“I know. I’m just saying that it happens to everyone at some point.”
“I want to be with her all the time, but I can’t be. Maybe we can get together sometimes, but not the way I want to be together always.”
“I’m so sorry, Ives. That just sucks.”
“It feels so bad,” she says. “So bad.”
I sit next to her. “I know. It’s the worst feeling in the world, wanting to be with someone and knowing you can’t.”
“Yeah,” she says.
I say slowly, “And the worst part is that you know there’s nothing you can do to force them to want to be with you—?that it’s the one thing in your life that you can’t just make happen, no matter how much you want it to and no matter how hard you try.”
“Huh?” she says.
“Never mind,” I say. “I was just thinking out loud.”
David doesn’t talk to me in English class the next day, just stares at his laptop and ignores everyone, including Ms. Campanelli, who occasionally glances at him hopefully when people say stupid things. But she gets no help from him.
At lunch, I bring my tray to David’s table and ask if I can join him. He says, “Feel free to sit here, but I’m about to leave,” and starts to load his dishes on his tray. So I go sit with some other friends, and I notice from there that David has stopped cleaning his place and gone back to doing whatever he was doing on his laptop. So he was lying about leaving to get rid of me. Which hurts.
James comes and joins our group. This time I make sure I smile and wave at him, so he won’t think I’m ignoring him again. He waves back and flashes an uncomfortable—?but not angry—?smile. Sarah arrives at the table and takes the seat across from him. They start talking, but they’re at the other end of the table, so I can’t hear what they’re talking about.
Other conversations wash over me. Jana complains about an unfair grade; Lambert says his grandparents are giving him an old car they don’t use, and he’s annoyed that they expect him to pay something toward it; Caroline Penner whines about how she can’t go to a Coldplay concert that weekend because her little sister is performing in her school play and her parents are making her go to that instead.
Every kid in that cafeteria is only thinking about himself.
Except no. There’s one person in the room who cares about someone other than himself, and I feel more connected to him than anyone else in the room.
But he won’t even look at me.
Thirty-One
OVER DINNER ON WEDNESDAY, Ivy says, “Can I bring cupcakes to school on Friday? I said I’d bring cupcakes. It’s Ethan’s goodbye party.” She adds, a little wistfully, “Diana likes vanilla cupcakes but not chocolate. But I like chocolate.”
“Sure,” Mom says. “I’ll buy some tomorrow—?I can get half vanilla, half chocolate so—”
“Hold on,” I say. “A goodbye party for Ethan? Where’s he going? Did he say?”
“To sleep-away school,” Ivy says. “He won’t live at home anymore.”
“Fuck.”
Ron says, “Hey, hey—?watch the language, Chloe.”
“What’s wrong?” Mom asks me.
“David told me this might happen.” I push my plate away. I’m not hungry anymore. “And it’s all my fault.”
“Why is it your fault?”
“Because I let him run away.”
Ivy says, “Ethan tried to run away from school today too, but the security guard stopped him. Ethan was crying and hitting his head a lot and had to go sit with Kimberly in the Self Management Room. He’s never had to go to the Self Management Room before, but Ajay has to go almost every day.”
Mom reaches out and touches my hand. “It’s not the end of the world,” she says gently. “It probably is safer for him at a boarding school.”
“But there’s no way they’re sending him to a good place. I mean, come on, it’s been, like, three days, and they’re already shipping him off? They must have just grabbed at the first school they saw. And he won’t have David to watch out for him anymore. And David won’t have him.” My voice breaks, even though I’m trying hard not to let it. “The two brothers are everything to each other. And their stepmother doesn’t care.”
“Where’s their biological mother?” Mom asks. “Why isn’t she getting involved?”
“She totally abandoned them and started another family. Which is basically what their father’s done too, except at least he lets them live with him.”
“Those poor boys. It all sounds very complicated.”
“Yes,” Ron says, and I raise my head to glare at him. He’s going to tell us all about how hard it is to parent difficult kids and how I’m being unfair to Ethan’s stepmother, and then I’m going to lose it, I’m just going to lose it, and it’ll end with both of us screaming at each other.
There will be blood.
Only that’s not what Ron says. What he says is, “It’s complicated, but that doesn’t excuse sending the boy away. When that woman married their father, she made a commitment not just to him, but to his sons. And shipping Ethan off makes it sound like she’s not honoring that commitment.”
I stare at him, open-mouthed.
Mom says, “Yes, of course, you’re right about that.”
And I find my voice enough to say, “Yeah.”
I’ve never told Ron he was right before.
He’s never been right before.
“It’s something I’ve thought a lot about,” he says. “I take my responsibility to you girls very seriously.”
Mom says, “But we don’t know all the details. I don’t think we should judge the stepmother too quickly—?she may feel like she really doesn’t have any choice.”
“I wonder if it would help if I tried talking to her,” Ron says.