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Buck calls.
It shouldn't be weird, but Buck doesn't call. Buck and Dad are always talking, but they're usually on FaceTime, glancing at each other as they cook or play video games or do housework. If Chris didn't know better from having been in his dad's car while he's working, he would assume that Buck was on the dashboard for every ride, chatting with Dad's passengers about the latest LA emergency.
Dad glances at the phone and frowns a little, but he hits speakerphone automatically. "Hey, you've got me and Chris."
"Hi, Buck!" says Chris.
"Hi, Chris," says Buck, his voice all wrong. "Um, Eddie, I think I should just have you."
Dad and Chris exchange a look. "Okay," says Dad, hitting the speakerphone button again and picking up the phone. "Should I go to another room?"
"Probably," Chris hears, even more distant. Sometimes, he feels like there's this string in his heart, eight-hundred miles long, reaching all the way back to Los Angeles. Once Dad moved to El Paso, he was expecting it to break, but it's still there, and every time he thinks he knows every place it's going, he thinks of another. Not just Buck, but Carla, his friends, his school, the parks he liked, his mother's grave.
He's never felt so far from home.
"Okay," Dad says again. He gives Chris a tight smile, not like he's trying to reassure him exactly, but like he doesn't want Chris to worry yet.
Buck's not calling about a surprise party, though.
Chris's cereal has been in the milk for too long; it's soggy and starting to fall apart. If he was still living with his grandparents, he would have to eat it. Abuela wouldn't let him leave the table until he'd finished. But Dad gets that soggy cereal is gross and eating it makes Chris feel a little sick.
He dumps it and grabs an orange out of the fridge, putting all his focus into peeling it, pulling off every shred of white on the outside, separating every section without breaking the skin, popping out the seeds and dropping them in his empty cereal bowl. He takes as long as he possibly can, but Dad still isn't back. Chris can hear the hints of his voice, but not enough to read his tone, not enough to guess what's happening aside from the obvious.
He has three sections of orange left when Dad comes back in. His face is red from trying to scrub off the tears, but Chris still knows they were there. It's obvious.
"Who is it?" Chris asks.
Dad jerks, like it's somehow unthinkable that Chris would know someone got hurt or died. It's not the first time he's heard this news.
Dad swallows. "Bobby."
"Is he hurt?"
"No. I mean, he was. He—"
"He died," Chris supplies. Dad shouldn't have to say it.
Dad's face cracks open and he's crying again.
*
In English class, they did a poetry unit, and Chris had liked it more than he'd expected. Not all the poems, obviously, but he likes poetry in general, as it turns out. Robert Frost and Emily Dickinson and even Shakespeare, the rhythm of the sonnets, the language. He'd liked the unit so much he went to the library and got out a poetry anthology, so he could find other poems he'd like too.
He brought the book back to his grandparents' house and flipped through it in his room, stopping on any title that caught his eye, letting the words wash over him.
On page 78, he found, "Childhood is the Kingdom Where Nobody Dies," and he felt his heart stop.
It wasn't exactly that he wanted to read it. But he had to. He couldn't have stopped if he tried. And once he'd read it, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He went online and printed a copy, kept it hidden like contraband under his bed because he didn't want Abuela to find it when she was cleaning and ask about it.
It's not really that Chris thinks he grew up when Mom died. But if he's really honest, he thinks he might have grown up before then. Sometimes, he thinks he was born grown up. He was still a kid, he still said stuff like "must you always be kissing a person," but for as long as he can remember, he's known mothers and fathers could die. Would die.
He'd expected Dad to be first, of course. Dad's death had always been the fear, the nightmare that woke him up at four in the morning with no possibility for reassurance because Dad was in Afghanistan. That had been the second country he learned how to find on a map, after the United States, and he used to look at the atlas in his bedroom before bed, one finger on Texas, one on Afghanistan, measuring the distance he couldn't understand.
Mom's death came like he was getting hit by a car himself. It was like for his whole life there had been a steady stream of traffic from the left and no cars in sight on the right, so he'd been looking left, waiting for a break, and when there finally was one he forgot to check right and got hit as soon as he stepped into the street.
Sometimes, he thinks it's not really all that bad, losing a mother. Not because it wasn't awful, but because he could have lost so much more. Dad could have died in Afghanistan, or in that well collapse, or when the sniper shot him, or even just on a regular call, something unremarkable. Just a fire. And Buck could have died when the truck fell, when the lightning hit him. In a way, he's lucky that only Mom died, when he could have lost so many other people.
It could be worse is never the comfort it's supposed to be.
Watching Dad fall apart in the kitchen, it hits Chris for the first time that Dad's parents are alive. He'd never really thought about it before, the way he didn't think about Mom dying until it happened. At some point, his grandparents will die, but that's to be expected. Most of his friends have had grandparents die. But it's easy to forget that grandparents are, well, parents.
And Bobby wasn't actually Dad's Dad, but sometimes Chris thought he was more of a dad than Abuelo was. He did more of the things dads do, giving advice and hosting parties and taking care of people. Bobby is—Bobby was—good at love.
