Free The Belief in Angels by J. Dylan Yates

a few things that inspire him to move from the bed. I’ll list them in order of frequency: going to the bathroom, riding his motorcycle, and doing art projects. One day last fall he got out of the bed and actually started taking classes at an art school in Boston. He turned the basement into his studio, which includes a dark room. He works nocturnally. We barely see him.
    Everything Jack produces is beautiful. He makes stained glass windows and lamps and sand paintings, and after taking the photography classes he started making great photos, which he sells to pay his bar tabs.
    I like the creative part about Jack. I still draw and I’ve started oil painting this year. So we have something in common. But he hardly ever speaks to me, and I mostly avoid him.
    The artistic part of Jack is the reason Wendy puts up with his lack of ambition, his sleeping around, and the fact that he’s catatonic. She loves the idea of having an artist boyfriend.
    Also, and most importantly—in Wendy’s mind, at least—Jack is handsome.I don’t think he’s heart-stoppingly handsome like Omar Sharif or Cat Stevens, but he looks like a surfer version of the Marlboro Man. This is important because even though Wendy has a lot of self-esteem about her intelligence, she was a fat kid, and she’s really self-conscious about her weight, which is why she’s always on a diet. I guess she figures people won’t think she’s that bad-looking if somebody she thinks is handsome, like Jack, likes her. So I think she overlooks the parts of Jack that don’t fit with an ideal mate.
    In my opinion, she looks just fine. People sometimes tell her she looks like Jennifer O’Neill when she straightens her hair with the big pink soup-can curlers.
    She’s weird about my weight too. People constantly tell me I’m too skinny, but whenever Wendy hears them say it she goes crazy. “She’s perfect at this weight,” she yelled at our pediatrician when he tried to lecture her about feeding me. I had to go see him for a tetanus shot when I stepped on a rusty nail and the whole way back from my visit she kept ranting that it was better to be thin than fat and I should consider myself lucky. She told me that even if I didn’t turn out pretty, if I was skinny I’d be considered attractive.
    I could care less about that stuff.
    That January, when I was eight, Jack got hired to sail a boat from Massachusetts through the Panama Canal to California. Key West was a port stop for him. Wendy managed to weasel his sailing information from the boat’s owner, even though Jack told her he wanted privacy, and she surprised him with a visit. Jack likes women, and Wendy grabs every opportunity to interrupt his “adventures.”
    It’s a long drive down to the Keys, and when we checked into a hotel it was almost midnight. Wendy told us she was going to see Jack and we should go to sleep. Four hours later, she came back to the hotel a Complete Emotional Mess. She woke me up and proceeded to have a meltdown. She didn’t bother to keep her voice down, but my brothers, in the other double bed, slept right through her yelling.
    I guess when she arrived at the dock Jack was partying with the crew and his new girlfriend who had been sailing with them for a few days.
    “I can’t believe I trusted that asshole. He’s fucking her while I’m waiting for him to call me. I will never trust that bastard again. Never trust men, you dig me? Their penises do all their thinking for them.”
    I didn’t understand what she meant by “thinking with his penis,” but I tried to give her good advice. I told her what I’ve heard my teenage neighbors say to one another when they get mad at their boyfriends: “You can find another boyfriend. You don’t need him.”
    Wendy, apparently, thought this was a good solution. The next day, she paid for our breakfast and gave me the room key after we changed into our swimsuits to go down to the hotel pool.
    “Watch your brothers and be good. I’ll