In This Moment (In Plain Sight Book 3) Read online

  “Why the hell not?” TJ asks, slamming his fist on the hood of my truck. “Burgers!”

  “Burgers!” Beau says, louder. Some other guys from the team walk by and shout burgers too. Now it’s an all-out burger yelling match.

  I shrug it off. “I got shit to do at home, man. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  “He ain’t got shit to do,” Beau says.

  “What, you got some homework?” TJ adds, rolling his eyes. “You suddenly a teacher’s pet?”

  I laugh. There’s no way I’m telling them I need to save my money for more important things. So I lie. “If by homework, you mean a girl, then yeah.”

  “Damn, bro.” TJ taps my hood again, this time giving me a look of appreciation. “Get the hell out of here then.”

  I wish I was going home to meet a girl.

  When I get home, I pull my truck next to Dad’s and cut the engine, sitting here for a minute. The lights are on in the living room, and the sound of my dad’s favorite Metallica album is flowing out of the house. At least it’s not cranked up as loud as it goes, which gets the cops called on us.

  Dad must be okay, I decide.

  When I go inside, he’s sitting on the couch, a beer in one hand and a plate of nachos in the other. “Hey,” he says, nodding at me as I walk by.

  “Hey,” I say back. Nice and calm, and he won’t get upset.

  Sometimes I wish we’d get him some help. Send him to a rehab center or something. But unlike most of the privileged assholes I go to school with, my parents aren’t loaded. We have a decent three-bedroom brick home that looks nice on the outside. It’s a remnant of the days when both of my parents were happier and Dad worked in the oilfield making a ton of money. But as his alcoholism got worse, he got laid off more and more, and ended up getting a job with a small roofing company, that doesn’t pay much at all. Mom had to start working again when I was about twelve, and she chose to work nights because it pays more.

  I got a job the day I was legally allowed to work, and together we stay afloat as a family. I just wish there was more money to get Dad some help, not that I’ll ever say it. He’d really lose his shit then.

  I shower and make a sandwich. Dad’s phone rings, and from the other room, I can hear him talking to what sounds like my Uncle Chase.

  Shit.

  Sure enough, Dad’s voice goes from a little annoyed to full out angry. Uncle Chase is the only family member who isn’t afraid to call dad on his shit. I hear Dad cursing on the phone, calling his brother every name in the book.

  Slowly, I grab another soda from the fridge, and slip off to my room undetected. But the yelling only gets worse. When Dad hangs up the phone with a few choice expletives, I hear him pacing around the living room, still muttering about his brother, not that anyone is there to listen.

  “Thinks he’s better than me,” Dad mutters.

  I stand by my bedroom door, wondering if I should do something. But from past experience, I know it’s better to just keep my mouth shut.

  The fridge opens and I hear the clank of another beer bottle opening. Another metal cap clinking to the counter top.

  Dad cranks the music louder.

  Eventually, the music is so loud it’s shaking the walls, and I know the cops will probably roll up at any moment, and my dad will curse at them too. They’re all pretty good with people like my dad, taking his insults in stride, but I’m not the only one worried that one day his stupidity will land him in jail.

  If he’s not working, then we’re not getting all the bills paid. Mom and I would be screwed.

  Sure enough, red and blue lights flash through my window a few minutes later. Shit. I throw on a shirt and some flipflops and run out the front door past my dad who is drinking on the couch, swaying to the music.

  “Officers, I’m so sorry,” I say as soon as they get out of their cars. “I’ll make him turn down the radio.”

  One of the officers, a short woman with her hair pulled back in a tight bun, gives me a sad smile. She’s been here before, and she probably remembers it. “Why don’t we go inside and help you?”

  I know there’s no point in arguing.

  As soon as Dad sees the cops enter our house, he stands up and throws his beer to the floor where it spills out all over the rug.

  “Fucking narc!” he yells at me. “Worthless!”

  “I didn’t call the cops on you, Dad. The neighbors did.”

