Home is a Four Letter Word

chapter three

Mid-March

College admissions letters came throughout the month.

Jake had been the one to bring in the mail everyday since he was sent off to preschool. There was something about seeing it all before anyone else in the family did that made him feel included in their lives even when they wouldn't tell him about why there was a new bill from the Anderson's car lot, or why the hell they were getting so many credit card offers when none of them had a credit card to begin with. It was such a simple thing, but it made Jake feel a sense of control in his life. Some days he wondered who would pick it up after he left for college, and how long it would even take them to realize it was all stacking up before someone would be bothered to go check the mailbox.

Jake had only applied to four schools, and now all but one had given him a response. He toyed with the newest letter in his hand—an unopened envelope from Harvard—attempting to feel if it was going to be acceptance or not. Shrugging his backpack off his shoulders onto the kitchen floor, Jake tapped it along the white granite countertop, wondering if he should even bother to open it. Applying to Harvard was a joke. It was debatable if he was going to get in, but he hadn't expected to, and he didn't want to go even if he did. Hunter and Aaron had bet on it because if one of them was going to make it to an Ivy League, it definitely would have been Jake. Jake was the only person they knew that had planned to go to college, so at this point his decisions were just the laughing stock of his friend group since none of them gave a shit either way. There were two months left until decision day and Jake wouldn't lie and say he hadn't thought about it every day he went to school to face the same boring prospects of a future that everyone else was encouraged to take up in this town.

"Was my package in there?" McKenna slid into the kitchen—fuzzy socks and all—to investigate what Jake had brought in.

"Nah."

He held up the letter to his sister with a smug grin, watching her break into a smirk as she bounced over to the counter top, her loose sun-kissed brown curls like springs with her energy. She nudged Jake's arm with her elbow, pushing him to open it because in reality, she had likely bet on it too.

"Alright, alright." He swatted her away, which was no difficult feat.

McKenna was all but 5'2," an impressively short height for a Holmes child at sixteen. She made up for her height with her attitude and ardor, a deadly combination for anyone who tried to cross her in an argument. McKenna Holmes may not have looked like much, but she was the queen of everyone's gossip and could end a person's career before it even started. Jake was honestly terrified of how much she knew about their classmates sometimes. It made an interesting game of secrets between the two of them—always locked in a stalemate until one of them broke down and needed the other's help.

Jake opened the letter as quickly as he could to get it over with. The jagged edges of the envelope threatened to give him a papercut as he tried reading it before he could even get it out. Skimming over the first few lines, he saw exactly what he needed to see. 'We regret to inform you that...'

"Didn't get in."

"Bam." She clicked her tongue. "Katherine owes me ten bucks."

"You bet against me?" Jake dropped the letter on the counter in ridicule.

"Yeah, why not? Kat's too confident in your abilities. Someone needed to humble her."

Jake shook his head, but he wasn't at all surprised.

"Bitch."

The side door opened with a clamor that made Jake flinch. Their father barreled in behind it, kicking off his muddy boots on the side as the door crashed shut behind him. He never tried to catch the door from slamming and it made Jake cringe every time he thought about his mother's voice telling him not to slam the door as a child in order not to wake him up from a drunken nap. His father reeked of sweat. It cascaded off of him as he crossed the kitchen, stopping at the sight of Jake before he got to the living room doorway.

"Aaron still swingin' by tonight to fix that damn door?" He grumbled in question, looking at Jake like he was ready to fall asleep.

The door in question was the door to the barn—a door McKenna had insisted she didn't break even though she was the only one who used it going in and out for her horse.

"As far as I know." Jake humored his father, but then held up his letter with a flat smile. "Harvard rejected me."

It didn't take long for Jake to see the smug smile that buried itself under layers of hard wrinkles on his father's face. It was disheartening, but it was better than the alternative. That didn't stop Jake's stomach from dropping when his father nodded to speak.

"Good." He paused. "You know the type of people that go there."

Academics? Scholars? The future lawyers and leaders of America? The type of people that might amount to something Jake might have wanted to be if he were raised under similar circumstances. He knew he would never have daddy's money or a perfect ACT, but what he did have was nothing to sneeze at either. Jake was intelligent, he was driven, and he wouldn't take one rejection as an evaluation of his character. Harvard meant nothing to him, but it meant everything to his father who agreed with his rejection out of spite that his son could be 'liberalized,' as if he wasn't teetering the border already.

"Don't worry, not leaving the state anyways. Tuition costs too much."

His father scoffed at the very idea of college at all. It was a difficult pill to swallow for the both of them. College meant Jake leaving, and leaving meant creating a new life somewhere else away from his family. His father resented him for wanting it, and Jake resented his father for trying to hold him back.

They left it at that. His father walked off, presumably to take a shower, and Jake was left watching him retreat before the conversation turned nasty. He grumbled as he walked up the stairs, a bellowing commentary that made Jake subconsciously roll his eyes.

"Tell your momma the Anderson's need eggs again."

Tell her yourself.

"Yeah, okay."

With that cue, McKenna slinked back into the living room to watch what Jake knew was reruns of Criminal Minds on the TV, and Jake stood alone in the kitchen, rejection letter in hand, trying to make sense of it all.