and the other team would take the lead.
We won the first game. Glenlawn took the second. The third and deciding one went down to the wire, ending 23-21 in our favor.
Victory was sweet. Glenlawn left our gym vowing revenge.
Tess jumped down from the bleachers and ambushed me. She shoved a felt marker under my nose as if it were a microphone.
“Great game, Shaw,” she said. Her expression was serious and her voice was deep and reporterish. “Sixteen big stops in today’s match. Could you tell our listeners how it feels to be the Dakota Lancers’ new blocking machine?”
I made a face and pushed the felt marker away.
“You are too funny.”
She giggled and gave me a hug. “I know. It was an awesome game though,” she said. “And you did have some pretty amazing blocks. Why don’t we grab a burger, and I can interview you for the paper. My treat,” she sweetened the pot.
“You’re buying?” I waggled my eyebrows at her. “Hey, guys!” I hollered. “Tess is gonna treat us to — ” That’s as far as I got before she stomped on my foot.
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