I flash Gracie a triumphant look.
She scowls and takes her lunch box to her bedroom.
With Gracie gone, Mama comes over to me and hugs me. Holds me tight and whispers, “I’m sorry about the TV thing.”
“Me too. It was my fault.”
“Not a chance. You’re perfect.” She doesn’t let go. Just asks, still whispering, “So . . . that woman Eleanor didn’t hurt you?” She can hardly get the words out before she’s crying again.
“No, Mama,” I say. “No. She didn’t hurt me. She just wanted a kid.” I want to tell her how it really was with Ellen. I want to. But I can’t hurt Mama like that, and I need to stop thinking about it now so I can focus on remembering. I just pat her back and let her cry it out.
We go to the mall. Mama asks what styles I like, and I don’t know the answer.
“You’re supposed to wear your jeans so your butt hangs out,” Gracie says when Mama goes off to find more shirts.
I laugh. “Then my butt gets cold. I’m tired of being cold.”
“Why did you live outside, then? How come I never seen you before if you’re my brother?”
I look at Gracie in one of the mirrors. “I went away. A long time ago, before you were born. I lived somewhere else. And then that person couldn’t take care of me anymore so she dropped me off at a bad place. And I ran away and lived on the streets until I found you. I even lived at the zoo for a while.”
“Ha-ha, the zoo!” Gracie says. She ponders it for a while. “I would have runned away too.”
I nod. “Of course you would have. Because you’re smart like me.”
She laughs. “I’m smarter than you.”
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.”
“How?”
“I wouldn’t have gone away from Mama in the first place. Why’d you do that?”
I’m grateful to see Mama coming back with more stuff. “I dunno why, kid,” I say to Gracie. “Maybe you can teach me how to be smarter.” My sarcasm is lost on her.
When we get home, Dad is in the garage unloading a bed frame and a mattress from the back of the minivan. I help carry them into the house. Everything inside me wants to ask for my bed to be set up downstairs so I can have a place of my own, but I don’t dare. I don’t want to sound ungrateful. So we set it all in the hallway outside Blake’s bedroom until we can move his crap around to make space for mine. It’s going to be a tight fit.
I go out to the garage to close the minivan’s hatch when the school bus pulls up in front of the house. I slam the door hard, and then turn and watch as a dozen kids get off the bus. Shivering like crazy, I fold my arms across my chest. It’s fucking freezing in this state.
Blake is the third one off. And there’s the group of girls. Some of them look at me, all shy and curious, and some are oblivious. The girl in the red coat I saw this morning yells good-bye to her friends and turns in the opposite direction from them, but stops in her tracks when she sees me. She catches up to Blake in the driveway and walks with him. Says something that makes him laugh. She’s a little taller than him, and when they approach, I can tell she’s older than him. My age, maybe. I’m guessing I’m supposed to know her.
“Hey, Ethan, wow,” she says. “I can’t believe it’s really you.” She has crow-black hair and deep, dark eyes, not quite perfect teeth and big, soft-looking lips, the kind you want to bite. She hops in place, apparently excited to see me, which feels nice. Despite the slicing cold wind, I feel a stirring and shove my hands in my pockets.
“Hey,” I say, teeth chattering, looking at Blake for help. “Um . . .”
“It’s Cami,” Blake says, rolling his eyes like I’m stupid. “She’s lived down the street since birth?” He says it like a question, as if making me feel stupid will bring her back to my memory.
“I’m sorry,” I say, looking back to her, and boy, am I sorry. “I don’t remember much.”
She grins. “It’s okay. I can’t believe you’re back. Everybody thought you were dead.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I’m sure I’ll hear that a few more times before everybody settles down, too. It’s a pretty sick thing to say to somebody, if you ask me.
“I cried for weeks. It was horrible. You were my best friend. We took baths together when we were babies. Our moms used to be friends, back when . . .” She trails off, not embarrassed, but looking at me curiously, like she hopes I remember.
