A rustle in my room wakes me. Mom is rummaging in my closet.
“Hey . . . ? Whatcha looking for?”
When she glances over her shoulder, I catch a glimpse of red-rimmed eyes. Has she been crying? Please don’t tell me she’s crying over that asshole. I mush the pillow behind my head into a ball and punch it lazily with my fist.
She clears her throat. “Your father had a lockbox with important papers. Yay big?” She holds her hands about ten inches apart.
I know it. I nod. “So?”
“So. It’s got the deed to the farm from your grandfather. I need it for Uncle Jack.”
I pull the covers over my head, but it’s already hot up here. The stone farmhouse stays cool in the summer, but not on the second floor. I feel my mother’s finger poke my shoulder through the sheet.
“Well? Thoughts?” She paces my room, absently stepping over my crap spread across the floor. She doesn’t seem to notice any of it.
“Did you check the shop?” I yawn and allow myself to tumble off the bed and onto a soft pile of jeans and T-shirts. My mother kicks me with her bare feet.
“Quit it. Aren’t you supposed to be at work?” I ask.
She’s half dressed, wearing the bottoms of her nurse’s scrubs with her pajama top. She’s not even embarrassed about it. “My shift doesn’t start till ten.” She kicks her way through my crap as she leaves my room. I really don’t want to get up, but I feel compelled to follow her to the guest room, the one where Grandmom Jones gave birth to her two sons. I’m too sleepy to shudder at the visual like I usually do. Mom opens drawers and closets that haven’t seen daylight in years. Why she thinks Dad would put anything of value here is beyond me.
“The shop, Mom. Have you checked the shop yet?” I ask again.
She brushes past me as she stalks the top floor of the house, from my bathroom to hers, from the linen closet to the hamper (the hamper? Seriously?). I stop for a long-ass pee, and by the time I finish, I find her in her bedroom, sitting on the edge of the queen-size bed that is rumpled on one side only. She stares at the floor.
“Mom. Mom,” I say, until she finally looks up. Her fingertips hold her chin.
“What.”
“Did. You. Check. The. Shop?”
She sighs and glances around the room, her eyes darting from corner to corner. I can almost read her thoughts: Is it in the closet? Under the bed? Between the layers of winter clothes? And then we both hear a squirrel scamper across the roof and my mother’s gaze lingers on the ceiling. Maybe it’s in the attic?
“The place you should look is the shop. If it’s going to be anywhere, it’s going to be there.”
She shakes her head and slides off the mattress, hastily starting to make the bed behind her. “I don’t have time. Will you?”
“Me?”
“What, you have something better to do? A job you’re rushing off to, maybe?”
Uh, what the hell? I think but don’t say, and then I realize why she didn’t go to the shop to look for my dad’s lockbox:
If it’s not there, it means he really is gone. Gone and not coming back.
“Yeah, I’ll do it. Whatever.” I don’t care if it’s not there. I hope it won’t be. That would be the final nail in the coffin of hope she’s holding. It would at last blow out the torch she’s carrying. It would . . . oh god, coffee.
“It’s only been one day, Matty.”
“Sure. One day. With Carol, Mom. He left with Carol. You got the note and . . .” She’s making the bed with furious gestures, shoving the pillows under the sheets and fiercely smoothing out the wrinkles on her side of the bed. Clearly not in the mood to hear logic. “Whatever.”
I stagger down the back staircase and go through the motions: water, filter, Maxwell House. While I wait for the coffee to brew, I go to text Brian but my phone isn’t where I left it. Rubbing my eyes, searching the kitchen, thinking maybe it slid under something, a flyer for dry cleaning or an old grocery list, but it isn’t anywhere.
“Mom! Mom!” I shout up the back stairs. “Did you move my phone?”
“Your what?”
“My phone! Did you see it when you came down this morning?”
“Your phone? No.”
“Are you—”
“I have to get dressed, sweetie.” A second later, I hear the water running in her bathroom.
I know I put it on the counter last night after I said good-bye to Priya.
Priya. I think of her and my memory is . . . hazy. But she was real, wasn’t she?
I run to the side door, the one I left unlocked, and my heart thumps hard in my chest. In the daylight, the field looks even more forlorn and empty.
Empty. It’s . . . empty. Priya is gone.
And so, evidently, is my cell. Did she take it? Or just borrow it to call her boyfriend for a ride?
Why “boyfriend,” Matty? Could have been just a friend.
