Chapter 4 - What Bryce Thought Was Funny
Mason didn't reach for it this time.
"He's not going to stop," he said.
"No. He's not."
"What am I supposed to say back?"
I sat down across from him again. "What do you want to say back?"
He looked at the phone like it belonged to a stranger. "I don't know. I never really thought about Bryce being like that. I mean — I knew he said stuff sometimes. I figured it was just—"
"Just joking around?"
His mouth closed. He heard it. His own words from the car, handed right back to him.
"Yeah," he said.
"Mason, the people who laugh loudest are always the ones calling it a joke. That's the trick of it. That's what makes it easy to keep doing forever."
He picked up the phone and read the new message. His expression stayed flat, but something moved behind his eyes. He turned the screen toward me.
Bryce had sent a meme — one of those that drops a medical word in as the punchline. Under it he'd typed: *your waiter tonight lmaooo*
I looked at it for exactly one second. Then I looked at my son.
"What are you going to do?"
"I don't know."
"Yes you do."
He looked at the screen again. His thumbs hung over it. Then he flipped the phone face-down on the table.
"I can't just text him back like it's a normal night," he said.
"No," I said. "You can't."
"But if I say something, he's gonna think I'm being weird about it."
"Probably."
"And then he tells the other guys."
"He might."
Mason rubbed the back of his neck with both hands. "This is hard."
"Yes," I said. "Doing the right thing is almost always harder than skipping it. That's the whole reason most people skip it."
He sat with that a while. Then he picked the phone back up. He typed slow. Deleted it, started over. Deleted it again. The third time he didn't delete it. He set the phone down and pushed it across to me.
*That wasn't funny. The guy was just doing his job. I shouldn't have texted you about it.*
I read it twice. It wasn't a speech. It wasn't polished. But it was honest, and he'd built it himself, word by word.
"Send it," I said.
He took it back and pressed send, then turned the phone straight over again like he couldn't stand to watch the reply come in.
"He's gonna think I'm an idiot," Mason said.
"Maybe. Or maybe he sits with it for a minute."
"Bryce doesn't really sit with stuff."
"People can surprise you."
Mason looked at the wooden box, still open on the table. He reached in and lifted out the graduation photo again — Nathan in the cap and gown, that wide-open grin.
"Did he have friends?" Mason asked. "Like actual friends?"
"Yes," I said. "Good ones. People who saw Nathan and not a diagnosis."
"Was it hard for him? Growing up?"
I wanted to answer that one straight. "Sometimes. People could be cruel. But Nathan had this way of not hauling it around with him. He'd come home wrecked over something a kid said, and by breakfast he was himself again. I asked him once how he pulled that off." I stopped. "He said, 'I don't want to waste a good day being angry at someone who already forgot about me.'"
Mason set the photo down soft.
His phone lit up. He turned it over slowly.
Bryce had answered. Mason read it, and his face cycled through about three things in four seconds. He held the screen up to me without a word.
*lol ok whatever man. you're so sensitive lately. is this about your mom making you do volunteer stuff or something*
I watched him read it a second time.
"He thinks somebody put you up to it," I said.
"I know."
"You going to set him straight?"
Mason looked at the message a long moment. Then he laid the phone down, face-up this time.
"Not tonight," he said. "I need to think first."
It was the most grown-up sentence he'd said all night. I didn't point that out. I just nodded.
May you like
Then he asked me something I wasn't ready for.
"Mom — do you think Ben knew? At the restaurant. Do you think he could tell what I was doing?"
