“Who are you, and why are you in my house?” I asked. I was holding my phone, ready to call the police.
The man stood and turned around. He was wearing a Game of Thrones T-shirt and khaki shorts that revealed tan, hairy thighs. He looked about Renny’s age, maybe older, but not by much. I continued down the stairs. The stranger didn’t look like a crazed psycho killer, but neither had Norman Bates. The man walked toward me, smiling, and held out his hand.
“Hey, bro. I’m Ben Schwitzer.” A sun-and-moon tattoo decorated the underside of his wrist. “You must be Ozzie.”
I looked at his hand, but refused to shake it. My parents had taught me the importance of politeness, but that didn’t extend to strange men who’d possibly broken into my house with the intention of robbing and/or killing us.
“Am I supposed to know you?”
Ben Schwitzer, if that was his real name, looked like the kind of guy who spent hours at the gym, sitting in front of a floor-length mirror, admiring his broad shoulders and thick arms while he lifted weights. I figured I couldn’t take him in a straight-up fight, but I could’ve probably outrun him if necessary. Still, his youthful red cheeks and his purposely haphazard stubble screamed beer-pong aficionado rather than serial murderer.
“I work with Kat at Entropie,” Ben Schwitzer said. “For her, I guess you could say. But not directly. I’m in the IT department.”
My mom had started working at Entropie—a medical software company—a few months after I was born. I’d been delivered prematurely, and the weeks I’d spent in NICU had demolished my parents’ savings. They’d needed the money, but I also think Mom had regretted giving up her career to take care of Renny. She’d started in the logistics department and had worked her ass off to eventually become the COO.
I wondered if Ben Schwitzer was the man Renny told me she’d gone on a date with a couple of weeks ago.
“First job after college?” I asked.
Ben cocked his head to the side. “How’d you know?”
“Lucky guess.” I glanced out the bay windows that framed the staircase for Dad’s car, but it was gone. “Are you dating my mom?”
Ben shoved his hands into his pockets. He looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “Kat and I are just hanging out.”
Hanging out. A mental image of my mother and this man-child on a date crashed through my thoughts. Her leaning forward as he regaled her with stories of his not-so-distant college escapades. Them trying to figure out where to go at the end of the night because she couldn’t take him back to her house, where her legal husband and two children slept, and they couldn’t go to his house because he didn’t want to wake up his parents. Laughter bubbled out of me and self-replicated.
Ben frowned. “Did I miss something?”
“The seventies and eighties,” I said. “Unlike my mother.” My entire body shook. I held on to the banister for balance. “Are you even old enough to drink?”
“I’m twenty-four, bro.”
Being “bro’d” by Ben Schwitzer made me crack up harder. Mom walked into the kitchen wearing tight gray jeans and a sleeveless blouse. She looked forty-two going on twenty, which made it impossible to stop cackling. She stared at us, her face hardening to marble.
“Ozzie,” she said. “I see you’ve met Ben.”
I held my stomach, trying to swallow the laughter. “You know how old he is, right? You were a year older than he is now when I was born.”
Mom’s eyes narrowed. Ben forced a smile. “I think I’ll wait in the car,” he said. “Nice to meet you, Ozzie.”
“Don’t forget to buckle into your child seat,” I called after Ben as he left through the garage.
The moment the door shut behind him, Mom rounded on me. “You think this is funny, young man?”
I tried to wipe the smirk off my face but couldn’t. “You’re old enough to be his mother,” I said. “It’s hilarious.” Even when my words smacked Mom and I could see I’d hurt her, I couldn’t stop laughing.
“I know this is confusing, Ozzie, but your father and I are through. We will not be reconciling.” Her composure amazed me. She gritted her teeth and the muscles in her neck bulged, and I didn’t know how she kept herself from slapping the stupid grin off my face. She took a deep breath and let it out. I recognized the technique, because one of the therapists I’d test-driven had encouraged the practice to help me handle stress. “Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand—”
“Older?” I said. “I’m practically your date’s age.”
“You have no right to judge who I spend my time with while you carry on this foolish charade of having an imaginary boyfriend.”
“Whatever,” I said, partially because I knew she was right—my parents’ marriage was over, and she was free to date any strange man she wanted—but mostly because, even though I wanted to argue with her about Tommy, it was pointless, since I had exactly no proof he was real.
Mom stopped herself from doing or saying whatever she’d been considering, plucked her purse off the counter, turned, and walked out the door, slamming it behind her.
“Wow,” Renny said. “Way to be an asshole.”
I found my brother leaning over the railing at the top of the stairs.
“Shut up, Warren.”
2,008,389,000 LY
I LOVED MS. NOVAK ONLY FRACTIONALLY less than I loved Lua. She answered the door at Lua’s house wearing the run-down look of a person whose life was all work and responsibility, but who refused to let it break her.
“My second son,” she said as she wrapped me in a hug. “How are you, love?”
Before I could unleash the torrent of all my problems on her, the sound of glass shattering from inside the house cut me off. “Jaime’s here,” she said. “I think they’re fighting. Or making up. Who can tell? I should probably check on them.”
“I’ll do it,” I said.
Ms. Novak stood aside to let me in. I followed the shouting voices past the Novak’s cheerfully silly Christmas tree to Lua’s room, and momentarily debated leaving and spending the evening driving around Cloud Lake. But I wanted—no, I needed—to talk to Lua, which meant refereeing another fight between my best friend and Jaime.
When I opened the door, I saw Lua standing beside the bed, holding a crystal rose over his head. His hair was no longer platinum blond, but electric pink. Jaime stood on the other side of the bed, his arms outspread, his eyes panicked. It was like by opening the door, I’d frozen the moment. I cataloged every detail. Jaime’s oily, shaggy hair plastered to his forehead with sweat; the shattered remnants of a lamp on the floor by the closet; the word “No!” paused on Jaime’s lips.
Then time unfroze.
Lua threw the rose against the wall, and Jaime flinched as the crystal shards exploded.
“Stop it, Lu! You’re acting crazy!” he said.