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

but the anger I’d inhaled when I researched the details about Amy Nessor’s murder continued to smoulder under my ribcage. Walter and I were still friends, although by then things were starting to get weird between us. We were joking around one day in his basement about how so many people assumed we were dating when there was this awkward pause in our conversation. Walter was looking at me funny and my heart started to race.

“I mean, have you ever thought about —” He glanced past me, at the wall. “Like maybe there’s something there?”

No, I wanted to say. But instead I put my hand on his knee — to get his attention and bring him back to reality — which was the wrong thing to do because he looked surprised, but then quickly placed his own hand over mine and we were sitting there on his couch almost holding hands and it felt so, so wrong.

“I think we’re too good of friends for that,” I finally said. “Plus, I’d make a crappy girlfriend.”

He looked at me a moment longer, then pulled his hand back. “Yeah, and it’d be too much like a brother sister thing.”

I’D NEVER CONSIDERED MYSELF ONE of the pretty girls — I would have placed myself squarely in the unremarkable category — but by grade twelve more and more guys started paying attention to me. Walter attributed it to my legs.

“Guys always stare at you when you wear those short shorts. You have nice legs. Guys like long legs.”

Tommy broke up with Ingrid, and the two of us briefly got back together, but it didn’t last long, which was too bad because Mom really liked Tommy. I did, too, but Mom thought he was just the sweetest thing. She never gave me a hard time about Walter, or questioned our friendship, but she poked and poked about Tommy.

Walter and I continued to hang out, even when I was dating Tommy, but after our awkward hand-holding experiment in his basement, things never quite went back to normal. I still pretended, every once in a while, that I was part of his family — even going so far as to refer to his parents as my adoptive parents — but after his remaining two sisters moved out, his house became as empty and as quiet as mine.

Near the end of grade twelve, when Walter was applying to universities, I started looking for a job. My plan was to work over the summer, then do a victory lap at Dunford High in an attempt to raise my average. By staying an extra year, I would also be able to play one more season of rugby, although by that point I had pretty much completely stopped lashing out at the world in the off-season. My outrage, all that boiling fury in my veins, had leached away over the last year.

By the time prom rolled around, neither of us had a date so Walter and I ended up sitting on his front porch in our jeans drinking Coke. Walter had just accepted an offer to the University of Waterloo for their math program and his approaching absence was gnawing at me. We watched as a limo pulled up across the street to collect a group of six people decked out in gowns and tuxes. The couples posed on the lawn in front of a flower garden while someone’s mom, or maybe it was an older sister, took pictures. There was a lot of giddy laughter.

“Do you think we should’ve gone?” Walter asked.

“No.”

“I don’t mean together. But I bet there were lots of guys who would’ve gone with you.”

“I didn’t want to go. Did you? You could have gone! Why didn’t you ask someone?” I had never considered the fact that Walter might’ve actually wanted to go to prom. I knew his parents had wanted him to go — all four of his sisters had gone — because to them it was like a right of passage, but Walter had seemed just as scornful of the whole thing as I was. I had nothing against prom itself, but given the fact that I was single, it was easier to scoff at the event than to admit it sucked to be on the outside looking in.

“Nah. There’s no one I wanted to ask. Except maybe Lisa, but she would never have agreed.” Walter scrunched up his face and laughed. Then he kicked at the ground on the porch and dumped the rest of his Coke over the railing and onto one of his mom’s rose bushes.

Lisa had been Walter’s long-standing crush since grade nine. Once, when I was dating Tommy, Walter and Lisa came on a double date with us. We went out for pizza and then to see a movie in Leeville. Walter was so nervous that he barely spoke to Lisa. At one point, when Lisa and I were in the bathroom at the theatre, she admitted to me that she thought Walter was boring. He must have known the whole thing was doomed because he never asked her out again, although by the end of grade twelve they were friends.

“I don’t know,” I said to him, attempting to be loyal. “I think she might have said yes. It seems like she likes you.”

“Yeah, but not like that.” He put his empty pop can on the ground and crushed it with his foot. “You wanna go inside? Play some foosball?”

“Yeah,” I said, draining the rest of my Coke. “Screw Lisa. You’re leaving soon anyway.”

THAT SUMMER, I GOT A job with the Township, working in the Parks division, mowing the lawns of the municipal buildings and driving around in a golf cart to empty the garbage bins along the path that bordered the Still River. Walter was working at the Pioneer gas station, saving up for his tuition, one foot already out the door.

“I’ve decided to get my Operator-in-Training Licence so I can switch divisions and work at the Water Treatment Plant