We Are Inevitable by Gayle Forman (read aloud txt) 📕

spartan. On the wall hang a dozen pine bins, locked. The one and only key is in my pocket.

Mom used to say that money problems are really math problems. Rehab stint number one: Sandy’s college savings. Wilderness program: a second mortgage on the store. Rehab stint number two: my college savings.

I wonder if Sandy operated by a similar logic. Ten bags of heroin: Mom’s SLR camera. Twenty tabs of oxy: my laptop computer. A handful of fentanyl patches: Ira’s prized signed first edition of Ken Kesey’s Sometimes a Great Notion.

I pull the key out of my pocket and open the first bin, which is alphabetically the last, X–Z: X, X Ambassadors, X-Ray Spex, XTC. And so on. According to the laminated index nailed to the inside of the door, there are 167 pieces of vinyl in this bin alone, a fraction of Sandy’s collection.

I open the other eleven bins, one by one. I run my hand across the top of outer plastic sleeves, sharp, meticulously straight, like a military formation. This is his legacy, the one thing Sandy refused to destroy, the thing he loved more than any of us.

Find a way to increase your income, Dexter said.

There are 2,326 records down here.

Money problems are just math problems, Mom said. I lock the bins and shove the one and only key back in my pocket.

You gotta promise me, Sandy said.

The three voices clash in my head as I climb back to the ash heap of our store. This is my brother’s true legacy.

But can I do it?

I ask myself this as I sit across from Ira, eating spaghetti from a box with sauce from a jar and parmesan cheese that tastes like sawdust. Can I sell of some Sandy’s records to get out of the crater he created? After what he did. After what I did.

“How are your friends?” Ira asks.

It takes me a second to remember Ira thinks I was chilling with friends this afternoon as opposed to hanging out with a CPA.

“Good, good,” I lie.

I’ll find a music club, the kind full of people like Sandy. I won’t sell all of them. Just enough to cover the mortgage payment for a few months, get us back on our feet. A few hundred. He’d barely notice.

(He would totally notice.)

“In fact,” I tell Ira, the idea taking root because I guess I can do it, “I’m going out with them tonight. If it’s okay to take the car.”

“Oh, that’s nice,” he says, even though it’s November 2 and even if I still had friends, none would be home on break now.

But that’s what Ira does. Trusts people. It’s his downfall.

The nearest musical venue is a club called the Outhouse, though it’s a “club” like the coffee served at C.J.’s is “fine Italian roast.” (It’s Folgers. I’ve seen the cans.) It’s basically a converted garage with a bare-bones bar and some fold-up plastic tables for merch sales.

I get there and case the joint, pay my cover, then come back to the Volvo, lift the hatch, pull out a crate, and set it on the curb. I can’t bring it inside. It weighs a ton. But what am I supposed to do? Announce “Vinyl for sale” like the salesman in Caps for Sale, the first book Ira says he ever read to me (in utero, the day Mom’s pregnancy test came back positive)? Do I flash my goods, like those guys in movies who hide a trove’s worth of stolen jewels in their trench coats? Given it’s mostly women hanging outside the club, I’m not sure how well that would go down. Do women even collect records, or is it more of a guy thing? Like serial killing.

If Sandy were here, he’d know exactly what to do. He had Ira’s memory for things like printings and value. Not to mention his radar. We’d be driving and he’d shout to stop the car at a particular yard sale, even though it looked like the dozens of similar ones we’d just passed. But Sandy somehow knew that at this sale, behind the rusted lawnmower, would be a box of records, and in that box, amid the Andrea Bocellis and Barry Manilows, a rare ten-inch bootleg of the Who. From inside the club, I hear the feedbacky blare of guitar. My head starts to throb. What was I thinking? I can’t do this. For so many reasons. I open the hatch, replace the crate, and lay the blanket on top of it.

“Hey, I know you.”

I turn around but don’t see anyone.

“Down here, dawg.”

And that’s when I see Chad Santos. Chad was a couple grades ahead of me in school, one of those beery, cheery snowboarder bros who went around high-fiving and saying things like, “Just living my best life.” A few years ago, Chad flew off a cliff while snowboarding, broke his back, and wound up in a wheelchair. Not living his best life anymore, is he?

“You here to see Beethoven’s Anvil?” Chad asks.

“The what now?”

“Beethoven’s Anvil.” Chad grins. “I’ve never seen any other guy from our town at one of their gigs.”

“Oh, I’m not here to see them.” I try to close the hatch, but Chad has angled himself in the way. “Sorry, do you mind?”

Chad peers into the Volvo. “What you got there?”

“Nothing.”

Chad reaches in and pulls off the blanket. “Those records?”

“No.”

“They look like records.”

“I mean, they are. But they’re not mine.”

“Are they Sandy’s?”

At the mention of my brother’s name, my heart ricochets, as if someone has reached into my chest and yanked it.

“You are Sandy’s brother, right?” Chad asks. “Sorry, I don’t remember your name.”

When I don’t answer, Chad sticks out his hand. He’s wearing high-tech fingerless gloves, fraying at the seams. “I’m Chad.”

“I’m Aaron,” I manage.

“Aaron, right. Man, I can’t remember the last time I saw you.”

I can. Junior year. I was walking home from school with Susanna Dyerson. We’d bonded over our mutual love of The Sorrows of Young Werther and our literary