“DO YOU WANT to stop at IHOP?” Rowan asks from the driver’s seat of my car. This afternoon, she drove my Civic from her place to my place and picked me up to head back to school. I didn’t bother offering to drive, and she didn’t bother asking if I wanted to.
“I look like crap,” I mutter with my forehead resting on the cool glass of my passenger-side window, every single hair follicle reminding me of how much I had to drink last night.
“You’re wearing alien-sized sunglasses,” Rowan counters. “No one can even see you.”
I turn my head to give her a look, but it’s lost behind sunglasses that are just as big as she said they are.
“Are you glaring at me right now?” she asks.
“Something like that.” I lay my head back against the glass with delicate precision, careful not to wake the troll hammering at my brain.
This morning, after dry-heaving in a hot shower and finishing washing up in a cold one, I got dressed and faced my dad in the kitchen. He slid a coffee and a stack of home-made pancakes in my direction as I took a seat at the breakfast bar.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
The truth was, I felt too shitty to even look at his pancakes. I slid them to the side and glued my cheek to the cold granite countertop. “Bad.”
“Do you want to talk about what happened with Joel?” my dad asked, and my heart pinched at the mention of his name.
“Not really.”
My dad rested his big hands on the counter and said, “Okay . . . but you know you can, right? I’m here to listen if you need me to . . .”
I closed my eyes for a long moment before I began to sit up. My head protested, but I managed to get my elbows on the bar and the rest of me into an upright position. “Dad, about yesterday . . . I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean anything I said.”
He frowned at me. “Sweetheart . . . we both know that’s not true, and I think it’s time we talk about it.”
I didn’t want to talk about it, but my dad lured me into a conversation, and every confession I made felt like a weight lifted from my soul. I told him about how much I hated my mom, about how much I needed a mom because, even though he had been the best dad a girl could ask for, there are some roles a dad just can’t fill. I told him about the night I heard him crying after she left, and his eyes filled with fresh tears as he apologized for me having overheard. I told him that I hated her for what she did to him, that I hated that he never moved on or dated anyone else.
And my dad told me things too, things I didn’t want to know but that he said I should understand.
“Your mom got pregnant with you when we were nineteen, Dee,” he said as I finally began picking at my pancakes. It was easier than looking him in the eye. “We hadn’t even been dating that long.” He sighed and raked his hand through his dusty blond hair, like he was trying to work up the courage to tell me something he didn’t want to admit even to himself. “She never loved me,” he said, quietly, “not really . . . I thought I could love her enough for both of us, but . . .” He shook his head at some unseen memory he was reliving. “Anyway, when I found out she was pregnant, I immediately got all these ideas in my head about a marriage and a house and a family. And your mom went along with it because—even though you don’t think she did—she loved you. She did her best . . . it just wasn’t enough.”
I sat in my chair, my headache forgotten while I listened intently to every word my dad was sharing. I clung to each new piece of information, saying nothing because I didn’t want to risk him shutting down and leaving me in the dark.
“Sometimes, I would come home from work and your diaper would be filthy, and it was just because your mom was too overwhelmed to even change it. Looking back now, I realize she needed help, like professional help, but at the time, I thought I could do it all. I tried to be everything for you both, and I’m sorry.”
“Dad—” I began to say, hating that he was blaming himself for being a loving father and a devoted husband, but he just put his hand up.
“Just let me get all this out, okay? I’m not trying to excuse your mom, and I know you’ll still hate her when I’m done talking, but . . . she really did love you, Dee. She just didn’t know how to love you. She tried and tried to be who she thought she should be, but over the years I think she just . . . she just lost herself.”
“There’s no excuse for walking out on your eleven-year-old child, Dad,” I said, stern in my convictions in spite of everything he said.
“No, there’s not,” he agreed. “And I guess that’s why I can’t hate her. I feel sorry for her, Dee.” His almond eyes became glassy, and he stared across the counter at me. “Because look at the beautiful woman you’ve become, and she missed it.”
When we met each other at the side of the bar and hugged, I wasn’t sure who was being strong for who. Maybe we were being strong for each other. Like we’ve always been.
“You alive over there?” Rowan asks, pulling me from the memory.
“Yeah.”
“Sure you don’t want IHOP?”
“Yeah . . . I just want to go home.”
Over the entire week, I spend my days wanting to ask her a single question that dare not be spoken: Is this how you felt when you broke up with Brady?
I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I make T-shirts for the band’s website, but I don’t enjoy it. I’m a robot—I go to classes, I suffer through homework, and all of it hurts.
I don’t hear from Joel, but neither does anyone else. He’s a ghost, haunting me with his absence through a phone that never rings. On Friday, after he skips out on the the band’s first practice with Kit, Rowan threatens to file a Missing Persons Report and he finally texts her back. But all he says is that he’s fine, and he refuses to say where he is. I spend my nights imagining the girls he’s with, the ways they might look, the ways he might touch them. I wonder how long it will take him to forget me, but then on Saturday afternoon, my phone rings and Rowan is on the other end. “They think he might be at his mom’s.”
