Fully clothed, I climb into his bed, pulling the covers to my neck, turn my back on him, adjust his pillow under my head.
He’s quiet.
On the wall nearest his bed is a picture of Zach on the football field, Taylor and a few of the other players gathered close. They won that game. I snapped the shot of the few of them, and Taylor printed it because, he said, “I can see a bit of your finger, London.”
He was so corny.
Is he still?
After a moment he flips off the light and the room goes gray. I hear Taylor pad across the carpet. He pushes me over a bit, then lies on top of the blanket and wraps his arm around me. I can feel his breath in my hair. His knees are bent behind mine. He’s pressed close. Does my hair stink?
“I miss him too,” he says. He pulls in a big gulp of air and is quiet.
I jerk awake when Mrs. Curtis says, “Who the hell are you in bed with, Taylor?”
I feel him kick awake. He sits up, fast. “It’s just . . . ,” he says, and his voice is deeper than normal. “Mom? What are you doing here?” He gets up.
“I live here,” she says. “And I’m home from work.” She’s mad.
For some reason I can’t quite move. I’ve slept so hard I’ve drooled on Taylor’s pillow. I smear my hand on the pillowcase, then try to flip it over.
“Is that you, London?”
“Yes.” I try to get out from under the covers, but I’m stuck.
Mrs. Curtis is across the room in a few strides. She takes my face in her hands. Her palms are so cool I close my eyes. “Hey there, girlie,” she says. “I’ve missed you.” She untucks me, pulls me to my feet, and hugs me so close I think I can stand here forever in her arms.
When I get home that night, Daddy waits, arms crossed over his chest. He stands on the porch, right by the swing that I once flipped out the back of when Zach pushed me too high. I was fourteen. He laughed for hours over that. We hadn’t been in New Smyrna but a few days.
Taylor takes my fingers in his hand. “We’re still here, London,” he says. “We’ve been trying to tell you so.” He clears his throat. Looks at our hands. “I want to be with you.”
“Heather?” I say. “What about Heather?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
No. Okay, no.
“I lost so much,” I say. It feels like the ghost of my brother crowds the front seat of the car. My father stands on the porch, waiting.
My father hasn’t waited . . . “He hasn’t waited for me in months.”
Taylor says nothing.
“My mom, she doesn’t really talk much anymore.” I can’t believe those words come out of my mouth. I’m embarrassed by them. The deal is, I want to say, “Doesn’t talk much to me anymore,” but my head won’t let my mouth admit that fact.
Taylor brings my fingers to his lips. He talks over them.
“Just remember, I’m here, okay? I can keep waiting.”
As I walk up to Daddy, I can see he’s not waiting for me.
Not really. Yes, he pats me on the back as I pass him, but he doesn’t follow me into the house.
“You hear from your mom, London?”
I stop, my hand on the doorknob, backpack hanging from a shoulder. An almost warm breeze rushes past, ruffles my hair, moves on. Tonight’s almost comfortable. And the sky threatens a late rain maybe. I glance back at my father, hoping he’ll look me in the eye. Lightning splits the distant horizon. He stares away.
“What do you mean?” He knows she doesn’t speak to me. I’ve heard him asking her to. I’ve heard her silence at his request.
“She hasn’t come home today.”
Okay. Okay then. “Where did she go?”
He doesn’t answer, and I turn away. I’m numb inside. I’m ice. I’m raw. I’m cruel, unkind, alone, alone,
alone.
When the best part of a family dies, everyone falls apart.
I close the front door with a soft click.
How long will he stand out there?
Will he come in and check on me?
Will he remember I’m inside?
Where has she gone?
Did she go alone?
Does she miss us?
When I close my eyes here in the foyer, I see Mom’s face in the hospital.
She was so mad. So mad.
At me.
Like I had killed him.
And maybe I did.
Maybe I did.
In slow motion I make my way down the hall to Zach’s room.
Mom hasn’t changed a thing about it. It’s exactly as it was.
The broken door hinges
splintered wood
marks on the white paint.
