Ethan is finally allowed to call home, but Mr. and Mrs. Fields won’t let David talk to him. “We can’t trust you to stay upbeat,” their stepmother says.
“She’s probably right,” I point out when David calls me afterward, upset. “Even when things are good, you’re not exactly ‘upbeat.’”
“I wouldn’t have upset him,” he says irritably. “I just want to know how he’s doing, but all they asked him was whether he needed more underwear. They couldn’t get off the phone fast enough.”
“They’ll let you talk to him eventually, right?”
“They said when he calls next week I can talk, but only for a minute or two.”
After that second call, he drives over to my house and texts me from his car so I can come out and we can talk in private.
“How was it?” I ask as soon as I’m in the car with him.
“Confusing.”
“Why? How did he sound?”
David rubs his forehead. “He’s just so bad on the phone. It’s impossible to get a real conversation going. I asked him how he was doing, but all he said was ‘fine.’ And then he talked for a while about the movies they’ve been showing.”
“Did he sound happy or sad about them?”
“He was annoyed they showed a Disney movie because—?and I’m quoting—?‘those are for little kids.’ But he liked that they showed a Clint Eastwood movie.”
“He doesn’t sound miserable.”
“I don’t know. It’s not like he would ever say, ‘I’m unhappy here, take me home.’ I mean, if he could express what he was feeling and ask for help, he wouldn’t need to run away. Running away has always been how he lets us know he’s unhappy. And he can’t run away from there. They’ve got him locked up tight.”
“When can we visit?”
“That’s the one good thing. I called the school when my parents weren’t around and asked when Ethan can have visitors, and they said I can come up next weekend.”
“Yay!” I say. “And I can come too?”
He grins. “I didn’t ask whether I could bring you, because I didn’t want them to say no. But you’re coming with me.”
“Damn right I am.”
David is tense during the long drive up to the boarding school. He doesn’t talk much, and when he does, it’s more snarling than talking.
“Can we stop for a cup of coffee?” I ask after we’ve been on the road for a while.
“I want to get there before lunch,” he says. “Why didn’t you have some before I picked you up?”
“I did. I just wanted more. But it’s fine.”
We drive for another ten minutes. I poke around on Instagram and Twitter, figuring it’s better to amuse myself than to try to get civil conversation out of him right now. Then he exits the freeway and pulls in at a Starbucks.
“I thought we weren’t stopping.”
“You wanted coffee.”
“But I don’t want to make us late.”
“It’s fine.” He gets out of the car, and I follow him inside. We get in line. He nudges my shoulder with his. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m really glad you’re with me today. But I won’t relax until I see him.”
“I know,” I say, and I do. “I’m not mad. I totally get it.” I’m worried, too—?what happens if the place is awful and Ethan’s really unhappy? It’s easy to say we’ll rescue him. It’s another thing to do it. And what if the place is only moderately bad, and Ethan is okay but would rather be home? Do we leave him there, drive away, try to forget that he wants to come with us?
The caffeine was a bad idea—?it only makes me more nervous.
Thirty-Six
“WELCOME TO PRISON,” David mutters as we stop at the gate guard booth.
The guard does carefully check both our IDs before giving us visitor passes, but none of this is all that different from what I went through at Ivy and Ethan’s high school. And once we drive in, the place is a lot prettier than a prison—?not that I’ve ever actually been to a prison, but I assume most of them don’t have nearly so much in the way of trees and paths and low buildings and sunlight.
We park where the guard told us to, in a space marked VISITOR in front of the main administration building. Neither of us says a word as we get out of the car and walk inside, where there are lots of sofas and chairs and big windows looking out on more of the campus.
The woman sitting at the front desk is tall and thin and looks like something out of a Roald Dahl book illustration—?all spiky hair and spiky limbs and spiky eyebrows. She does not give me a warm feeling, and my heart sinks.
David explains why we’re here.
“Visiting hours aren’t until eleven on Saturdays,” she says. Spikily.
I glance at my watch. We’re only, like, twelve minutes early.
David points that out, and she says coldly, “I’ll see what I can do. Have a seat.” She waves toward the sofa as she picks up the phone and presses a button or two.
We ignore the sofa and wander toward the windows. I lean against the frame and watch David as he gazes out at the buildings and fields. A few weeks ago, I’d probably have said his face was expressionless, but I can read him a lot better now: there’s tension in his cheek and in the slight tuck of his bottom lip under his teeth and in the line between his eyes. He’s right on the edge, and a single word might make him explode. So I stay quiet.
It feels like forever before we hear someone come in from a side door. We both whip around, but it’s not Ethan. It’s a young man, probably about twenty-five or so. His dark hair is already receding from his forehead, and he’s slightly sweaty around the temples, but he has a nice smile. He’s wearing sweatpants, a T-shirt, and sneakers.
“You guys are here to see Ethan Fields?” he says.
“Yeah,” David says. “I’m his brother, and this is my friend Chloe. Where is he?”