The Haters by Jesse Andrews

Author:Jesse Andrews
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2016-02-28T16:00:00+00:00

About two months after we got Dad Junior, Mom and Dad took me out to a special dinner. It was at a Himalayan restaurant in Squirrel Hill. There were prayer flags and pictures of mountains everywhere.

“Wessie,” said Mom, her eyes kind of teary, “we have some incredible news.”

Mom was pregnant. She was pregnant for the first time in her life. It was completely unexpected, for reasons they didn’t and probably couldn’t explain to me. There were all kinds of medical reasons why it shouldn’t have happened. But it did, and Mom and Dad were really, really happy.

I was, too. I mean, of course, deep down I had some vague worry that it would be weird. There would be me and then there would be this other kid who was Mom and Dad’s birth kid. And I knew that the birth kid would on some level be more their kid than I was. Even if they were insisting that wasn’t true. You’re as much our kid as you could possibly be, they used to tell me, not realizing it probably should have been, you’re as much our kid as anyone could possibly be.

But despite all that I was still happy. Because I knew it was making them really happy, and even at that age, that’s what I was all about. I was a company man.

“And so, uh,” said Dad. And he buried his mouth in his beard and turned to Mom, and I knew something bad was coming.

“Wessie, my family had a big dog when I was growing up,” said Mom. “And one day he just kind of went crazy. And he attacked me and bit me on the arm.”

“Oh no,” I think I said, stupidly.

“At your mom’s age, bud,” said Dad, “and just for a number of reasons, this pregnancy is going to be a very delicate thing, and then after that a baby is an even more delicate thing, and we know you love that dog, bud, we really do.” And he kept looking at me, and his beard kind of crumpled, and he said, “But we just don’t know if we can keep him around.”

“Dad Junior is never going to bite anyone,” I promised them, shaking my head, desperately trying to keep my eight-year-old shit together.

“You can just never know that, Wessie,” said Mom kind of quietly.

“I do,” I told them. “I do. I really do. He’ll never attack you. I promise. He’ll never attack anyone. I know him. I really, really know him.”

I remember just losing it. I remember the smell of the food and the weird sitarry music and the red fake-leather seat cushions that I was pushing my face into and just completely losing it with sadness and powerlessness while my dad tried to explain that when a dog attacks you as a kid, you can never relax around dogs ever again, and so this has been bad for your mom’s health, Wes, and that means bad for the baby’s health, too, all this stress and anxiety.

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