I'll have to see, Seth tapped onto the screen of his phone. U know how my mum is.
It's mOm, U homo, Gudmund wrote back. And what's her problem now?
B in History.
Ur mom gets upset about GRADES?! What f-ing century does she live in?
Not this one & only girls text this much, U homo.
Seth smiled to himself as his phone immediately vibrated with an incoming call. "I said I'd have
to see," he whispered into it.
"What's the matter with her?" Gudmund said. "Doesn't she trust me?"
"Nope."
"Ah, well, she's smarter than I thought."
"She's smarter than everyone thinks. That's why she's always so pissed off. Says she's lived
here eight years and everyone still talks to her in a loud, slow voice, like she's a foreigner."
"She is a foreigner."
"She's English. Same language."
"Not really. Why are you talking so quiet?"
"They don't know I'm awake yet."
Seth took a moment to listen from his bed. He could hear his mother stomping around, probably
trying to find Owen's clarinet. Owen, meanwhile, was in the next bedroom over, playing a
computer game that involved lots of dramatic guitar solos. And every once in a while there was a
banging from the kitchen downstairs, where his father was ten months into a three-month DIY
project. Typical Saturday morning stuff, so, no, thank you, he'd stay here as long as no one
remembered he –
"SETH!" he heard shouted from down the hall.
"Gotta go," he said into the phone.
"You have to come, Sethy," Gudmund insisted. "How many times do I need to say it? My parents
are out of town. It's like a commandment to party. And we're not going to get many more chances.
Senior year, dude, and then we're out of here."
"I'll do what I can," Seth said hurriedly as his mother's feet came pounding toward his door.
"I'll call you back." He hung up as she flung the door open. "Jesus," he said, "knock much?"
"You have no secrets from me," she answered, but with a forced half-smile, and he could tell
she was trying to apologize, in her bizarrely hostile way.
"You have no idea what secrets I have," he said.
"I don't doubt that for a second. Get up. We have to go."
"Why do I have to come?"
"Have you seen Owen's clarinet?"
"He'll be fine for an hour –"
"Have you seen it?"
"Are you even listening to me?"
"Are you listening to me? Where's Owen's goddamn clarinet?"
"I don't goddamn know! I'm not his goddamn butler!"
"Watch your mouth," she snapped. "You know he loses track of things. You know he's not as on
"Watch your mouth," she snapped. "You know he loses track of things. You know he's not as on
the ball as you. Not since –"
She didn't finish her sentence. Didn't even trail off, just stopped dead. Seth didn't need to ask
what she meant.
"I haven't seen it," he said, "but I still don't see why I have to come and just sit there."
His mother spoke with angry patience, enunciating every syllable. "Be. Cause. I. Want. To. Go.
For. A. Run." She dangled the running shoes she was holding. "I get precious little time to myself
as it is, and you know Owen gets upset if he's left there alone with Miss Baker –"
"He's fine," Seth said. "He puts it on because he likes the attention."
His mother sucked in her breath. "Seth –"
"If I do it, can I stay over at Gudmund's tonight?"
She paused. His mother didn't like Gudmund much, for reasons she couldn't quite explain
herself. "I don't even like his name," he'd overheard her saying to his father one night in the next
room. "What kind of name is Gudmund? He's not Swedish."
"Gudmund is a Norwegian name, I think," his father had said, not paying much attention.
"Well, he's not that either. Not even in the way Americans go on about being Irish or Cherokee.
Honestly, a whole population who refuse to call themselves after their own nation unless they're
feeling threatened."
"You must hear them calling themselves American quite a lot then," his father had said dryly,
and the conversation had soured somewhat after that.
Seth really didn't understand it. Gudmund was damn near the perfect teen. Popular enough, but
not too popular; confident, but not too confident; nice to Seth's parents, nice to Owen, and always
got Seth home by curfew since he'd gotten his car. Like all of Seth's classmates, he was a bit older,
but only by ten months, seventeen to Seth's sixteen, which was nothing. They ran on the crosscountry
team together with Monica and H, which couldn't have been more wholesome. And while it
was true that Gudmund's mother and father were exactly the sort of scary American conservatives
that tended to horrify Europeans, even Seth's own parents had to admit they were pretty nice
people one-on-one.
And though they clearly suspected, his parents had also never found out about any of the trouble
he and Gudmund got up to. Not that any of it was actually all that bad. No drugs, and though there
was more than occasional drinking, there was definitely no drunk driving. Gudmund was bright
and easygoing, and most parents would have been happy to have him around as a friend for their
son.
