Rocco pressed his forehead to his knees. He thought about Lena. Lena with the crooked smile and the book of Rilke poems she carried like a bible. Last month, at a party, she’d pulled him into a closet just to show him a glow-in-the-dark sticker of a jellyfish on the inside of the door. “See?” she’d said. “Even in the dark, there are things that make their own light.”
He heard her hesitate on the other side of the door. For a terrible, hopeful second, he thought she might say something real. I’m scared for you. I miss you. You’re not your father. But she just sighed, her footsteps retreating down the hall.
His phone buzzed. Leo. “Party at the point. Be there or be square, old man.”
“Ma,” he said, leaning over the railing. rocco-s pov 17
Rocco stared at the screen. The point. A gravel beach down by the old quarry where kids went to drink warm beer and pretend they weren’t terrified of Monday morning. Last week, he’d watched a girl named Mia throw a bottle into the lake so hard it skipped six times. She’d laughed, but her eyes had been dead. He recognized that look. It was the same one he saw in the mirror after his father’s monthly phone call—the one where the old man promised to come to a baseball game and then found a reason to cancel by the second sentence.
He picked up his phone. Leo’s text still glowed. “Party at the point.”
He typed back: “Maybe.”
“I’m going out. But I’ll be home by ten.”
The Weight of Seventeen
He’d kissed her then. Not because he was brave, but because for one second, the pressure inside him found a pinhole. She kissed him back, and for three songs’ worth of time, he forgot he was seventeen. He forgot the absent father, the tired mother, the screaming silence. He just was . Rocco pressed his forehead to his knees
Then she’d pulled away and said, “You’re shaking.”
“Okay,” he said. His voice came out steady. That was another skill: the steady voice. The one that said I’m fine when his insides were a riot.
Rocco stood up. He walked to his mirror and looked at the boy staring back. Dark circles. A jaw that needed shaving but not badly enough to bother. A small scar above his eyebrow from a bike crash when he was twelve—back when pain was simple, just gravel and blood and a mother’s kiss. Last month, at a party, she’d pulled him