Page 38 of Notice Me, Jameson Hart
I push the door open and find him at his desk, scrolling through TikTok videos on his phone. He glances up.
“Hey, Kev. That was pretty funny with Dad?—”
“I know about Stanford.” The words fall out of my mouth, tumbling to the floor in a jumbled mess.
Adam freezes, his thumb hovering over his phone. “What?” His voice is barely above a whisper.
I step fully into the room and close the door behind me. My legs are jelly, but I force myself to remain upright. “I found your application. The one in the wooden box in your closet. I was snooping—I’m sorry—but I found it and I read it, and I know you’re thinking about going to California.”
Adam sets his phone down slowly, deliberately. His jaw works as if he’s chewing on words before deciding which ones to spit out. “When?”
“A couple of weeks ago. The day all your friends came over after football camp.”
He nods, more to himself than to me. “I wondered. The papers were folded wrong.” A ghost of a smile crosses his face. “You always were terrible at putting things back exactly how you found them.”
“You knew?”
“Suspected.” He leans back in his chair and runs both hands through his hair. “Believe it or not, a part of me is relieved. I’ve been carrying this around for months, and having someone else know?—”
“Why didn’t you tell us?” The hurt bleeds through despite my best efforts to sound neutral.
Adam’s shoulders slump. “How do you tell your brothers that you might want to break up the band? That this whole plan we’ve had since we were kids might not be what you want or need anymore?”
“But we’re supposed to do everything together. That’s what we’ve always said.”
“I know.” His voice cracks slightly. “And that’s the problem, isn’t it? When have any of us ever done anything apart? Truly apart?”
The question hangs between us. I think about all our shared birthdays, shared classes, shared dreams. Even our separate interests—theater and sports—have always orbited around a central truth: we’re the Pryor boys. Inseparable.
“The essay,” I say quietly. “You wrote about wanting to know who you are without us.”
Adam’s eyes widen. “You read the essay too?”
“I read everything. It was beautiful—the part about teamwork and brotherhood.”
Adam shifts in his desk chair, crossing his legs at the ankles. I’m suddenly reminded of all the times we’ve been together,the two of us—after nightmares, before big tests, whenever we needed the silent support of a brother. I love him, and I don’t want to have to let him go.
“I still haven’t finished it,” he says. “I’ve written it out three different times and thrown them all out. I can’t find it in me to bite the bullet.”
“Because of us?”
“Because of you, Robbie, Dad, football—this whole life we’ve built here.” He scrubs his face with his hands. “What if I’m making a huge mistake, Kevin? What if I go all the way to California and realize everything I need is right here?”
“What if you don’t go and spend the rest of your life wondering?”
Adam looks at me, really looks at me, and I see my fears reflected in his eyes. “When did you become this sage?”
“I’ve been taking lessons from Dad.”
I’m relieved that the outcome that I’d been dreading didn’t come to fruition. That there was no yelling, no fists flying, no cold shoulder. But there’s still one crucial piece missing from this conversation.
“You have to tell Robbie,” I say.
“I know.”
“Soon,” I urge.
“Kevin—”
