Total pages in book: 112
Estimated words: 108049 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 108049 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 540(@200wpm)___ 432(@250wpm)___ 360(@300wpm)
“You don’t understand,” he says. “Please, just get out of my way.”
“I can’t. Not until you tell me the truth.”
“Fuck,” he grits out, yanking at his hair. “Just let me go. I don’t want you involved, T. Why are you making this so difficult?”
His mask has finally failed. Gone is the aloof, indifferent face he’s held in place all week while he’s done his best to hide the anguish inside. Now all I see is pain, desperation. This thing has been eating him up and he looks exhausted.
“Don’t you get it?” I say. “I care about you. What other reason is there?”
Conor deflates. He collapses on the edge of his bed and drops his head in his hands. He’s quiet for so long I think he’s given up.
But then he finally speaks.
“Last May, back home in California, Kai comes to me one day—I hadn’t seen him in weeks—and says he needs money. Like a lot of money. He got in bad with a drug dealer and had to pay him back or the guy would fuck him up. I told him I don’t have that kind of cash. So he says, you know, ask Max for money.” Conor raises his eyes, as if checking to see whether I remember what he’s told me about his relationship with his stepfather.
I nod slowly.
“Right, so I said hell no, I can’t do that. Kai gets pissed, like, fuck you, I thought we were friends, all that crap, but he doesn’t push it. He just says he’ll find another way and leaves. At the time I thought he was exaggerating about the trouble he was in, that maybe he just wanted a new phone or some dumb shit and thought I could waltz into a giant gold vault and take whatever I wanted.”
Conor takes a breath and rubs at his face. As if he’s gathering energy.
“So then maybe a couple weeks later, Max and I got into some stupid argument. I hadn’t declared a major yet and he was getting on my case about figuring out what I’m going to do with my life. So of course I get defensive because what he really means is that I’m a loser who’s never going to amount to anything if I don’t become just like him. It turns into a full-on shouting match and then I get pissed off and leave. I end up at Kai’s place, tell him what happened, and he says, hey, you know, we can totally get back at him. Just say the word.”
I approach the bed with timid steps and sit down, keeping several feet of space between us. “And what did you say?”
“I said fuck it. Let’s do it.”
He shakes his head, letting out a deep sigh. I can feel the anxiety wafting off him, how hard it is to admit all of this. How far he has to reach into himself to find the courage.
“I gave Kai the alarm code and told him Max always keeps three grand in cash in his desk drawer for emergencies. I said I didn’t want to know when it’s gonna happen. It’d be months before Max would even notice it was missing, and besides, that kind of money is nothing to the man. He’d spend that in a week on dinner and wine. Nobody gets hurt.”
“But…?”
Conor looks at me. Finally. For the first time in a week, he really looks at me.
“So one weekend we all go to Tahoe. I wanted to stay behind but Mom gave me a guilt trip about spending quality time together. So the house is empty for a few days, and Kai makes his move. He was probably high or wasted on some shit—the kid never had a fucking dimmer switch, you know? He slips in quiet enough, but then he trashes the place. He grabs one of Max’s golf clubs from the garage and smashes up Max’s office and the living room. We came home a couple days later and it’s obvious the place has been robbed. The messed up part is, Max blamed himself. Figured he must have forgotten to set the alarm. But whatever, no big thing, he says. Insurance will cover the damage.”
My forehead wrinkles. “They didn’t wonder why nothing else was stolen?”
Conor barks out a sardonic laugh. “Nope. The cops decided some teenagers probably just wanted to trash the place. They said they’d seen it a million times, a crime of opportunity, and that maybe the teens got scared off by something.”
“So you got away with it.”
“Yeah, but that’s the thing, right? The guilt tore me up from the moment we stepped inside the house and I saw what Kai did. What I did. Somehow in my head I convinced myself that it’d feel good to see the look on Max’s face. But it fucking hurt. What kind of asshole trashes his own house? My mom was terrified for weeks afterward that whoever did it would come back. She couldn’t sleep.” His voice cracks. “I did that to her.”