I’ll Meet You There (31 page)

And what about me?

She looked at me, eyes wide, bewildered.

“You don’t have to do this,” I said. “I told you, I can take care of both of us.”

“You’re going to college,” she said, her voice firmer than I’d heard in months. “Someone
in this family has to make something of her life, and we both know it’s not gonna
be me.”

I leaned against the counter, letting the universe’s—God’s?—message sink in. Not sure
if I believed it. Was I actually going to San Francisco?

“But … Florida? I mean, how will I see you and what am I supposed to do for the summers?
The dorms aren’t year-round.”

“You can stay with Marge in the summers and on your breaks, she said so, or maybe
you could come to Florida. We’ll figure something out, I promise.”

“I don’t know, Mom.” I stared down at the carpet, feeling like I’d been hit over the
head.

“This is a real good opportunity,” she said. “Maybe we could even send you some money—help
out with your school supplies. Books. Or whatever college kids need.”

That would never happen. Someone like Billy didn’t just suddenly make a good life
for himself.

“What about the drinking?” I didn’t want to fight tonight, but I had to know. Everything
hinged on it.

“Better,” she said.

She stood in front of me and put her hands on my shoulders. “Do you know how proud
I am of you? I don’t even have my GED, and look at you—scholarships and that working
thing … what do you call it?”

“Work-study,” I said. It was a grant from the school that guaranteed me a job on campus
to help with expenses.

“Right,” she said. “Work-study.” She kissed my forehead. “Everything’s gonna be fine.
You’ll see.”

It wasn’t, though. It felt like nothing would ever be fine again.

“So, you and Billy are … serious?”

Mom looked away from me, toward the glass door that led to the patio. “Baby, Billy
is gonna be around for a while, okay?”

Billy. I never would have guessed he’d become the monkey wrench in my life.

“I know you don’t like him—hell, I didn’t at first. Maybe when you get a little older,
you’ll understand.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t want you to understand. I want
you to find someone like your daddy, but someone who maybe doesn’t drink as much.
And I want you to be happy. Billy and I are just two lonely people that need someone.
He treats me right and makes me laugh. And right now, that’s enough for me.”

I thought of Josh and me, how we’d moved closer and closer over the summer. We were
like my mom and Billy, maybe. Just two lonely people that needed someone. The ache
in the pit of my stomach that I’d begun to associate with Josh heated up. I knew that
wasn’t true for me—it wasn’t just because I was lonely. My feelings were real, whatever
they were. But his weren’t, and that just plain sucked.

Mom put a hand on my arm. “Sky, look at me.”

I did.

“I know you’re worried. But I won’t have you giving up your dream. Your father would
kill me,” she added, with a little smile. She put her arms around me. “I love you,
Sky. I love you so much.”

I hugged her back. “I love you too.”

I was going to school and being all but kicked out of Creek View.

So why wasn’t I happy?

JOSH

We sit in a circle, young old men. Look into our eyes and you can see the war, how
even though we’re home we never left. One dude doesn’t have arms or legs. Another
has PTSD so bad he twitches all the time. Dude next to me just said his wife left
him because she couldn’t deal with his “war shit”—the nightmares and the piss-poor
memory because he hit his head too hard on the roof of a Humvee when a bomb went off.
Another said he’s tried to kill himself three times. He says he knows he’s batshit
crazy but he doesn’t know what to do about it, and a dude who fought in Fallujah says,
It’s okay if you’re batshit crazy. As long as you’re batshit crazy functional.
One of the older guys bursts out laughing and says he’s gonna tell his wife that
next time she calls him a psycho. We have contests to see who has to take the most
meds—a Marine sergeant wins: forty-three pills a day. One dude shows us the tattoo
he got with the names of all his friends who died. It’s a long fucking list. We drink
bad coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and the room smells like shit because fifteen
guys are farting for two hours. Today it’s my turn to talk. I tell them how when you
laughed, you’d hold your stomach and shake your head and that the last time I saw
you laugh was when some kid grabbed his crotch and yelled, “I MICHAEL JACKSON!” Some
of the guys crack up and the dude who lost an eye and both his hands says,
I miss those little bastards
. He’s smiling, which he doesn’t do so much. The therapist says,
Can you tell us about the bomb, Josh?
and I shake my head because not today, I can’t. And I just start shaking, shaking
and I can’t stop and these guys who are all banged up inside and out, they say,
It’s cool, bro; you’re doing good, man, real good; we got your back, don’t sweat it.
And for a second I remember what it feels like to be thousands of miles away from
home and fall asleep in a room with a bunch of guys and feel like a family and I don’t
know which is better: remembering or forgetting.

