by J. Bengtsson
“Blech! That’s wrong on so many levels. And I’m sorry but no way are the first paparazzi pictures circulating in the media of me going to show me dressed like Colonel Sanders.”
Dad took mental note of my refusal before turning to Keith, also not in white. “And you?”
“What?” He shrugged. “I just forgot.”
“That’s not cool,” Mitch fussed, gesturing toward his lily-white outfit. “Jake, Keith, and Quinn shouldn’t get off scot-free. It should be all or none.”
“Exactly,” Kyle complained, all decked out in his finest snowy duds. “The hypocrisy sucks.”
My brother-in-law Finn didn’t seem to want to get involved, but relented when all eyes fell on him. “Obviously, I side with Mitch and Kyle. The others should be punished for their insubordination. These ten-year-old party pants are so tight they’re cutting off my circulation. I can barely breathe.”
“You make a good point, Finn. Listen up, boys. I want you all to take a really good look at Finn’s junk. It’s so crammed in there that at any minute his plums could blast through those seams like a busted can of biscuits. That, my friends, is loyalty. Did he have to load those pants like gunpowder into a musket? No, he didn’t. Finn is the only one of you boys who didn’t come out of my nutsack and look at him. He looks absolutely ridiculous... all because he loves me.”
Finn accepted the backhanded compliment with his characteristic aplomb. “Scott, I’m not sure if I say this often enough, but you always make Mother’s Day a special one.”
“I say the team players should get some sort of reward,” Kyle suggested.
“Your reward is knowing that you are loved more than your brothers.”
“That’s it?” He bristled.
Jake nodded. “I can live with that.”
“Me too,” I added.
“I just forgot.” Keith shrugged. “I don’t know why I need to be punished.”
“Wait? So, there are no pictures?” Mitch asked. “This was just a test?”
“That’s correct. You passed. Well done, Mitch.”
“Asshole,” my brother grumbled.
“Oh, and as an added benefit to my now-favorite sons, I will also be cutting Jake, Quinn, and Keith out of their inheritance.”
Keith gasped. “But your ‘postal worker’ fashion collection is our legacy. I was counting on the proceeds from the auction to buy a candy bar.”
“Welp, I really can’t help you, Keith. You should’ve thought about that before being a dumbass.”
Casey entered the room. “Thought about what?”
“Oh, I’ve just been cut out of Dad’s will,” Jake replied.
She shook her head. “My god, Jake, I leave you alone for five minutes and now I’m never going to get the money to buy the box of Hot Pockets from the grocery store.”
“I’ll save up… just for you.”
“Thank you, babe,” she said, giving him a kiss.
“Is he sleeping?” Jake asked once she’d settled in beside him.
“Yes. Finally.”
I didn’t have to ask who they were talking about—Jake and Casey’s youngest son.
Jake saw me staring. “You arrived about three minutes after Slater melted down to the core.”
“Ah, yeah,” I said. “Slater.”
“Ah, yeah,” he mimicked, his lip drawing into a thin line. “Slater. Casey calls him high energy. I call him Chucky.”
I’d seen the little dude in action. He was no joke.
“Stop.” She elbowed him. “He didn’t get his morning nap. We won’t make that mistake again, will we, Jake?”
“No, we will not,” Jake said.
“What’d you do, pinch the poor kid?” I asked.
“Let’s just say I didn’t know I could ruin a person’s day by giving him the wrong color sippy cup.”
“Purple, Jake. Always purple,” Casey said, laughing as she laid her hand on his leg. No further words needed to be passed between them. They understood each other at a deeper level. Like me and Jess. Or at least where I thought the two of us could go if given the chance. I was confident we’d get to the point where she could lay a hand on my thigh and all would be well.
“Who cares about Slater’s meltdown when we’ve got Quinn’s totally epic tantrum on stage last night?” Keith said. “Or are we all just going to pretend like it never happened?”
“I vote we pretend,” I answered.
“Dude, I gotta know what was going through your head,” Keith said.
“Obviously not much.” I shrugged. “I got mad.”
“You got mad?” Mom repeated.
“You know,” Keith continued, “I’m wondering if Quinn might have benefitted from more timeouts as a child.”
“We had a full-on Quinn Corner,” Dad countered. “I assure you, we tried.”
Mom ignored the others in her quest for details. “What’s your plan, Quinn? Are you considering going back?”
“To the show?” I asked, surprised she’d even thought that an option. “Obviously not.”
“Well, do they know that? The show made it seem like you were performing next week, so you might want to clarify that with them.”
“I plan to.”
“Good. And next time something like this happens, I’d really appreciate if you answered my texts. I was worried about you.”
“Next time?” I scoffed. “You act like I do this all the time.”
I was met with silence as if, yes, they all did think this was a recurring theme. I drew my head back, stunned. What fresh fuckery was this?
“It’s not that you do it all the time, Quinn,” Emma said, trying to ward off my coming storm. “But you know how we are. A little communication goes a long way. What were you doing that was so important you couldn’t return a text?”
