You Say It First - Katie Cotugno Page 0,60

in the backyard or pile driving one another into the couch. He’d broken Matt’s front tooth once by hitting him in the face with the remote control for the DVD player, but they’d never done anything like this.

Colby hit his brother again, then another time, anger erupting out from an inside deeper than he knew he had. He could feel something warm and wet, spit or blood or maybe both, slipping down the side of his chin. His fist caught his brother in the cheekbone. Matt’s work boot caught him square in the chest. “You’re an asshole,” someone said, though Colby wasn’t sure which one of them was talking. After that, he didn’t hear anything at all.

Twenty

Colby

“Welp,” Meg reported miserably when she called him late that night, Colby’s phone vibrating wildly across the nightstand, “turns out Rebecca Latimer Felton was a giant white supremacist.”

“Wait, what?” Colby shifted around on the mattress as gingerly as possible. His ribs were bruised, according to the ER doc; every time he breathed it felt like someone was stomping on his lungs. “Who?”

“Rebecca Latimer Felton!” Meg repeated, like if she said it enough times he’d somehow magically know who she was talking about. He could hear her typing angrily away in the background. “The first woman in the Senate! I’m doing my independent study about her, remember? Or I was, at least.”

“Oh,” Colby said, wincing. “Yeah. Whoops.”

“Yeah, Colby, whoops.” Meg sounded aggrieved. “I read all these scholarly sources about her, I had a freaking children’s book, and it wasn’t until I looked at Wikipedia of all places that anybody even thought to mention the fact that she owned slaves and was, like, very much in favor of lynching.”

Colby grimaced. “Shit.”

“That’s what I’m saying! My project is due in six days, and it turns out she’s basically the poster woman for the most awful, racist, violent kind of white feminism.”

“I mean, I keep trying to tell you that about politicians,” Colby said, leaning back against the pillows. His head throbbed. They’d only just gotten back from the hospital a little while ago; his mom had gone directly into her bedroom and slammed the door loud enough to rattle the whole house. “They’ll let you down every time.”

Meg made a strangled sound. “It’s not funny, Colby!”

“I’m not joking,” he countered immediately. “This lady sounds like she was hot garbage, which is a good example of why you shouldn’t, like, put all your faith in—”

“Okay, okay,” Meg interrupted. “I get it. But can you just feel bad for me without telling me why it’s stupid to believe in government altogether?”

“I do feel bad for you,” Colby promised, though truthfully he wasn’t super surprised there’d been gaps in her research. Meg meant well—Colby knew that now—but still he got the feeling she only knew what she was talking about, like, half the time. “I mean, I feel a lot worse for all the people she thought she had the right to own, but—”

“I mean, yes, obviously. Thank you.” Meg sighed. “Are you okay?” she asked a moment later. “Your voice sounds funny tonight.”

“I’m surprised you can hear me at all, the way you’re pounding on those keys over there,” Colby informed her. “Whenever I picture you working, I imagine that gif of Kermit the Frog slamming away on the typewriter. Arms flying all around, clouds of dust everywhere . . .”

Meg laughed at that. “Oh, that’s how you imagine me?”

“It is,” Colby said immediately. “A very sexy Kermit the Frog.”

“Perv.”

“Prude.”

“That’s what you think,” Meg shot back immediately. Colby smiled, then winced as the butterfly on his cheekbone pulled his skin. His voice sounded weird because there was gauze shoved up into his sinuses: Matt had broken his nose, which Colby guessed was fair enough considering the fact that Matt had needed seven stitches in his lip.

“What are you up to this week?” he asked Meg now, wanting to change the subject. He didn’t tell her about his fight with Matt. It felt too complicated to explain, even to her, on top of which he knew it would just underline the stuff she already thought about his family, the idea that they were too dumb or backward to settle their disagreements with SAT words and civilized debate.

To be fair, he didn’t know if she actually thought that.

Also, he was a little embarrassed.

After they said good night, Colby lay on his back on the mattress for a long time, trying not to jostle his busted self too badly and also not