"I'm sorry," he tells Dad, putting his arm around him. "I know how much he meant to you."
Dad pushes the heel of his hand into his eye, laughing a little through the tears. "When did you get so grown up?"
To be grown up is to sit at the table with people who have died, he does not say. But he thinks that a lot, every time he has a meal. He thought about it most before Dad came to Texas, when he ate every meal with his grandparents, who were alive, and imagined eating with his mom, who was dead, and his dad, who was eight hundred miles away.
His grandparents treated him like a kid, unfailingly, and he felt it most at meals. It was like he was on display, stuffed into clothes that didn't fit him anymore, or never had, the grandson suit that was smaller than he was, weaker. More perfect in some ways and more flawed in others.
He manages half a smile for his dad, even though he's crying too. "I guess it just happened."
*
Chris and Harry are Discord friends, but they don't really talk much. Or, really, they don't talk for long. Every few days, one of them will send "fortnite?" and the other will respond with an affirmative emoji, and they'll play a few games of Fortnite together. Not that Chris minds most of the time; they have an efficient friendship.
But he's staring at the blank message box now, trying to figure out what he's supposed to say. It's hard to remember what people said to him when Mom died, mostly because only the bad stuff stood out. There was a sea of bland condolences that washed over him like waves, warm and appreciated but ultimately temporary, and the rocks of sentiments like she's in a better place that came out of nowhere and hit him sometimes.
There's no right thing to say, from what Chris can tell. Just less wrong things.
diaznuts: buck told us u joined the dead parents club
im sorry it sucks
harry: thx
am i in the club if its my stepdad?
diaznuts: i think ur in the club if u feel like ur in the club
harry: dude idk how i feel
bad for my mom mostly
like she lost her husband but i didnt lose my dad yk?
diaznuts: yah i get that
im sad but im really worried about dad and buck
i know it's harder for them
harry: did u talk to buck?
may is worried about him 2 but she doesnt have his #
diaznuts: not much tbh
im gonna call him soon but idk
i think hes in bad shape
harry: give me his # ill send may after him lol
diaznuts: lmao poor buck
lmk if you want to talk more or play fortnite or wev
im around
harry: thx man
appreciate it
Chris finds Buck's contact on his phone, copies the number and sends it to Harry, but then he just looks at it for a while, trying to get his nerves up. Buck loves him, he knows that. But they haven't talked much since Chris came to Texas. At first, Chris was so mad at everything and everyone that he didn't want to talk. Buck called a couple times but stopped when Chris didn't pick up, and Chris hadn't known how to start calling him. Not without having more of a conversation. Not without an explanation of what had changed, and Chris still doesn't know.
Mostly, he thinks, he loves his dad more than he hates what happened, and it's not worth being mad anymore. But it doesn't feel like enough to say out loud, and it doesn't feel like a good enough reason for him to still be in El Paso, let alone for Dad to be here. For both of them to be away from Buck.
He takes a breath and hits the button to video call.
Buck declines basically immediately, before Chris's brain has even switched from being nervous about hitting call to being nervous about calling. But Buck is calling back so fast that it could have been an accident, except that he's calling back with no video.
Chris picks up anyway. "Hi, Buck."
"Hey, buddy," Buck says, his voice warm. "Are you okay? Is your dad okay?"
"Yeah. As good as we can be, anyway."
"What's up?"
"I wanted to check on you."
"You don't need to check on me."
"You check on me."
"Well, yeah," says Buck. "That's how it works. Adults check on kids."
"Kids can check on adults . We worry too."
"Are you worried about your dad?"
"Yeah. He feels really bad he wasn't there. I do too," he adds, a calculated risk. "It's my fault."
"Hey, hey," says Buck, the protest immediate and expected. "It's not your fault. You didn't do anything wrong."
"I know. But if I wasn't in Texas, he wouldn't be either."
Buck is quiet for a bit, then lets out a shaky exhale, like maybe he's trying to keep his voice under control. It's a mean trick, but if Buck wants to comfort him then Chris can work with that. "Is your dad with you?"
"No, he's doing some repair stuff."
"Don't tell him, but I'm glad he wasn't here for this."
"Really?"
"I knew he was safe. Both of you were. And you didn't know you should be worried."
The words hit harder than Chris was expecting, real pain shooting up his chest. They didn't know. Buck was going through one of the worst days of his life, and Dad hadn't been there to help. Chris hadn't heard about it. If Buck had been hurt—or worse—they would have heard, but they wouldn't have been there.
Buck is hurt, actually, and they still aren't there. All Chris can do is call, and Buck won't even let them see his face.
"It's worse not knowing," Chris says, surprised by the tone of his own voice. "I don't want to find out something happened eight hundred miles away and I couldn't do anything!"
Silence drags between them, until Buck finally says, "Yeah, I know what you mean. I was actually kind of happy when your dad couldn't get a job with the fire department there. Not without me to watch his back."
"Cars crash all the time," Chris says. "People can die anywhere."