It wasn’t the best phone, wasn’t the newest “i-” anything, but it was mine and it had a pretty decent data plan.
Back in the kitchen, the smell of fresh coffee fills the air and I breathe in a bit of caffeine high.
Well, I guess she wasn’t lying about not having a phone before.
“And she has one now,” I say to Mr. Coffee. “You’re welcome, Priya.”
Ginger paws the door just then, and I realize I haven’t taken her for a walk yet. Crap. I’ll give her breakfast first. “Do you remember that crazy girl last night, Ginger? Do you?” I ask as I let her inside and grab the kibble. “Do you remember that beautiful yet crazy girl?”
“What beautiful crazy girl?” I hear my mother ask. She rushes in, fully dressed now, her hair gelled and spiked properly, looking way more professional than she did a few minutes ago. She hustles about, gathering her things for the day. She snaps her fingers a couple of times and points to a shelf high above her. “Grab me a travel mug from up there, okay?”
Even with her orthopedic shoes on, my mother is puny compared to me and my father. When things were good with Dad, he and I would tease her about being so tiny, playing keep-away with her cell or throwing her between us like she was a doll. Ginger would bark and jump too. Usually, things weren’t that good.
“You want the silver one?” I take it down from a cupboard above the stove.
“What beautiful crazy girl?” she asks again.
“‘Why yes, the silver one goes perfectly with my gray hair,’” I say.
“I do not have gray hair. What girl, Matty?”
I deftly sub the mug for the coffeepot so it can drip directly into it. Clever me. “No one. I was talking to the dog.”
“You’re not sneaking out at night to hang out with some girl, are you?”
“No. Mom. Stop. No girls, no sneaking. Just . . . take your coffee, okay?”
I hand her the mug without looking at her. “Where’s your phone?” I ask. I dig through her canvas bag and find not just her phone but my dad’s as well. Why the hell hasn’t she crushed that thing already?
Whatever. I dial my number and hope Priya answers, even if she’s a million miles away by now.
I take the phone outside so Mom won’t interrogate me, practicing what I’ll say when Priya picks up.
You took my phone, you wacko! Or maybe, Can I pretty please have my phone back? Or—
Wanna hang out sometime?
No, no, no. Hellllll no. I stop thinking with my pants. I’m going with the first choice.
My palms start to sweat as the phone rings once, then twice, and a third time. On the other end, the screen should be reading “Lorna” since I have no desire to have “Mom” come up on my caller ID at any point in time.
I hear my own voice in my ear: “It’s Matty. Text me. I don’t do fucking voice mail.”
Why didn’t she pick up? I dial again. A minute later, I hear my message again and cringe. Crap, I’ve got a super-annoying voice.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see my mother at the kitchen door, hands on hips, watching me. I head straight toward the creek and the willows.
My phone, wherever it is, rings a second and third time.
“Answer it, Priya!”
I stand in the center of the completely empty field. No Priya, no notebook, no black bag, not even an impression in the dry earth of where she and I sat and looked up at the stars. Maybe she was never here at all.
But my phone is still missing.
When I hear my voice mail for the third time, I leave a message. “Hey, Priya, it’s Matty. You have my phone. Could you bring it back, please? Or, like, send it to me or something? Thanks.”
I have a sinking feeling I’ll never see that phone again. A car honks; Mom is backing her Honda out of the driveway. As I approach, she holds her hand out to me. “Can I have that?”
Reluctantly I give her cell back to her.
“You lose yours?”
“Something like that.”
She shrugs. “Sucks to be you.” She’s just pissed she hasn’t found Dad’s lockbox. Still, who needs her crap? It’s not like it’s my fault. “What are you doing today?”
“Not calling or texting anyone.”
“Ha-ha, funny boy. There’s a thing called a landline.”
I make a face. “If you’re a hundred years old.”
She holds up her middle finger and I match it with mine, touching our knuckles together like we’re a profane version of the Wonder Twins. “Go. Clean the house.”
“Go. Heal the sick.” I feel Ginger’s tail swish against the backs of my legs and wonder how she got outside. Mom must have let her out. “What are we doing today, girl? Cleaning? Nah, I didn’t think so.”
Summer is not about cleaning the house or chasing after your stupid father. It’s about hanging out at the lake and riding dirt bikes and maybe smoking a little weed to make those two things even more enjoyable.
But I can’t stop thinking about the imaginary girl who has really stolen my cell phone.