Fans of the Impossible Life (23 page)

She met us up there, Sebby drifting off to sleep with his head in my lap, me half watching a show about catching extreme fish or extreme fish catching or something.

I checked my phone to make sure that I hadn't just imagined texting my dad to ask if it was okay for me to stay at Mira's house, imagined getting a yes in response.

The hungover haze of my brain was starting to clear, and images from the night before were coming back to me. The three of us in Molly's parents' bed. Me and Sebby in the dark of the storeroom. I touched his head as he lay in my lap. He was still in his sleep for the first time in a long time. I tried to match him in stillness, wanting him to stay there with me, stay in place.

I was worried that we had gone too far. That things would not be the same now. I felt like I was holding something fragile
in my hands that was daring me to break it.

Mira sat down on the other side of me.

“How are you feeling?” she said.

“Pretty terrible,” I said. “Probably the same as you.”

“No, I mean, about everything.”

I shook my head. “Everything's okay,” I said, hoping it was true.

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You were stopped at a gas station on the side of the highway. Nick went inside to get some candy and you stayed by the car watching the pump, the numbers rolling mercilessly higher. Thirty dollars. Thirty-five. Forty.

You had been up for a day and a half, and the protests from your brain made you feel exhilarated in your own ability to hurt yourself.

“This is nothing,” you wanted to tell it. “I'm capable of so much more. You should know that by now.”

Your phone was dead in your pocket. There was no reception out here anyway, even if you wanted to take stock in who missed you when you went away. Dead cell phone and a backpack filled with drugs in the trunk. That was how this moment in your life could be summed up.

The past two nights you stayed at a cabin in the mountains that belonged to some of Nick's friends, that served as a place
for him to meet up with his supplier. Or else it belonged to no one. A bunch of drugged-out weirdoes happened to stumble upon it during a misguided trek through the Poconos and just never left.

You took mushrooms for the first time and ended up outside lying in the last of the melting mountain snow, looking up at the stars. The air was so clear there that it felt like it was humming at you, a tune at first of wind and water and earth and then speaking words, saying that it had the most important thing to tell you.

You closed your eyes and your entire body listened. The words whispered into you, the secret of the beauty in all of your messy vulnerability. Happiness was always only temporary for you. And so you had started pushing too far, welcoming the inevitable pain that followed.

You lay there in the slowly thawing earth and you understood suddenly that as long as you were here, this is what would be asked of you. To feel such things, such strong, such difficult things, and to know that this is what brings you closest to the divine. This is when you are divine.

On the second night you took Ecstasy and fooled around with a short guy with dark rings around his eyes. His mouth on your body felt like some kind of witchcraft there in the woods, calling wolves and night creatures to circle the cabin. You imagined that he might devour you when he was finished with you. He was too rough, but you liked it. You wanted to carry around outward signs of destruction like a badge of honor.

“Is this divine too?” you asked the air. “To feel this too?”

Now Nick drove with the window open, speeding down the highway, one hand dangling out with a perpetually lit cigarette. He stopped periodically to do a line to stay alert enough to drive. He offered you some but you were enjoying the way your brain and body felt. Abused.

Nick had the radio turned up too loud and you listened hard to try not to fall asleep. Falling asleep would mean giving up. You tried to follow along with the words of a silly pop song. You thought they might contain a secret that could explain how to ignore the past, present, and future all at the same time. This song might know something about escape. But then it was over and there was a loud commercial and you lost your train of thought.

Maybe that was the secret. To try not to think. Try as hard as you could not to think at all.

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Mira and I didn't start to panic until the third day that we didn't hear from Sebby. It was normal at this point for him to only sporadically respond to my texts, but Mira had left him a message that if he didn't call her back she was going to start freaking out and there had been no response.

“He's definitely with Nick somewhere,” Mira said.

We were sitting at our regular table in the cafeteria. We were alone since Rose and Ali's fight on Saturday had ended in Rose finally convincing Ali to try to get back together again. Now Rose was spending every free minute sneaking phone calls to her in the bathroom.

“Did you ask Rose if Ali's seen Nick?' I said.

Mira shook her head. “She hasn't heard from him.”

Full trays of untouched food sat on the table in front of us.

“Maybe he's just ignoring us,” I said.

