The Upside of Falling by Alex Light

Author:Alex Light [Light, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperTeen
Published: 2020-02-17T18:30:00+00:00

Becca

WHEN IN DOUBT, RETURN TO the trusty pro-con list.

I made myself at home in Brett’s bedroom. Which is probably one of the weirder places I’ve been this year. Weeks ago, if someone told me I’d be spending my Saturday afternoon sitting on Brett Wells’s bed, I would have laughed in their face.

Once Brett dug out a notebook and pen from his desk drawer, I went to town. I drew a line down the center of the page and wrote PROS on one side and CONS on the other. The list was to decide whether or not it was a good idea to tell his mom about his dad’s affair. Or, on a heavier note, possible multiple affairs.

Brett was sitting at his desk chair, his head still in his hands. It was physically painful for me to see him like this and not know what to do to help him. I of all people should know some magical word to ease the pain at least momentarily. But nope. I had nothing. Nada. His world was falling apart and the only solution my brain could conjure up was a dumb list.

It was quite literally all we had. The pressure was on.

I tapped the pen against my knee, thinking out loud. “A con could be that there’s always the slim chance it wasn’t your dad we saw.” Brett made a noise, almost a snort, and didn’t look up. “Maybe telling your mom will do more harm than good. Like she’d prefer to not know instead of everything changing with the truth. Ignorance is bliss and all that.”

“That would make two of us,” Brett mumbled.

I filled in the CON side of the list with the two bullets.

“Pro would be that you don’t have to keep a secret from your mom and that she deserves to know the truth. I’d want to know if it were me.”

Brett stood up. “This is ridiculous, Becca. We’re seriously using a list to figure out whether we should break my mom’s heart?”

I gripped the notebook a little tighter. “They help me make decisions.”

“But it’s not helping me,” he said, storming out of the room.

I hated this. Feeling like there was nothing I could say or do that would make this easier on him. But there had to be something. This wasn’t some book I was reading, where the future was already planned out. I still had a chance to change Brett’s story. So what was I going to do?

I had an idea. It was there, in the back of my mind. I kept thinking about last night, when Brett said he wanted to be distracted, that it would help him process. And I had the perfect distraction. But it was personal. Like, very personal. And it was one of the things I wrote on my own pro-con list about dating Brett—the one con that scared me the most.

I tried to put everything into perspective. Brett was going through a lot right now, and I knew exactly what having your world turned upside down felt like.

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