“Dylan?”
I don’t want to be awake. “Is it time to go?”
“Um, I don’t know,” says Jamie.
My eyes fly open. Sitting up, I see her. She’s red in the cheeks, her hair is a tangled mess, and she’s pulling at her hands over and over. “Is this a dream?”
“I’m afraid not.” She looks to her wet boots. Then, carefully, up at me. “Hi.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
Mom stays stuck to the floor in my room, eyes whipping back and forth between me and Jamie. I didn’t notice her before. “I’m going to the kitchen,” she says. “Does anyone need anything?”
We shake our heads no. I still can’t believe Jamie is here in my house, not just in my house, but in my room and breathing and everything. It is a dream. I’m speechless.
“Okay then, um, so that’s where I’ll be and I’m going to leave the door open, okay?” Mom tilts her head and glares. “The door stays open.”
“Fine. Open,” I mumble.
Behind Jamie, Mom gives me two thumbs up before she jets away, and I laugh at her. “Am I bothering you?” Jamie asks.
“No, my mom’s being a nut.”
“Oh.” Jamie paces the floor, leaving behind a spot of wet and dirty carpet from where she stood. I am so happy to see that mud, but she’s oblivious. Every movement is stiff with cold, and she rubs her arms inside the sleeves of her coat. Her light is dim. “I didn’t mean to come up here.”
“That’s okay.” I sit up in bed and pull the blankets in.
“I left JP’s house and walked. And walked and walked and walked. Fuck-it stomped all over town. Thinking. I thought about everything. Then around midnight, I saw your crutches lying in two different places a block away from each other. I was like, those are longer than mammoth tusks; they’re definitely Dylan’s,” she says. “I worried someone stole them or something. So I brought them here.”
“Someone did steal them.”
“Well, that’s a shitty thing to do.”
“Sometimes people are shitty.” Like me.
“Hmm,” she murmurs in agreement. “I was going to leave them on the front steps, but your mom saw me. She asked me if I wanted to come in.”
“It’s pretty cold out.”
“Yeah.” Jamie rubs feeling back into her ears. “So I thought okay, and then she asked me if I wanted to say hi because you were upstairs and I thought why not, so here I am. Hi.”
“Are you hungry?”
“Not really.” Jamie leans against my desk and takes in the shapes and sights of my room. “It looks a lot different in the sunlight.”
“I guess so.”
“I’ll be honest with you, I’m stalling for time.” Jamie hides holding a tissue to her eye and disguises it as a runny nose before putting it back in her pocket. “I don’t want to go home and hear ‘I told you so’ from my mom.”
“She doesn’t mean it like that.”
“The heck she doesn’t. She ‘doesn’t approve of my choices’ these days,” Jamie says. “And I don’t want more therapy. It took forever to get it down to two sessions a week. I’m tired of feeling like a project. I wish people would just believe me when I say I’m fine.”
She sniffs, but this time it’s not pretend. “Do you want a blanket?” I say, and reach for a folded one untouched at the end of my bed.
“Thanks.” Jamie unfurls it, wraps herself up like a woolen burrito, and sits on the far end of the bed. “I’m just not in the mood for ‘I knew you’d be one of those girls who stays out all night’ right now.”
“Understandable.”
“Just feel…” Her voice slips away. Jamie buries herself completely in the blanket. “I feel so alone.”
I move to touch her, but my hand hovers. Waiting for a sign. I don’t know if I’m allowed to touch her in any way, but waiting for signs is a bullshit experience. Only sign I need is hers, and my hand comes down soft to rest on her shoulder.
She doesn’t shake it off. She doesn’t tell me to move it.
“I know that feeling,” I say.
“So does JP,” she says. “It’s funny, when he found me I was practically bleeding from your silence. And all of a sudden it was like, who is this broken little rich boy?”
“Who cares.”
“He doesn’t know how to tell you how important you are to him. We were both kind of moping around over you, isn’t that stupid? Especially since he disgusts me right now. What kind of ally does that? He is a very good listener, though.”
“That’s how he learns your soft spots.”
“At least I got a show out of it.”
“You did it on purpose?”
“I’m no angel,” Jamie says. “Every time JP wanted me to talk to you and I said no, because I was pissed at you, which I still am, he kept upping the ante and I was like, hmm, how far will this kid go to get what he wants?”
“JP will go the distance.”
“He told me about his mom.”
“Whoa. That’s major.”
“He said you and your mom were the only people who knew.”