“If you want, I’ll walk you home, Jamie,” I offer.
“No, Jamie, stay here,” JP says.
She stares at me, stares at JP, stares at me again. “I’m going.”
Yes!
“By myself,” she says.
Shit!
“I don’t know what it is with you boys, but it feels like I’ve spent the past couple months locked up in a world-class fun house of jacked-up emotions, and I need to go find mine again. I don’t know what’s true anymore.” Jamie edges out of the tree house and brushes past me as she scrambles herself, her bag, and her camera to the door. Her foot rests on the first step down, and she regards the two of us. “I don’t want to see either of you. Not for a long, long time. If ever. Don’t follow me. Don’t call, don’t text. Just—don’t.”
Right before she’s halfway down the tree, JP calls out, “What about your show at the café?”
“What about it?” she hollers up. “Are you going to take back all the money just because I think you’re unhinged? Cool. You two are seriously made for each other.”
Jamie vanishes, and JP and I are left behind like chumps.
The gate slams shut and he turns to me. “None of this went the way I wanted. This is hard—like, for real.”
“What’s hard, being honest for once?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Jeezus, enough already.” I get my frozen butt cheeks in gear to leave. Not to catch Jamie, but to go finish my homework and go to sleep because I know I’ve lost her forever. He grabs me.
“I have nobody,” he says in a rush. “I said I was sorry. I apologized, like, so many times. When you left, I realized I have nobody. I just want to hang out again, that’s all.”
“Groom a sycophant.”
“Can we start over?”
I blink and we’re in third grade again. He’s changing the world with a wave of his hand and I’m jumping as soon as he says how high. No thanks. But then like a bad connection, the video of us stops loading on our grade school years. Back when we played all day. Then it hiccups to middle school, when we went to Cannon Beach and all we did was walk to and from tide pools and talk about cool stuff. Back when I never felt more trust for another person that wasn’t my mom. “JP…,” I say.
When people get hurt, what do we do with the past?
“Dylan.”
“I’m sorry I never wanted to talk about your mom and I always ignored it,” I say. “It’s real shitty you have to live in a tree house.”
“Thanks. For finally saying something.”
“But everything else? I just…I don’t know.”
And I leave too. When I get back over on the other side of the wall, my crutches are gone. Fine. Be that way, universe. I’m going home. By the time I get home, I’m frozen to the core and the house is quiet. Our car is gone. I open the front door and there’s only one light on in the hallway. “Mom?”
She doesn’t answer.
I shuffle into the kitchen and see a note on the table.
If you get this note, I found your phone on your bed and I’m out looking for you. Please call me so I know you’re safe!
I love you. Mom
I pick up the note and stick it on the fridge under a magnet, wondering if she’s out there driving around in circles and really asking Dad for help. I wonder if she feels as helpless as I do when I hear nothing in return.
I drag myself up the stairs and toward my bedroom window. It slides open with all the ease I remember and it’s just as difficult as the last time to get out onto the roof. I mean, even more so because I’ve grown almost six inches since I broke my leg. No wonder the somnabitch is taking so long to heal.
Ah well. It’s all good.
I sit on the moldy shingles and swing my feet over the side, embracing the cold dark night in February and waiting for the sun to rise again.
THIRTY-SIX
I sit up there, on my roof, and watch tiny sparks of gold tickle the trunks of the trees as the sun rises. Hazy pinks and yellows gradually waking up. My street is quiet. All the nosy neighbors still sleeping. I keep thinking it’s my turn to sleep too, but I don’t want to. My eyes are heavier than me and yet they refuse to shut. The sun compels them to stay open. Just a little while longer to watch a new day dawn.
When her car rounds the corner around 5:15 AM, I wave. The car speeds up, parks, door slams, and she sprints around to the side of the house below where I’m sitting enjoying the sunrise.
“Dylan!” she shouts.
I raise my finger to my lips. “Shhhh…people are sleeping.”
“Oh my god.” Mom races to the front door and I hear her clambering up the staircase and opening my bedroom window as fast as her almost-forty-year-old self can go. “Dylan.” She squeezes out through the frame and onto the shingles. “Sweetheart?” I’m jealous of how easy it is for her. She slowly crawls toward me and crouches on her knees. “Please don’t jump, please, let’s figure it out, let’s talk about it. Just don’t jump, okay?”