A Really Awesome Mess (21 page)

All this still left us with the stinking little piggy, and the question of what to do with him.

“Let’s play a game here,” I said at lunch as Diana was manhandling everyone’s buttered rolls into a napkin and stuffing them in her gym bag. “Let’s just say all of you get the go-ahead to leave, and me and Justin here are stuck with Mr. Smelly. What then?”

“Then you’ll continue to take care of Willy until you can figure out a way to get him to the farm refuge,” Jenny said.

I caught Chip patting her leg under the table, and I didn’t even heckle them about it. It was like he just wanted to show her he was there supporting her, no need to freak out. It was so sweet it reminded me of … well absolutely nothing Mason had ever done for me. I wondered why I had ever liked him so much in the first place. Why I’d been willing to accept the crumbs of his affection when I could have held out for a relationship in which the guy would actually be seen with me. Actually be with me, talk to me, hang out with me, love me. It was exactly was what my next boyfriend would have to give me to earn the spot.

This place must have really gotten to me. Either that, or I was just so nervous about Family Weekend—which started tomorrow—that any stupid thing could make me go all sappy.

“Dude, get a grip. It’s not gonna happen,” I told her, my voice gentle but my words strong. “It’s time for Plan B.”

“Fine,” Jenny said. “In that case, I’m sneaking out tonight after lights-out and hitching a ride there. Hopefully I’ll be back by the time my parents get here. But if I get hacked to bits by some creeper before then, at least I know I tried my hardest to get Little Willy to safety—which is a lot more than I can say I did for Wilbur.”

“But what about our plans—” Chip said.

Jenny shrugged miserably.

“Poor bastard really likes her,” Tracy muttered under his breath. Justin nodded in agreement.

“You are not sneaking out,” I told Jenny. “You’d be risking everything you’ve worked so hard for. I won’t let you.”

“You’re giving me no choice,” she said with a shrug. “Either you promise to somehow get him to that refuge after I leave, or I’m outta here tonight.”

I let out a huge sigh. “Fine. You win. Again.”

I barely got any sleep that night at all. Between all my tossing and turning and mentally picturing how the reunion with my family was going to go—and I couldn’t imagine it would be anything
other than humongously
awkward
for all of us—and Willy’s snorting and rooting around and gassing up the place, I was lucky if I got ten minutes of sleep.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed just after the sun came up, it was like there was a weird current running through my body. Really, through the whole school in general. Jenny was already awake, sitting at her desk, looking green.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“I feel like I’m going to puke,” she said.

“Welcome to my world,” I said. She didn’t even crack a smile.

“Seriously, what are you worried about? It’s all going to be fine. You’ll hang with your parents, they’ll see how much better you are, and you head home with them. Easy peasy.”

“What if I haven’t changed?” she asked. “What if I just go right back to that bad place and stop talking again?”

I knelt down in front of her, put my hands on her knees, and looked her straight in the eyes. “You won’t. But even if you do, you know you can stop yourself before any of it becomes a habit again. You’ve learned a lot here. You have a lot of tools you didn’t have before.”

She shook her head. “Well then, what if my
family
hasn’t changed at all? What if my stepdad is as big of a controlling asshole as ever, and my mom still lets him walk all over her? And us kids? What then?”

I shrugged. “You know what they tell us around here … 
you can’t control anyone else’s actions, only how you respond to them. You’ll figure out how to stay out of their way. You’ve only got one more year until college, it’s not that long. Listen, as much as I’m going to be lonely without you as my roommate here, I truly think you’re ready.”

The sick look finally drained from Jenny’s face and she grinned at me. “Good thing you have Willy to keep you company then, right?”

I tried to smile back, but my anxiety about seeing my fam and the realization that I was going be stuck here all alone after Jenny was gone turned it into more of a grimace. By this time, though, Jenny was happily getting dressed and didn’t seem to notice.