“Wow.” I don’t know what to say to that. Taking baths together. Jesus. I just look at my feet and stomp them on the garage floor, watching the fluffy new snow skitter away, leaving my footprints looking huge, like a monster’s. “I’m sorry I don’t remember you. I wish I did.”
“You look different,” she says then. “Not how I pictured you.”
“I need a haircut.” I shrug, trying not to blush thinking that she’d been picturing me. But blushing in the cold wind probably wouldn’t make a difference anyway.
“When are you coming back to school?”
“Monday, I guess.”
“Cool. Well, I gotta get home. See you around?”
“Yeah . . . we’re having a party or something tonight, so I’m sure you’re invited. . . .”
She grins, reaches out, and squeezes my upper arm, then turns and waves over her shoulder.
I wave back like a dork.
Blake scowls at me.
“What,” I say.
“Dude. How could you possibly not remember her?” He shakes his head and we turn to go inside.
CHAPTER 12
What starts out as a quiet visit by Grandpa and Grandma De Wilde turns into an extended family reunion. And after the six o’clock news hits, the neighbors start coming too. The phone rings nonstop and finally Dad turns the ringer off and lets everything go to voice mail. People bring food and drinks and it gets really loud.
I recognize some people, aunts and uncles and cousins, from the photos I had studied. But after about the millionth time of having people expect me to know who they are, and then the disappointed looks on their faces when I don’t, I get kind of sick of it. It’s so hard letting people down over and over again. It’s making me feel a little out of control, and I get that anxious skittering in my stomach again.
Finally, I escape. I throw on my new winter coat and step out to the side of the house that is blocked from the wind, and I suck in the freezing night air. My cousin—I think his name is Pete or Phil or something—is out here too, having a smoke, so I bum one, wanting it so bad but hating myself for doing it, because I quit like a year ago. But I can’t help it. This is all a little too much.
I’m glad when Phil-Pete leaves so I can be alone, clear my head. And here I stand, freezing my balls off, sucking down a cigarette, and wishing for some of the booze that is flowing inside the house, when across the frozen freaking tundra comes a sweet red coat of distraction.
I bury the cigarette in a snowdrift, wishing I hadn’t smoked it, but loving the fleeting rush. Wishing I had a mint. Wishing I could remember Cami, even just a little bit. Her looks remind me of a girl I hooked up with at the youth home—Tempest, her name was—only Cami has class. My gut tightens. I step out into the wind.
“Hey, Cami,” I call out.
She’s walking up the driveway, hovering over a dinner plate, shielding it, and her hair is going wild. “Hey. What are you doing out here?”
“I needed to get away from the noise.”
“It’s freezing.”
I wave off her concern. “Cookies?”
“Brownies. From my mom. We’re all really glad you’re home.”
“Thanks.” I remember what she said earlier. “Why aren’t our moms friends now?”
A gust of wind nearly upends the plate in Cami’s hand. Her teeth chatter. “I don’t know, exactly. But I think it’s because maybe your mom couldn’t handle it once you were gone. My mom still had me, but your mom didn’t have you. Constant reminder. That’s what my mom thinks.”
I nod and try to shield
her from the wind. “That would be hard, I suppose.”
We go inside.
It always happens like this for me, you know? Blindsided by a girl. Back with Ellen in Oklahoma, when I was thirteen, there was this girl, Bree Ann, in the apartment next door. Her mother left her alone a lot too. She was older, fifteen, maybe. I used to listen for her. Climb out the window to the fire escape when I heard her go out there to smoke or write in her little notebook. I longed to jump across just to be closer. We didn’t ever talk, and she ignored me, but she was my secret and I loved her. I did. I loved just being near her. I wanted to get closer, sit down with her. Talk to her. But back then, before I had to really go out and learn how to get what I wanted, I didn’t dare.
I guess I just wanted Ellen to come home, but she was always out working her johns . . . or partying, toward the end of things. That was right before she got rid of me. Everybody gets caught up sometime, she said.