His clothes are on the floor. The covers on his bed are still messed up, like he left them that morning. You can almost see where he may have put his head on his pillow.
Here’s the thing about life.
It twists away.
It feels right-perfect—and then it makes a wild turn worse than a roller coaster.
And how can anyone expect that?
I haven’t seen Daddy in here. Not since a week or two after.
But I have seen Mom touching his bed.
It’s so private, so mommy-ish, the way she touches where he’d slept, that I never let her know that I’ve seen her do this. She’d see it as an intrusion. Maybe she’d slap at me again. Maybe she’d scream her sorrow at me again.
Instead, when I catch her
I am quiet
watchful.
I see her kneel sometimes, rest her head on his pillow, spread her arms wide in the place he slept.
Sometimes her lips move, and I know she’s talking to him. You know, like I do. The whole thing, it’s like she’s waiting for him to come back
home.
I want to say, “We’re all waiting, Mom.”
I want to shout it at her.
Shake her. Make her see make her see me.
I want to say,
“No one wanted this.”
“I miss him too.”
“Look! at! me!”
But Mom is gone. Not just gone in the car, but gone gone gone.
If anything like this ever happens to me again anything
like
this
And I am the mom
And if there are other kids
I swear to God in Heaven that I will pull all who are left close, and
never
let them
go.
I won’t leave one out.
Lili calls right after I’ve finished my homework. It’s like she somehow knows I’ve closed that last book, have just rested my forehead on the cover.
“London?” she says.
“Hey, Lili.” My head’s still down. The second L in CALCULUS is huge and blue. An ugly blue, at that.
“It’s Friday night,” she says.
“Yes.”
“Are you going out with that really hot guy I saw you with the other afternoon?”
“No,” I say. “Taylor and I aren’t dating.” I just slept in his bed all day, him so close I could feel his heart beat.
“Well, we do movies as a family on Friday nights. Want to come over?”
I swallow. Twice. “I’m not part of the family.”
She laughs. She has a nice laugh. A laugh that means it.
“We can have friends over,” she says. “We’ll come get you. If you want. Will your mom let you?”
You mean the mom who hasn’t wandered in yet? The mom I haven’t had a conversation with in months? The mom who hates me? “She won’t care.” Truer words haven’t been spoken in this house.
“You want to then? We’re watching this old movie called
Blast from the Past. Have you seen it? It’s hilarious.”
“Sure,” I say, just like that, because now Daddy is gone, driving around looking for Mom, and the house is so quiet, so quiet, that I could stay here, yes, I could, or I could call Taylor or I could try to
sleep but I am way awake and Lili has been trying so hard to be my friend and I still remember what is was like to be the new kid—twice at the same school. “Sure. Yes. I haven’t seen the movie, but I’d like to.”
“We’ll be by in a few,” she says. “See ya!”
Lauren isn’t with them.
Lili drives, almost running into the deep ditch next to the road when she pulls up.
“In Utah we have curbs.” She shouts out her brother’s window and does that cute laugh.
“I’ve been praying she won’t kill us,” Jesse says.
“Praying doesn’t keep people alive.” The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.
Jesse looks at me wide-eyed. Surprised.
If I knew how to chuckle, I would. Ease the discomfort.
He opens his car door, leaps out, and then opens the van door for me.
“Wow, thanks,” I say. Even after my faithless comment, he’s done something kind. Something my daddy used to do for my mom.
He takes my elbow. Holds me back. Lili watches from the driver’s seat.
“Don’t be sad, London,” he whispers to me, then helps me into the van. He smells so good.
Don’t be sad, London. I think it over and over. Don’t be
sad.
Lili’s house is the opposite of mine.
Piled up with things, things all over, like people and voices and toys and shoes taken off right here and just left.
This is sensory overload.
Mr. and Mrs. Fulton in the family room. Two more boys—who look just like little Jesses—on the sofa. The one in Pull-Ups can’t be more than three. He stares at me with eyes like dark chocolates. His bangs have been cut too short.
“I’m sitting with you,” he whispers. Then he stands and takes my hand. Something slivery stabs at my heart.
