Ivy glances tentatively between us. “I have a question,” she says quietly, like she’s afraid to disrupt the fragile moment of peace. “I don’t understand the connection between Charlie, Boney, and Autumn. How did that happen?”
Mateo heaves a sigh. “So, like a month ago, Autumn and Loser Gabe went to a party at this empty house at the edge of Carlton. It was condemned or something, supposed to be torn down soon, totally deserted. Anyway, Gabe was being a dick, like always, so Autumn went outside, and while she was walking around, she heard voices coming from a shed in the backyard. She said a couple guys from school were there, and started acting shifty and weird when they saw her. Turns out they’d found a bunch of Oxy hidden under one of the floorboards, and they were talking about taking it and selling it. One of the guys said he could get eighty bucks a pill.” He swallows hard. “And Autumn…Autumn wanted in.”
That’s pretty much what Charlie told me, except a lot less garbled.
“Why?” I ask. It’s what I came to find Mateo for; the piece of the puzzle that makes no sense. Even though Charlie and Boney weren’t friends, they had friends in common, so I can picture the two of them running into one another at a party. And I can definitely picture them stumbling drunkenly across a bunch of hidden drugs and thinking it was a gold mine. Boney used to see dollar signs everywhere, and Charlie’s the kind of guy who thinks rules don’t apply to him. But Autumn Wojcik? She’s always been quiet and serious, and probably made it through four years of high school without a single detention. I could imagine her walking away, maybe, and letting Boney and Charlie drown in their own stupidity. But joining them? It doesn’t fit. “Why would Autumn want to be part of something like that?”
Mateo’s jaw clenches. He doesn’t answer right away, and Ivy lets out a strangled little gasp beside me. “Your mom,” she breathes.
He nods, his expression pained. “It’s like I told you guys in the car—her pills cost a fortune, and our insurance has sucked ever since Spare Me shut down. So most of the time, Ma doesn’t take them. Autumn said that if she sold six pills a month, she could pay for the prescription. She said six pills wasn’t a lot.”
Ivy and I exchange glances as Mateo stares at the floor. “I tried to talk her out of it. Swear to God, I really did. I’ve been sick about it. But Autumn wouldn’t listen. And she wouldn’t listen when I told her how much my mom would hate it, or that it could all blow back on Ma and screw up the way people see her. My mom’s a Reyes, not a Wojcik. It’s different, and Autumn doesn’t get that.” He exhales a heavy sigh. “She doesn’t get a lot of things. Problem is, once my cousin gets an idea in her head, it’s like she has tunnel vision. She sees the light at the end, and none of the mess she’s making to get there. She said if I wanted to stop her, I’d have to turn her in. And I couldn’t do that.” His head drops, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen Mateo look so defeated. “There’s no way I could ever do that to her. And I didn’t think—I never thought something like this would happen.”
We’re all quiet for a few beats, absorbing the aftershock of his words. Ivy looks too devastated to speak, and I have no clue what to say. I guess I can understand the position he was in with Autumn; Mateo’s family means everything to him. Ratting her out must have felt impossible, even when she was clearly in the wrong.
I try putting myself in Autumn’s shoes: If Wes or Henry were sick and needed medicine we couldn’t afford, what would I do? What lengths would I go to? But the parallels are too hard to draw; for one thing, my other dad would be there. Plus, my parents have great insurance, and savings, and all those other things Henry talks about when he’s trying to convince me that I should get a business degree alongside an art degree. You need a safety net, he always says.
We have that, but Autumn and Mateo don’t. Not anymore.
“I get it,” I finally say. It’s a weak response, I know, but it’s more of an olive branch than anything else. A signal that I’m done giving Mateo a hard time. I’m not going to tell him that Autumn did the right thing, but he’s not trying to say that, either. She came up with a bad solution to a bad situation, and everyone loses.
“You didn’t…I mean, your mom…,” Ivy says haltingly. She bites her lip, eyes on the highly polished wood of the hallway floor. “We all make mistakes, right? And almost never see the fallout coming. If we did, we’d never do…whatever it was that we…did.” She trails off, and I get the distinct impression that she stopped talking about Mateo after the first sentence.
“Hey, Ivy!” Charlie’s voice floats from Ivy’s living room, startling me. I almost forgot he was here. “Check it out. They’re talking about you on TV.”
CAL