Write This Down (6 page)

Another thing that makes Cameron seem different from the rest of us is that even in ordinary conversation he uses words most kids don't use. “You have my condolences” means that Cameron is expressing sympathy toward me for having Hunter as a brother. What it really seems to mean is that Cameron thinks Hunter is a jerk.

Why does he think Hunter is a jerk? Is Hunter a jerk because of reading my poem to the band? After all, Cameron's brother was the one who told Hunter to give my notebook back to me. So does Cameron think Hunter was mean then, too? Mean because my poem was so embarrassingly bad nobody should ever read it aloud to anyone else? Or mean because my poem was so amazingly good that nobody should ever make fun of it?

I've come to another sticking place where I need to screw more courage and force out one more syllable.

“Why?” I ask.

Cameron gives me a smile that can only be described as inscrutable, which means “impossible to understand or interpret.”

“You know why,” he says.

He smiles again, and this time it's not a mocking smile, exactly, but sort of an amused smile. Like the smile of a boy who knows that the girl sitting next to him wrote him a love poem. I can't tell if the smile means that he thought the love poem was good or bad. There's a limit to what you can decipher from one single smile.

Now my face must be redder than red. It's aubergine: the deep, black-purple of an eggplant.

I still don't know what Cameron thought about my poem, but that he thinks my brother is awful for making fun of it suggests that Cameron
gets
it, that he's on my side. Maybe in a romantic, protective kind of way?

Kylee slips into her seat, nearly tardy as always. Olivia turns around to glare at Kylee for grazing her shoulder as she dashed past.

I try to think of something else to say. “Hunter didn't use to be like this.”

Cameron cocks his eyebrow—like,
Yeah, right
, but also like he's interested in hearing more, as in interested in
my
brother, and so, according to the principle of transitivity we learned about in pre-algebra, interested in
me
.

“So what happened?” Cameron asks.

I'm about to say,
I think he might have changed when he joined the band.
Maybe Cameron would say that his brother changed when he joined the band, too. Maybe there's something about being in a rock band that makes older brothers start acting mean to their younger siblings. But Cameron offered me condolences about having Hunter as a brother in a way that made it sound as if my brother was a lot worse than his, if his is even bad at all.

But just then Ms. Archer calls the class to order: “Good morning, intrepid scholars.” That's what she calls us sometimes, which could come off as sounding sarcastic but doesn't when she says it. “Intrepid” means bold and fearless, exactly what I want to be as a writer.

Now that class is beginning, I couldn't answer Cameron's question even if I knew the answer, which I don't. The band thing was only a guess, and maybe not a good one at that.

I wish I did know.

If I knew what happened to make Hunter change, maybe I'd know what to say or do to make him change back again.

 

9

On Saturday morning—well, what's left of Saturday morning (the clock on the microwave reads 11:40)—I'm in the kitchen, chatting with Mom at the table, and Hunter has just staggered downstairs—bare-chested, pj bottoms, hair looking like he mussed it on purpose to look more like a wannabe rock star, which maybe he did.

I've been up since seven-thirty. Mom says it's bad for your circadian rhythms—that's what she calls them—to sleep more than an hour later on the weekends than you do during the week. I'm a morning person anyway, so I've already showered, made French toast for me and our parents (it's the only thing I can cook, but it's delicious), knocked off a pre-algebra problem set, worked on my personal essay about Hunter, and helped Dad rake leaves.

Okay, I admit it, I'm feeling smug, and even smugger now that Hunter has appeared half-asleep with nothing to show for his Saturday morning. Like the “Goofus and Gallant” comics I still read for old times' sake in the
Highlights
magazines at Dad's office. Goofus always does the bad thing, like leaving his dirty dishes on the table, and Gallant always does the good thing, like carrying his dirty dishes to the sink. The comic has the least subtle moral of anything in the world, but maybe I like it for that reason. With “Goofus and Gallant,” you always know exactly how you're supposed to be.

Be like Gallant.