I watch Cami talk to my mother and father and I can hear that laugh. It’s like a cat bell, so pretty yet alarming, because I know I’m letting myself fall when maybe I should fly away. But that loneliness inside, it’s so fucking painful. It’s that longing feeling that scratches to escape and makes you want to blurt out all kinds of gushy crap just to get the girl to look at you. It’s like I had with Bree Ann, trying to guess her schedule every day so I’d know when I could just be near her, and a little bit with Tempest, who was always disappearing. I hate it. Love its melty-ness and hate its leash around my neck.
When she’s done talking to them and I can pry myself away from other guests I don’t remember, she says near my ear, “Let’s get away from the mob. Go talk somewhere.”
I shiver and nod. We find a spot on the basement steps, away from the noise. Close the door to the rest of the house, and sit. I lean against the wall and she hugs her knees.
“What’s your favorite color?” she asks.
“Black.”
She laughs. “You can’t have black as a favorite color.”
“Why not? It’s all the colors. Maybe I have a hard time committing to just one.” I smile. “What’s yours?”
She laughs again and says, “Mine’s green. Yours used to be red. What do you like to do for fun? Do you ski?”
“I don’t know how,” I say. “I’m not really accustomed to this perpetual snow thing . . .” I run my fingers over the carpeted step between us. Brushing it one way, then the other, seeing the color change slightly.
“Skateboard? How about music?”
I look up at her. “Nope, never tried it. Music is nice, I guess.”
“Rock, emo, screamo, ska? Punk? Pop? Not country, I hope.” She looks at me expectantly.
I feel like I know what I’m supposed to like, but I really don’t know that much about music, especially current stuff—just that canned music they play on downtown streets and at the zoo. I shrug. “I like all kinds. Not country.”
“Me too.”
“Cool,” I say. My tongue is in a knot. I’m so surprised she’s not asking me all the usual questions I’ve been bombarded with all night. All the tough questions. Like where the hell was I for the past nine years and what did the evil abductor do to me? Like how was it living in a youth home and on the streets?
“Did you go to school at all while you were away?” She pulls her hair in front of her shoulder and smiles at me. So easy.
I just look at her a minute, contemplating the question, and I feel myself smiling back—I can’t even help it. “Yeah,” I say. She makes it comfortable. “At first, I don’t think I did—I can’t remember. But then yes, some of the time. We moved around a lot, so I was always catching up.”
“I’m really glad you’re home,” she says. “And it’s cool to see inside your house again. It’s been a long time.”
“You haven’t been over? I thought you were sort of friends with Blake.”
She laughs. “Nah. We just ride the bus together. He’s just a kid, you know? I think he has a little crush on me, actually.”
The crowd noise increases suddenly and Russell shoots down the stairs like a gremlin. I look up. Blake stands at the top, glowering. “Mom needs you,” he says. He looks from me to Cami, then back to me, and slams the door. I look at Cami and her eyes are wide.
“Gosh,” she says. “I hope he didn’t hear that.”
I shrug. “Don’t worry, he probably didn’t. I think he’s mad at me. Besides, I don’t blame him.”
“For what?”
I stand up. But I don’t want to go. “Having a crush on you.”
Cami blushes and stands up too. Climbs the stairs. “I should go,” she says. “I’ll see you Monday?”
I bite my lip. “Yeah, I guess.”
She gives me a hug, and that freaking kills me. It really does.
CHAPTER 13
Friday night doesn’t end until Sunday. The visitors keep coming. Another newspaper and TV crew show up to do a story, and Mama makes them give us the questions first so we can approve them. Somewhere during that time, two uncles and an aunt barge into Blake’s bedroom to construct my bed.
By the end of it, when Dad finally closes down the circus and says “enough,” Gracie is cranky from too much attention and sweets, Blake is disgusted by being ignored and trampled, Mama is frazzled, and I’ve got a major headache from all the stress, noise, and stupidity. I escape to the basement for some privacy and hold my ears to stop the ringing sounds.
