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except for amber waves of grain.’” He exaggerated his father’s affected Minnesotan accent. “There are plans already in place for where I’m going to go to college and what I’ll study when I get there, and he doesn’t give a shit about how I feel. I haven’t even been included in the negotiations. Negotiations?” He scoffed. “Geez. Listen to me. It’s like he puts words in my mouth, but he’s nowhere near me. It sounds like I’m talking about a business take-over or making a deal.”
    Kevin hit the trunk of the tree he stood beside with the stick in his hand. He drew his brows close together and pursed his lips in frustration. Hugo didn’t know what had happened to set Kevin off, but he obviously had a strained relationship with his dad. Maybe they’d fought that day. When Kevin looked up at Hugo, his eyes were glassy.
    “I just wish what I wanted mattered for once. Do you know what I mean?”
    Hugo nodded. For almost three years, Hugo had been living on his father’s treatment schedule, only buffered some by Charisse. He hadn’t really shared any of that with Kevin yet, not wanting to be pitied. Kevin had never met Hugo’s dad, whose workspace was hidden deep in the Hormel laboratory, far away from where he delivered mail. Although by that point, the days Hugo’s dad was even able to be at work were few and far between. He needed the health insurance though, so his dad had to keep working as long as he could.
    Hugo also made sure to be waiting outside for Kevin on those mornings when his dad was home sick. By the time evening arrived on the days his dad worked, they were long gone from Hugo’s house, if they’d spent any time there at all after their shifts. When his dad was in town, Hugo avoided having friends at his house. It was something Hugo consciously did with everyone after one of his classmates asked what was wrong with his dad, who was thin and gaunt. He didn’t want pity. He didn’t want people, for one second, even pondering phrases like, “Oh, poor Hugo is going to lose his father,” or “Hugo’s dad looks sick.”
    But Hugo understood not wanting to disappoint his father. That’s why he kept working his job, the one his dad’s boss helped create when he saw a need, and why Hugo continued to try to do well in school. The look on his dad’s face when he scanned Hugo’s report cards had never been harsh, not like he suspected Kevin’s father’s face would look. Hugo’s dad didn’t even get upset when Hugo got a C- in Geometry. That was because his dad knew how hard Hugo had tried, how challenging math was for him to grasp. It just wasn’t his strong suit even if it was his father’s, and his dad was okay with that.
    Maybe, just maybe, he was also okay with it because as the end of his life approached, Hugo’s dad knew that knowing how to solve for x was really unimportant in the grand scheme of things. If Hugo really needed to solve for x , he knew the people who could help him figure it out. That was what was important to Hugo’s father near the end: people and knowing Hugo would always have someone helping him when he needed it. Yet Hugo had started to push against the help, the support other people readily offered to him, as he dealt with the changes of his life circumstances as his father wasted—body eaten away to practically nothing by chemotherapy and cancer.
    Maybe it was time Hugo stopped trying to deal with things alone and opened up to someone like Kevin in the same way he had with his own sister when he realized he was attracted to boys rather than girls. Charisse had never lost respect for Hugo when he was upset or beaten down when yet another test came back for their father saying the cancer had spread and the end was near.
    Even though Kevin and Hugo had very different problems, Hugo saw the similarities. They both wanted to be respected by their fathers. Respected, loved, and accepted for who they were. If Kevin didn’t have that acceptance, then Hugo