Page 1 of Quiet Rage
Chapter 1
Kellen
It must benice to be a college student. Not just somebody who takes classes, but the old cliché of a carefree teenager who gets to live out every day the way they want to. On the surface, that’s what I get to do. I hang out with my friends in my free time, I study—and at least, I do as much as I need to so I can pass. Right now, walking across campus, I fit in. Nobody would know there’s anything different about me just by looking.
They don’t see what’s inside. They don’t see the walls separating me from the rest of them. I feel like a scientist or something like that, the kind who observes animals in the wild. When I notice a group of guys throwing a football around while girls hang out on the grass, I don’t see people my own age passing time between classes. There’s something foreign, because they have something I never will. They’re free to think about themselves and their lives and that’s it. There’s nothing hanging on them the way it does on me.
“Kellen! Hey!” A couple of the guys lift their hands to me, like they’re trying to wave me over to play. I point to my wrist and shrug—the international sign forI’m in a hurry.I’m not really ina hurry, but I’m also not in the mood to pretend I feel carefree today. The mood I’m in, I would end up hurting somebody, which isn’t hard to do even on a good day since I’ve pretty much been the biggest guy in the room ever since I hit puberty.
There’s a couple of girls sitting on a bench under a tree. They’re cute, but that’s not what caught my attention. I can hear one of them bitching and moaning about something as I approach with my backpack slung over my shoulder. “I’m supposed to work fifteen hours a week and take four classes? Where the hell am I supposed to find the time?” the girl whines.
It’s amazing I can settle for rolling my eyes when I really want to laugh in her face. She thinks that’s a problem? That’s something worth complaining about? For fuck’s sake, she’s close to tears while her friend tries to comfort her. It’s pathetic. So many people don’t have the first clue how easy their life is. Taking four classes and working fifteen hours a week would be a luxury for me.
Because not everybody has a father like mine. Not everybody has a life like mine. They can act young and careless the way we’re supposed to at this age. They can fuck up, make mistakes and learn from them, they can fall back on their parents when they need help the way people our age are supposed to be able to do. And I know life could be worse. I’m not poor, I don’t struggle that way. But there are many ways to struggle.
Like the struggle I’m going through as I enter the cafeteria and force myself to leave the rest of my life outside for now. I don’t want to think about Dad or anything I left behind this morning. I can think about it later, when class is over and I have no choice but to slide into my other life the way I slide into a pair of jeans.
“Hey!” Tucker notices me first and waves a hand overhead, even though they’re all sitting at our usual table. Not that we have our names written on it or anything. People know to stay away just because we’ve been seen there so many times. That’s sort of the effect we have around here.
I jerk my chin at my friends and look around the table. “Just us today?” I ask as I sit down.
“The girls had some stuff to do at the library,” Briggs explains. He looks disappointed, which doesn’t make any sense to me—he and Wren live together. He sees her every day. They can’t spend a few minutes apart?
It’s funny, how different it is to hang out with them when their girls aren’t here. I would never tell them this, but I’m not totally comfortable with the way things have changed since everybody started dating seriously. The girls are cool and all that, low drama, I can sit down and have a beer with them at a party. But there are differences in how we talk and act around each other now that it isn’t just the guys, and since I’m the last one still single, I’m the one who feels it.
“Did you sleep last night?” Preston asks, elbowing his twin brother Easton and jerking his chin at me. “You look like you just rolled out of a grave and brushed off the dirt before you came in.”
“It was a late night.” That’s all that needs to be said. They know I work at my father’s bar, even if they don’t know the specifics. To them, a late night means staying up with their girlfriend. Or partying too hard, maybe. They have that luxury.
I wonder why they got lucky and I didn’t.
“How’s it going there, anyway?” Carter turns to me and I wish he wouldn’t. He’s only trying to be a friend—I know that. It’s not his fault he doesn’t understand the shit I’m going through, especially since I don’t talk about it. I don’t talk about much of anything. Life is easier that way, cleaner, simpler. The less I say, the less I have to remember later on. There’s nothing as pathetic as somebody who gets lost in their own lies.
“We should come in some night, keep you company.” Preston winks at me and wiggles his eyebrows. “Could be fun.”
“Would Emma think it was so fun?” I ask, snickering. I have to doubt their girlfriend would be a fan. She’s pretty open minded, dating twin brothers, but everybody has their limits. The Archer’s Den is well-known for the type of women who drink there. If the new girl in town doesn’t know that yet, she’d find out once her boyfriends started hanging out there.
“Okay, it’s not like we would have to get in a bar fight or whatever,” Preston points out.
“Oh, damn.” Briggs snaps his fingers and scowls like he’s disappointed. “I was really hoping for a bar fight.”
“Who invited you?” Easton asks him, and I laugh along with them even if my mind is miles away.
No, that can’t happen, and not only because they’re too young. Hell, I can’t remember the last time anybody got carded before coming in. If a patron’s got money, there’s a stool empty at the bar. If I didn’t know better, I might think Dad genuinely cared about bringing people together and giving them a place where they can kick back and forget about life for a little while.
As soon as Briggs’ eyes light up when he looks toward the door, I know the brief break from the girls is over. I sit up a littlestraighter, grinding my teeth, swallowing back disappointment. I should be glad for my friends, shouldn’t I? They look happy. I should want that for them, and I guess I do, really. It’s just harder to swallow on days like today, when I was up half the night dealing with a lot of shit that did anything but make me happy.
There’s a dark cloud hanging over me the rest of the day, too, making it tough to get through without showing everybody what’s happening in my head. But that’s something I’ve gotten good at over the years, too. That’s why I’m so quiet. Being quiet is easier. People expect less of you when you’ve got a reputation for silence.
Silence comes in handy throughout my life. I can’t remember how I ended up first seeing something I wasn’t supposed to see, but I’ll never forget the way my dad looked at me. The way his eyes went hard and sharp. Not that he was ever loving or anything like that—the most I ever got was a smile and maybe a pat on my shoulder. But in that moment, staring down at his eight-year-old son, he let the mask of parent fall to his feet so I could see what was underneath. It’s a mask he never bothered putting back on.
“Whatever you think you saw here, you didn’t.” I can still feel his fingers pressing tight against my shoulder, like he was trying to break it, but it was the look in his eye that mattered more. “You’re going to keep your mouth shut, understood?”
I understood then and I still understand as I park my 4Runner behind the bar which has been my second home for as long as I can remember. It’s only late afternoon, meaning the bar itself will be mostly empty except for the handful of regulars who show up like clockwork before the doors open. Sometimes I get things started in the morning and I find them waiting outon the sidewalk with their cigarettes and coffee. We don’t even exchange words anymore – all it takes is me flipping the lock for them to stub out their smokes and filter inside, where they take the stools down from the bar and the tables and settle in to watch TV while I turn on the lights and power up the register.
That’s already been done by the time I enter through the back door leading into the kitchen. A couple of dishwashers hang around, eating an early dinner while they have the time to do it. We nod in recognition before I poke my head into the bar through a swinging door. Lorna, one of Dad’s longest running employees, stands behind the taps and fakes interest in a story from one of the regulars which she’s probably heard thirty times. Even I know it by now. But there’s another rule we have to follow around here, and I’m sure it’s pretty universal. Make the customer feel at home and you’ll always have their business. That means nodding in the right places, shaking your head sympathetically when the time comes.
“Finally. Where the fuck have you been?”