“His mom’s?” I ask, the memory of my own voice echoing in my ears.
Go home, Joel.
“Yeah. The guys are leaving to go check.”
“Stall them,” I say, already grabbing my keys and heading for the front door of my apartment.
“Why?”
“Because I’m coming.”
It’s my fault that Joel is there, and it’s my responsibility to bring him back. I pull my car into the parking lot of Adam’s apartment complex just as he and the rest of the guys are walking out of the building. I park next to his topless Camaro and hurry out of my car. “I’m coming with you.”
Shawn, who doesn’t look at all surprised to see me, just shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“It might be . . .” Adam offers. He puts his cigarette out under the toe of his shoe and climbs into the driver’s seat, waiting for Shawn and me to figure out what we’re doing.
I climb into the back with Mike, challenging Shawn to try to remove me.
“Dee,” he sighs, “you don’t know Joel’s mom.”
“I know enough.” I give him a meaningful look, and something passes between us. I’m trying to tell him I know about Joel’s mom. Even if I don’t know her, I know all I need to know. I know we need to bring him home.
Shawn hesitates, hearing my unspoken words, and then climbs into the passenger seat beside Adam.
An hour later, we turn onto the derelict road of Sunny Meadows trailer park.
If I were in my own car, I’d roll up my windows and lock my doors. But Adam rolls onto Dandelion Drive with his roof down and his radio blasting. People on porches turn their heads to follow us as we drive by, and I flip my shades down, sinking lower in my seat.
We park next to Joel’s brown clunker in the stony driveway of a rusted brown trailer with wind chimes hanging on the porch. Tulips hide in a neglected garden, choked out by overgrown grass and weeds.
“How is that dog not dead yet?” Adam asks of a one-eared mutt barking at us from the next yard. He picks a stick off the ground and throws it over the chain-link fence, frowning when the dog doesn’t chase it. I slide out of the car on Mike’s side to stay as far away from the dog as possible.
“Maybe you should wait in the car,” Shawn tells me, and I give him a look that asks if he seriously wants me to get murdered.
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” I say, and he rubs his eyebrow like a serious pain has taken root there. Then, without another word, he climbs the stairs to the trailer’s porch and knocks on the broken screen door. It clangs against the frame as I climb up behind him, each stair creaking under my weight.
He knocks again, and when no one answers, Adam huffs out a breath and opens the door. He disappears inside, and I file in between Shawn and Mike.
“Hey Darlene,” Adam says to the woman on the couch who has just stirred awake. A white cat jumps down from the cushion beside her and rubs against my leg, but my attention is fastened on the woman I can tell is Joel’s mom. She has a certain something about her—a certain beautiful something that I can tell Joel inherited from her—but she doesn’t have his blond hair or blue eyes. Her hair is a washed-out brown with choppy layers and split ends, and her eyes are a murky brown. She has her legs stretched out on the built-in recliner of the sofa and an ashtray sitting on her lap, and she’s pretty like a ruby coated in years of neglect. This is the same woman who sold her son’s birthday presents, the same woman Joel can’t bear to talk about unless it’s quietly in the dark.
“Who are you?” she slurs at me, and I catch myself glaring at her.
“This is a friend of ours,” Adam offers simply, nodding in my direction while I push my sunglasses on top of my head. “Where’s Joel?”
Darlene’s gaze swings back to Adam like she forgot he was standing there. “His bedroom.”
Adam immediately heads down the hallway while Shawn, Mike, and I stand awkwardly on the ragged brown carpet. The entire house smells like vanilla air freshener, and I dread to think of what it would smell like without it. Every available surface seems littered with something—liquor bottles, beer cans, full ashtrays, empty cigarette packs, magazines, old paper plates, old chip bags.
Darlene’s bushy brows pull together as she watches Adam head down the hall, and then she turns her attention on the boys at my sides. “Who let you in?” She has a smoker’s voice and a drunk person’s patience, irritation lacing the confusion in her voice.
“Door was open,” Mike lies, and Darlene lets out a disgruntled breath. She tries to put the footrest down but eventually gives up. I doubt she could walk a straight line even if I held a gun to her head, which I kind of want to.
I pry my eyes away from her to stare at the pictures on the walls—angels, Jesus, a wooden cross. Beside them hang pictures of Joel, with his dark blue eyes and innocent little smile. I stand in front of one of him with a head full of spiky blond hair, smiling in a bright orange T-shirt in front of a laser-filled blue background, and then I move to the next, and the next, taking them all in and realizing that he isn’t older than eight or nine in any of them. Maybe they were framed by his grandma before she had a stroke, or maybe by one of the ex-boyfriends Joel told me about. Maybe even the one who bothered to buy him a Hot Wheels track and leave behind a guitar.
My gaze travels back to Darlene to find her tracking me with cold, narrowed eyes. I don’t know why she doesn’t like me, but I know why I don’t like her.
“What’d you say your name was again?” she asks, her words all running together.
