The Favor Read online

  Of being no fun.

  “Hey, buddy.” Janelle crossed the room to sit down next to him. “How’s it going?”

  “Good.” Eyes on the game, Bennett manipulated the controller back and forth. “Just leveled up, killed the big boss, now I’m almost out of health and I need to get to the next save point.”

  “Can you pause for a second?”

  With a hefty sigh, he did, not giving her his full attention until she held up the tests. “Want to tell me how come you didn’t show me these? I thought we agreed you’d show me every test you got, and the homework, too.”

  As soon as the words came out of her mouth, she regretted them, but there they were. She couldn’t take them back. Instead, she settled papers on top of the dresser and sat on the edge of his bed.

  “I was afraid you’d be mad,” he admitted. “Because I didn’t get A’s.”

  “Oh, Bennett. Did you do your best?”

  He nodded.

  Janelle sighed, wondering if there was ever any easy way to be a parent. “When we talked about your grades, I never said I expected you to only get A’s. B’s are great, so long as you did your best. That’s a good grade.”

  Bennett shrugged, still looking at the screen, though the game was paused and his eyes glittered suspiciously. “Okay.”

  Janelle opened her mouth to say more, but she could still taste the regret from her words of moments before. Sure, she could talk this to death. She could be stern or lecture. She could make certain he understood the consequences of not showing her the tests, the consequences she’d promised for the next time he hid something from her.

  Or she could let it go.

  In her day, Super Mario had been a big deal. This game system had cost as much as her car payment, and featured graphics and stories as complicated and impressive as movies shown on the big screen. Janelle had never had any desire to do more than watch for a few minutes, but now she gestured at the monitor.

  “Can I play?”

  Bennett looked up. “What?”

  “The game. Can I play?”

  He laughed. “Oh, Mom.”

  “I’m serious! What, you think your mom can’t shoot a zombie?”

  Bennett shook his head, still chuckling, then saw she was serious. He handed her the controller. “Okay. Go ahead.”

  She had no idea what she was doing, which made him laugh all the harder. When she got killed, the screen filled with dripping, gory blood. Bennett didn’t take the controller from her. He put his hand over hers and showed her how to manipulate the buttons and levers. Then he reset the game.

  “Go,” Bennett said.

  She did her best, which was really all she could do.

  FORTY-FOUR

  Then

  EVERYTHING’S GONE WRONG, and it’s all Gabe’s fault.

  Probably everything has always been, ever since the beginning, when whatever he’d done as a kid had sent his mother packing. It’s something inside him, so deeply rooted he can’t pull it out. Not without killing himself in the process, anyway, and yeah...he’s thought about that. More than once.

  He asked Janelle to do it—to fool around with his brothers—because he wanted Andy to feel better. He wanted him not to focus so much on what the old man had done, which wasn’t Andy’s fault. It was Gabe’s fault, just like everything else was. So he’d tried to fix it, tried to get Andy to see that no matter what the old man had done, Andy was fine. He was good. He was okay. He wasn’t any of those names the old man had called him. And even if he was—the way Mikey might be, shielded in his desire to become a priest, as if giving his life to the church would make it easier to forget what he really wanted—well, even if Andy was a fag like the old man had said, Gabe wanted to show him that it didn’t matter. It just didn’t fucking matter.

  But it did.

  Now he can’t even look at Janelle without thinking about her kissing his brothers. Touching them. Them touching her. He thought because he trusted her more than anyone else, that she was the right one to ask, and the fact she’d agreed told him he was right.... But that didn’t help things now, when she was sitting on his bed with her face streaked with tears and her knees clamped tight. She’d chewed her lower lip so hard it bled, and he shouldn’t be an ass, he should hand her a hanky or something, but he doesn’t.

  “So,” she says. “That’s it? It’s over?”

  “Nothing’s over. For something to be over, you have to start it.” Those words taste bitter and mean.

  That’s how they must sound, too, because Janelle flinches. She’s not the sort to just take anything lying down, though. Her lips thin. Her eyes narrow. She raises her hand slowly, slowly, giving him the middle finger.

  But when she gets up to push past him, something makes him put out a hand to stop her. His grip’s too tight, he sees that immediately by the way she winces when he grabs her, but he can’t make it softer. He needs her to leave, but he can’t make himself let her go. He should tell her he’s sorry. About this, about the other things. About everything. But the words don’t come.

  “You’re hurting me.” Janelle manages to sound dignified even though her voice shakes. She doesn’t try to yank her arm from his grip. She just looks at him as if he’s something she scraped off the bottom of her shoe.

  It makes him mad. Furious, even. Because he already knows he’s being an asshole, that he’s worthless, a piece of shit. She doesn’t have to look at him like that. Like she’s never made a mistake, never done anything wrong. He wants to shake that look right off her face.

  He wants to kiss her.

  He wants to maybe even hit her, and she juts her chin forward as if she’s just waiting for him to do it. But Gabe won’t give her the satisfaction. Instead, he lets her go. Janelle rubs her arm, the pale skin already going dark. He left his mark on her, and that seems fair enough, since she sure as hell left hers on him.

  “You told me,” she says in a stiff, rough voice, “that it would help make things better for them. I saw how Andy was acting in school. I know he’s in trouble. I love your brothers.”

  She doesn’t say she loves him, and though he deserves that slap, it still stings.

  “You told me it would help them, but I did it for you! You asked me for a favor, and I did it!”

  He knows that’s true, but it doesn’t make him feel better. “Yeah. You did it. Now you can get out.”

  “I didn’t know it would change things....”

  That’s it; he can’t stand it anymore. Everything is swirling and tipping and twisting all around him; the whole world has gone dark and he doesn’t know what to do to make it stop. All he has is the power of his words, and knowing which ones, exactly, will hurt her the most.

  “Change what? What could it change, Janelle? Us? What about us could this change?”

  He’s so angry he spits when he talks. She wipes the splash away with a knuckle. He thinks she shouldn’t be able to look him in the face, but she does.

  “Everything! Us! What we’ve been doing. What we are.” Her voice dips low. Becomes sad. “I thought we were friends, at least.”

  This forces a harsh laugh from him. Sharp like barbed wire. Like breaking glass. She flinches in the face of that laugh, which feels as if it cut him open from guts to throat.

  “I was just convenient for you. That’s all. Someone who could get you high and get you off.” Even as he says it, Gabe knows it’s too much. He’s gone too far. She will never forgive him.

  “What is the matter with you?” she cries. “Why are you doing this?”

  Because he has to. Because he can’t stand it. Because if she knew the truth about what’s been going on in this house, she will hate him, and he’d rather have her hate him for this.

  He’d rather hate her.

  “I wish you’d never come here,” he tells her. He doesn’t mean it, but that’s what pours out. “You fucked everything up, Janelle. I wish you’d never come into my life.”

  Janelle’s mouth opens. She blinks, fast. She