  He glares at me like he doesn’t believe it. An officer reaches behind the stereo and pulls the plug, then holds it up so my dad can see it. “No music after seven p.m. You understand?”

  “That ain’t no fucking law,” Dad spews.

  “It is for you,” the female officer says. “Noise complaints are made about this house several times a week. I don’t want to take you to jail. I don’t even want to write you a ticket. Just keep the music off.”

  They leave, and Dad doesn’t put up a fight.

  He just waits until the two cop cars drive away and then he glares at me. “You’re a useless piece of shit,” he says, his words slurring together so badly that if I hadn’t heard him say that so many times before, I might not have understood it.

  “I know,” I say, not in the mood to argue with him. “You should take a hot shower. Maybe go to bed.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do.” He picks up the beer bottle from the rug and flings it at me. Luckily his aim is so bad it just crashes against the wall, leaving drops of beer on the paint.

  “You’re the worst son on the planet.”

  I head back to my room. I sit on my bed. I stare at the wall. I tell myself to let his drunken words bounce right off me, but they never do. I flash back to playing soccer with him in the back yard when I was five. Christmases and family vacations back when we were happy and Dad wasn’t a drunk. Maybe if he’d been this shitty my whole life, it wouldn’t matter. But he hasn’t. I still have the good memories, and they’re what makes the new memories even worse.

  It’s already after ten o’clock, but I don’t care. I call up TJ, and they’re still at the diner. “I’ll be there in five minutes,” I say.

  Louetta, Texas is a small town with only one main street. That’s where the high school is, along with other businesses, shopping centers, and the Lone Star Diner. I sit in the booth with my friends, telling them I’m not hungry, and stare out the window at the high school across the street.

  Beau has been sneaking sips from a flask all night and he’s more than drunk by the time I arrive.

  At midnight, they kick us out because the diner is closing, and we all decide that Beau can’t drive his sorry ass home since he’s too drunk. I offer to drive him, just so I don’t have to go home so soon.

  “Dude,” Beau says as he stumbles through the parking lot. “We should like, set the school on fire.” He wiggles his eyebrows as he gazes at the school across the street. “That way we don’t have to go back.”

  “That’s arson,” I say, opening the truck door for him. He better not throw up in my truck. “You’d go to jail for that.”

  Beau stumbles forward, looks at my truck and then turns around. “But I wanna destroy something,” he says.

  I am not in the mood to shove his ass into my truck, but it’s looking like I will have to. “Get in,” I say.

  He shakes his head. And then he takes off running.

  The idiot can sure run like hell even when he’s drunk. That’s the true skill of a soccer player, I guess. I chase after him, across the highway that’s empty of cars because it’s so late, and into the high school parking lot.

  “You’re not setting the school on fire,” I say. “You don’t even have a lighter.”

  “I want to destroy something,” he says, holding his fists in the air. “I am a man and I want to be manly.”

  I snort out a laugh. He’s a complete idiot when he’s drunk. Beau’s gaze focuses on a greenhouse in the distance. “Bingo,” he says. He takes off running again.

  I follow him to the little greenhou
se at the edge of the school’s property. There’s a daycare next door, so it’s closed. The school is closed too, but I get this weird feeling like we might be watched.

  “Let’s go,” I say, halfway debating if I should just leave him here.

  He picks up a hammer on the ground. “Perfect.”

  He swings it at the greenhouse and the plastic green wall cracks open. Beau’s satisfied laugh fills the air.

  “Dude.”

  I stand here, half annoyed and half envying him. He swings again, and again, breaking out pieces of the walls. His laughter gets louder. “It’s not arson, bro!” he says as he swings again and a large piece of the wall breaks off.

  He hands me the hammer. “Your turn!”

  I look around. This hunk of junk has been here forever. There’s an old pile of green plastic panels stacked up to the side, and tools are in a bucket next to the door. I look inside. The place is empty. Clearly no one cares about this place. They’re probably going to tear it down anyhow.

