Emmy & Oliver (32 page)

Instead, I changed clothes and did my homework sans music or the internet. It turns out that being grounded makes you really productive, and I cranked through two chapters of my US civics textbook and diagrammed the Krebs Cycle for bio by the time I realized it was dark outside and my mom was knocking on my bedroom door. “Okay, I'm going,” she said. “Food is downstairs for you. Bed by ten.”

“'Kay,” I said. I must have looked like the model child, sitting at my desk with no distractions, surrounded by textbooks and notepads and highlighters.

“I'll be home by eleven, Dad should be here by ten thirty.”

“'Kay.”

“Emmy, don't sulk.”

“I'm not sulking!” I said. “I just said okay, that's it! What else do you want me to say?”

She ignored my question. “Are you doing your homework?”

“No, I'm plotting a government takeover.” I held up a highlighter. “Can't do it without the pink one, though. That's just foolish.”

My mom narrowed her eyes at me, but ignored that comment, too. “Bed by ten,” she said again. “You stay up too late.”

I bit back a comment about how ten p.m. is practially late afternoon, and instead just said okay again.

“Call me if you need anything.”

“Mom.” I closed my eyes, then opened them. “Okay.”

She looked at me one last time, like she didn't know who I was, like I was some stranger who had moved into her daughter's room and was organizing her school supplies. “Bye,” she finally said, then went downstairs. I waited until I heard the garage door close behind her, then the sound of her car disappearing down the street, before I closed my textbooks and went downstairs to eat dinner.

It was turkey meat loaf with a mustard glaze and red smashed potatoes, one of my top three favorite meals, and I wondered if it was a concession while I ate and watched an episode of the
Kardashians
. None of the Kardashians were ever grounded. One of them even made a sex tape! My mom would probably sacrifice me to the gods if I had a leaked sex tape. (Which, just to clear up any confusion, is not something that I will ever, ever have. Leaked or not.)

I left the TV on as I loaded my plate into the dishwasher, then turned it off and put on music while I showered and changed into sweats and an old T-shirt that said
SAVE THE HEDGEHOG
on it (for the record, I don't know why the hedgehog needs saving; it's just a comfortable shirt). I was reading a book that Caro had loaned me that she had gotten from her oldest sister, Jessica, and I was about to start reading it when I saw Oliver's light flick off, then back on.

“Can I come over?” he said as soon as I poked my head out the open window. His voice was different, low and serious and shaky. “I need to come over.”

“No one's here,” I called back. “I can't—”

“I need to come over.”

There was an urgency to him that scared me. I wondered if he and Maureen had had a fight, if that was just the latest trend on our street.

“Okay, okay,” I said. “The back door's open. Come on up.”

He must have run because he made it up to my bedroom in record time. “Wow, that was—” I started to say, but the words died on my lips once I saw him. His hair was disheveled, his eyes frantic, and he was shaking.

“What is it?” I asked, crossing the room to his side as he shut the bedroom door behind him.

“Pull the blinds,” he said to me.

“What?”

“Just do it, Emmy. Please.” He sounded like he was choking and I realized that he had the envelope from Columbia in his hands, which were trembling as much as the rest of him.

“Okay, okay,” I said, then closed them. When I turned around, Oliver was still standing there, still holding the envelope. His face was something I hadn't seen, scared and lost and hopeful and sick, all at the same time.

“It's not from Columbia,” he said.

“What?”

“This. It's not really from Columbia.”

“Who's it from, then?”

“Emmy. It's from my dad.”

He shook out the contents onto my bed. A shiny, colorful letter-sized pamphlet spilled out, and Oliver picked it up, flipped it open, and pulled out a handwritten letter. “It's from my dad,” he said again. “He sent it to me. He knew Columbia was my favorite and he . . . he sent it. It's from him.”

Was this shock? It was hard to tell now that I was shaking as bad as Oliver.