Avoiding you all was what I wanted to say, but I held my tongue. In light of the day I’d spent with Jess, I hoped to be a better, more introspective man, so instead of arguing—which was my first instinct—I mimed throwing back a shot.
“Quinn!” Mom shook her head in disappointment. “I hope you’re joking.”
“Uh-huh,” I humored her. “Just joking.”
“No joke,” Kyle snitched. “I saw him this morning pre-shower. He looked like he’d been nibbled on by a gaggle of rats.”
“And did drinking solve any of your problems?” Mom asked.
“No. But it tasted good going down.”
“How about coming up?” Mitch inquired.
“I know how to hold my liquor, dickhead.”
“Less so how to hold onto a job.”
All heads turned to Jake and his coarse comment. Leave it to him to shut the room down. I could see my family nervously glancing around. Clearly, they’d had a discussion about my joblessness before I’d arrived.
“Dude,” I said, glaring at him. “Low-fucking-blow,”
But Jake showed no signs of backing down. In fact, after the sippy cup incident, he appeared to be itching for a fight. “All I’m saying is, good for you. You made your stand. But then what? You run away? Turn off your phone? Don’t deal with the situation when your whole career now depends on you making quick, sound decisions? If you’re going to take a risk like that, at least be a man and back it up.”
I was not liking one thing that came out of my brother’s mouth. It didn’t matter that everything he said was probably true. I’d never been good at accepting criticism from Jake. When it came to me, he had a way of wrapping everything in condemnation.
“Good thing it’s none of your business, then.”
“I disagree. The minute you walked off that stage, Quinn, you made it my business—hell, you made it all of our business.”
My leg began to thump, an early sign of combustion. “I’m so sorry to have inconvenienced you all. I didn’t realize I was supposed to clear all my fuckups with the family first.”
“Wait. Is that a thing?” Kyle asked. “I haven’t cleared any of mine.”
His jok
e dropped like an anchor.
Kenzie whispered something only he could hear.
Why had I even bothered coming here? The paparazzi would be preferable to this inquisition. “I didn’t do it for attention, if that’s what you all think.”
“Then what did you do it for?”
“Jake, stop!” Casey warned, grabbing his arm. “Quinn is right—it’s none of your business.”
I unraveled from Emma and rose from the oversized chair, my fists clenched. “I did it for you!”
“For me?” Jake protested.
“Yes. I did it for you. And you and you,” I said, pointing out various family members. “I did it because the show disrespected our family.”
“By showing the truth?” Emma asked.
“No. By exploiting it.”
“But you had to know they’d do that,” she countered. “The show thrives on drama.”
“No, I didn’t know it. Because they promised me the focus would be on me and my career and not Jake and his goddamn kidnapping. I mean, does everything in our lives have to revolve around that?”
The room fell silent, my hastily spoken words ricocheting back at me. Shit. It slipped out. We never talked about the kidnapping. It just wasn’t done. And now, thanks to me, it couldn’t be undone.
Jake got up and left the room. Casey followed close behind.
I stomped off in the other direction.
How was I the asshole? Jake’s comments were no less damning than mine. Okay, mine were way more damning. The kidnapping was a taboo topic. I knew better. But I also knew Jake would get over it. He always did. The unusual part of growing up McKallister was that despite the feelings of rejection and neglect I still harbored toward my family from the time when I was a small child and left to fend for myself, I was also fiercely devoted to them. Maybe it was because we’d been forced to come together as a cohesive unit to fight against an outside force trying to destroy us that we’d all bonded like glue. So, when blowups like this happened, I was barely fazed. I knew it was only temporary. That was how it was done in our family. We huffed. We puffed. We blew the place down. And then we came back together like we’d never been apart. That was our family. Dysfunction at its finest.
I found a spot outside by the fire pit, a place to be alone until the storm settled, and that was where I checked on Jess, hoping she’d responded to my text, but there was nothing. I’d thought for sure she would’ve texted back by now. Why the delay? Now I was getting genuinely worried. Was her emergency of the irreversible kind? God, I hoped not. Jess didn’t deserve to deal with stuff like that. Her life had already been hard enough without added stress piled on.
“Hey, hon,” Mom said, walking over the grass to take one of the many empty spots beside me. “You’ve had an eventful few hours, haven’t you?”
“Skip the pleasantries. I’m in no mood.”
“I can see that. You came in hot.”
“No, I came in like campfire ash—cooled and contained. You’re the ones who fanned the flames.”
Her lips pursed as she nodded. Clearly, she did not agree with my version of events. What was new?
“Quinn, what your brother said wasn’t nice.”
Nice? What did I care about nice? He attacked my character and questioned my motives so I struck back. An eye for an eye.
“I know Jake’s approval means everything to you.”
My jaw constricted. “I don’t care what he thinks of me.”
“You do care. You’ve always cared.”