  I think about my dad and let the anger fill me up. Then I swing at the wall and the hammer takes out a chunk of it. Beau whoops and I feel laughter rising in my own chest.

  I’m not drunk like he is, but this is euphoric.

  I take a deep breath and swing the hammer again.

  Chapter 3

  I fold my binder closed and let out a sigh. The first day of school is supposed to be easy. For most of my life, it’s been easy. But not junior year, apparently. All of my teachers passed out this stupid “About Me” worksheet that they want us to fill out and return tomorrow.

  There’s seven classes a day, and like twenty five students per class. I really doubt these teachers are reading every single worksheet about all their students. There’s just no way. And even if they did, it’s not like they’d remember everything. They give us this crap to torture us.

  But now I’m finally done writing about my favorite food and color and other pointless things that will never matter in the classroom. Livi has been texting me nonstop ever since she got named on Instagram as one of the girls with the best hair. It’s so unbelievably stupid, but a couple years ago, these girls started rating people online, trying to make it into a thing. I guess now it is a thing. I’ve never been chosen for anything, which is fine by me. I’d rather not have the attention of everyone, either online or in person.

  I grab my phone and reply to Livi’s text about if she should spend the money to get a blowout at the salon this weekend.

  I tell her no, because her hair looks gorgeous naturally.

  She writes back: um, excuse you. This isn’t natural…I work really hard on it!

  I send her the eye rolling emoji.

  “Clarissa!” my mom’s voice rings out.

  I poke my head outside of my bedroom door. “What’s up?”

  “Can you give me a hand?” She holds out two large bags from Home Depot. Inside are two dozen lights that plug into wall outlets. They’re motion sensors, according to the packaging.

  “What is this?” I ask.

  “Motion lights,” she whispers back. Whispering is what she does when she doesn’t want Grandpa to overhear. Now, it makes sense. He’s finding it harder and harder to move around the house now, even though he has the layout memorized.

  “I’ll take this side of the house,” I say, ripping open the packages.

  Together, we go through, placing a motion light in the outlets all around the house. Grandpa is sleeping on the recliner in the living room, so I tip toe around him and plug in some more lights.

  By the time we’re done, we turn off all the lights in the house and then test it out. Like magic, as you walk down the hall, the lights turn on and light your path.

  “This is pretty cool,” I say.

  “I don’t know how long it’ll help,” Mom says, a frown wrinkling her lips. “But it’s something.”

  We’ve barely talked about what we’ll do when Grandpa loses all of his sight. We don’t want him to go in a nursing home, mostly because it’s sad, and also because we know he would hate that. But it’s also scary thinking of leaving him here by himself while we’re at work and school. Sometimes at night, I’ll close my eyes and try to walk the house by memory. I’m much younger and more agile than Grandpa, and yet I still crash into things when I can’t see.

  Mom thinks he’ll be fine if he uses a cane and just stays in the living room while we’re not home.

  I worry that won’t be enough. I’d hate to come home one day and discover that he’d fallen and hurt himself.

  After testing out the lights, I find Grandpa in the living room and I get him to hold my hand while I walk him around the house. He says he can see the lights, and they kind of help.

  “Clarissa,” he says after our third trip around the house. “I think I’m ready for bed. Can you take me to my toothbrush?”

  I walk him into his room, which is the master bedroom. Mom gave it to him when he started losing his sight, saying it’d be better for him to have a big room with its own bathroom.

  Before I leave, Grandpa squeezes my hand. “Clarissa, I am so proud of you,” he says. I don’t know how much he can actually see of me, but his eyes look into mine with a grandfatherly sort of admiration. “Those kids are going to love that greenhouse.”

  “Well, it’s not ready yet,” I say as dread weighs me down, making me sigh. “We still have to actually plant the flowers, and I have no idea how to keep something alive.”

