The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Glass in the Hall

Brynn tells him to give way to Nate; glass breaks, photos are torn and Drew takes the blame and a slap. At the hospital he hears his parents say they should send him away. Ends on Brynn's phone: a scholarship interview.

My room used to be the hall closet, until Nate took my old bedroom.

It held a bed and a desk, and my clothes were piled on the windowsill.

Someone knocked on the door frame, and I opened it to Brynn.

She had her phone in one hand and a paper plate of cookies in the other.

"You saw the group chat," she said. "I meant it. I'm repeating the year with Nate."

I took a cookie. I didn't eat it.

"You've wanted Huntington since you were twelve."

"And you'll be there already, so it works out." She smiled. "You'll show me the good dining hall."

She didn't know I had deleted my Huntington acceptance. I didn't tell her.

"Which matters more to you, your own future or Nate?"

Her smile held.

"Both. You have no idea what Nate's been through, Drew. You took his whole life. The least you can do is give way to him."

I stared at her.

Before I could answer, glass shattered down the hall.

Her face went blank with panic, and she shoved past me so hard my back hit the desk corner.

I bit down on a groan.

"Drew!" Dad shouted from the other end of the house. "Get in here!"

I limped down the hall to my old bedroom.

Nate was standing in the middle of it with his hands over his ears.

A framed picture lay smashed by the window.

Torn photos covered the carpet.

I knew every one of them. Me at six with Mom and Dad at the lake. Me at ten with Brynn in matching Halloween costumes. Me at fifteen on the stage with my science medal.

Mom had boxed them up in April and left the box in the back of Nate's closet.

I hadn't been in that room in two months.

Slap!

Dad's palm cracked across my cheek so hard I tasted blood.

Nate saw my face and screamed.

"Did you do this on purpose?" he yelled. "You put your junk in my room! You're a parasite! You live off my family!"

Mom pulled him into her arms, and Dad stood between us.

Mom's eyes were red when she looked at me.

"Drew, you aren't our real son, but we raised you for eighteen years. Is this how you pay us back?"

My ears were ringing.

Brynn was kneeling beside Nate, picking glass out of his palm, and she didn't look up.

I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.

"Did anyone ask Nate if he saw me come in here?" I said.

Nobody answered.

Nate put his face in Mom's shoulder and kept screaming.

I bent to pick up one of the torn photos.

Dad's boot shoved me hard in the ribs, and I went down on the glass.

"Why are you touching those? You want to hurt him again?"

"Dad, it's our family picture," I said.

"Out," he said, and pointed.

Nate started choking on his own breath.

"Get him to the hospital," Brynn said, her voice shaking. "Something's wrong."

Within a minute they were gone, all four of them, and the front door was still swinging.

I sat on the carpet alone.

A sharp sting ran down my forearm, and I found a long cut where the glass had gone through my sleeve.

Blood ran into my palm.

I gathered the biggest pieces of the photos and put them in my pocket.

Then I took out my phone and opened the voice recorder.

If this house was going to keep deciding what I'd done, I wanted it on file.

I took a cab to the emergency room, because nobody was coming back for me.

A nurse closed the cut with six stitches.

I was walking out when I heard my father's voice in the hallway outside the psychiatric ward.

I stepped behind a vending machine.

"Maybe we should just send Drew away," Dad said. "Give him some money and let him go. Nate's getting worse again."

Mom's voice was thin.

"We raised him for eighteen years for somebody else's family. We don't even know where his people are. We've done more than enough. Who matters more, our real son or some outsider?"

*Outsider.*

I pressed my back against the cold wall.

I remembered the night Nate came, when I moved into the closet.

I had cried, and Mom had sat on the edge of that narrow bed.

She had promised me nothing would change. We would only be one more person at the table.

I had believed her.

Eighteen years of being theirs, and they were already planning how to get rid of me.

I turned to leave and walked straight into Brynn.

She jumped back, and her eyes darted to the arm in my sleeve.

"Drew! Where's your mask? What if Nate sees you?"

She had a white bakery box in her hand.

She looked at my bandage, opened her mouth, and then pushed the box into my chest instead.

"Nate couldn't finish it. Take the rest, no point wasting it. If you're okay, go home. Seeing you will upset him again."

Her phone rang, and she hurried away without a second look.

I opened the box.

It was half of a lemon cake with coconut frosting.

I hate coconut. Brynn had known that since the third grade, when she'd traded me her whole lunch to keep me from eating it.

Years ago all of them had known everything I liked.

I dropped the box in the trash by the door.

Down the hall, Brynn held her phone up to her ear.

The screen lit up before she answered, and I read the notice over her shoulder.

*Community Caregiver Scholarship: finalist interview confirmed.*

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