Beneath The Skin(42)

I pull my phone from my ear while Mom and Dad quibble back and forth at my expense, then pull up the pic of Nell I took while I was at her place last night. She’s looking at me through the photo. I stare at it and try to see what she was seeing. I look for the contrasts and the light and dark and the essence of her hair that I captured … or whatever.

When I bring the phone back to my ear, I miss what my mom just said. “What?”

“Brant, I’m sorry to say this, but if you don’t straighten up—”

It’s my dad talking now. “What? But my grades are all good. We’re talking about my camera, Dad.”

“That camera is mine that you lost. I paid for it, so it’s mine. So you just lost my camera.”

“But it was stolen.”

He takes a deep breath, which always means I’m about to get it. “Son, if you don’t straighten up and figure out what you’re doing with my money at that college, I’m pulling you from it.”

“Huh?”

“You heard me.” He huffs into the phone, despite Mom’s efforts to calm him suddenly. “I’m pulling all your funding unless you take your education seriously. I’m sick of your … dickin’ around … on your mother and my dime.”

The words were difficult for him to say. They aren’t any easier to hear. “I’m not … dickin’ around,” I spit back.

“All your friends are graduating this year,” he says in a firm voice, hitting me as bluntly as a brick to the chest. “Doesn’t that concern you a bit, Brant?”

Something about the way my dad scolds me makes me feel an inch tall. “Of course it does. I just—”

“And where will you be? Still trying to pass basic algebra?”

“Dad …”

“I had a vision for you when I sent you off to that school. I saw you making a man out of yourself. I saw you growin’ up after all that stuff we had to deal with in high school. And I’m not talking about you and Clayton and your … antics.” He sighs and says something to my mom, I think to calm her down, then returns to me. “I saw you taking some darn responsibility by now. And now look at what you’re doing with my money. Literally letting it get stolen out of your hands. You’re leaving it on a car seat for some darn hoodlum to come take.”

I feel hollow after all the scolding. “I’m sorry.” The two words come out in a miserable drone. “I’m really trying, Dad. I just need—”

“Photography? What’re you gonna do with a photography degree?”

“Photograph,” I spit back.

“And you can’t very well do that without a camera, now can you?”

Or an ounce of Nell’s creativity. Or an understanding of balance, of light and dark and blah, blah, blah.

Dad sighs. The storm in his voice dissipates. “We’ll get you another camera. A replacement.”

I breathe a sigh of relief. “Thank you.”

“But you need to take a serious look at your life.”

I’m staring across the room at a blowup doll I bought Dmitri as a prank. Its big O mouth gapes at me as if caught mid-scream, frozen in surprise.

“Yes, sir,” I say back.

“We love you.”

“Love you too, Dad.”

I bring the phone back to my lap, which shows the picture I took of Nell for a short moment before the screen goes completely dark. Then all that’s left is my tired reflection staring back at me.

“Your dad?”

I look up at Dmitri, who’s leaning against the doorframe of his bedroom.

“And my mom,” I confirm, smirking down at my phone. “They’re not happy.”

“Neither was I.”

“I’ll pay for the window.”

Dmitri slumps into the room and drops onto the couch with a huff. Now we’re both sitting here in the stark silence, neither of us speaking, just the sound of our breathing filling the room.

“I’m working on a new story.”

I lift an eyebrow, turning to him. “What’s it about?”

“I haven’t figured it out yet.” Dmitri picks at his fingers, scowling. “I think it might be about Riley.”

“The girl in your writing class?”

“She’s really pretty. I like the way she sees the world. She’s got this way of turning really ugly stuff into beauty. She, like, wrote this scene about an angry wife revenge-murdering her husband one night and she made it sound like a choreographed dance. I could hear music with it.”

I wrinkle my face. “That story sounds horrible.”

“It wasn’t a nice one. But it was beautifully written.” Dmitri yawns, then slaps his own face. “I really need to start waking up earlier. I keep having lunch for breakfast.”