“What . . . what does it say?” I said, sinking down onto the bed next to the papers. Oliver sat next to me, hanging on to the letter the way Caro used to hang on to her rag doll, Alice.

“It's, um, I don't.” Oliver cleared his throat and I could see his eyes were starting to redden. “I just want to keep it for me, if that's okay.”

“Okay, yeah, of course.” I put my hand on his back, feeling him shudder under his hoodie. “But what does it say? Does it say where he is?”

Oliver shook his head. “No. But he, um, he wants to see me. Tomorrow. At lunch. I guess he doesn't realize I'm in school right now.” Oliver named a restaurant that was about twenty minutes away. I had been there with my parents once, but my mom hated their French fries so we never went back.

“What?” If I hadn't been sitting down, I would have needed to sit down. “He's
here
? He's here in our city right
now
?”

“I don't know! I don't . . .” Oliver took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don't know,” he said again. “But he wants to meet me at this diner tomorrow afternoon. He
said he wants to talk.”

“Oliver,” I said. “Ollie, you have to tell your mom. You have to call the police. This is an actual serious crime!”

“Yeah, I know, Emmy,” he said, and he jerked away from my hand and got up from the bed. “I'm actually really aware of that, but thanks.”

“You can't go meet him!” I cried. “You know that, right? What if he tries to take you again? What if he, I don't know, what if he has a gun?”

“My dad? With a
gun
? Seriously?” Oliver scoffed at me, but he also wouldn't make eye contact. “Look, you don't know him like I do, okay? He probably just—”

“No!” I said, standing up alongside him. “You keep trying to defend him, Oliver! And I get it, I understand, he's your dad, but people—active police officers—are looking for him. They've been looking for him for ten years! You have to tell someone!”

“You don't understand!” he yelled back, and now we were face-to-face. I had never seen him look so shattered before, so completely lost. “I just need to see him, all right! But I can't drive—”

“Oh no!” I said. “I'm not driving you to meet your dad! Are you serious right now, Oliver?”

“I know when I left that it was hard on everyone but—!”

“Stop saying that!” I screamed and he took a step back, surprised into silence. “Stop saying that you
left
. You didn't just leave, Oliver! He
took
you away from us! He fucking kidnapped you!” I yanked open my closet door with such force that the doorknob slammed into the wall, climbing up onto the step stool and grabbing the dusty shoe box. “Here!” I said. “Look!”

“Emmy—” he started to say, but I just yanked the lid off the box and threw my college application on the floor. There was nothing in that box, I suddenly realized, that was a secret anymore.

The note was still lying at the bottom of the box, still yellowed and soft, and I pulled it out and let the box fall on the floor. “Look!” I said again, shoving the note at him. “This is all I had for ten years, okay? The last time your dad was here, this was all I had left of you.” I was trying not to cry and failing miserably at it. “And I don't want it to be all that's left, either.”

Oliver's face was stricken, and the note seemed so small between his hands. I could see his jaw tighten, his eyes filling with tears as he read the words. “Emmy,” he said, his voice strained. “I'm not going to leave you.”

“Stop saying that!” I screamed. “You keep making it sound like it was your fault when
it was all
his
fault!”

“That's what you don't understand!” Now he was yelling, too. “All of this
is
my fault!”

“What are you talking about?” I cried. “You were seven! That's ridiculous!”

“Not then! Now! All of
this
”—he waved an arm toward his house, toward the daily struggle of trying to return home after ten years somewhere else—“
this
is all my fault.”

“How?” I yelled, throwing my hands into the air. “Because you let them take a fingerprint of you? Enlighten me, Oliver, please! How exactly is all of this
your
fault?”

“Because I made sure my dad wasn't in the apartment that day!
That's
how it's my fault! He wasn't arrested because of me. I made sure of it.”

It was like all the air got sucked out of the room. We were both breathing hard by now and for a few seconds, that and the blood pounding in my head were the only things I could hear. “What?” I finally said when I able to speak again. “What are you . . . ?”

