Chapter Twenty-Six
Twenty-Six
Mo’s sister Krissie is fourteen, four years younger than Monique, but she claims she’s been searching for an aesthetic that matches her soul for years.
When she opens the door dressed in black from head to toe, lips and fingernails included, I don’t quite think she’s found it. But I can see why she thinks she might have. It reminds me of the wailing widow I wanted to be when Jason first went into a coma.
“Krissie, hey!” I say, giving her a hug.
“Hey, Zadie!”
“Is Mo home? She wasn’t at school today.”
“She has a cold, but I’m sorry to tell you that she is in the basement, watching the new TV Granddad mounted.
Jack and Archie were playing whatever they play and they cracked the screen, and because everyone in my family is a slave to the capitalist agenda of consumerism, they went and immediately purchased another. I don’t even believe in screens.”
“I am sorry to hear that. Good for you for standing strong,” I say, right as Mo appears from the basement.
“Oh, hey, Zad! Are you here for dinner?” Mo asks, then blows her nose noisily into a tissue. Just seeing her face, I want to start crying. I don’t want it to be true. “Bad night for it. It’s the twins’ turn, and we’ll be lucky if we get peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches.”
“No,” I manage to get out. “Just wanted to talk.”
She must hear something in my voice, because she looks up. “Oh,” she says. “Let’s go outside.”
Outside, we sit on the porch chairs her grandparents love. “What’s up?”
“I think I was right about Jason. He was cheating on me,” I say. The stiffening of Mo’s posture is subtle, but I’m watching for it.
“Geez, really?” She sniffs. “What did you find out?”
I close my eyes because suddenly I am just so, so tired. Of lying, of hiding, of trying to get things right. “I know it’s your ring.”
Mo frowns, opens and shuts her mouth. “Sorry, what now?”
“The ring,” I say. “I know it’s yours, and I know that you’re the one who’s been messaging me on Instagram.”
Mo stares at me a moment, then laughs. “I’m sorry, Zadie. I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her eyes widen and she sniffs again. “Wait, did Alana answer? Or did a different girl contact you on Instagram?”
“Yes,” I say. “You!”
Mo is looking at me with genuine concern now. “Zadie, is everything okay?”
“Just tell me the truth. I’ll respect you more if you just look me in the eye and be honest with me,” I say. “Maybe we can still find a way to be friends.”
“What do you want me to say?”
“The truth,” I say, getting more and more frustrated. “I know about you and Jason.”
Monique blinks, sniffs. “You think I’m cheating with Jason?”
“Aren’t you?”
“No!” she practically bellows. “What the fuck! Why would you even think something like that?”
The strength of her reaction is making me doubt myself, but then I remember that people can be damn good actors.
It had never even crossed my mind before he broke up with me that Jason might be cheating on me.
Now, there are so many possibilities for ways he could have betrayed me.
From falling out of love with me to being with my best friend.
“I know you were with him at Penny’s party and God knows when else.”
“Penny’s party?” Mo looks confused. “I didn’t even go.”
“Oh my God, I saw you!” I tell her, not caring if she tries to make me explain. “You were leaving a room with him.”
She frowns like she’s trying to recall this. Finally, she says, “Oh, you mean before Penny’s party?”
I sigh. If she’s going to try to skirt this with a bunch of technicalities, I don’t have time for it. It wasn’t at Penny’s party; it was before Penny’s party. I didn’t hook up with Jason; he hooked up with me!
“I saw you, Mo,” I say again. “I know for a fact you hooked up with him.”
A light repetitive thud is starting in my brain.
Mo looks disgusted. “I absolutely did not!” she cries.
“Then why were you alone in a room with him?” I ask, finally losing all semblance of control.
“Because he’s investing in my app!” Mo spits. “Or we were talking about it, anyway. I would never hook up with Jason.”
I blink at her. “Then why were you adjusting your top when you left the room?”
“Because that top is itchy?”
“And why did Josh imply Jason had been hooking up with someone?”
“Because Josh is an imbecile and likes to start drama? I don’t know! Ask him.”
In addition to the thumping in my head, that electric sound is back again. It’s a loud buzzing noise, and I have no idea what to think or believe. “But you’ve been absent a lot.”
I’m expecting her to use the excuse of her app again, but she surprises me.
“Because I’ve been visiting Jason,” she snaps.
“I found out what he’d done to you—that he’d been with another girl—a couple of days before the accident.
So I cornered him and told him exactly what I hoped became of him.
I might have called him a couple of names, cursed him and his children, and then he goes and gets in a stupid coma.
