Forever in Love

  My heart swells with a rush of empathy for Mrs. Williamson. I recognize her pain. I know what it feels like to lose a part of your family. But her loss is much more ferocious than mine. Her pain is vastly larger in scope.

  I’m still in awe of Mrs. Williamson as I am falling asleep later that night. The way she was so strong in front of us. Her determination to get back to her routine, to her life, after dealing with such a shattering loss.

  Her strength is with me when I wake up screaming from a nightmare.

  It is with me when Rosanna and Darcy race into my room, asking if I’m okay.

  And it is with me when I tell them about losing the sister I never had.

  CHAPTER 20

  DARCY

  I AM SO FURIOUS ABOUT what happened to Sadie’s mom and sister I can’t even. What is wrong with people? Like you’re seriously going to be stupid enough to break out fighting on the subway with tons of other people around? Including a pregnant woman standing right next to you? Seriously?

  My heart broke when Sadie told me and Rosanna how that guy shoved her mom, who fell and lost the baby. Sadie said she didn’t want us to feel bad for her. No pity allowed. But I can’t help it. Sadie is like the sweetest person ever. It’s not right.

  I want to go on a rampage. I want to school every dumbass in New York, in the States, in the world. I was shaking when Sadie told us her story last night. I’m still shaking inside.

  I try to keep my voice steady while I talk to my mom. She has enough to worry about. Every time I’ve called her since The End of the World as I Knew It, she has sounded so sad. My heart aches when she cries on the phone. I hate that I can’t comfort her in person. She has done so much for me. I wish I could do more for her.

  Tonight is her last night at home. She has to move out tomorrow. How crazy is that? My mom, who thought she would live in the big, beautiful home she built with my dad forever, has to move in with her mom. My grandma, who never expected to have her middle-aged daughter move back home with her. Grandma sold her house and downgraded to a two-bedroom condo after Grandpa died four years ago. The extra bedroom was supposed to be for guests. Not her grown and married daughter.

  Life is crazy and random and makes no sense.

  Those idiots who pushed Sadie’s mom aren’t the only ones making me furious. I used to like people. But now people I used to trust are turning out to be assholes. I am so furious at my dad that my head throbs when I think about what he did to us.

  My mom is crying on the phone again.

  “I can’t believe this is it,” she says. “How am I supposed to leave our home? There’s so much history here . . . all the memories we made. I’ve been walking around every room, taking it all in. Remembering when you were little. You used to do fashion shows for me on the stairs. You loved gathering your stuffed animals in the breakfast nook for tea parties. Or in the living room to play school. Do you remember any of that?”

  “Yeah.” The outlines of my memories from when I was little are mostly colored in by Mom’s stories and photos. I can’t tell if I remember playing school with my stuffed animals on my own or if I remember because of what she has told me. Memories can be erratic like that.

  “Now I have to leave it all behind,” she sobs.

  Hearing Mom this torn apart is tearing me to shreds.

  I hate my father. I hate him for destroying her. For destroying our family. And then running off to be with a family he likes better.

  No one should get to do that. No one should get to build a family and then throw them away whenever something better comes along.

  Mom must be so humiliated that she has to move in with Grandma. I put myself in her shoes for a minute. On top of her husband breaking the law, having an affair, and leaving her for another woman, she has no money left to get a new place of her own. She wasn’t even allowed to keep the money she made from her own work. Are her friends being supportive? Or are they still the superficial socialite club I remember, where prosperity is a given and appearance is everything?

  After Mom hangs up to finish packing, my brain jumps from one catastrophic thought to another until I can’t take it anymore. Even if I wanted to be in the Now, I can’t stand being in my own skin.

  Then I remember that I don’t have to feel this way. There is an easy way out.

  Alcohol tricked me for a while in high school. It lulled me into believing that escaping to an altered state would help me deal with everything when reality was just too much. I learned my lesson the hard way, drowning in self-destructive decomposition.

  But I don’t care what I learned back then. All I want to do is escape into that altered state again.