Don't be like Goofus.

In my house, though our parents would never come right out and say this, I'm clearly the family's Gallant and Hunter is the family's Goofus.

Be like Autumn.

Don't be like Hunter.

Even back in the Mrs. Whistlepuff days, I remember how Mom's forehead would furrow when Hunter would bring home his Friday folder and she'd see work that was unfinished or sloppy, with comments like “Hunter needs to check his work more carefully,” “Hunter needs to learn to follow rules,” and “Hunter needs to stay on task.”

Our parents, being our parents, had him tested. But I never heard anybody say he has attention-deficit disorder (ADD) or any other official thing that has a bunch of initials ending in a “D.” He was just the kind of kid who couldn't sit still, who had to be drumming on the table or sassing a teacher because he thought up something super funny to say. I know our parents hoped that he'd “grow out of it.” I heard Mom tell Dad once that Hunter was a “late bloomer,” as if that was a fine thing to be. Daffodils bloom in the spring. Chrysanthemums bloom in the fall. It's not a
bad
thing to be a chrysanthemum.

I know they had hoped the blooming would start by the time he got to high school, but I didn't notice a whole lot of blooming going on last year. And this year—well, this year so far is a hundred times worse.

Because here's the thing about Hunter: however bad his Friday folder was, however worried Mom looked on parent-teacher-conference night, he was always nice to us. He had this great grin he'd flash after Mom or Dad yelled at him, a grin that was like,
Say whatever you want, but I know you love me anyway.

That's what's different now.

Without even a flicker of acknowledgment, Hunter opens the fridge, grabs the carton of orange juice, and takes a swig.

“Hunter,” Mom says, the scolding tone on automatic pilot, without any real energy in it.

“What?” Hunter asks, as if she hasn't told him ten thousand times to use a glass.

I see Mom's eyes roam over to the microwave clock. “You didn't use to sleep till noon. What's going on? I heard you come in at eleven”—that's Hunter's curfew on weekends, which is plenty late if you ask me—“so I know you weren't out until all hours. Did you stay up late on the computer?”

Hunter puts a piece of bread in the toaster, which surprises me. He isn't usually willing to go to that much trouble. Given the hour, maybe the piece of toast is his brunch.

“Hunter, I'm talking to you.”

As if he could think she was talking to me.

“Are you having trouble sleeping?” Her tone is softer now.

I know she wishes that Hunter's new awfulness—what she likes to call his moodiness—has a simple biological explanation. It's not that Hunter has turned nasty and mean; it's that he's sleep-deprived, poor thing. Sometimes I've heard her say “Hormones” to Dad when Hunter slams a door. She says the same thing when I get extra crabby, or tear up over a B− on a paper for multicultural history. (Mr. Morton loves to give even his top students little “wake-up calls” when he thinks we're not doing our best work.)

Hunter still makes no reply.

His toast pops up.

Without even buttering it, not to mention putting it on an actual plate, he starts to walk back upstairs, toast in hand.

“Hunter James Granger!”

Don't parents know how clichéd it is to call your kids by all three names when you're extra irritated with them?

Hunter does turn around, his mouth conveniently full of toast. So maybe the three-name thing survives as part of the parenting script because it works.

“Hunter,” Mom says tentatively. “Do any of the guys in the band use
drugs
? I know that musicians, well, sometimes they walk on the wild side … and the other band members, they're older—”

Hunter bursts out laughing. The crumbs of toast spraying out of his mouth do nothing to make his shirtless, mussed-hair, vacant-eyed look any more attractive.

“I know pot—weed—is legal in Colorado now,” Mom says, unwilling to back down, “but it's not legal for anyone under twenty-one, and just as with alcohol, there are reasons why certain substances are not available to minors, whose brains and bodies are still growing and developing.”

“Pot?”
Hunter asks.
“Weed?”

“Marijuana,” she explains.

I know Hunter knows what pot and weed are; it's just so weird to hear Mom say the words, as if she's showing off how hip and cool she is.