chapter twenty-eight

Chris left three days after Mom’s visit.

“Soon this’ll be you,
chica
,” he said as he hugged me.

He pulled away and looked down at me, inspecting my face as if I were on the witness
stand. His brown eyes were bright with excitement, and it was only because I’d known
him his whole life that I could see the sadness behind them.

“Promise me you’re getting on that bus, Sky.”

“Nine
A.M.
on August twenty-seventh,” I said. “Don’t worry.”

Now that I knew I was leaving too, it felt like everything was happening at warp speed.
I’d be gone before I knew it.

“I’m gonna miss you,” Chris said.

I kicked his shoe, keeping my eyes on the ground. It was weird how it felt like only
yesterday that he was helping me with my math homework, using candy to show me how
to add and subtract and divide. But the math we were doing today—the him being subtracted
from us—wasn’t as easy for me to understand.

“How was it saying good-bye to Dylan?” I asked.

He sighed, and it made him sound older. “She’s never gonna be mine, you know? I mean,
it’s not like I thought she ever would be, not after Sean.” He shrugged. “Time to
move on. Uh, literally.”

“Hot little math majors?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Call me when you get there, okay?” I said.

“Yeah. I’ll text you a pic of my room.”

The heaviness I’d felt ever since my mom told me I could go to school was threatening
to push me into the ground. It didn’t make sense—I should have felt lighter than air.
Instead, it seemed like I was running out of time that I desperately needed. I didn’t
know what I needed it
for
, though.

Mrs. Garcia stuck her head out of the minivan. “
Mi hijo—vamanos!
”

Chris waved at her and gave me one more hug.

“I love you,
gringa
,” he said.

I bit my lip. “I love you too.”

He swung his backpack over his shoulder, and as he turned toward the van, I grabbed
his hand and squeezed.

“Chris.”

I wanted to have the perfect words to tell him how he’d been family, how I wouldn’t
be who I was without him and how my life was a collage of memories and he was in every
one. But the words couldn’t get past the lump in my throat, and as his eyes became
glassy, I knew that it was okay. He got it.

Chris jogged to the van and jumped inside. Just as they started to drive off, he pulled
open the door and yelled, “The pact!”

I laughed and gave him a thumbs-up. Then he slid the door shut, and they were off.
I stood alone on the Garcias’ front porch, waving long after they’d turned the corner.
All his siblings had gone with him to the airport, so the house was quieter than I’d
ever seen it. If Dylan had been there with me, we’d have tried to cheer each other
up somehow, but she’d said her good-byes that morning, since she had to work the lunch
shift at Ray’s.

I sat on their steps and stared out at the empty street in front of me, thinking about
all the hours I’d spent there dreaming and imagining and playing. After a while, I
stood and took a picture of the house for Marge’s collage, this time with a disposable
camera I’d bought since I’d been borrowing Chris’s.

I wanted to call Josh. To share memories I had of Chris and me growing up that Dylan
was tired of hearing about. I wanted him to wrap his arms around me, and I wanted
to let myself sob about losing my best friend. I wanted the impossible.

I couldn’t go back to the Paradise—it was only three in the afternoon, and Josh would
be there, repainting one of the rooms or maybe fixing the filter in the pool. I got
into my car and headed toward the trailer park. Now that Mom and I had reconnected,
I was trying to pop in once a day to say hi, and I didn’t want to be alone with this
emptiness that was seeping into every part of me until I felt like I was made of concrete.