But not, it seemed, Seth's mother. She pretended she had some sixth sense about him.
And maybe she did.
"You've got work tomorrow," she said now, but he could already tell she was on her way to a
yes in the negotiations.
"Not 'til six," Seth said, keeping his tone as unargumentative as possible.
His mother considered. "Fine," she said curtly. "Now, get up. We need to go."
"Close the door," he called after her, but she was already gone.
He got up and found a shirt to pull on over his head. An hour sitting through Owen's torturous
clarinet lesson with onion-smelling Miss Baker so his mother could go run furiously along the
coastal path in exchange for an evening of freedom which included a stash of beer forgotten by
Gudmund's father (though not behind the wheel of Gudmund's car; really, they were good kids,
which made her suspicions all the more infuriating; Seth almost wanted to do something bad,
something really bad, just to show her). But for now, it was a fair enough trade.
Any chance to get away. Any chance to feel not quite so trapped. Even for a little while.
He'd take it.
Five minutes later, he was dressed and in the kitchen. "Hey, Dad," he said, taking down a box
of cereal.
"Hey, Seth," his father sighed, intently studying the wooden frame for the new counter, a frame
that refused to fit, no matter how much sawing went on.
"Why don't you just hire a guy?" Seth asked, stuffing a handful of peanut-butter-flavored
granules in his mouth. "Be done in a week."
"And what guy would that be?" his father asked distractedly. "There's peace to be found in
doing something for yourself."
Seth had heard this sentence many, many times. His father taught English at the small, liberal
arts college that gave Halfmarket two-thirds of its population, and these projects – of which there
had been more than Seth could count, from the deck at the house in England when he was just a
baby, adding a utility room in the garage here, to this kitchen extension his father had insisted on
doing himself – were what he swore kept him sane after swapping London for a small coastal
American town. The projects all eventually got finished, all eventually pretty well, too, but the
peace, perhaps, had less to do with the project than with the medication his father took for his
depression. Heavier than the usual antidepressants that some of his friends took, heavy enough to
occasionally make his father seem like a ghost in their own house.
"What have I done wrong now?" his father mumbled, shaking his head in puzzlement at a pile of
off-cut timber.
His mother came into the kitchen, thudding Owen's clarinet down on the table. "Would someone
mind telling me how this ended up in the guest room?"
"Ever thought of asking Owen?" Seth said through a mouthful of cereal.
"Asking me what?" Owen said, coming through the door.
And here was Owen. His little brother. Hair curled up in a ridiculous, sleep-messed pile that
made him look way younger than his nearly twelve years, a red Kool-Aid stain around his lips and
crumbs from his breakfast still stuck to his chin, wearing regular jeans but also a Cookie Monster
pajama top that he was about five years too old and too big for.
Owen. As scatterbrained and messy as ever.
But Seth could see his mother's posture change into something that almost resembled joy.
"Nothing, sweetheart," she said. "Go wash your face and put on a clean shirt. We're almost
ready to go."
Owen beamed back at her. "I got to level 82!"
"That's brilliant, darling. Now, hurry along. We're going to be late."
"Okay!" Owen said, blazing a smile at Seth and his father as he left the kitchen. Seth's mother's
gaze greedily followed him out the doorway, as if it was all she could do not to eat him.
When she turned back into the kitchen, her face was disconcertingly open and warm until she
caught Seth and his father staring at her. There was an awkward moment where no one said
anything, and she at least had the good grace to look a little embarrassed.
"Hurry up, Seth," she said. "We really are going to be late."
"Hurry up, Seth," she said. "We really are going to be late."
She left. Seth just stood there with his handful of cereal, until his father, without a word, started
sawing slowly on the counter frame again. The familiar yearning to get away rose in Seth's chest
like a physical pressure, so strong he thought he might be able to see it if he looked.
One more year, he thought. One year to go.
His final year of high school lay ahead of him, and then he would go off to college, (maybe,
hopefully) the same one as Gudmund and possibly Monica. The location didn't matter so much as
long as it was as far as possible from this damp little corner of southwest Washington State.
Far away from these strangers who called themselves his parents.
But then he remembered there were smaller escapes closer to home.
An hour of clarinet, he thought. And the weekend's mine.
He thought it more angrily than he expected.
And at the same time, he realized he wasn't very hungry anymore.