Page 15 of Catch the Sun

My heart stutters. “How can you say that?”

This has him lifting off the couch and scrubbing both hands over his face, elbows planted on his knees. He swipes at his hair, the same chocolate-browncolor as mine, only longer. His hangs at his shoulders, where mine is a tousled mess on top but shorter in the back.

McKay closes his eyes for a beat, flinching when it sounds like the dresser gets flipped upside down in the adjoining room.

He pretends he doesn’t care.

But I know better.

My twin brother has simply grown content in the role of useless bystander, knowing damn well I’m here to keep the house from going up in flames.

Steepling his hands together, he finally looks up at me with something other than aggravation. “He needs help, Max. Actual help. We can’t keep doing this.”

“You think I don’t know that?”

Crash.

Bang.

“Whore!”

My throat rolls with despair. “Just help me get him into bed. Once he sleeps it off, he’ll be fine. I’ll get rid of the liquor he managed to get his hands on.”

“Solid plan,” he grumbles. “You’re such a genius.”

No—I’m not a fucking genius. If I were a genius, I’d have come up with a better strategy by now, instead of the following endless charade:

Keep Dad sober.

Keep Dad alive.

Keep myself alive.

Go to school and learn about pointless shit like potato batteries and long division, instead of important things like the above-mentioned points.

Repeat.

The thing is, he wasn’t always like this.

Once upon a time, we were a picture-perfect family living that idyllic, rural lifestyle in southeastern Tennessee. We had bonfires. We swam in lakes and washed dirt off our skin under waterfalls after endless afternoons of hiking and exploring. We fished, we laughed, we roasted hot dogs on tree branches over firepits, and we ate s’mores until our bellies ached.

Then the accident happened.

Seven years ago, my father worked as a machine operator at a local factoryand was responsible for operating heavy industrial equipment. On that shitty, fateful day, Dad was maneuvering a large hydraulic press used for shaping metal components, and due to a misjudgment in timing, the press came down unexpectedly, resulting in a severe crush injury. Despite the emergency stop being activated, the damage was done. The force exerted by the press caused significant trauma to his spine, resulting in a spinal cord injury that nearly paralyzed him from the waist down. He used a wheelchair for the better part of a year, while he took to the bottle to ease his pain and self-loathing.

Mom couldn’t deal, so she had an affair with a coworker named Rick.

Then she left.

She left all of us with nothing but a note that said: “I’m sorry.”

We haven’t heard from her since and that’s fine by me. I want nothing to do with a woman who was so quick to walk out on her family, leaving two young boys behind.

McKay took Mom’s abandonment the hardest, leaving me to step up to the plate. At twelve years old, I became a caregiver. The head of the household.

And to be fair, Dad isn’t always like this. Some days, I see glimmers of the man who raised me right for twelve golden years, who showed me how to build and fix things, who took me camping under the stars, and who taught me that the most important thing in the world is family. For better, or for worse. Always.

Dad is my “for worse.”

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