  Mrs. Bradley was excited about the greenhouse when I pitched the idea to her, but she also said I’d get to be in charge of the whole thing. She said she doesn’t have a green thumb, and well, I have no idea if I have one. I’ve never tried to grow anything. The first time I was given a bouquet of flowers, it died after a couple of days because I didn’t realize it came with flower food you had to mix into the water.

  “You’ll do fine,” Grandpa says. “Get a pack of seeds, plant them, and water once a day. That greenhouse will be flourishing before you know it.”

  I grin, and then put his hand on the bathroom door frame so he can feel his way around. “Goodnight, Grandpa.”

  I know I won’t be able to fall asleep easily tonight, so I just lay in bed and stare at the blank TV screen in the corner of my room. I spend half an hour flipping through Netflix but nothing sounds good to watch. I can’t really describe the feeling in my chest. It’s something like a cross between dread and anxiety, and I don’t even know why.

  My greenhouse is done. All we have left to do is haul away the old pieces and pack up the tools, and Mom said she’d help me with that this weekend since Grandpa is now too blind to be helping me haul stuff.

  But as I lay here, feeling weirdly anxious and full of dread, I wonder if building the greenhouse was the easy part. I had been so excited to recreate my late grandmother’s dream, that I hadn’t stopped to realize what comes after that step.

  Planting freaking flowers.

  I’ve even measured out the shelves and decided how many clay pots we need to buy, but I haven’t put much thought into what plants we’ll use yet. I figured that once school started, and I drop my daycare work hours down to two days a week, I can ask the kids what they’d want. We’ll take a vote, and let them choose what to plant. Now, I’m thinking that’s not a good idea. I’d hate to get their hopes up and then plant something I can’t grow. Instead, maybe I’ll research what the easiest, foolproof plants are, and use those.

  All of these stupid greenhouse worries are just covering what’s really keeping me awake.

  I roll over in my bed and pull the comforter up to my face, wishing I could block out my thoughts as easily as I can close out my bedroom around me by putting a blanket over my head. It only took one day of school to run into Shawn. I guess I’m stupid, but I’d been hoping it would take months, or that maybe I’d go all school year and never see him at all.

  Is it too much to hope that the universe makes his parents decide to move them out of the state?

  I can�
�t believe he moved on so quickly, and with someone so much prettier and shorter than me. I mean, I know we only dated two months, but I thought it was going well. We never fought. I let him hang out with his guy friends and I didn’t whine about it because I know guys hate that. I wasn’t clingy, and I didn’t make him take me to expensive places on dates. I was the perfect girlfriend.

  And all of that means nothing, because I know what caused this relationship to fail. Me.

  Big, tall, awkward, me.

  I take a deep breath and throw the covers off. I stare at the ceiling and try to just fall the hell asleep like a normal person. But I can’t stop thinking about it. Honestly, all summer long was just like this. I’d throw myself into working on that greenhouse, and I’d feel better, but then bedtime comes around and suddenly I can’t sleep.

  I don’t exactly miss Shawn so much as I miss what having a boyfriend feels like. It was easy falling asleep when we were dating. I’d lay right here in this same bed, but I’d have my phone. He’d Snap me a goofy photo and send bitmoji’s telling me goodnight.

  I send them back. He’d send hearts and kissy faces.

  I fell asleep every night those two months feeling like someone cared about me. Now I just lay here, hating myself for being tall. Hating guys for being shallow. Hating every short girl on earth.

  *

  It’s only the second day of school and yet it feels like I’ve been doing this for decades. Like waking up and dragging my ass to the bus stop is the worst sort of torture ever. It’s all because I know once I get to school, I might run into Shawn and his new girlfriend. And if I do, I’ll put on a smiling face and I’ll seem happy and normal and like I don’t even care.

  And it’s all just so stupid I want to scream.

  Livi meets me outside as soon as the bus arrives at school. She hands me a cup of coffee. “Good morning,” she singsongs as her golden hair flows around her shoulders. It’s somehow even shiner today, and I’m betting that’s on purpose.

  I take the coffee and give her a wary look. “Why are you so happy?”