“How can you be so casual about this?”
Jamie shrugged and pressed the red button on the machine. A claw zoomed forward from a corner of the glass case. “My parents were upset about the whole flunking-out-of-boarding-school thing, yes”—he pressed the button again and the claw whizzed to the side; it was hovering over the box of Pockys now—“but at this point, they kind of expect me to fuck up. I don’t even think they mind that much. I guess they would if I were actually theirs.”
The claw touched the corner of the box and scraped it. But it didn’t grab on.
“Jamie,” I said. “You don’t mean that.”
“I don’t know.” The game finished, and he dropped his hands by his sides.
“If you really mean that, you’re stupid. Because you are theirs. Because they’re your parents.”
“Come on,” Jamie said, nodding his head in the direction of another aisle.
Even though it was bizarrely unpopulated that night, the arcade still hummed with its own energy. Jamie had gone quiet. I hoped he wasn’t upset with me for saying that. I hoped he didn’t want to go home. Although, to be honest, it might have been better for both of us if he did. It might have saved me from feeling all these… feelings. The ones that made me want to stay out all night with him. To stay in this pocket of the week where time stopped breathing.
Jamie stopped at a machine, and I figured he’d fish out a few hundred-yen coins to play the game. Instead, he sat down on the floor. I sat next to him, close enough that I could smell the laundry detergent on his T-shirt. I inhaled deeply.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have talked about your parents like that. It’s obviously none of my business.”
He shrugged. “I asked about your dad. You can ask me whatever you want.”
I shoved my phone into my bag, and my hand scratched against the canvas. “So tell me about them. Your parents, I mean.”
He leaned his head back and closed his eyes—I could see his eyelashes moving against his cheeks. “My parents got married in their thirties. They wanted kids, but they couldn’t have kids, so…” He lifted his hands helplessly. “Voilà.”
“Did you ever meet her?”
“My birth mother?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Yeah, a couple of times. Once when I was three, right after the movie came out. And once when I was six.”
“Did your parents know her?”
“Sort of. It was an open adoption. Lauren—that’s her name—is from a town not far from where my parents grew up. But her family threw her out when they found out she was pregnant. She was seventeen.”
“Jesus,” I said. “That’s, um, my age.”
“I know,” Jamie said.
I shifted uncomfortably. The stiff purple carpet felt like Styrofoam against my bare legs.
Jamie went on. “Every year, my parents sent Lauren pictures of me, and she sent me birthday cards and stuff. But my parents wanted to help her as well.”
“Help her?”
“Yeah. They wanted her to go to college and make something of herself, I guess.”
“So what happened?”
He knotted his hands together and held them between his knees. Jamie had always been so light and open, like he couldn’t contain his emotions even if he tried. But now he seemed small and closed in. This was Jamie from a new angle, through a hidden door, and I wanted to do something for him. To help him.
“Lauren couldn’t handle it,” he said. “It was too much me. Me in pictures, me in a movie, for Christ’s sake. Plus my parents breathing down her neck all the time.” He went silent for a moment. “Anyway. She moved to Oregon. She’s a dental hygienist now, I think.”
“Do you talk to her at all?”
“Nope.” He cleared his throat. “No one heard from her. Until last year.”
“Wait.” I scooted toward him. “You mean you met her again?”
He sighed. “She contacted my parents’ lawyer and said she wanted to visit for Thanksgiving. She was supposed to come to my grandparents’ place from the airport, but—she never showed. She freaked, I guess, and couldn’t handle it.”
I thought about Paris. About how much I’d wanted to live there and how heartbroken I’d been when I’d found out I couldn’t. But no matter how weird things were in my family, I never doubted for a second that my mom and dad loved me.
“I’m sorry,” I said, placing my hand next to his on the ground. “I can’t imagine doing that. I can’t imagine cutting off someone you’re supposed to love.”
Jamie turned suddenly to face me, his expression resolved. “But that’s the thing. She wasn’t supposed to love me. That’s my parents. And they do, but they have all of these expectations. After last Thanksgiving, I skipped class and I totally bombed my exams. Honestly, I should have been kicked out at winter break, but the headmaster gave me another shot because my glorious grandparents donate so much money. Anyway, he didn’t have a choice when I failed next semester, too.…” He sat back again, miserably. “My parents said I didn’t deserve that school. And it’s like—I don’t deserve their family, either. I know I don’t.”
A speaker nearby kept playing the same twenty seconds of a song over and over. I focused on how close our hands were, only a sliver of purple carpet separating them, and wished I could close the gap.
“Okay,” he said, sitting forward. “Okay. This is important. Tell me where you want to go to college.”
“What?” I laughed. “No.”
“Why not? Are you worried I’ll apply? Because you shouldn’t worry. I already failed out of school. I’ll never get anywhere in life.”
“No.” I knocked his shoulder with mine. “I’m not worried about that.”
“So you think I couldn’t get in?”
“Jamie! This isn’t about you.”
“But still.”
I tugged nervously at the bottom of my skirt. “MIT.”
“Wow! Really?”
“Yes, really. I mean, I’ll apply. But that doesn’t mean I’ll get in. That doesn’t even mean I’ve got a shot.”
“What do you want to study?”