He could maybe keep busy this way. Going to his dad's house and packing up stuff. There was the estate sale coming up. Looking at Joey in his old house was just weird. He'd never been there before, not inside like this. Looking at the stairs, remembering running up them as his dad talked on the phone with Joey, his look growing darker and darker. Remembering the hollow boom of the golf club slamming into his bedroom door. It was all over now. That part of his life was in the past.
He felt like he was dodging people at school, talking to them before they could ask how he was, maybe distract them from that question he just didn't know the answer to. How was he? He had no fucking idea.
Keeping busy. That was how he was dealing with this whole thing. Planning for the dance, helping Joey, packing up boxes and boxes of his father's belongings, and his clothes had that smell on them that wasn't entirely unpleasant, or associated with unpleasant things. He remembered smelling that particular odor of hospital and dry cleaning when he'd go out to eat with his dad, and his interest as he asked him about school and photography.
He shook his head. He'd been planning on never seeing him again anyway. Hadn't that been the plan? Of course it was. Because as he was screaming at his father on the very public streets of Toronto, they both admitted that things weren't going to change.
Tears would seem to threaten only when he was standing still. So he moved. He called Ashley and flirted and talked about going to the dance. He cleaned the house for Joey, picking up an endless stream of Angela's toys. He did school work, called Sean, went to the mall with Spinner. Anything, anything so he wouldn't have to think.
Joey wanted him to talk and think about the Children's Aid meeting, and he didn't want to do that, either. He wanted to just stay where he was and not talk about things that didn't matter at this point. So he was an abused child? So? His father was dead so it didn't matter anymore. He couldn't do that again, now could he? So he saw no point in even going to Children's Aid, in even discussing anything with anybody because it was moot. It was dead, like his father was dead. All that past didn't matter anymore. He could be just as normal as anybody else. What was stopping him?
"Craig," Joey's calm voice trying to intrude on him, trying to get him to stop and think. But he wouldn't. He rushed past him.
"Craig," Still soft but more insistent, and Craig glanced up at him as he walked by.
"Yeah?" He buttoned the Hawaiian shirt he planned to borrow from Joey for the dance, he ran a hand through his curls, licked his lips.
"Listen, we have to go over what you're gonna say at Children's Aid,"
"Not now, Joey, okay? I've got this dance to think about and everything," Maybe Joey caught the pleading desperateness in his voice, because he scowled but he let it go.
Craig sighed in relief, taking the shirt off, rushing up the stairs to find something else to fill his time, to occupy his thoughts. He just wasn't ready to turn them to his father, not yet.