Later, after lights-out, Blake won’t even talk to me. I wish he would accept me, but I just lie in my new bed and feel like I’m taking up space.
Monday morning I’m wide awake at five, thinking about school. Wondering where they’ll put me. My chest is in a vise grip. I can’t breathe. I start wheezing, sweating, and I get out of bed so I don’t wake up Blake. Walk to the bathroom and just sit in there, on the edge of the bathtub, trying to get a grip. I drape a towel over my head and breath in and out, in and out. In. And out.
In the shower I think about Cami. That helps me calm down.
I’m ready for school two hours early, so I just sit at the dining table drinking about forty-nine cups of coffee. I watch, like I’m a security camera, the people moving through the house and sitting at the table for a few minutes to eat, then going on their way, first Dad, then Mama and Gracie, then Blake. If we talk, I don’t remember what we say. Mama gives me some papers and talks to me, a concerned look on her face. “You’re enrolled and you’re all set. Are you sure you don’t want me to go with you? Set you up with the school counselor?”
But I can’t comprehend right now. I shove the papers in my backpack. “No, I’ve had lots of first days at schools. I know the drill.”
“Okay,” Mama says, doubtful. “Come straight home after and tell me how it went.”
I just nod. “I’m good, Mama. I know what to do.” I am in a zone, a place I need to be to keep away the panicky things inside me.
Still, it’s been a while since I went to school. Like, a really long time.
At the bus stop, Blake stands off to the side, watching me. He calls out to a few guys who are near me. They ignore him. He pretends like he doesn’t care, but his face is hard, and I feel bad for him. I can tell he’s not a popular kid, and that worries me, because maybe I’m not popular either. I wonder how big the school is. Maybe I’ll be just a blip.
Cami is at the bus stop, and she smiles at me but lets the others crowd around me. I talk to them, but I stare at her until she blushes. I want to talk to her more. Have her ask me easy questions that don’t stress me out. And I want to know what everyone did, what things were like right after it happened. I want her perspective.
I want her.
She’s a fucking lake of beautiful.
On the bus, I shove into the seat with her. The other girls give sidelong glances and carry on stupidly, but I don’t care. “Hey,” I say.
She looks at me and blinks her ropey lashes. “What are you doing?”
“Why? Is this seat taken?”
“My friends . . . ,” she says.
“Tough,” I say, but I smile.
She laughs and gives in, shrugging to the other girls and moving her backpack from between us. “You nervous?”
The vise grip tightens on my ribs. “Nah. I’m cool.”
“Oh, I see,” she says with a lopsided grin. Teasing me. “I thought if you were nervous I could show you around, but . . .”
I slouch in the seat, stick my knee up against the seatback in front of us, and lean my head back. My heart races from all the caffeine this morning, and from the closeness of this girl. “So, what—you only show the nervous loser-type guys around, not the cool ones who used to be your best friend? What kind of person are you?”
Cami shrugs, takes her wool cap off, and smoothes her hair down. “I help those in need. You, apparently, don’t need anything.”
Oh, God. I need her.
In school, she walks with me to the office and pauses outside the door. “You’ll figure it out,” she says. “The layout is just two big squares. Numbers go up, clockwise starting here.” Her hair is staticky and I want to touch it. I want her electricity. But she just grins and leaves me there to fend for myself.
I walk up to the desk, where a woman sits with a pen and papers strewn around her, severe black glasses that look kind of artsy, and cropped black hair. A nameplate says her name is Miss Lester.
“Yes?” she says, still writing.
I clear my throat. “I’m . . . Ethan. De Wilde. New student.”
The woman looks up. “Oh. Very good. Welcome home. You’re that lost boy.” It’s not a question.
“Yes, ma’am,” I say.
She takes my paperwork and shuffles through it, then pulls one sheet out and hands it to me. “You’re going to need this—it’s your schedule. There’s a map on the back. Come with me. We’ll put you in classes for now and each teacher will assess you, do some testing, so we know if you’re in the right place.”