For a second Hunter catches my eye and comes close to grinning at me. I almost expect him to say
Mo-o-o-m!
like when we were younger and she'd snap her fingers to music on the car radio as if that were a cool instead of pathetically uncool thing to do.

His grin vanishes before it has a chance to happen.

“Mom, I'm not using
drugs
. None of my friends are using
drugs
. Because I sleep late on a
Saturday
does not mean I'm using
drugs
. Because I'm in a
rock
band does not mean I'm using
drugs
. Because you're not in love with my
grades
doesn't mean I'm using
drugs
.”

“But … if you were … I wouldn't be angry, I promise I wouldn't. I'd want you to be able to tell me, so I could get you help.”

Hunter stares at her. I know he's thinking:
In what universe does a fifteen-year-old tell his mom he's smoked a few joints or had a couple of beers so she can get him
help
?

“Don't worry,” Hunter says, his eyes narrowing with what looks less like anger than hatred. Anger is hot; the look on his face is icy, as if any love he ever had for any of us is frozen solid beneath the groaning weight of an Ice Age glacier. “When I need your help, I'll let you know.”

He heads back upstairs, turning away before he can see Mom's face crumple into tears.

“Mom, don't,” I say.

She wipes her hand across her eyes.

“I can't help remembering,” she says in a voice so low I can hardly hear it, “how I'd drop him off at preschool—how he'd cry and cling to my leg and say, ‘Mom, don't go.'”

What am I supposed to say?

“Well, teens are supposed to grow away from their parents,” I try. “Like that pamphlet you brought home?” Yes, I read “Surviving the Teen Years: A Guide for Parents,” too. I'll read anything if it's lying around and there's no other reading material handy. “And you know, hormones…”

“I just remember,” she says, as if I hadn't spoken, “how he used to
like
me.”

*   *   *

I was having a good day until Hunter made his brunch appearance, and now I'm having a bad day. That look of hatred was directed not just at my mother but at me, too. Sometimes I think he hates me most of all, even though all I've ever done to him—truly all I've ever done—is to get better grades than he does and do the things our parents want us to do, like playing the flute or sticking with ballet. I can't help that I like playing the flute. I can't help that I like—well, don't really mind—doing ballet.

Dr. Jackson, my principal back in elementary school, used to say the same thing every single day at the end of morning announcements: “Have a good day—or not. The choice is yours.”

Dr. Jackson obviously didn't have Hunter as her brother.

Still, I'm not going to let Hunter ruin a perfect October Saturday any more than he has already.

I text Kylee:
Bike ride by the reservoir?

She texts back:
Can't. Knitting. Come over here?

Now I have to decide if I want to spend a crisp, cool, cloudless autumn day watching someone else knit dog sweaters. I decide I don't. Kylee hasn't put down her needles since she got that folder of patterns and bag of yarn at the animal shelter. I've created a knitting monster.

Brianna is away visiting her grandparents, and Isabelle has some kind of maybe-flu thing I don't want to catch. So I'll just curl up and be a writing monster. I'm not going to write any more poetry until I hear from
The New Yorker
, so I go back to my novel. I need to get rid of the finding-the-amulet scene in the Tatiana and Ingvar book and launch Tatiana on her next harrowing adventure.

Dad comes into the kitchen before I can make my getaway. One look at Mom's blotchy face, and the muscles in his jaw twitch. Dad can handle just about anything Hunter and I do so long as we're not mean to Mom.

“What did he say this time, Suzanne?” Dad asks.

“Oh, nothing really,” Mom replies. “The usual.”

“The usual,” Dad repeats. I know it makes things worse that how Hunter acts isn't even surprising anymore, just how he
is
. Dad forces a smile. “Autumn, do your mother and me a favor and always stay as sweet a kid as you are today.”

I don't think of myself as particularly sweet, but maybe on a sweetness scale of 1 to 10, a kid who makes French toast for her parents and helps her dad rake leaves without being asked would score at least an 8.