  That boy I hooked up with in the Gap dressing room gave me his number. I put it in my phone under Random Boy. I can’t remember if he ever told me his name. But I can remember how he made me feel. That rush of excitement from the day I saw him in Self-Help at the Strand makes my heart patter. I liked what I saw and made sure he knew it.

  I want to feel that way again.

  I don’t want to think. I just call.

  An hour later we are tangled together on a couch at Epstein Bar.

  Two hours later we are making out in a corner between drinks.

  Three hours later we are doing shots of a fiery drink so strong it makes my eyes water before I even touch my lips to the glass.

  I still don’t know his name.

  Somewhere in the part of my brain where logic is supposed to be working, I know I should stop. I should rewind this night to when I got off the phone with my mom and not call Random Boy from the Gap. I should not revert to my self-destructive wild child tendencies that got me into trouble back home.

  But this is happening.

  “Want to get out of here?” he asks.

  The chemistry between us is too intense. I am powerless all over again, exactly like I was the day we met.

  I should stop.

  I don’t want to stop.

  I can’t stop.

  We grab a cab to go to my place. So I can bring home this person I don’t even know. And that’s when, with the traffic noises and flashing lights and people walking around in all directions, the weight of my new life comes crashing down.

  I break down crying before I can stop myself.

  “Are you okay?” Random Boy asks.

  A stranger asking me this in the back of a cab while I’m bawling makes me cry even harder.

  The driver peers at us in the rearview mirror.

  “She okay?” he asks.

  “We’ll get out here.” Random Boy pays for the ride and we get out. He takes me over to a stoop between a psychic and a dry cleaner’s, where I collapse in a wasted heap. He hugs me while I cry, sobs so forceful they are making my whole body tremble.

  This is ridiculous. I don’t cry. I mean, I try not to let unhappy emotions get to me in front of other people. I’m all for getting carried away with the happy feels, being swept up in the moment and letting spontaneous fun take me wherever it wants to go. But the rogue emotions, the ones that shove their way in after disappointment or heartbreak or anything else I don’t want to face, those are the ones I try to push away. That is my version of damage control.

  Now here I am crying over a new life I don’t know how to live. And the old life that is gone forever.

  “What’s going on?” Random Boy wants to know.

  As if I could tell him. I don’t want to admit that I’m scared. I didn’t even realize how scared I was until right now. It’s like I’ve been running on autopilot ever since the day my credit card stopped working. No more money, check. Logan playing me, check. Get a job, check. Dad destroys our family, check. Mom has to move out, check. Jude just wants to be friends, check. I didn’t stop to let anything sink in. Until now.

  So I tell him anyway. All of it. Even the Jude stuff.

  I never really got the help I needed back home. I thought I could help myself. This summer was supposed to be all about having fun and forgetting everything else.
But what about now? I am wasted. I am disgusting. Falling back into old habits that lead to nowhere.

  Random Boy is almost as wasted as I am. Or he was. Listening to the gory details of my miserable new reality has sobered him up. I can see in his eyes that I am not okay. He thought I was the uncomplicated girl, the no-strings girl he could have fun with and not worry about calling the next day. But now he knows I am someone else. I’m the girl who is just starting to see what a mess she is.

  When we get up to leave and I fall down hard on the sidewalk, I realize this is what it feels like to hit bottom.

  Everyone’s bottom is different. Tasting the sidewalk is mine.

  CHAPTER 21

  ROSANNA

  WAS SUNDAY NIGHT ONLY THREE days ago? It seems like breaking up with D happened forever ago. Or in another life. Or in a dream.

  It doesn’t feel real.

  I’ve been crying on and off since the breakup. It feels like my insides were scooped out, leaving me hollow and shaky. The shaky sensation comes without warning. One minute I’ll be fine, helping my campers put pinwheels together in arts and crafts or make milk carton microenvironments in nature, and the next thing I know my stomach will drop thirty stories like I’m falling off the ledge of a roof I forgot I was balanced on.