I feel terrible, okay? So, yeah, sometimes I visit him. ”
I remember the time her sister “hurt her leg,” but that’s not what makes my voice small. “So he did cheat?”
Mo is quiet a minute, then says, “Not with me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Any of it—the cheating, the visits.”
She shrugs. Wipes her nose. “He promised he’d tell you himself,” Mo says. “And why did I have to tell you about the visits? I didn’t think you’d care or fucking think I was hooking up with him!”
She seems really genuinely hurt. “I would never, ever hook up with a boy you were dating. Which, by the way, was never even a possibility if you or anyone bothered to ask questions or bothered to see me.”
“What the heck are you talking about?”
“I don’t like Jason!”
“Okay?”
“I don’t like guys,” she tells me, quieter this time.
I blink. “Oh…oh, Mo, I didn’t…”
She swats the hand I’m reaching out to her. “I don’t like girls either.”
“Wait, so you’re like…”
“I don’t know what I am, okay? I’m figuring it out, but I’ve been pretty much screaming that for four years, and you and Ambs are so obsessed with your own love lives that you’ve never taken the time to ask about mine.
Instead, it’s just like this assumption.
‘Why don’t you ask this guy to prom?’ or ‘Would you ever hook up with him?’ or whatever else. ”
“Oh, God, Mo.” I feel like the absolute worst, most selfish person on the planet. “I’m so, so sorry. I didn’t know…”
“You don’t have to know, but people who don’t know? Ask. They don’t assume.” She gets up now, is pacing back and forth. “You actually collected yourself to come all the way to my house to accuse me of sleeping with your piece of shit boyfriend after I’ve been your best friend for four years.”
She takes a big breath. “I’m trying to figure out what it means. Is it that four years is not enough time, because you’ve known Amber for twelve or whatever?”
“No, of course not.”
“Well, it’s something because this is…this is so…” She shakes her head and holds up a hand. “I’m done with this.”
“Mo, please,” I say, getting up too.
“I’m serious. You don’t trust me? Then don’t act like you’re my friend. Don’t call me. Don’t text me. Just leave me alone.”
And then she goes inside her house and slams the door.
I go to her front door and call her name. “Mo? Mo, come on! I’m sorry! Mo?”
The curtains are pulled shut.
I knock. “Mo, please. I’m so sorry.”
My phone starts ringing, and I want to hurl it across Mo’s front lawn.
“Give me a break,” I groan, because it’s probably my mother for the twentieth time today. But when I check my screen, it says Mrs. R. Jason’s mom.
My heart drops.
I know it’s big news immediately. Life-changing news.
I call her back. “Hi, Mrs. R! Is he awake?”
“Zadie, you need to get here as soon as you can,” she says. She is not laughing through her tears, not rejoicing, not squealing.
I stop breathing. “Is…is everything okay? Is Jason…”
“Please,” she says, and then she hangs up.
I look over at Mo’s door, and then I run for my car.
I rush all the way to the hospital.
Park in a spot I’m pretty sure is reserved for physicians. I run all the way to Unit 4C.
There’s a commotion outside Jason’s room when I arrive. His parents are looking in through the glass as several nurses and a doctor work on him. They’re using a defibrillator.
Mr. R is staring at his son in horror, his face red. Mrs. R’s hands are clasped over her mouth, and she’s crying.
“What’s going on?” Nobody answers as I head for Jason’s door, but another nurse stops me and then I’m standing next to Mrs. R, my palm on the glass separating us from Jason. I watch as his lifeless body jumps at each shock, and I’m crying too.
I haven’t been to see Jason at all this week.
Please don’t go, I beg.
Please, please, please don’t go.
1, 2, 3, shock.
1, 2, 3, shock.
The quiet pulse in my head that started in Marcus’s dreams, that continued outside Mo’s house, starts to get faster and more insistent.
“Has anyone…Is Marcus coming?” I ask, speaking over the noise in my brain.
“We can’t reach Marcus.”
“Should I…I could try…” I start to suggest, but Mrs. R’s sudden shriek makes me turn back to Jason.
She’s weeping like a mother who is losing everything.
I cry even harder.
I’m terrified that we’re watching him take his final breaths.
That he’s dying.
That he’s dead.
The wailing gets even louder. Unbearable. The pain in my head is too much.
Please let this be a dream, I plead with everything.
Please.
And suddenly, just like that, the walls start to peel. The ceiling dissolves.
“Is anyone…” I say, pointing to the melting doorframe. “Can you see that?”
1, 2, 3, shock.
The wailing is getting louder and louder.
“Mrs. R,” I say, reaching for her, but like everything around us, she is vanishing.
I look around and I am the only thing that’s real.