Chapter Twenty-Two
Hey. Thanks for the phone.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied. I walked up the ramp and took a seat beside him. “Thought you might want it. It’s one thing to choose to be disconnected. Having it forced on you is something else.”
“Choices are everything,” I agreed.
A car passed by on the road behind us. Rare enough that we both got quiet, listening.
“Speaking of choices,” he said after a moment, “I wondered if you might make one not to come again tonight.”
“I had to wait for Lana to fall asleep before I could sneak out the window,” I explained. “I swear it’s like she takes ages to nod off just to spite me.”
“Right.” He pushed his hair out of his face. “Why do you use the window anyway?”
I shrugged. “I don’t really want to explain where I’m going to my mom, I guess.”
“Ah,” he said. He scratched his nose. “I thought it might be one of your signature moves or something.”
I laughed. “You think I have moves?”
“Sure,” he replied. “I mean, the first night I got to know you, you did slam two beers, pass out, and throw your phone in the lake.”
“All of which is completely out of character.” I thought on this for a moment. “In fact, maybe you’re the issue.”
“Me?” He touched a hand to his chest. Like I’d be referring to someone else.
“You have been right there or at least adjacent to all of this new behavior,” I told him. “Could be you’re a bad influence.”
“I have always wanted to be a bad influence,” he said, sounding almost wistful. Then he shook his head. “But no. This is all you. Why not just own it?”
Snap! That same light popped on over our heads. This time, I drew back so quickly, I banged my elbow against a nearby stool, sending it into a noisy spin.
“Dude,” Clark moaned as it rattled off the dock completely, hitting the pavement below. “Seriously? Why can’t you sleep like a normal person?”
“You could move your bed away from the window,” Ben pointed out.
“I need a natural breeze to get my best REM.” Clark ran a hand over his head, eyes closing. “The time for which is ticking, right now, as we both have to be at work in a few hours. So shut up.”
The light went off again. Ben and I sat there, silent and reprimanded. I was learning that if you do have to get scolded for any reason, it’s always better to have company.
“So,” he whispered finally. “How is your mom?”
“Tired,” I said. And grumpy. After she’d been discharged that afternoon, Liz had driven her home, then stayed on, fussing around Juvie, adjusting pillows and pushing liquids.
Finally, my mom had told her to get out and go home, using those words pretty much exactly.
All evening I’d been walking the delicate line between staying vigilant while also pretending to ignore her.
It was exhausting. “She seems okay, though.”
“What about you?”
“Me?”
He eased back on his palms, spreading his fingers. He was in shorts and the same shirt from that day, which said EAST RIVER THUNDER over a pattern of bolts. “Her passing out was pretty intense. Make sense if you’re freaked out.”
“I am,” I admitted. “Cancer and hospitals… it’s a lot.”
“You want to talk about it?”
Of course this would be the next question. From him. From anyone. It was my answer that surprised me. “Is it okay if we don’t?”
“Yeah,” he said.
“It’s just,” I began, then stopped when the words didn’t come. Trying again, I managed, “I like that this is separate. From all that, I mean.”
Just the two of us, away from everyone else. The darkness a contrast to the bustling brightness of the Egg. Like two views of a coin, and this was the luckier one.
“Oh,” I said softly. I reached out to put a finger, gently, on his forehead, covering a small constellation of freckles. “Hold on. You… there might be something on you.”
I was hardly convincing. He did not flail or shriek. “Bug?” he whispered.
A beat. Then I slid my hand down his cheek, fingers trailing. I could feel the heat coming off him: His shirt, when I moved down to touch his shoulder, was soft, slightly damp with sweat.
“It’s gone now,” I said.
He blinked at me. Once, twice. Yes, I thought. And then it was happening: He leaned in and our lips touched. Tipping, tipping, and just like that, we were on the other side.
Later, coming back up the driveway, I eyed the door, considering it. Then I went back through the window anyway.
The next morning, my mom passed out again.
The thump came while I was brushing my teeth.
I’d had to spit and, froth still on my lips, then run into the kitchen, where I found her on the floor in the open doorway to Juvie.
I’d been ready to yell for Lana to call another ambulance.
But even coming out of a faint, my mom was able to convince me otherwise.
“I just got up too fast,” she insisted, waving me off as she got to her feet.
“Mom. You can’t—”
“Finley.” She went over to her bed, taking a seat. “I’m fine.”