I witnessed about twelve sobby/huggy/apology-filled reunions on my way to Brittany’s office, where I was supposed to meet up with my family, and it just amped my jitters to epic levels. By the time I actually got there, I was a complete wreck. Feeling like all the breakfasts, lunches, snacks, and dinners I’d been actually eating for the past week were about to come flying out my mouth.

“I don’t think I can do it,” I gasped to Brittany when I opened the door to her office.

“I
know
you can,” Brittany said, and gestured for me to get on the scale. I knew I was expected to get on facing away from the display. That was part of the deal: Brittany didn’t want me obsessing over the numbers, so I wasn’t allowed to see them for now.

I stepped on and closed my eyes. I knew I’d gained weight this week. I hated the tightness of my waistband and the lack of control I’d felt eating semi-normally. My body, however, disagreed strongly. I hadn’t had a headache all week, and I had more energy than since the end of me and Mason.

“Good, good,” Brittany murmured.

I hopped off the scale and stood with my hands on my not-quite-as-bony-as-they-were-last-week hips. “How good?” I asked. It was like I wanted to torture myself or something.

“It’s progress,” Brittany said, and gave me a hug. “So here’s the scoop. We find it’s best for your first Family Weekend to have siblings spend a little time reconnecting before the whole family comes together. Kind of takes a little pressure off everyone to do these things gradually, you know? So your mom and dad are attending a parents’ roundtable this morning. You and Joss will go to the gym for sibling game time until I’m ready for you all to come back here for family therapy after lunch.”

I looked at my watch. That gave me and Joss about three or so hours to catch up and ignore the dodgeball game or whatever they expected us to play. And Brittany was right, it did take a lot of the pressure off. I was way less nervous and way more excited now that it would just be Joss and me for a while.

And then there she was in the doorway, all golden-haired and looking like Tyra should be begging her to audition for the next cycle of
America’s Next Top Model
. I went leaping into her arms
and she twirled me around. We were both laughing hysterically.

“I really missed you!” Joss yelled.

“Why don’t you girls get on over to the gym,” Brittany said with a smile, shooing us out her door. “I’ve got a Sexual Reactivity group to teach.”

We walked in silence for a little while. I was feeling shy and weird about what to say, where to start my story of what had really been going down at Assland. Thankfully, Joss broke the ice.

“While we’re on the subject of sex,” Joss said. “I’ve got something here for you.”

“I’m scared to even ask,” I told her as she rummaged around in her bag.

“Here,” she said, handlng me a big envelope. It was fat, like it had been stuffed with a senior thesis or something.

I opened the flap and pulled out the stack of papers inside. She’d printed out all my Facebook wall posts since I’d been gone, and they were nice as hell. One of my friends Lainey wrote a different thing she loved about me every day and had even gone so far as to start a
Bring Back Emmy Magnusson
group, which apparently had something like four hundred members in it.

“Hey, that was really nice of you,” I said. “But I don’t get what it has to do with sex.”

“Did you read the bottom of page two?” she asked.

I flipped to it and sucked in my breath. It was from Mason. Saying how much he missed me.

“What!” I yelped.

“Right. They broke up again this week. Him and Lizbeth, I mean,” Joss said. “I’ve been dying to tell you that.”

Before I came to Assland, I probably would’ve hoped that meant we were going to get back together. Now, it just made me think he was a total ass.

“Now go to the top of page three,” Joss said.

It was from none other than Danny Schwartz.
Sorry. I’m sure you are, too. I told the school no apologies necessary. Hope you come back to Stonebridge Country Day soon
. Lots of people had liked his comment.

“So, what do you think?” Joss asked with a huge smile.

“I think I want to talk about something else.” It was just too embarrassing to admit how happy it all made me. “Tell me more about what’s been going on at home.”

She rummaged around in her bag some more and came up with car keys, jingling them just inches away from my face. “Got my permit yesterday. Mom and Dad even let me drive part of the way here. See? The car’s right over there.”

I noted where it was, then we headed to the gym doors. A ball immediately went whizzing by my face but I didn’t even flinch—because I was having the best brainstorm ever.

