1 January 2016
I watched my brother chew his fingernails down to the quick, and then keep biting. He gnawed on the ends until they bled, and I finally had to pull his hands away from his mouth. He looked at his fingers and shook his head.
“How long are they going to be in there?” he asked.
“I’m sure someone will be out soon.” The hospital waiting room was far from comforting, and our coffee cups sat forgotten on the small plastic side tables. We’d been waiting for more than an hour, starving for even the smallest scrap of news. Diego had been the only one of us sober enough to drive, and we’d rushed Zooey—moaning in pain and clutching her belly—to the nearest hospital in Audrey’s car. I wanted to call an ambulance, but Charlie refused to wait.
“Do you think I should call her parents again?”
“You left them a message, right?”
Charlie nodded. “I don’t think they get reception on their boat.”
Diego held my hand and smiled when I glanced his way. It was difficult to think of anything other than what we’d been about to do when I looked at him, but Charlie needed me, so I tried to pretend Diego wasn’t there.
“Do you think she’s going to be all right?” Charlie asked.
Audrey’s eyes were half closed—she never could hold her liquor—but she said, “It was probably false labor. Sometimes it happens.”
Diego and I agreed, but I’d seen the blood on Zooey’s hands and between her legs. I didn’t know what it meant, but I doubted it was good.
“Well, she’d be the first Denton in history to be early to anything.” I tried to loan Charlie my smile, but he wasn’t in the mood.
“Zooey’s always early,” he said. “If she’s not at least fifteen minutes early to wherever she’s going, she starts to get physically sick.”
Audrey said, “I thought I was bad.”
“You are,” I said.
Charlie wasn’t listening to us so much as talking to fill the void where Zooey should have been. “She has this saying: ‘Early is on time, on time is late, and if you’re late, don’t bother showing up.’”
“I’d hate to work for her.” Diego couldn’t figure out which cup of coffee was his and so just took one at random. He grimaced. “This is worse than what they served in juvie.”
Audrey blinked to clear the sleep from her eyes, and tried to sit up straight. “What was it like?”
Diego’s back stiffened, and he bit the corner of his lip. He hadn’t talked about it, and I hadn’t asked. I was about to change the subject, when he said, “At first it’s scary. When you go inside, they strip you and search you in the most humiliating way imaginable. Guys’ll hide drugs and weapons anywhere they think they can get away with it, but I think the strip search is more about the guards showing you that your ass is theirs. No matter how tough you think you are, you’re their bitch.”
I wondered if that’s why the sluggers always sent me back without my clothes. They had the technology to travel the universe and draw out my memories; surely, they could have returned me to Earth fully dressed.
“I tried to keep to myself, and read every book I could get my hands on, but it’s tough. Most every kid in juvie is inside because they screwed up pretty bad, but they’re all just boys hiding under layers of false bravado. They act like thugs, but most of them miss their mothers. Most still believe they can do anything.”
“Do you believe that?” Audrey asked.
Diego nodded. “If a kid looks like he doesn’t give a shit, it’s not because he doesn’t believe in himself anymore; it’s because no one else believes in him.”
I thought about Jesse. I wondered if that’s why he killed himself. If he thought no one believed in him and that his only escape was at the end of a noose. I wondered about Marcus, too. People believed in him, but the person they believed in was a lie. I don’t know when Marcus stopped being himself and started pretending to be the person others expected him to be.
Charlie was chewing on his fingers again, biting the skin around the nail, and Audrey looked like she was going to fall asleep. “Did it work?” I asked. “Juvie, I mean. Did it change you?”
Diego cocked his head and looked at me as if that wasn’t the question he’d expected me to ask. “People don’t really change; they just find something else to give their life meaning.”
“Do you regret what you did?” Audrey asked.
“Sometimes . . .”
I sensed Diego was going to say more, but Charlie stood up, drawing our attention. I followed his line of sight to the doctor walking through the double doors. She was short and stocky, and carried herself with confidence. Charlie rushed to meet her, and Diego held my hand while we watched. I knew it was bad news the moment I saw her pinched lips and tired eyes. Charlie went rigid, offering the doctor robotic nods as she explained what happened. We were too far away to hear.
“They’re going to take me to see Zooey,” Charlie said when the doctor left. “You should go home.”
“What about you?”
“Just . . .”
Audrey stood, her keys jingling in her hand. “We’ll drive your car here and leave it in the parking lot.”
Charlie nodded, but I doubted he’d heard the words.
“Mr. Denton?” A nurse stood waiting by the doors.
“I’m gonna . . .”
I slugged Charlie lightly in the arm. “She’s okay. You’re both going to be okay.”
“Yeah, Henry. Sure.” Charlie followed the nurse into the bowels of the hospital, and I watched him go. I jumped when Diego touched my shoulder.
“We should get out of here,” he said. “Clean the house before your mom gets home.”
“What do you think happened?” Audrey asked.
“I think I’m not going to be an uncle anymore.”
• • •
Audrey tried to make me sit in the front seat on the way home, but I refused. It was her car, after all. I stared at the streak of blood on the leather and wondered if the baby were already dead or if it had offered the world one mewling cry—a first and last protest—before succumbing to gravity.
We sat parked in my driveway for a while. I didn’t even realize we’d arrived until Audrey looked at me in the rearview mirror and said, “We missed midnight.”
I didn’t know if the stain would come out or if some shadow of it would always remain. “We didn’t miss it,” I said. “It just happened without us.”
It seems silly to worry about the arbitrary moment some person long dead declared to be the end of one year and the beginning of another, as if our attempts to divide time into meaningful chunks actually mean anything. People wait for the countdown to tell them that it’s okay to believe in themselves again. They end each year with failure, but hope that when the clock strikes twelve, they can begin the new year with a clean slate. They tell themselves that this is the year things will happen, never realizing that things are always happening; they’re just happening without them.
“I should get home,” Audrey said.
“Are you okay to drive?” Diego asked.
“Yeah.”
When Audrey’s BMW disappeared into the night, Diego hugged me close. I wanted him to kiss me, to kiss away everything that had happened. To kiss me until time reversed and we were back in my bedroom. But you can’t live in the past; you can only visit. I wasn’t sure what was happening between us, but I didn’t want it to happen without me.
“Happy New Year, Henry.”
“Happy New Year, Diego.”