The cafeteria was emptying out as it got closer to the end
of the period. Food eaten too quickly, conversations had too loudly, and now a slow leak of noise until it was just the two of us there in the middle of an empty room. The two of us left behind.

“I can't believe he won't answer his phone,” she said. “Why is he doing this?”

This wasn't how this was supposed to go. If Sebby was going to hurt someone it was supposed to be me, the person who let him come and go as he pleased, the one who demanded nothing more than whatever he could get. He wasn't supposed to leave her behind too.

I picked up a french fry for something to do with my hands, put it down again.

“I can't tell my parents,” she said. “We can't call his house. Talking to Tilly would be a disaster. I'm sure he told her some lie that he was staying with one of us. We need someone to tell us what to do.”

“It's my fault,” I said. “I screwed everything up.”

“It's not your fault, Jeremy.”

We were quiet for another minute.

“We could talk to Peter,” I said finally.

She looked at me.

“Do you think that's a good idea?”

“He'll know what to do,” I said.

“If there's something really wrong, and we don't do anything . . .” She was trying to talk herself into it.

I stood up.

“So,” I said. “Come on.”

Peter was in his office when we got there, eating lunch at his desk.

“Hey, guys,” he said, when we came in. “Excited about the gallery opening on Friday? I think we're all set for it.”

Mira closed the door behind us.

“Everything okay?” Peter said.

“We have to talk to you,” I said.

“Okay,” he said. He put down his sandwich.

“We don't know where Sebby is,” Mira said.

“He's not answering his phone, and . . .” I looked at Mira, wondering how much to tell. “He might be with this guy. This kid who does a lot of drugs. Who sells drugs.” I sounded like a such a loser.
Who cares. Who cares about anything besides making sure he's okay.

“You have no idea where he is?” Peter asked.

Mira shook her head. “We don't know what to do. His foster mom won't know. I'm sure he told her some lie.”

Peter thought for a minute, looked at his desk. “Come sit down,” he said. We did.

“Well, the best thing we can do is call the police and report a missing person,” he said.

I looked at Mira. She looked like she was going to cry.

“He'll get in trouble, though,” she said. “If he's with this guy. He might get in a lot of trouble.”

“The most important thing is to make sure that he's safe,” Peter said. “If you really think that something's wrong, then that has to be the priority.”

Mira covered her face with her hands.

“Okay,” she said through her fingers.

“Okay,” I said.

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Nick dropped you off at Tilly's in the early evening. You figured you could probably eat dinner at Jeremy's house, but something told you that you should put in an appearance for Tilly. Although keeping her expectations of when you might show up at the house low seemed to be working out well. There had been no requests to watch the kids, to take them to church group, to even take out the garbage for a while now. Tilly seemed to be catching on that the less the two of you had to do with each other, the better.

They were all in the kitchen when you came in, the kids eating their regular five p.m. dinner.

“Sebastian?”

You stood in the doorway, looking into the kitchen.

“Hi,” you said.

Tilly handed the jar of baby food that she was holding to Stephanie.

“Why do I have to do it?” Stephanie moaned.

Tilly took off her apron and came into the living room.

“Where have you been?” she said. She looked tired, dark circles under her eyes, her bright red hair unwashed in a messy ponytail.

“I left you a message,” you said. “I was staying with Mira.”

The two of you were standing facing each other in the middle of the living room.

“The police called,” Tilly said. “They said that you were missing.”

“The police?”

You could feel yourself starting to sweat. Stephanie stuck her head out from the kitchen to try to hear.

“It must have been a misunderstanding,” you said.

“This is the second time this has happened,” Tilly said.

You tried to smile, like someone reassuring a wild animal that it wasn't a threat. Or was it the smile that indicated a threat? “It was a misunderstanding,” you said again.

“I can't have this, Sebastian. I told you that if you're getting into trouble I can't risk having you around the children.”

“You're not risking anything,” you said, a little too loudly. You took a deep breath to try to relax your speeding pulse. Tilly responded to calm and agreeable.

“Jonathan convinced me to give you a second chance the last time,” Tilly said. “I can see now that that was a mistake.”

“Tilly, come on, it wasn't a mistake.”

“I told you that you needed to go to school,” she said. “And
you didn't listen. You don't listen to me. And you obviously have problems that I am not equipped to deal with.”

