It could have been avoided. This couch misery spiral, this … loss … I could’ve avoided the bulk of it simply by doing more. I could’ve given a shit, like Rachel said. Put the effort in.
But what was there to do about it? What could I do now but play Super Mario Kart with Foster?
I was quite possibly the worst.
Foster and I stirred from our spots on the couch only for dinner, and that’s when my mom and dad broke the news to us—over a meal of Foster’s favorite foods.
They were going to California to “finish the process”—finalizing the adoption. It had to be done in the state of Foster’s original residence, my mom said. Legal stuff.
“We’ll leave Thursday morning and be back late Friday. Do you think you’ll be okay, or should we ask Mrs. Patterson to stay over?”
“No!” Mrs. Patterson was our elderly neighbor, and my childhood babysitter. Not that I didn’t mind spending the occasional evening with her back in the day, but I was way too old to be “minded,” as Mrs. Patterson always put it.
“We’re going to be fine,” I said, taking the volume down a little. “We can look after ourselves for one night.” I looked emphatically at Foster. “Right?”
His eyes were on his plate. “Sure.”
It was quiet for a moment. “Foster, I know this is all happening really fast,” my mom said. “We haven’t talked to Elizabeth personally about this, but we thought maybe you’d like to come with us and see her?”
Foster didn’t skip a beat. Not a moment’s hesitation. “I don’t want to miss the game.”
“But—”
“He doesn’t want to miss the game, Kath.” My dad twirled some pasta around his fork and then looked at Foster. “It’s a big one, right, bud?”
Foster nodded. “Districts.”
“Districts,” my dad repeated, and then gave my mom the same kind of emphatic look that I had just given Foster.
We went back to the couch after dinner, only this time Foster set up the Monopoly board on the coffee table. I watched as he arranged the brightly colored bills. He was always banker.
“How come you don’t want to see your mom?” I couldn’t think of a good preamble, so I just went for it.
“She doesn’t want to see me,” Foster answered simply.
“You don’t know that.”
“Don’t I?” His face never changed, but he tamped down the Community Chest cards with a little more force than was necessary.
“Maybe it’d be good for … closure. Or something.”
Foster just shook his head, and when he looked up, his eyes had this odd shine to them. “It’s kind of like an inside joke, Dev. You can’t really get it because you weren’t there. You can’t really understand.”
There was a pause. I cleared my throat. “Well … I wish I could.”
“No, you don’t.”
“You know what I mean.”
He looked at me for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
33
I wasn’t looking forward to school on Monday, but it came and went with little fanfare. I half expected Stanton Perkins to attempt an attack on either Foster or me, but I never even saw him.
I didn’t see Cas, either, or Lindsay or Ezra. After such a whirlwind of a weekend, school was actually a little anticlimactic. But blessedly so. I didn’t really want any confrontations. I just wanted to do calculus homework and write an essay on Chinua Achebe. To hide myself away in the study cave. I was for college now, remember? I would get into Reeding and someday when I was studying under those oak trees, all this would seem light-years away.
Miraculously, gym class on Tuesday was canceled, and we got a free period. I worked on my college essay in the library and sent up sincere thanks to whoever gave Mr. Sellers’ kid pinkeye.
It wasn’t until Wednesday afternoon that I saw Lindsay. She flagged me down in the hall on my way to “office hours.” At least, she tried to flag me down.
“Devon!” She waved me over from where she stood at her locker. “Could we talk?”
I slowed a bit as I neared. I wanted to talk. I did. But then … I didn’t.
“Ah, sorry,” I said. “I gotta get to my tutoring thing.”