Free Gun Lake by Travis Thrasher

He’d be with them for the summer, then leave for Dover Academy in upstate New York. Maybe that would change him. Or maybe not. Maybe it would make him worse.
    What do you want me to do? Nothing I’m doing’s working out. I have to do something
.
    But again, God remained silent. Was he holding a grudge because he knew she was ticked off at him? She knew she had no right to be angry at her heavenly Father, but she was. This was her son she was making herself sick over. Her eldest son. Didn’t that mean anything? Didn’t her prayers, their prayers, count for anything?
    She thought of their attempts to get Jared involved at church. Jared claimed the whole youth group consisted of “nerds” and “stuck-up kids.” And Michelle had to admit he didn’t really fit in with the kids at church. So many of them seemed smug, self-assured, like they knew the answers. And Jared—Jared was a walking question mark. Questioning where God was if he existed, why high school was so awful, what had forced him to move in the middle of his junior-high years, who had designated the cliques at school. When cornered, he was adept at protecting himself with questions.
    But not recently. That was what worried Michelle most. Jaredused to argue and yell and scream at her, at Ted, at the other kids. But not anymore. Now he simply shrugged. And disappeared.
    God help me
.
    Those big-name speakers and authors made it sound so easy. The guys on the radio who talked about the right way to bring up your children, the correct way to love and discipline. She had to wonder if those “experts” had ever really had to deal with someone like Jared. She suspected they did, and they just didn’t talk about it. Sometimes, regardless of every bit of wisdom you managed to convey, your kids simply wanted to do their own stupid things.
    Jared snorted, stirred in his sleep, flopped a long arm off the bed. Michelle started to put it back, then decided there was no point. She just watched him, feeling closer to him at that moment than she had in months. He was so beautiful, slim like her, that golden flawless skin he’d inherited from his father. But she could look at him and still see the baby she had carried for nine months and taken twenty-four hours to push out into the world. The tiny but feisty infant who had cried with strangled, unlearned vocal cords and waved his little fists in the air. The energetic little boy whose smiles and hugs had given her back her faith.
    She had to laugh at the irony of that. But it was true. Back when Evan died, at a time when she had almost stopped believing God could be good, Jared had kept her going. He had reminded her that God is good and life is a precious gift.
    Maybe that’s why, of all her three children, he had always been her favorite. She wouldn’t admit that to anyone else, but it was true. Maybe that was part of the problem. Maybe she was being punished for having a favorite. Mothers weren’t supposed to do that.
    Is that why he’s being taken away from me? Father, you’ve got to help me here. I’m really stuck
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    Michelle sat in his room looking around, thinking, praying. And then she saw the photo. It was tacked onto the corkboard on the wall, a board full of photos of old friends and distant memories, along with other miscellaneous postcards and stubs and quotes.
    The photo had been taken two summers ago, the first summer after they had moved to Illinois. It had been their first family vacation in years, back to a vacation spot Ted remembered from being a child in Michigan.
    Michelle remembered smiling while Ted snapped the picture. It was of Jared and Michelle, sitting by the lake’s edge, smiling after a day spent fishing and riding on the boat.
    An idea came to her as she looked down at the Jared of two years ago. He was a different boy back then. How different, she didn’t know. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know. But maybe there was some of that boy left inside of him.
    The idea was a good one.