“What problems?” you said, knowing she wouldn't say it. The thing that had kept her from looking you in the eye for almost a month after you got back from the hospital.

“You can't live here anymore.” She let that hang in the air, settle down around you, land at your feet. There it was. The truth. You felt a rush of what could only be described as relief, the calm of the inevitable. You had been dreading this moment for so long and now that it was here, you were finally free from its grip.

“You don't do anything to help this household,” she said. “You don't go to church with us. You're a bad influence on these children.”

“I'm a faggot, too, Tilly,” you said. “You can just say that. You don't have to come up with all of those other reasons.”

She stood there in silence. Her hands on her hips. You saw Stephanie's head disappear.

“I didn't say that,” she said. “Don't say that word.”

“Why?”

She sighed deeply and you felt the air around you stir, as if even the oxygen in this room belonged solely to her. There was no place for you here. There never had been.

“I'm calling tonight,” she said. “They'll come get you tomorrow.”

“Great,” you said.

She shook her head.

“I did everything I could for you, Sebastian,” she said.

“Yeah, I know you did,” you said, going to your room. “It just wasn't very much, was it?”

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Mira was having dinner at my house when he finally showed up. She and I were having trouble being apart, as if we were being picked off one by one, and we had to make sure to keep each other in sight at all times.

I hadn't told Dad and Dave what was going on. Part of me thought that I should, that they would know what to do. But then I remembered how angry Sebby had been about Dave talking to him. It seemed like it would be a betrayal.

Mira was helping to clear the dishes when my phone beeped in my pocket. I took it out.

“No phones at the dinner table,” Dad said.

“We're done with dinner,” I said.

“Then leave the table. No phones at the table.”

“Yes. Fine.”

I got up.

I'm outside
, the text read.

I looked back at my dad. He was clearing away the rest of the dishes. I put my coat on and went out the front door. Sebby was standing on the sidewalk with a garbage bag at his feet.

“Where have you been?” I said, going to him. “We were freaking out.”

“Mira's here?” he said. He could see in the front window to the dining room.

“Yeah, she came over for dinner. Are you okay?”

I tried to take his hand. He stepped away from me.

“Did you call the police?” he said.

I looked back at the house for Mira.

“Peter did,” I said. “We didn't know what to do. We told him we couldn't find you. We thought something had happened.”

“I got kicked out of my house,” he said. “Tilly kicked me out. Just now.”

“What? Why?”

“Because she doesn't want to deal with me anymore. Because the police called her. Because I'm a fuck-up faggot. Pick one.”

I heard the door open behind me.

“Sebby?” Mira said.

“You can stay here,” I said. “We'll figure it out.”

“What's going on?” Mira said.

“Tilly kicked him out,” I said. “The police called her.”

She went to him and he stepped back again, away from both of us.

“We thought you might have hurt yourself,” Mira said.

“I was fine,” he said. “I just wasn't with you guys. I'm allowed
to be with other people.”

“With Nick?” Mira said.

“It's none of your business,” he said.

We stood there for a minute in silence. He kicked at the trash bag.

“This is everything that I own,” he said.

“Here,” I said, “bring it inside. Let's go inside.”

I picked up the bag.

He shook his head.

“You guys seem like you're doing okay without me.”

“What's that supposed to mean?” Mira said.

“It means the two of you make a great pair.”

“Are you kidding me?” Mira said. She looked at me. “We've done nothing but worry about you for the past four days.”

“Well, I'm fine, so you can stop worrying.”

“You're not fine,” she said. “What's going on with you?”

“Right now? I don't have a place to live. That's what's going on.”

“We'll figure it out, Sebby,” I said. “You'll stay here.”

“No, I won't,” he said. “I won't stay here in your perfect house with your perfect dads who are totally overinvolved in your perfect life and give you everything that you need and love you unconditionally. People like me don't get that, okay? I don't get that life.”

“Sebby,” Mira said, “come on, you're just upset.”

“It didn't even occur to the two of you how much it could fuck things up to have the police looking for me, did it? And you
told Peter, what, that I ran away?”

“Peter cares about us,” I said.

“Peter doesn't have a fucking clue, okay,” he said. “And neither do the two of you.”

He started walking away.

“Sebby!” Mira called after him.

“Leave me alone,” he yelled back.

He kept walking. And we stood there watching him until he disappeared.