“Joss, would you do something for me, even if I don’t have time to fill you in on all the details right now?”

She looked skeptical. “I guess, as long as you promise me no one gets hurt—especially you.”

“Promise,” I said, grabbing her keys and her hand. “Come on,
let’s go. I’ll explain on the way.”

“Whaaaa?” she said.

I shook my head and put a finger to my lips. “We need to leave now if we want to get back in time for the stuff with Mom and Dad. My goal is to not get a level drop for what we’re about to do.”

We bumped into Justin right as we were heading out the door.

“I forgot what maniacs these dudes are,” he said, gesturing to his twin brothers.

“I’m taking Little Willy to the refuge now,” I whispered to him. “Cover for me and my sister, okay?”

“Wait,” he said, grabbing my sleeve as I turned to go.

“What?”

“Let me help,” he said. “I’ve been part of this since the beginning, and if you’re going to put your ass on the line for Jenny, I should, too.”

I shook my head. “We got this.”

“I
want
to. Please,” he said.

I looked at the twins. “What about them?”

Justin thought about that for a second. “Maybe your sister can stay here, babysit them and cover for us at the same time?”

“Sure,” Joss said, and gathered the boys to her like she had a great secret. “Your brother and my sister have to go to a special class right now, so I’m gonna play with you all morning, okay?”

I GOT TO BE THE GETAWAY DRIVER. THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN COOL
if I weren’t behind the wheel of a freaking Honda Odyssey. It was pretty hard to feel like the main character in
Grand Theft Auto: Assland
when you were the wheelman for a rolling toaster.

I sat behind the wheel feeling like every window in Assland was hiding a person who was staring down at me. Finally I saw movement out of the corner of my eye—it was Emmy, small to begin with and now positively Smurf-like as she was all curled over and ducking behind cars.

She’d borrowed one of my jackets. Since it was big enough to fit a normal-sized person, it provided plenty of room for Emmy to tuck an increasingly large, bigger-than-a-stuffed-Dora pig underneath and hunch her way through the parking lot. I hit the
button and the side door slid open—so maybe there were some advantages to using a minivan as a getaway car—and Emmy and Willy tumbled in. I hit the button again and gunned it out of the parking lot before Emmy could even sit up.

“Ah, Jesus, relax, will you? Nobody’s following us! It’s not like we just robbed a bank!”

“Don’t wreck my Bonnie and Clyde buzz,” I said as we turned from the gravel driveway out onto Rural Route 12. Emmy joined me in the front seat and started punching the Farm Asylum address into the GPS. “Hey,” I said. “Won’t they be able to track us with that?”

She gave me a quick, disgusted look. “Dude. We’re only going thirty miles. Even on a road like this, that’s still only going to be like an hour. They won’t even know we’re missing for another half an hour at least. It’s not like we’re going on some coast-to-coast crime spree.”

“I knew that. I just … I wanted to be careful. I left a note on Mom’s windshield just to throw them off the scent.”

“Oh God. What did you say?”

What I’d actually written was
Hey, Mom & Patrick. Stole away with my new girlfriend. Needed some alone time. You know, hormones, sexual reactivity, all that. Sorry, but a kid’s gotta obey his urges sometimes. Back for therapy and punishment tonight!

But maybe Emmy didn’t need to know all that. “Let’s just say I won’t be getting out of SR group anytime soon.” Emmy
yowled and punched my arm. “Hey! Not while I’m driving, okay?”

“Fine,” she said. “Pull over so I can beat the crap out of you.”

I didn’t look over to see if she was serious. I just kept my eyes on the road and said, “Look. We have to keep Willy’s existence secret. Right? I mean, if anybody finds out about him, they’re gonna wonder exactly what he was doing at Assland. And that’s gonna implicate at least Jenny, but possibly everybody else, too. And then everybody gets knocked back a level or three and nobody gets to go home. As much as I want them to stay, I don’t feel like we can really do that to them.”