  Breaking up with D was the right thing to do. I know that. And I know I will be okay. I just need to get my shaky legs on solid ground.

  Momo isn’t in the cafeteria having breakfast with Jenny this morning. She hasn’t been at camp for the past two days. My stomach was in knots when I didn’t see her on Monday. The knots tightened when she wasn’t here on Tuesday. But I couldn’t tell if my stomach knots were part of my breakup queasiness or something else.

  Now I know it was something else. Something is wrong.

  “Hey, Jenny.” I sit on the bench across from her. Jenny’s waffles smell really good. “Do you talk to Momo outside of camp?”

  “No. Where is she? I want to show her the shirts we made in arts and crafts.”

  “I don’t know where she is. Did she say anything to you last week about going away or something?”

  Jenny shakes her head, sipping through the straw in her chocolate milk.

  “Did she ever say anything to you about missing school last year?”

  Jenny thinks. “She told me one time she got in trouble and missed a week of school.”

  “A whole week?”

  “Yeah. It was her punishment.”

  “For what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did she say who punished her?”

  “She just said that sometimes she gets put away when he’s angry.”

  “He who?”

  Jenny shrugs. She pours more syrup on her waffles, making slow spiral patterns from the edges to the center.

  “Jenny.” I lean in over the table. “This is important. If you can tell me anything about Momo, anything that might help me figure out why she hasn’t been here, you should tell me now.”

  She puts her fork down. She doesn’t look at me.

  “Anything,” I beg.

  “It’s a secret,” Jenny tells her waffles.

  “That’s okay. You can tell me anyway. Momo will understand.”

  “How do you know?”

  “You know how you said she might be in trouble? Well, if she is, this is our chance to help her. But I need to know what she told you.”

  “You want me to tell you the secret.”

  “Yes.”

  “If she finds out I told you, will you say I was going to get in trouble if I didn’t tell you?”

  “Sure.”

  “And that I didn’t have a choice?”

  “Okay.”

  Jenny looks around. None of the other campers or counselors are close enough to hear.

  She looks me in the eye. “The man who punishes her is her mom’s boyfriend.”

  My heart thumps against my chest. “Does he live with them?”

  “Sometimes he stays with Momo when her mom goes away.”

  “Is her mom away now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Does her mom know that he’s punishing her?”

  “I don’t know.” Jenny’s eyes fill with tears. “Is she going to be okay?”

  “Yes. I’m taking care of it.” I come around the table and lean down to give Jenny a hug. “Thank you for telling me the secret. You did the right thing. Don’t worry, okay?”

  Jenny nods against my shoulder. But of course she’s worried. So am I.

  The bell rings for first period. I tell Jenny to let the other counselors know I had to go to the main office. Then I run there faster than I’ve ever run before.

  Cecelia is on the phone at her desk. I fidget impatiently, willing whoever is on the other end of her call to wrap it up. When a camper is not going to be at camp, a parent or guardian has to call before camp starts that morning to report the absence. Same with when a camper will be arriving late or leaving early. Cecelia can tell me if Momo’s mom has called her out from camp at all this week.

  I barely give Cecelia a chance to say hi to me after she hangs up before I ask if Momo’s mom has called her out from camp.

  “No, she hasn’t,” Cecelia says with concern. “I’ve left messages for her, but she hasn’t called me back.”

  “Do you have any idea why Momo isn’t here?”

  “I thought she might be sick.”

  “Then why wouldn’t her mom call her out? Or return your calls?”

  “Her mom could be away. I know she travels for work.”

  “Where does Momo stay when her mom’s traveling?”

  “Maybe at her grandmother’s?”

  The sickening knots in my stomach are tighter than ever. Not over some boy drama that was everything three days ago. They are about a girl who needs my help.

  Sometimes she gets put away when he’s angry. What does that mean? Put away where? Is that where she is right now?

  I remember the night I was waiting in D’s lobby for him to come home. The night he showed up with Shayla. I remember promising myself that I would help Momo no matter what it takes. When I think about victims who never see justice, especially kids who are abused, I become infuriated to the brink of insanity. I would do anything to help them.