When Joel emerges from his bedroom, I don’t bother answering her. He freezes in the hall, shirtless and barefoot with his mohawk soft and messy like he just woke up. His skin has lost some color, and his eyes are hangover-red. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”
“He says he’s not coming,” Adam tells Shawn from behind Joel, but Joel never breaks eye contact with me.
“Why the fuck are you here?” he asks, his voice holding not one ounce of the boy who told me he loved me less than a week ago.
“To make sure you come home,” I answer sadly, but Joel just laughs and rakes both hands over his scalp.
“So let me get this straight,” he says, “you tell me to go home, but when I go home, I’m not allowed to fucking stay there? Where the fuck am I supposed to go, Dee?”
“This is her?” his mom growls from the couch. She finally manages to get the leg rest down, and she sits forward, pointing an unsteady finger at me. “You’ve got some nerve coming to my house.”
“I’m not leaving without Joel,” I state calmly, realizing I mean it. He doesn’t belong here, with this selfish woman who stole his childhood. He belongs with his friends, with people who love him.
His mom’s finger jams farther forward. “You’ll do what I tell you, you stupid little bitch!”
“Mom!” Joel barks, silencing us. Claws scratch into the carpet as the cat glued to my legs darts down the hallway and into Joel’s room.
Joel’s mom glares at him and then me. “You break my son’s heart and think you can just come in my house and take him away from me?”
I want to tell her that someone should have done that a long fucking time ago, when he was young enough for it to matter, but that’s between Joel and his mom, and it isn’t my place to say. I fist my hands at my sides and bite the inside of my cheek until I’m sure the words aren’t going to burst free the second I open my mouth. Then, with pleading eyes, I look at Joel and say, “Joel, please.”
He’s staring at me like he’s debating coming with me when his mom says, “She ain’t even that fuckin’ pretty.”
“Mom,” Joel warns, but Darlene isn’t done.
She locks eyes with me and snarls, “I used to be prettier ’n you.”
“And look at you now,” I counter, and a molten red flush erupts across her cheeks. She begins trying to stand, and if she were sober, I don’t doubt she’d be in the midst of yanking my hair out. Instead, the couch cushion gives under her palm and she struggles to find her footing.
“YOU THINK YOU’RE BETTER THAN ME?” she hollers while teetering dangerously to the side. “YOU AIN’T NOTHIN’ BUT A DUMB FUCKIN—”
“SIT THE FUCK DOWN!” Joel bellows, and his mom literally falls back into her seat. She gapes at him for a second before resuming that ugly mask of anger again. Shawn and Mike, who were moving closer to the couch to intervene on my behalf, just stand there frozen in time like they’re not sure what to do with themselves. Adam puts his hand on Joel’s shoulder, but Joel barely seems to notice.
“You’re going to take that slut’s side over mine?” Joel’s mom asks him.
“She’s not a slut,” he snaps back.
“She doesn’t care about you!”
Joel laughs, quietly at first and then louder. “There’s some money in my room,” he says. “Keep it. Pretend I’m still here for a while. We both know that’s the only fucking reason you’ve ever wanted me around.”
“How dare you talk to me like that in my own goddamn house!” his mom shouts.
“I PAID FOR THIS FUCKING HOUSE,” he thunders, “so yeah, I’m going to do whatever the fuck I damn well please!”
Joel and his mom stare each other down, and then she starts to cry and he rolls his eyes.
“I’m out of here,” he says, snatching a set of keys off the counter and practically steamrolling me out the door. The rest of the guys follow. I hear Joel’s mom yelling behind them, apologizing and begging him to stay, but he ignores her. With his hand on my back, he ushers me down the porch stairs, and then he pulls away like I’m carrying something contagious. He walks to his car, opens the door—
He hesitates.
When he turns around, the world stops turning and I’m caught in one of those moments—the kind that have the power to change everything or nothing. A crossroad. A turn in the tide. A moment you can never come back from. “Why did you come here?”
I give him the simplest answer there is, the one that says just enough and not too much. “Because I wanted to make sure you went home with Adam.”
“Why?”
If there’s a right answer, I know the one I’m about to give isn’t it, and yet I give it anyway, because it feels like the safest. “You would’ve done the same for me. I owed you.”
“You owed me?”
When my response is to say nothing, his gaze lowers to the ground beneath his bare feet and he turns away from me. He climbs into his car, waits for Mike to climb into the passenger seat, and then they’re gone.
On shaking legs—still rushing with adrenaline from my near fight with Joel’s mom, and weakened from watching him drive away—I manage to get myself into Adam’s backseat, and he takes his sweet time lighting a cigarette before starting his black Camaro and heading toward home.
“Well,” he says with the cigarette between his lips, “that went well.”
“I told you we shouldn’t have brought her,” Shawn says, frowning at me in the rearview mirror. “No offense, Dee.”
“She,” Adam says, pointing a thumb in my direction, “is the only reason he’s coming home.”
I flip my shades back down and pretend to stare at the trees to avoid meeting their eyes. “No. He’s coming back for you guys.”
I’m the reason he left.