The Good Son by Carolyn Mills (free e reader txt) 📗

one less lie to tuck away in my chest, scraping, every so often, against the nervous beating of my heart.

I didn’t mind my loner status at school. Solitude suited me. I didn’t need any friends, or at least I didn’t think I did.

On the first day of grade seven, I boarded the bus for Galtview Senior Public which was on the outskirts of town and much bigger than my elementary school.

“Good luck, honey,” Mom said, patting my head. I think she still wanted to kiss me, the way she used to when I left for school, but by then I had started flinching from her touch. Leaning away instead of toward. “Have fun today! You’re going to meet a whole bunch of new people this year.”

At one of the stops, a kid wearing glasses got on and sat across the aisle from me. He kept his head low and didn’t talk to anyone. The bus ride was short, less than twenty minutes, and as I bounced along in my seat, I tried to ignore the butterflies flitting around my stomach. I’d been to the school for a tour at the end of grade six, but I wasn’t sure I’d be able to find my homeroom. When I had my tour, all the hallways looked the same: ultra-wide and impossibly long.

I did manage to find the right classroom, but when I walked in, the only people I knew from my old school were already sitting together and there weren’t any empty chairs left at their table. I recognized the kid with the glasses from my bus sitting at another table and when he acknowledged me with a slight dip of his head, I walked over.

“Is it okay if I sit here?” I asked.

He nodded, so I sat down, relieved not to be standing around looking like a loser on my first day. He told me his name was Walter and somehow or other we became friends. Never more than friends, although I’m sure lots of people assumed there was more to our friendship than there was. Like me, Walter was quiet and reserved. He came from a big family — he had four sisters, all older — where it was easy to become lost in the noise and commotion, so I think he was used to disappearing into himself, which by then was also a specialty of mine.

We spent a lot of time together, mostly hanging out at my house, because it was quieter than his, but I liked going to his chaotic house, too; I found the noise and energy refreshing. His sisters laughed a lot and they were always playing jokes on each other, and on Walter.

“Here Walter, try this! You too, Zoe. It’s iced tea, but made with less sugar. It’s supposed to be totally healthy.”

“No thanks,” Walter said, eyeing the light brown mixture suspiciously.

Not wanting to be rude, I cautiously agreed to have some. One of them poured me a glass and as soon as I took my first sip, I knew I’d been pranked. I didn’t know what to do other than swallow the disgustingly salty mouthful of iced tea, but my face must have registered my shock.

His sisters roared with laughter. “We told you it had less sugar!” one of them squealed.

Walter alternated between apologizing to me and telling off his sisters. I would never admit it to him, but I liked the attention from his sisters. Their ready smiles and easy laughter made me feel light. I wanted to be one of them. I wished often in those early days that I had been born into a family like Walter’s.

The eldest two, Rhonda and Rachelle, were twins and when Walter and I were in grade seven, they were already applying to universities. I assumed they would go somewhere together, so when they ended up in separate cities, it struck me as really sad. I guess I considered them to be invisibly attached, or maybe because I couldn’t tell them apart, I always thought of them as a pair, rather than individuals. When I brought it up with Walter, he didn’t seem to care one way or the other.

“It doesn’t bother you to think of them so far apart?” I asked him once, after they’d moved out, Rhonda to Windsor and Rachelle all the way up to North Bay. His house felt strangely quiet without them.

“Not really,” he’d said. “Do you wanna stay for dinner? I can ask my mom.”

“Nah. My mom will have made something for me already. I should go.”

Even without Rhonda and Rachelle at home, Walter’s parents still had three other children to keep them company. Mom only had me.

THE SUMMER AFTER GRADE EIGHT, Walter’s parents invited me to join their family on a camping trip. I looked at Walter to see his reaction, but he must have known already that they were going to invite me. He stared back at me expectantly, waiting for my answer. The two of us were sitting at the island in his kitchen, eating popcorn, and his parents were trying to figure out what was wrong with the dishwasher.

“Hand me the pliers, will you?” Walter’s dad said.

Walter’s mom, Sheila — although I only ever called her Mrs. Bronson — handed the pliers to Mr. Bronson, then smiled at me. “What do you think, Zoe? Do you like camping?”

What I thought was that I would die of happiness because they were treating me like a surrogate daughter. In reality, they probably felt bad about me not having a dad or essentially being an only child, but, at the time, I believed they considered me part of their family and it made me feel almost effervescent.

“DO YOU EVEN HAVE ANY camping gear?” Ricky asked, after Mom told him about the trip when he was down visiting from Leeville. We were sitting at the kitchen table, eating dinner together as if we were a normal family.

“You know I have a sleeping bag,” I told him. “They have everything else.