“I
told
him,” Oliver said, and his eyes were rapidly filling with tears, so fast that as soon as he wiped them away, fresh ones took their place. “That next morning at breakfast, I told him about how they had fingerprinted me at the police station. He didn't really say anything. He just said he had to go out for the day. And then he left.”

He sank down onto my desk chair, the tears starting to come fast and furious, but I didn't move from the bed. Oliver was full-on crying now, but I didn't want to stop him from talking. “Did you—tell him that you knew?”

Oliver shook his head. “No, it just happened that way. But I didn't think I wouldn't get to say goodbye to him, you know? I thought I could tell him or at least hug him once more or something. And now he's here and I just want to see him again, Emmy. That's all I want. I just miss him so bad and I fucked up everything and I ruined my mom's new family and the twins and Rick and I thought it would be okay but it's not and I'm sorry, Em, I'm sorry, I'm
so
sorry. . . .”

Oliver was about to say something else, but when he took a breath, the tears finally got the best of him and he pressed his palms to his eyes as his shoulders started to shake. He cried silently, in so much pain that there was no sound to equal it, and in that moment, he reminded me of his mom, of those nights when she would sob at our dining room table, aching for something she couldn't have.

I got up from the bed and walked over to him, sitting down on his lap and gathering him in my arms. He hung on to me tightly, so tight that I thought my ribs might crack, but it was okay. I could take it. I could do it for him. I stroked my hand over his tangled hair, protecting him from anything and everything that had happened, from everything that
was about to happen, and I held Oliver while he sobbed.

We sat there for long minutes, until he was gasping and shuddering against my shoulder. My sweatshirt was wet and cold with his tears, soaked straight through to my heart, but I didn't care. I didn't care about anything except the fact that Oliver had been carrying way too big of a burden for way too long. I tucked his hair behind his ear, smoothing it off his forehead the way my mom would do to me whenever I woke in the night with a nightmare about Oliver.

“Fuck,” was the first thing he said, and we both laughed a little. “Sorry. Wow. Sorry.”

“Stop saying you're sorry,” I murmured. “Better?”

He nodded, and I started to get up to get some tissues for him, but he just wrapped his arms around my waist and held on to me. I sat back down, resting my cheek against the top of his hair. “I just don't want the next time I see my dad to be in a courtroom.” Oliver sighed. “Or through a plate-glass window while he's wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

I just hugged him and didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say. Sometimes there just aren't enough words to fill the cracks in your heart.

Oliver sighed again, still sounding shaky. His breath brushed against my collarbone as he spoke. “You think I'm crazy.”

“No, I don't,” I said. “I think you're a kid who got put into a shitty situation that can't be solved. But I don't think this will end with everyone getting what they want, Ollie.”

Oliver nodded and then sat up a little. His eyes were swollen and I pressed my thumbs against his cheeks to mop up the tears, just like he had done for me that night on the swing set, when he told me that coming home was like being kidnapped all over again. He looked up at me, his face tired, and I kissed his eyes, the leftover salt water stinging my lips. “I'm sorry,” I whispered.

“For what?” he whispered back.

“Just that you have to go through this. That I can't help you.”

“You help every day,” he murmured, then found my hands with his and twined our fingers together, holding them between us.

“Do you want to lie down for a minute?” I asked, and he nodded.

We lay on my bed in the dark for a long time that night, Oliver's head on my shoulder and my legs tangled with his. Once the lights were out, I raised the blinds again so we could see out the window. It was a full moon that night and its light cast through the room, throwing blue shadows against my desk, my clothes, my bed.

Oliver was quiet next to me, his fingertips stroking up and down my arm. “Can I tell you something?”

“It's a little late to start asking that question,” I teased him, but I kept my arms tight around him. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”

“Remember last night when we were outside with Drew and he was saying that he was jealous of me?” Oliver paused for a few seconds. “The truth is that I was jealous of him, too.”