Page 23 of The Staircase in the Woods

Camping was supposed to be an easy escape. The way forward should’ve been clear. It was Friday afternoon. Mom was at the store. Dad was still at work. Plenty enough time to throw clothes and snacks into a backpack, hop into Matty’s car, and speed off to a weekend in the woods with his friends. He could get drunk with Hamish. Play Magic with Matty. Get his balls busted by Nick, probably. And maybe he and Lauren would finally get some face time to talk about…well, everything. College, their game, and their future. But when he stepped out of his room, he found his father there in the living room. Sitting forward in the dusty old recliner. A beer in his hand.

“You’re home,” Owen said, trying to keep the shock and disappointment out of his voice. He put a thumb in his mouth, biting at the nail.

His father, a bent stick of a man, sniffed. “Where you going?”

“Out.”

“Out where?”

And it was here Owen knew: His father wasn’t going to let him go anywhere. His plans, crumbling. The dreams of a weekend with friends, fucked.

“With the crew,” he said, in a small voice.

“Nngh,”his father grunted. “Go on, then.”

Owen’s heart lifted—the fog cleared, the path was lit.Almost free. “Thanks. I’ll—I’ll be back on Sunday morning, I think—”

“I don’t care, Owen.” The man leaned farther forward, the can on his knee, and he stared out at his son with dark, hateful eyes. “I don’t care if you go, don’t care if you come back. I’m done giving a shit about you. Never seems to pay off, does it? My friends at the jobsite, they all got kids they’re so proud of, and they ask me about you, and what can I tell them? What do I got to show for it? Mopey, soft kid, soft like his mother, scared of his own shadow, can’t dig a ditch or hammer a nail, probably a drug addict for all I know. So I don’t say anything.”

Owen felt tears hot at the edges of his eyes.

“Dad—”

“Go on, get out,” he said. Not loud. But firm. Angry. Acid.

Owen hurried past his father, out the door. Trying not to think about how there was something worse than a father who hated you—one who didn’t care about you at all.

Still. An escape was an escape. And it was easy, this time, at least. If not precisely uncomplicated.

—

Lauren was thinking about Matty again.

She stood there primping in the mirror, which was a thing she did not do. Not ever. Not for some stupid boy. And Matty was just a stupid boy, she told herself, even though she knew he damn well was not. And then there was Owen. Owen liked her. She knew it. How could she not? And it wasn’t that she didn’t like him—they’d made out a few times, and it was good, even great. But like, they were friends. Best friends. Making out was fine, but anything more than that felt fucked up, like incest or something. Besides, they wanted to go to college together, they wanted toworktogether and write stories and make games and—

She didn’t need him to be more than that to her.

Matty, on the other hand…

Matty was fun. Hot. Smart.

A friend, too, obviously—long a part of the crew, their Golden Boy.God, I want to climb him like the rope in gym class.

But it was more than that—he wasdriven. He got shit done. Matty had ambitions—he wanted to be a doctor, he said, or maybe a lawyer, and to meet someone who could even think ofbeingthose things was amazing. Like it proved something to her, that you were allowed tohaveambitions. That you could be more than what you were now. A future You, better than shitty current You.

I want to be ambitious, too,she thought whenever she was with Matty.

Nick saw her and Matty Frenching outside of school a month ago, and he told her, “You need to pick a lane, Laur. Owen’s fragile.” And she told him, “I didn’t even think you liked Owen that much,” and he said to her:

“The Covenant.”

That phrase. The Covenant. The promise that bound them all. The thing that made them more than just friends—that made them a real, true crew. Bonafide. Nick wasn’t using it cavalierly. He was trying to drive something home.

And it did. It drove into her gut like a fist.

Okay, fine, Nick, I’m picking a lane.

So she was picking Matty.

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