‘It’s okay,’ I tell him, smiling. If I was brassy enough, I’d throw in a wink. ‘At least you didn’t ask me why I don’t “just get over it”. Or, my personal favourite, “Why don’t you just not think about it?’’’ I click my tongue, fire finger-guns at the empty space in front of me. ‘Sure. I’ll get right on that,’ I say to all the hundreds of sceptical voices that seem to think I’m living like this for fun.
Luke tucks his hands between his legs, presses his knees tightly together so they make a prison, and I wonder if maybe it’s because he wants to reach out and touch me. Save me from a different kind of fall.
‘Does that happen a lot?’
‘It’s happened a few times. Friends – former friends – have said it before.’ I shrug. That was a day that started out with popcorn and a movie, but ended with tears and heartbreak.
Mercy Carr, a girl I’d only known since kindergarten, began the discussion before the opening credits had even begun. Mercy liked to talk with her hands. They began flapping as she casually mentioned that she and a couple of the girls were talking – aka questioning the legitimacy of what was wrong with me. Apparently they couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just tell myself not to be afraid. She compared my situation to her disliking the colour purple. Then one day, her mom bought her the cutest pair of lavender capri pants and she got over her aversion. Just like that. I didn’t see Mercy again after that. I didn’t see any of my friends again after that.
‘My grandma said it to me once.’
Luke’s eyes pop with shock. Mine did too at the time. I kind of expected Mercy Acts-Like-She’s-Eighteen-but-Thinks-Like-She’s-Eight Carr to question what she often referred to as my head drama, but when my gran did it, I died a little inside.
‘Yeah,’ I say, smiling.
‘Bet that was hard to swallow.’
‘Like nails coated in acid.’
‘Ouch.’
She didn’t mean to say it. Gran was like a replacement parent. My dad’s mom, she never forgave him for leaving us. When I was growing up, she tried everything to get him to come back and take responsibility for me, even threatened to cut him out of her will. Which I assume is why a week later I got that letter.
‘She freaked out one day when I passed out over black bits in my food. But she was actually kind of the shit.’ I laugh because besides this one, almost every memory I have of her is funny.
‘Oh, really?’ He arches his eyebrows.
‘She was Katie Maine, of K. Maine Bath and Beauty products.’ At one time, her Sugar Sand Scrub was in every bathroom in America. Her beeswax lip balms bought Mom and me this house.
‘No way. My mom has a ton of that stuff on her shelf.’
‘Yeah?’
He nods while taking a swig of his orange juice, and I hear his teeth click against the glass. I’m about to get all anxious about it shattering in his mouth, splitting and slicing through his strawberry lips, when he pulls it away and sets it back down on the step.
‘She took good care of me and my mom.’ I think about the summer when I turned nine and she took us to Disneyland. She came on all the rides with me because Mom was too afraid. She lost her false teeth on the log flume. ‘She was super-quirky and kind of impossible to stay mad at. And when all this started, everybody got scared, you know? It took a lot of effort and adjusting.’ My gran’s heart was so big, I was shocked to discover that’s what killed her.
We stop talking. He lets what I just told him sink in. The seconds drag on and my body starts to fidget, trying to get comfortable in the uncomfortable silence.
‘My gran lives in Gray Oaks,’ he says, and I am beyond grateful that he’s good at reading body language.
‘Gray Oaks?’
‘It’s a retirement complex.’ Of course it is. The guys that name those places have less tact than a cold sore. ‘Whenever I go over there these days, she calls me Matthew.’
‘Why?’ I ask, exercising caution because I’ve read about the damage dementia does. Assuming that’s what she has.
‘Her mind isn’t what it used to be,’ he says. ‘And I guess I look a lot like my dad when he was younger.’ Right. Matthew is his dad’s name. He touches the finger where the football ring was. Doesn’t take a genius to work out that the gaudy chunk of jewellery he was wearing the first time we talked belonged to his father. There isn’t much you miss when you’re really looking.
‘Last I heard, my dad was in the Alps, squandering his inheritance on a twenty-one-year-old blonde named Anika,’ I say. Nice. There are artists who work delicately, painting thousands of fine lines, and then there are artists who throw globs of colour across a room in the hope that it will hit something. In this moment, I definitely fall into the latter.
‘Ouch. That’s gotta sting,’ he says.
‘Nah. I decided to take a pragmatic approach to the whole thing. I can’t miss a man I never met, right?’
‘Do you think maybe I could borrow your no-bullshit shield for school sometime?’