I’m not sure what he’s been eating, but it’s still on his palm.
His mom and dad laugh like this is the funniest thing they’ve seen all day.
“Nathan likes you,” Mrs. Fulton says in a voice that sounds just like Lili.
(Do I sound like my mother?)
Mr. Fulton gets out of his La-Z-Boy, shakes my free hand—the wrong one—because Nathan holds tight to the other. “He knows what he likes.”
What can I say to that? Okay? I nod.
Mrs. Fulton says, “Natey, no. She’s here to visit Lili.”
The room is all overfilled with noise. Steve (“Hey guess what? I’m nine tomorrow!”) walks across the sofa till he’s right in the middle, then plops down.
“Mom,” Lili says. She makes the word two syllables. I remember when I used to do that.
“They’re okay,” I say. “I like little kids.”
“I’m not that little,” Steve says.
“Right,” I say.
Where is Jesse? I guess he’s not watching the movie with us. My heart sinks.
Lili sits, pats the sofa next to her, and I ease myself down.
This family is too much.
This family is my family not that long ago.
This was my family, smaller, yes, but together.
Laughing. Snuggled close.
Alive.
The lights are out, the opening credits rolling, when Jesse comes in with three bowls of popcorn, which he hands out to his parents, Steve, and me. He picks Natey up, then plops down close, settling his little brother in his lap.
“Off the phone with Queen Suck Face?” Lili fake whispers at him.
“I wasn’t talking to her,” Jesse says.
When I glance at him, he’s looking at me. In the dark he looks so familiar, so comfortable that I think maybe I have known him all my life.
I sort of watch the movie.
But mostly I feel Jesse so close, and Lili right there, and Steve and Natey and Mr. and Mrs. Fulton. Everyone breathing. Everyone smashed together and warm.
It’s like we are all on the sofa, all seven of us.
Squished side by side.
All the sudden the TV screen goes a little dark and no one notices. No one but me.
“Hey,” I say, and Jesse moves closer. His face near mine.
“What, London? Ya need something?”
Natey is asleep, his little hand loose in mine.
“The TV,” I say. But I almost can’t hear my words. There’s this buzzing in my ears, and I want to run, RUN!
Then Jesse does this weird thing.
He slips his arm around my shoulders, pulls me closer to him.
I can hear his breathing, and I match mine to his.
“Queen Suck Face isn’t going to like that,” Lili says. On the darkening screen Brendan Fraser dances.
“You all right, London?” Jesse asks.
But I’ve closed my eyes by now, and I’m just concentrating on Jesse’s breath going in and out until I’m okay.
“You better?” he says near the end of the movie. He moved his arm when my eyes cleared and I could see the movie again. How did he know?
I nod. “Yes. Yes.” I nod again.
“I thought we were going to lose you.”
Around us the whole room is quiet. Both boys are asleep. So’s Mr. Fulton.
“I’m not sure what happened.”
Mrs. Fulton moves on light feet, pulling the boys up, both at once, to tuck them into bed. “Don’t go anywhere other than to and from London’s home,” she says to Lili and Jesse.
Then she says, “I am so glad you’re here, London. Really.”
She means it. I can hear she means it.
“Can you spend the night?” Lili says. She’s on her knees, looking at me. She has the best hair. “Would your parents let you? I have something you can sleep in. Some kind of jammies. We can talk all night.”
How can she be so nice when I can hardly make a word come out of my mouth?
“Give her a chance to answer, Lili,” Jesse says. He moves away and my arm, I notice, goes cold. “I gotta go call Queen Suck Face.”
“Make me vomit, why don’t you,” Lili says. She rolls her eyes. “What do you say? Do you want to?”
“Sure.” And I do. I take a deep breath and try to shake off this ever present feeling of grief. I can feel it dislodge a bit. Move some, from my shoulders.
“Oh, goodie!”
Goodie?
“Call your mom and see if it’s okay.”
I clear my throat. “I don’t have to,” I say. “She’ll be all right with it.”