This Time, I Won't Be His Dead Weight novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Seven A.M.

Caleb comes to explain and Abigail tells him to go to Hailey; Hailey's boathouse crisis calls him away mid-sentence; that evening Hailey is on the porch with a suitcase.

At seven in the morning I sat on my porch steps with a cup of coffee.

Caleb was already crossing the gap in the fence.

He was wearing last night's shirt.

He stopped at the bottom step and looked at my face for a while.

"You sent it," he said.

"At 12:41."

He rubbed his jaw. "Okay. Okay. Can I sit?"

"You can stand there."

He stood there.

"Abby, the thing on the thread," he said. "I wrote it. I'm not going to say I didn't. But you read it wrong."

"I read it fine."

"You didn't. 'She' is not who you think."

"Caleb." I put my cup down. "I know who she is. I've known since ninth grade that you'd pick her."

His whole face changed. "Pick who?"

"You and Hailey lost four years because you kept stopping to worry about me."

"That is not what I meant."

"I get it," I said. "You don't have to explain. I'm letting you off."

"Abby."

"You carried my books. You did my calculus. You lent me forty dollars and never asked for it back."

My voice shook, and I made it stop.

"I was the last thing you owed anybody. I'm done being carried."

"Abigail, listen to me. You have it backwards."

He stopped, and started again.

"I need to tell you who she is. I need you to let me do it right."

His phone rang in his pocket.

He didn't pull it out. He stood there with his eyes on me and his jaw tight.

It rang again.

"Answer it," I said.

"It's nothing."

"It's her ringtone. Answer it."

He took the phone out and said, "Hailey, hey."

I could hear her from the steps. She was breathing in thin little gasps.

"Cal, I'm in the boathouse. The door's stuck and I can't breathe. I think I'm going to pass out."

His eyes shut for one second.

"I'm coming," he said. "Stay on the line."

He looked at me.

"Don't get on a bus," he said. "Please. Give me one day."

I didn't promise him anything.

"Go," I said.

He ran. I watched him cut across the lawn and down the lake road until I couldn't see his shirt anymore.

The screen door creaked behind me.

My dad stood there in his sock feet, holding the old blue coffee pot.

He had come in from a haul at four that morning, and I hadn't expected him to be up.

"The walls in this house are thin," he said.

"I know."

"So you're going to Minnesota."

"I already said yes."

He sat down on the step beside me, which made the board groan, and poured coffee into my cup until it ran over.

"I have a few questions," he said. "Is it a good school?"

"They have a field program on the basalt coast. It's the best one I could get into."

"Do they have rocks?"

"Dad."

"Just checking." He tipped his head toward the fence. "That boy ever make you feel small on purpose?"

I thought about it, because he would know if I lied.

"No," I said. "Never. That's what's so stupid."

He nodded slowly.

Then he got up and went out to the truck.

When he came back he was carrying something wrapped in an oil rag, and a folded bill from the sun visor.

It was his old rock hammer, the one with the cracked leather grip.

He used it on road cuts when I was little and he let me ride along.

"It's been in the cab since before you were born," he said. "Take it."

"Dad, I can't take this."

"And this." He pressed the hundred into my hand.

"A girl who fixed her own bike chain at nine is not anybody's dead weight, Abigail."

He shrugged. "I've hauled real dead weight. It sits in the trailer and never helps unload."

I laughed, and then I cried a little, and he let me.

That evening a car pulled into the driveway while I was packing the duffel.

I looked out my window.

Hailey climbed out of the back seat of her father's car in her pink windbreaker.

She had a foil tray in both hands.

A rolling suitcase stood beside her, with a luggage tag on the handle.

She looked up at my window and waved, bright and warm.

I came down and opened the door.

"Lasagna for your dad," she said, holding out the tray. "From our cook. And before you say anything, Abby."

She patted the suitcase.

"I'm coming with you."

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