"I know," says Buck. "I know. I know."
"I'm sorry." He's crying; he doesn't know when he started. "I love you. I want to be there when bad things happen."
"Yeah, me too. It's not really better."
"Really?"
"It is and it isn't. I don't want you or your dad to be in danger, but I can't stop that. So I guess I want to be there if you are."
"Yeah. I'm really sorry, Buck."
"It's okay."
"I'm sorry I left. That I took Dad away."
"You don't have anything to apologize for."
"But you miss us, right?"
Buck makes a weird noise. "Yeah. I miss you all the time."
"Okay. I miss you too. You can call me," he adds, in a fit of courage. "Not just Dad."
"And you can call me. Anytime. If I can't pick up, I'll call you back as soon as I can."
"Me too. May's worried about you," he adds. "I gave her your number, so she's going to call too."
"I'm fine," says Buck, and Chris doesn't believe him, not even a little. But he's done all he can for now.
*
"They set a date for the funeral," says Dad, a couple weeks later. "But, uh—it's Thursday."
Chris doesn't have to ask what funeral, nor does he have to ask why Dad sounds so guilty about it. Chris has a group presentation for history on Thursday. It's the big project for the whole semester, and Mr. Teixeira has been pretty clear that they need a good excuse to reschedule. A funeral might count, but it's not like he's related to Bobby or anything. And there's the group to consider, too. If it was just Chris, he'd probably take his chances, but he's got three other people to consider. Melissa and Cody have both been saying for weeks that they can't wait to get it over with. And Chris feels the same, if he's honest. He doesn't want to put it off for another week, not when Melissa will keep fine-tuning and fretting until the very last second. Not when they could be done.
"I can stay with Abuelo and Abuela," Chris says. "Just for a day or two."
"I don't have to go," Dad says, way too fast.
"Yes, you do. You should have gone back already. I know you would have, if it wasn't for me."
"Hey, that's not—"
"You'd still be in LA."
"I'm exactly where I want to be."
"Because you want to be with me. Not because you want to be here."
Dad exhales. "Yeah, of course I want to be with you."
"What if I don't want to be here?" Chris asks.
"I thought you said you were going to stay with your grandparents."
"For the funeral, yeah. But maybe once school is over, we could figure out how to move back."
"We don't have to."
"Dad."
"I know how much you like it here."
"You knew how much I liked chess too."
He huffs a little laugh. "Okay, yeah. Point taken."
"You know what I really like?" Chris finds himself asking. "Poetry."
"Poetry?"
"Yeah."
"Writing it?"
"No, just reading it." He swallows hard. "Do you want to read my favorite poem?"
"Yeah, of course."
He's shaking a little as he goes to his room to get it, finding the creased printout. He can't read it aloud, can't even meet Dad's eyes as he hands it over. What if Dad thinks it's stupid? What if he doesn't get it? Chris doesn't know if he gets it himself. The poem feels bigger than he is.
He can hear the clock ticking as Dad reads, aware each second passing. He counts them just for something to do, just so he won't be wondering what part Dad is at now.
"Did you read this in school?" Dad finally asks.
"No. I found it in the library. I was looking for new poems to read."
"It's beautiful," says Dad. His hands smooth the paper. "Did you tell Abuelo you like poetry?"
"No."
"He loves Pablo Neruda. He read a poem at me and Mom's wedding. I don't remember which one, but he will. You should ask him."
"I don't know why I didn't tell them about it," Chris admits, looking at the poem on the table under his dad's hands.
Dad snorts. "I do. It's not safe. You tell them something you like and they either act like it's nothing or like it's everything. Like chess for you, or ballroom dancing for me."
"Ballroom dancing?" Chris asks, making a face.
"Hell yeah, ballroom dancing. I was actually pretty good, I'll have you know. But the same thing happened. It could be competitive, so Abuela made it competitive, and I didn't like it anymore."
"Ballroom dancing?" Chris asks again.
"It's fun!"
"If you've got legs that work," Chris shoots back.
"I bet there's something you could do."
"I don't want to dance, Dad."
"You might like it."
"You don't even do it anymore."
"Yeah, well, maybe I'll start again. Once we're back in LA. I bet I could find somewhere with classes."
"Yeah, I think that would be good for you."
Dad folds the poem back up and hands it to Chris. "It's a really good poem. I can see why it's your favorite. You should tell me when you find other ones you like."
His heart twists. "Tell everyone I'm really sorry I can't come to the funeral."
"I will."
He packs a bag and Dad drops him off at his grandparents' on the way to the airport. He eats breakfast with Bobby's ghost, who smiles at him across the table, the way Bobby always smiled at him. He makes it through his classes thinking about where his dad is, when Buck will pick him up, when they'll go to the funeral.
He gives his presentation and it goes well, and he goes home and reads Pablo Neruda poems with his grandfather, and it turns out he loves them too.
Dad and Buck call and he tells them he loves them, that he can't wait to see them again.
He goes to bed early, and he's never felt so grown up.