I spent the afternoon on our busted-ass couch, watching the Syfy channel because Chris
loved it and it felt like as good a way as any to say good-bye. Every few minutes
I would think of him, wondering at what stage in his journey he was. I pictured him
arriving at the Fresno airport, going through security, browsing the magazines in
one of the gift shops. I didn’t actually know what the inside of an airport looked
like, but I’d seen enough movies to make a good guess.

I carried our plates from lunch over to the kitchen sink and threw in the pan I’d
used to make grilled cheese. Almost everything was packed in boxes. Mom and Billy
were leaving a few days after me.

“I miss him already.”

“Yeah, he’s a good kid,” Mom said. “But you’ll see him at Christmas and then you can
tell each other all about school and everything.”

I washed the dishes, then put them in the draining rack and dried off my hands. I
tried not to pay too much attention to the wineglasses in there or the bottles of
beer I’d seen in the fridge. If I thought about it too much, I’d be begging her to
stay.

“I’ve gotta get to the Paradise.”

Mom pulled her hair out of her ponytail and started braiding it. “No graveyard tonight?”

“Amy wanted to switch, so I’m off at midnight. I’ll drop by tomorrow, okay?”

“Sure.”

The breeze on the drive to the Paradise felt good, but I was all out of sorts. Luckily,
it was a strangely busy night, with a late checkout and then a new guest who insisted
that they
had
to be in the
Gilligan’s Island
room that had just been vacated. So I got to play maid for twenty minutes, changing
the sheets and cleaning up the room.

I checked in the new guest and then spent the rest of my shift walking around in circles,
bugging Marge whenever I got so bored I couldn’t stand it. I tried to write a to-do
list of the things I needed to get done before I left for school, but all I could
think about was Chris being on the other side of the country, the wineglasses at Mom’s
house, and Josh Mitchell being such a disappointment.

When Amy came at midnight, I headed out to the pool, too keyed up to go to bed. I
sat down on the lounge chair and leaned back. On the table next to the chair was a
half-finished bottle of whiskey. Every now and then, guests left stuff out—suntan
lotion, cups, magazines. I picked up the whiskey—Jack Daniels—and inspected the bottle
by moonlight. I remembered that Josh had been drinking a bottle of whiskey when I’d
seen him at the drive-in.

What was it with this stuff? Dad and his beer, Mom and her wine, Josh and his whiskey.
I unscrewed the cap and sniffed it—it smelled like a secret, the kind you held on
to for dear life and prayed no one would ever find out.

A plane passed overhead, and I imagined Chris inside it, looking down, even though
I knew he was already in Boston. He’d sent me a picture of his room with his hand
in the center of the photograph, doing a thumbs-up. I ran my palm along the side of
the glass bottle, tracing the grooves with my fingertips.

Chris and Dylan had always been cool with my decision not to drink. They’d understood
because of Dad, but that didn’t keep either of them from having a good time. Sometimes
I’d felt a little jealous or left out when they got a buzz—it was like they were in
this warm, fun place that I was always on the outside of. It was just one more thing
that made me feel like I never really belonged.

When Mom drank, she didn’t drink to have fun—I knew that. She drank to forget.

I swirled the amber liquid in the bottle, watching it splash up, like a tiny fountain.
I closed my eyes, tilted my head back, and took a sip.

Fire.

Hot, hot, gross, burning, God-how-can-people-drink-this-shit fire fire fire.

Warm.

Liquid honey filling the cold places that had gotten bigger and bigger inside of me
since Mom went off the deep end, since Josh said,
It doesn’t feel right
.

Another sip—disgusting, what am I doing, I should throw this out and—

Rubbery goodness.

I wasn’t made of hard, unyielding concrete anymore. It took a little while, but the
whiskey broke it up and turned me into warm sand. Creek sand in the sun.

Another sip—really not so bad, kinda nasty at first, but it wasn’t long before I was
floating and the stars were so amazingly bright, like that night at the gas station.

Fuck Josh Mitchell.

Another sip. Oops, where’d that cap go? Fuck it. Another sip. Another.

I don’t need him. Or Chris. Or anyone.

Tears threatened, and I thought of Dad.

Daddy.