The Summer I Left novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: No Room in the Car
Drew's mother stops him at the car door and the family drives off without him; he changes his college plans and, two weeks later, is soaked and ordered back into his mask. Ends on the one thing nobody has taken: his tuition money.
On the first Monday of summer, my mother stopped me at the car door with one hand flat on my chest.
My suitcase was still in my other hand.
"There's no room, Drew," Mom said. "Maybe you should sit this one out."
My parents had been planning this road trip since March.
I had paid for the cooler and the first tank of gas out of my own tip money.
Dad sat behind the wheel and studied the dashboard.
In the back seat, my brother Nate had his eyes shut and his headphones on.
Nate was my parents' real son.
A hospital had mixed up two babies on the night we were both born, and a DNA match had put him on our porch in April.
Ever since, everything in the house that used to be mine had gone to him.
"He doesn't want you along, either," Mom said. "He isn't feeling well. Give way to him."
I bent down to the back window to say goodbye.
Nate was humming along to his music, calm and fine.
He always hummed when I talked to him through a closed door.
Then he opened his eyes and saw my face.
He screamed.
Dad hit the gas before I could step back, and the suitcase wheel cracked against my shin.
Nate's therapist said he was autistic and that my face set off his meltdowns.
So I wore a surgical mask around the house, even to sleep.
Brynn Alcott jogged over from the curb.
She was my best friend since first grade, and she had come to wave the car off.
She squeezed my arm.
"Don't be mad at them. I'll fix this, I promise."
She was holding her phone up, filming the driveway.
"Nate's therapist wants every episode on video," she said. "Go inside, Drew. I'll text you."
I thought she was the only one in that whole family still on my side.
Twenty minutes later, the family group chat started blowing up.
Brynn had posted two placement test scores.
85 out of 100, and 47 out of 100.
The 85 was mine.
The 47 was Nate's.
*Nate's foundation is weak. He just tests badly.*
*So I've decided to put college off a year and repeat senior year with him.*
I stared at the screen.
Brynn was second in our class. She had been talking about Huntington University since she was twelve.
I sent back a single question mark.
A second later, Dad removed me from the chat.
I sat on the porch steps with my shin bleeding into my sock.
Then I went upstairs and opened my laptop.
I had already been accepted at Huntington, forty minutes from home. It was the school my parents picked for me.
I deleted it.
One by one, I moved every application I had left to schools three time zones away.
Cascade State in Portland, Oregon, took late applicants into a summer program that came with a dorm bed.
I hit submit at two in the morning.
It was the first thing in eighteen years I had chosen without asking anyone.
My family came home fifteen days later.
Nobody had told me when.
I was eating cereal at the counter with no mask on when the front door opened.
Nate walked in, looked straight at my face, and screamed.
He threw his full cup of water at me.
Water ran off my chin and onto the floor.
Mom and Dad rushed to him.
"Are you okay, Nate? Did he scare you?"
Dad turned and jabbed a finger into my forehead.
"How many times do I have to say it? You wear the mask around Nate."
I took the soaked mask out of my pocket and put it on.
Whatever I wanted to say stayed in my throat.
They ate dinner at the dining table.
I ate on the stool by the kitchen counter, the way I had every night since April.
Mom came in later with a plate of leftovers.
She dropped a chicken leg into my bowl.
"Nate is our real son, after all," she said. "His autism is still severe. Don't blame your dad and me."
My eyes stung. I nodded and kept eating.
Mom watched me for a moment, and then she said it.
"Drew, maybe you shouldn't go to college. We're an ordinary family, and Nate still needs treatment. Huntington isn't cheap."
My hands went stiff around the bowl.
"Mom, you never used to talk to me like this."
She wiped her palms on her pants and looked at the floor.
"Once I'm in college, I won't trouble you two anymore," I said.
She started to answer, stopped, sighed, and walked out.
I washed the bowl and stood there with the water running.
Then I opened my banking app.
Six thousand eight hundred dollars.
Every cent was from three years of tips and weekend shifts, and every cent was meant for tuition.
It was the one thing in that house nobody had taken from me yet.
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