  Anything.

  Including going back to Momo’s apartment. This time I’ll go during the day while her mom is at work. Or traveling or whatever. I don’t know what I’ll do if her boyfriend is home. But that’s a risk I’m willing to take.

  I tell Cecelia I’m sick and have to leave right away. She gives me a skeptical look, but says she will make arrangements to have other counselors cover for me. Like the last time I went to Momo’s apartment, I don’t want to tell Cecelia what I’m doing. I don’t want Frank to find out I’m doing his job. He would definitely try to stop me.

  Now that I have a cell phone, getting to Momo’s apartment is a lot easier than it was the last time. I take the subway up to her stop and navigate my way to her building. This time the gritty neighborhood doesn’t bother me. I am propelled across the South Bronx sidewalks by purpose and rage. Some guys loitering outside a dilapidated deli seem to sense my fury. They don’t catcall as I blast by.

  I recognize Momo’s building complex. Fortunately I have her address in my contacts, because all these buildings look the same. I stand outside the front door of her building for a minute, figuring out the best strategy. It would have been good to figure that out on the subway ride up here. But I was so frazzled with worry that I could hardly think straight.

  Okay. Momo’s mom probably isn’t home. Her boyfriend might be, but he doesn’t know who I am. He doesn’t know I was here before. If he opens the door I could say that we heard Momo was sick and I brought over a get-well card from her friends at camp. Once I get inside, I could pretend I forgot the card at camp and ask to see Momo.

  Through the glass of the building’s front door, I watch an old guy with a cane step off the elevator. He
pushes the front door open a little. Acting like I’m supposed to be here, I pull the door open wider for him. He doesn’t say thank-you. He just wobbles on down the path.

  I take the elevator to Momo’s floor. There’s a sign on the wall showing which way to go for different apartment number ranges. I remember which way I went before and force myself to take deep breaths. Breathing is a challenge in this hot, stuffy hallway. The knots in my stomach are so tenacious they’re reaching for my lungs. All my vital organs are at risk. But I refuse to let fear turn me back. I ring Momo’s doorbell, gulping at the stale air.

  No one answers.

  I ring her bell again.

  Still no answer.

  Except I hear something. I can’t be completely sure it’s coming from inside her apartment and not the neighbor’s. But I have a really bad feeling about this. I have to get inside.

  There has to be another way.

  I go back outside and look up at the tiny windows, willing the walls to crumble apart and reveal all the hidden horrors they conceal. I orient myself in the direction the elevator faced when it opened on Momo’s floor. Then I mentally retrace my steps to her door, figuring out which way her apartment faces. I go around to that side of the building. Momo lives on the third floor. A fire escape goes all the way up the side of the building. Climbing it up to the third floor wouldn’t be that hard.

  I close my eyes, picturing the sign on the wall that showed which way to go for different apartment numbers. Apartment 301 was at the end of the hall to the left. The numbers went all the way up to Apartment 350. Momo lives in Apartment 332. Counting the number of windows along this side of the building, I can estimate which windows belong to her apartment.

  No one else is outside except for two middle-school girls talking on a bench. They look at me when I pull down the fire escape ladder. But then they go right back to their conversation.

  The ladder pulls down with a loud clatter. I glance around nervously. No one opens their window to see what the noise was. The girls on the bench don’t even look over.

  I wonder how sturdy this ladder is. All I have to do is climb up to the second-floor landing, then take the stairs to the third-floor landing. I put one sneaker on a low rung and reach up, wrapping my hands around a rusty high rung. The hot metal burns. Chipped paint scratches my hands as I climb up to the landing. Once I’m there, I edge around the stairs, trying to be quick but quiet since I am right outside someone’s window. My heart pounds with fear that whoever lives in this apartment will call the police. I lightly climb the stairs to the third-floor landing, holding my breath. Then I slink over to one of the windows that should be Momo’s.