She knew me too well, and yet, really, not at all. Because if she did, she’d know why it was so important for me to best Jake. She’d understand that the only way for me to truly stand out in this family, to be worthy of their love and attention, was to achieve a status equal to or greater than my brother’s. But it wasn’t an attainable goal, not when my talent was forever being compared. Jake was the hurdle I’d never been able to clear. His bar was too high, and no matter how close I got to making it over the pole unscathed, I always came up short.
“He’s proud of you, Quinn. You should have seen him watching you perform. He was so impressed. Mentioned several times what a great singer you were. And that song—he went so far as to say he wished he’d written it. From Jake, that’s the highest praise.”
She’d always been quick to defend him. He was the golden boy, the tip of the deadly mountain I had to climb. He could say or do whatever he wanted, and the rest of the family was content to give him a free victim pass, no matter how poorly he acted. But not me. Never me.
“So why didn’t he tell me that himself instead of ripping into me for standing my ground?”
She paused, shaking her head. “Probably for the same reason you throw the kidnapping in his face every time the two of you have a disagreement. Look, I understand that you’re mad and that you’re lashing out any way you think will hurt him most, but blaming him for the kidnapping… Quinn, you just can’t. Maybe you don’t fully understand what he went through—what he had to endure. You were young, and I kept that information from you at the time, but you need to know that your brother suffered terribly. There was torture and abuse. I have the police report if you want…”
“I don’t want,” I clipped her off. “What would I want to see that for?”
“Because then you would understand why we don’t blame him for something he had no control over. Attack his behavior, Quinn. Attack his music. Attack anything else about him. But don’t attack him for being forced into a truck at gunpoint. Don’t attack him for being stabbed multiple times or nearly starving to death. Don’t attack him for surviving a hell none of us fully understand. Just don’t do it.”
Never had things been presented to me so plainly. Usually conversations centered around Jake’s kidnapping were done in hushed tones with carefully selected words. But this… Now I felt like shit for always tossing around the kidnapping like it was no big deal. And to me it really wasn’t. I didn’t know exactly what Jake had been through because I didn’t want to know. My whole life all I’d cared about was how his tragedy affected me. I blamed him… for his own kidnapping.
What the hell was wrong with me? I dropped my head into my hands and groaned. I had to be better than this. There had to be another way to be seen without weaponizing someone else’s suffering.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
“To apologize.”
“He went home.”
Of course he did. I wouldn’t want to stick around to be victim-blamed either. I sat back down. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me sometimes. It’s just… this family. The pressure. The expectations.”
“Nothing’s expected of you, Quinn.”
My head shot back up and I searched her eyes. “Why?”
She looked startled by my question. “What?”
“Why does no one expect anything from me?”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“But you don’t expect me to succeed at the same level as Jake, do you?”
“I never said that. I think you have every bit the potential your brother has.”
“But?”
“But why compare yourself to him? Why not carve out your own space in this business and be happy with your own unique successes?”
Oh, if only it could be that easy!
I shrugged. “Wins aren’t wins unless they’re Jake-sized wins.”
Mom’s eyes widened. “That’s your measure of success?”
“Yep. So now you see my dilemma.”
“Quinn…I…”
“I know.” I put a hand up to stop her. “There are factors in play that make it impossible for me to achieve his level of success. I get it. Look, Mom. I appreciate the pep talk, but I’ve had a rough day, and I already have to apologize to Jake. If we continue this conversation, I’ll have to apologize to you too.”
“Okay, but let me just say this, and then I’ll be quiet. Your dad and I would love to see you succeed, whether it’s by ste
pping over your brother or by forging your own path. We’ll be proud of you either way.”
Sure they would. I nodded, pretending to accept her naïve proclamation of parental equality, but I’d learned pretty early on that you had to go big in this family to warrant any attention at all. And in music? Forget it. In my parents’ eyes, Jake would always be the clear winner.
She grabbed my hand and squeezed, pleased with how the conversation had ended.
Right.
“I love you, hon.”
“I love you too.”
She patted my hair. “I don’t think I’ve seen you with short hair since we had to cut it off when Kyle accidentally got that toy racecar stuck in it.”
“That was absolutely not an accident. He rolled those racecars back to wind them up and then stuck four of them in my hair.”
We laughed at the memory.
“Anyway, you look so handsome. I love being able to see your face. You’re going to have to fight the girls off.”
“I was fighting them off with long hair too.”
“That you were.” She smiled. “You’ve always been a charmer, haven’t you? I can’t believe someone hasn’t snapped you up yet.”
“That’s pending.”
Mom whipped her head up. “Pending? Who?”
“Her name is Jess.”
“Look at you smiling. How long have you known her?”
I checked my watch. “About twenty hours.”
“Twenty hours?” she whined, nudging me. “You got my hopes up. I thought she was the one.”
“She just might be yet.”
12
Quinn: The Shark
It had been a full three days since my stage exodus, and I was in complete limbo. For the first time in my life, I was on the brink of stardom, but I had no idea how to seize the moment… or even if I was legally allowed to do so. Despite being majorly pissed at me for the fight I’d yet to apologize for, Jake nevertheless sent me his lawyer, who instructed me to hang tight until he could figure out just how much trouble I was in.