C a t h e r i n e A u s t e n
1 70
Advance Reading Copy
and stained, soggy tissues in her fist. She looks up at me and
hides her face in her hands.
She won’t tell me what’s wrong. She shakes her head
every time I ask, swats at me when I try to pry her fingers off
her face.
“It’s Xavier’s sixteenth birthday,” I say, but she just cries
harder.
I head to the kitchen and butter some toast, sprinkle
cinnamon and sugar overtop. I sit at the table and scroll
through
Freakshow
’s “behind the scenes” clips. Zipperhead
and his girlfriend just got engaged.
Eventually Mom comes out and sits beside me. I dissolve
my screen and offer her my last triangle of toast. She shakes
her head, clears her throat, takes my hand. She stares at the
table and says, “Tyler Wilkins died last night from heart
failure because of the shot I gave him.”
The bread wads up on my tongue. I’m silent, disbelieving.
I don’t say, “You killed him.” I don’t say, “You didn’t kill
him.” I don’t say anything.
I feel all ripped up inside, as if Tyler was my friend.
I try to remember him busting my ribs, slapping Ally’s face,
kicking Xavier, all the reeking moments he inflicted over the
years, but every image gets pushed away by the memory of
him storing my painting in his RIG and calling me an asshole
because I thought I had him pegged.
I get up and go inside the tent. I can’t sit down. I turn in
circles and watch the walls blur by. I know exactly what I’m
going to paint for the exhibit.
I’ll paint children, dozens of them, real ones—Tyler
and Pepper and Xavier, me and Dallas, Bay and Brennan,
