“Viv,” my mom says, smile fading a bit. “Sylvia is your dog now, so she’s your responsibility. You’re all she’s got. If for some reason you’re not around, I will not take care of her. I won’t feed her or walk her, okay? Do you understand?”
I narrow my eyes at my mother—clever woman.
Sometimes I think my mom doesn’t really know what to do with me. She got a whirling dervish of a daughter, and the best she can do is brace herself for the violent winds. I know what she’s telling me with this dog: don’t run away or end up in the hospital again. Now someone else’s life depends on me keeping it together. This little, innocent girl-dog, who is working her pink tongue around the back of my ears.
“Okay,” I say. I know it’s a trick or at least a trick wrapped in a present, but you know what? I will take it. “I understand.”
Upstairs, Sylvia roams around my bed, inspecting my stuffed animals at first and then lying down amid them. I place my head on the pillow right next to her, and it’s nice to have the company of someone who won’t try to talk to me or tell me what to do. She dozes off eventually, and her breath is so hot that she’s like a fluffy miniature dragon on my bed. When she hears a knock at the front door, she startles awake with a little bark. I’m not talking to Hayashi again.
I hear my mom’s footsteps, then my door creak open.
“Viv,” my mom says. “Jonah’s at the door.”
I give her this look like So? because I’m being horrible, and I don’t even care that I’m being horrible. I want to retreat into myself, and no one else is invited except for Sylvia.
“Viv,” my mom repeats. “Come on.”
She means: come on, don’t be rude, Jonah drove to Cloverdale for you, he loves you, he isn’t the enemy just because everyone else in the world is the enemy. I don’t feel like putting makeup on, and I don’t care if Jonah sees me bare-branched. Normally, I care a lot, but I don’t have the energy to be his Vivi today, not by a long shot. So let him see that my eyelashes are golden brown and not thick black, that my cheeks are actually fair and not flushed rose. I pick my cotton-ball doggie up so she’s resting on my arm. She seems right at home.
When I appear in the doorway, I can tell Jonah’s taken aback by my nude face because he’s never seen it. He’s not repulsed, I don’t think—just surprised.
I open the door a little more so he can see Sylvia.
“This is Sylvia. Sylvia, meet Jonah.”
“Hey,” he says. His grin makes him look younger, like Isaac. He holds his finger out for Sylvia’s inspection, and she sniffs at him. “She’s so cute.”
“She’s my birthday present from my mom.”
His smile drops away. “How are you?”
This feels weirdly formal, the tables turned—Jonah showing up at my house unannounced instead of me showing up at his. Only Jonah seems to hesitate, like maybe my sadness is too much to surmount. I can’t be his wings, the person who lifts him up from the sad days. I’m hopelessly earthbound, and I’m in no position to save anyone else.
“C’mon,” he says. He holds his hand out to me, palm up. I like a lot of things about Jonah Daniels, and some of those things are very shallow pleasures—his hair, his strong arms, those molten brown eyes. But I really love his hands, which are easy to underappreciate as a feature. Plenty of people have stubby fingers or knobby knuckles or shredded cuticles. You don’t really notice a pair of hands until two really good ones are holding yours. Jonah’s hands are square and tanned and smooth—really great boy hands.
I don’t want to leave my house, but this is Jonah’s allure: he is so handsome and so good, good enough to show up even knowing I might knock him backward with my shrewishness. And I can’t help but put my hand in his.
We let Sylvia romp through the mossy grass on the bluff overhanging the ocean. Behind us, flowering trees shed petals like tears. It’s my favorite spot in all of Verona Cove—the usual scene of my pill disposal—and perhaps the quietest place in this quiet town. But the bluff is noisy if you listen because it’s filled with the sounds of the natural earth. The sky is clear blue, the wind cool as it shushes low through the grass.
“Are you sure she’s okay off a leash?” Jonah asks, ever the conscientious grown-up.
“I’m sure.”
We sit near the edge but not too near, and about a foot apart from each other because I don’t feel like being touched by anyone or anything except the clouds. Jonah tells me about what the littles have been up to; he tells me about the restaurant changes under way, new wall paint and recipes.
“It rained for a few hours earlier this week,” he says, when I haven’t responded to any of his other soliloquys. “The day you were in Berkeley.”