a 360. I’ve forgotten all of my worries, completely lost to the creation I’ve made of water meeting sand, a seaside shack, a restaurant, a rich and glowing sun, its light shattering across the waves, wispy clouds in the sky, a few colorful towels spread out on the beach with some couples enjoying the sights, distant waves crashing over the rocks of a nearby cliff … Hell, I can even hear the seagulls.
Through the seagulls, however, I sense heavy footsteps. Then the shuffling of a doorknob. And then—in the middle of a piece of my beach—a skinny door opens, and my stepbrother Lee plods in.
“What the hell …?” he grunts in his deep, dull voice. His eyes go wide as he turns in a complete circle, observing my work. His mouth always tends to hang open dumbly, but for some reason, it appears to be quite intentional as Lee takes in the scene, for a moment transported to my beachside paradise.
Then he turns to me. “Dad’s gonna kill you.”
“You think?” I shrug as I consider my work, paint splotches all up and down my arms, across my clothes, and likely in my hair. “I think it’s an improvement.”
“It’s …” Lee squints, walks up to one of the walls where a small shack is painted, then points. “Is that a couple of guys making out in a hammock …?”
I smile distantly at the sight of my little beachside shack. It’s the same dream home I imagined with Vann and myself, living on the water, right where he craves to return to, where we belong. I guess whenever I let the paint take over, there’s just no censoring or controlling what comes out of my wild, uninhibited strokes. My heart when I paint even let go of whatever negative feelings I have right now with him or what he last said to me; I just feel love.
“Dad’s gonna kill you,” Lee repeats. Then he turns and looks at me, his eyes softening. “You miss painting?”
I give him one short look, then slowly nod.
Lee lumbers over to an old thrown-out chair and drops into it like it isn’t covered in dust and cobwebs twisting around the legs. “I heard you and Vann broke up. That true?” He scratches a spot on his head. “You guys actually, like, ended things?”
I shrug. “I don’t really know, to be honest. Still in the air.”
“Huh.” Lee keeps scratching at his head then inspecting his fingers. “I guess he was bad after all, huh?”
I don’t even have the energy for intelligent banter. Maybe Lee is the perfect company to have right now. Simple questions. Dumb answers. No thought. “He wasn’t all bad.”
“Wish I went to the Strongs for Halloween. Then I would have seen Vann kick Julio’s ass.”
“Wasn’t much of an ass-kicking. You didn’t miss much.”
“Huh. Still, never liked that Julio guy.”
I shrug. “I feel like Vann should have kept his temper. It was a mistake to go at him like that.”
“Thought you guys were all in love or somethin’.”
“I don’t know what we were.”
“Huh.” Lee lets the chair spin as he peers at each wall, his eyes weirdly alight. “Remember when Mom and Dad used to take us to that beach town every summer? It was for a festival or something. Is that what this is? The beach town? Is that what you painted?”
“Maybe. That was so long ago. We must’ve been … what, ten?”
“Nine, ten, I guess.” He picks at his nails. “I wanna go again.”
I study Lee’s face as he fidgets with his fingers. The way we’re talking right now, how we used to talk before puberty hit and we both got weird and all these tensions that didn’t exist suddenly made our brotherhood complicated, is strangely healing to me. Of all people to suddenly pull through for me, my stepbrother is the very last on a long list of names.
Second to last.
Later when I’m in the kitchen fixing myself a sandwich, I hear a shout from the garage. Carl’s come home. The door flies open and in storms my very angry stepfather. “TOBY!” he bellows out, furious. “What in the HELL did you do to my garage??”
I lean against the counter and face him. “Bad day at work?”
He’s in his dark blue mechanic’s uniform, the stench of grease emanating off of him in waves. He jabs a finger in the air, pointing to the garage. “Explain to me what the hell you did to my garage!”
“Made it pretty,” I answer blithely, licking off a