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.”