She wasn’t. Later that day, while I was at work, it happened again. Liz, unlike me, was not swayed by her protests. Now my mom was back in the hospital.
Once she was released, her insurance would send a traveling nurse to check on her daily at the Woods. For now, I was back at work, trying to distract myself.
“We still good for this afternoon?” Lana asked me as a table of public works guys went out the door. “The road trip?”
“Road trip?” Clark snorted. “Your house is less than two miles away.”
“It requires getting on the highway,” she replied, sticking a ticket. “So it’s a road trip. And we’re not just going there. Finley needs a phone.”
“I have one,” I said, glancing at Ben. The back of his T-shirt, a blue one, read, WE’RE PUMPED FOR NORTH PUMP GENERALS.
“A real phone,” she clarified. “One through which, say, your closest friend could reach you if it was necessary.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is this the same closest friend who lives in the same room I do and works alongside me?”
“You know, you could need me. Say you’re away from the house and suddenly in crisis. Who are you going to turn to, a total stranger?”
The irony was that this was exactly what she had been, not so long ago. “Hopefully not.”
“Exactly.” She put her tray flat against her chest. “I’m not saying you have to be plugged in to everyone in the entire world. Just, you know, your people.”
I thought of that feeling from my childhood of missing my mom, even if I barely knew or remembered her. It was the solitary aspect of it that stuck with me now, that specific loneliness. An emptiness where something else should have been. Maybe it was people.
Now I moved over to the table where the public works guys had been sitting, taking a rag and tray with me. It was finally slow enough I recognized what had become my favorite Dolly song, “Light of a Clear Blue Morning,” overhead. Lana, counting bills into the register, was singing along.
After closing, we went back to the Woods.
There, I used the house phone to check in on my mom, who was scheduled to be released from the hospital later that day.
If possible, she sounded even more annoyed at my questions about how she was feeling, as well as curt with her responses.
It was clear that this dynamic, her needing me—or anyone, for that matter—did not suit her.
I wasn’t much of a fan either. All the more reason for a road trip.
We took the rental car. Lana was, in a word, impressed. “It’s so new!” she marveled as I started down the driveway. She inhaled deeply, then exhaled before doing it again. Personally, all I was getting was plastic and AC, but it was nice she was happy.
At the end of the driveway, we saw Ben leaving the Egg.
“Hold up.” She poked her head out the window. “Ben!”
A van passed between us as he looked up. When he saw us, he waved.
“Didn’t you need to do something at the post office?” she yelled.
It took him a minute. Then he said, “Oh. Yeah.”
“We’re going now. Get in.”
I looked at her. At no point so far had the discussion of this journey involved anyone other than the two of us. And definitely not the guy I’d been making out with less than twelve hours earlier.
“You don’t mind, right?” Lana asked me as he jogged across the street. “If he comes with?”
I shook my head, hitting the button to unlock the back door. When he got in, he, too, took a noticeable inhale. “Nice ride.”
“Right?” Lana turned in her seat. “New-car smell!”
With that, we headed off, soon curving around the lake, passing low cement motels and T-shirt shops.
After about a mile, I glanced back at Ben.
Although he’d been watching the scenery, his eyes clicked over to meet mine.
This was going to be harder than I’d thought.
Meanwhile, Lana was immersed in what she had termed “the luxury.”
“I mean, this car doesn’t just have seat heat,” she pointed out. “There’s seat cooling, too! For a hot day!”
“Impressive,” Ben agreed.
“And,” she continued, “Four airbags. I could hit a tree and live!”
“Not necessarily,” he said.
“My chances would be good, though.”
I pulled up to the first light off the lake. “Which way?” I asked her.
She sat there a second, now fiddling with the nav system. We were a little blue dot as she cycled through various settings: up close, far away, street view. I glanced in my mirror, concerned about someone getting impatient behind us. But there was just Ben. This time he was looking directly at me.
“Go right,” Lana said finally, jerking me back to the present. She sat back, taking a breath. I put on my blinker and turned.
Maybe it was the way she settled in, getting quiet. But I was expecting a bit of a drive. Instead, we’d not even gone half a mile—Clark hadn’t been kidding—before she said, “Turn here. By the firewood sign.”
It was a simple placard, with just this word and a phone number. Beside it was a narrow dirt road. As we started down it, dust rose. We passed a field, then an old barn.
Lana pointed. “It’s this one.”