Page 32 of Concerted Chaos

“Suicide.” She says the word flatly, but I hear the pain. That’s so much worse.

“Oh, no, I am so sorry.” My repeated apology sounds weak. I imagine parental suicide is much harder to deal with than accidental death. No matter the actual reason, the child probably interprets it as I don’t love you enough to stick around. I don’t want to watch you grow up. You aren’t enough for me.

“He lost his job and his self-worth. He felt like a failure and that we would be better off without him. We weren’t, of course. We—my brother and I—were better off with him.”

“How awful.” I’m not a writer like my brother or Jace, so I don’t have the right words to express my sympathies. I can’t imagine how terrible it would be to go through a tragedy like that. My dad didn’t want to die. It wasn’t his choice. If he’d had his way, he and my mom would be happily together, and me and my never-born younger siblings would visit them often. Maybe the hypothetical little brother they were always planning to try for would still live at home, and we’d share weekly dinners and group chats full of silly jokes.

“It caused me to eat my feelings.” Whitney holds up one thin muscular arm. “I used to be five times this size. That’s why I have all these stretch marks. I did nothing but eat for a couple of years. Then I woke up one day, looked in the mirror and hated myself. And after having a long cry and seriously considering following my dad to his grave, I came to the realization that I was hating the wrong person. I should hate the one who took my father away.

“That’s when I started working out,” she continues. “I lost the weight and got stronger. I feel better now, like I can do something about my father’s death. Because it wasn’t his fault, not really. He was lied to and manipulated, which cost him his job. Without a job, he felt like he couldn’t take care of us, especially since he’d been blackballed in his industry. The selfish monsters who did it to him not only got away scot-free, but they have these amazing awesome lives built on my father’s blood.” There is such bitterness in her voice, it’s almost frightening. I don’t think this is a healthy obsession.

“Have you ever contacted them?” I’ve thought about doing that myself. I won’t admit it to Whitney, since it makes me seem as obsessed as her, but I’ve looked up my dad’s killer on social media before. The $175 fine she was given for ‘failure to yield’ had no affect on her life. She posts pictures with her grandbaby and shares those obnoxious memes about happiness and positive energy and being #soblessed. It makes me #soangry, that she gets to go on and do all the things she took away from us.

Whitney shakes her head. “Contact them? Ha. I plot revenge from afar.”

“What are you going to do? Wait, are you actually going to do anything?” Anything I could think of would be illegal.

She studies me, eyes glittering. She looks like she’s trying to decide if she trusts me enough. Please don’t, I think. I don’t want to be an accessory to murder—they serve jailtime too. Her smile is toothy and fake. “Of course not. I just like to imagine it sometimes.”

Something about her tone gives me pause. I suspect she’s lying. Maybe this whole go-out-and-make-friends thing was a bad idea. But I won’t admit that to Tanner.

“Well ... good.” I don’t really want to have this kind of conversation. I have no interest in being a co-conspirator, and this isn’t the sort of thing that two people who are barely acquaintances should get into at their first happy hour. “Cheers, then, to moving on.” We clink our glasses, sloshing a little bit of martini on the table. These might be a little stronger than I’m used to. I suspect I’ll be ordering a Ryde car to get us both home.

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