“You can stand it for ten minutes so you can get a show at some café. And this one?” I point at JP. “If he changed, even the littlest bit, he’d sponsor your show because you two are the most awesomest awesome friends ever. Not because he needs a favor.”
“Dylan, wait a minute….” JP hops near.
Years of backed-up anger comes pouring out. The miserable things I did just so I’d have a place in this world. “Just be quiet.” I get over him and leer down. “You treated me like a dog my whole entire life. I do a trick so you throw me a bone. I hate your fucking guts, JP.”
He covers his neck and Jamie separates us. “Leave him alone. He said you choked him in the cafeteria. You can’t do that. Like, ever,” Jamie says.
“Oh my god.” I spin in a stupid circle, cursing up at the sky. “Yeah, I did almost choke him. Did he tell you why? Because he wanted to embarrass me for being with you.”
“JP said he was publicly supporting our relationship in front of the whole school.”
I can’t even look at him. “That’s what you told her, JP? Neat. You know what, Jamie? You got a real sweet deal here. You get a piece of your dreams fulfilled. I have memories of busting kids’ faces for the rest of my life.”
“Get over yourself, Dylan,” she says. “And do shut the fuck up.”
JP stands torn between us. Looking at me and then looking at Jamie. “Seems like this was the king shit of all shit ideas,” he says. “I thought we could all figure something out. Seems like I was way wrong. About everything.”
He follows Jamie and they leave together.
“Wait,” I say, wanting to stop her.
Jamie slowly turns around. “You know what I think when I look at you, Dylan? How can someone so smart be so stupid?” She grips her bike even harder. “Let’s go play video games,” she says to JP.
I lean into my crutches and watch them climb up the slight hill next to the football field. In all this shitty mist, I feel like the world is taking a cold, wet dump on me. I’m this close to running. She thinks I’m the asshole of the universe. Fine, I deserve that, but she got to say her piece and I never got to say mine. About how much I missed her and thought about her every day. She needs to know. Launching myself after them, I race on one leg to get there and do something, say something brilliant, to keep her from going home with him, when the sky changes. The sun sneaks just enough through the clouds and my mouth drops.
“Motherfucker,” I mutter.
Careening over them, in a big, happy bank of color, is a rainbow. A bright, shiny, and twinkling-with-every-meager-speck-of-lightin-the-spectrum rainbow. My sign from above. After all these weeks, Dad finally sent me THE SIGN. Let her go, he says.
So I do.
I turn around and head for home.
I let her go.
THIRTY-FOUR
My room isn’t as warm as I’d hoped. My back hurts from dragging home mountains of homework and I’m cold and wet. Not to mention, I have nowhere to put all the things clamping my arteries shut with emptiness. I don’t know how else to explain it: it’s like all my blood stopped moving. Which explains why I’m freezing, I guess.
But I finally got my sign, so it’s time to shut up now. I’m going to do the same things I’ve done for the past several weeks. Eat, sleep, do homework, try to forget Jamie, and lift shit. Only bright side will be getting my cast off tomorrow.
I exhale.
That’s honestly the only thing I have to look forward to. After that, I don’t know. Maybe taco night.
Night falls and I try not to think about them. I can only hope JP has a heater on in his fort while they play video games. It’s getting kind of cold and I want her to be comfortable. There’s all kinds of thoughts bubbling up. Me showing up out of the blue and Jamie flying into my arms, the two of us running away. Jamie realizing it was all a mistake, me telling her no, I made the mistake. I want so bad for everything to happen just like that, but I can’t run.
Dear Dad, I’m letting her go.
I turn on my computer and update my podcasts. Ooh, the Dyatlov Pass Incident. That sounds interesting. I click on that and collapse on my bed. Five minutes in, I’m hooked. A possible paranormal modern-day incident with likely scientific explanations? Yes, please.
Lying on my bed, I am being as apathetic as possible because if I actually acknowledge things, it will be painful. So I zone out and play a stupid game on my phone. My fingers are too big to do much damage, but I like to beat my mom’s score when I can. I’m halfway through Level 5 when my phone beeps. An alert to update Settings. Whatever, that’s a quick fix and I’m already losing this game. Might as well do it now. I swipe out of there and into the updates. Security, check. Games, check. Privacy…Wait. Hold on. What the hell is uGoiFindU, and why is it buried in the Privacy folder?