“Mitch, you coming in?” Drew called from the garage entrance to the kitchen. I shook my head to clear the thoughts of Holly and joined her in the house. Dinner was a smear on my memory. The shell of Mitch Houser smiled and laughed and drank too much hot chocolate. Inside, I felt cold and distant, with nothing to look forward to over Christmas vacation but endless hours alone in my room.
The next morning, I got up early as if I was still attending show choir at 6:30. Instead of going to school and begging Mr. Sellers to let me have my spot back, I drove to Jade’s house. The sun wouldn’t rise for another hour, and the windows in her house waited just as dark as the night.
I didn’t turn the radio on, but sat in silence, my eyes glued to her front door. I scrunched down in my seat when the garage door began to rise. Her father backed out in his Mercedes, never once looking in my direction. I resumed my vigil until I need to leave for school or risk being late.
I ignored my lectures, not taking a single note. I endured lunch with Ivy, once again employing my shell and letting him act like everything was hunky dory. Days passed in the same fashion. I rose early from a restless night of sleep. I sat in my car across the street from Jade’s house. Her father left at seven AM every morning. Sometimes she got a ride with a girl I’d never seen before, and sometimes her mom drove her to school. If she noticed my stalkish behavior, she didn’t break her insane oath of silence to let me know.
I seemed to have taken the same vow, because I hardly spoke. Not in class, not to my friends, not to my family. I caught them exchanging worried glances from time to time, but thankfully, no one brought it up.
Omar went back to driving Drew home after school—I knew he hadn’t been looking for a job. He came to dinner every night. Mom resumed her disapproving frowning when Drew suggested breaking our Christmas traditions and decorating the tree with colored lights instead of only white.
The Shell agreed. He grunted. He escaped to his room as soon as possible, where he stared at an orange folder for a while before he focused on the package that was his ex-girlfriend’s Christmas present.
On the first day of Christmas break, I slept in. After showering, I got in the car and drove to Jade’s. Instead of just loitering across the street, I got out and rang her doorbell. I had no idea what to say should she open the door. I just knew I couldn’t end our relationship with her thinking that I liked Holly. Her mother was the one standing in the foyer when the door swung open.
“Hello, Mrs. Montgomery,” I said in what I hoped was a pleasant voice. I couldn’t really tell anymore.
“Mitch,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. Christmas music played in the background, but nothing moved in the house. “Hello.”
“Is Jade here?” I asked.
“Oh, dear, she’s, well, no, she’s not home.”
A lie. I could read it in her face and hear it in the spaces between her words. She knew what had happened, and she was willing to go along with whatever Jade had asked her to do. A tide of anger rose, and I welcomed it, because it was better than feeling hollow all the time.
“Okay,” I said, forcing my voice into a normal conversation volume. “Well, I bought her a Christmas gift a long time ago, and I thought I’d drop it by.” I thrust a package toward Mrs. Montgomery, who looked like it might suddenly transform into a snake and bite her.
After a moment, she took the gift and smiled. “That’s nice, Mitch. I’ll make sure she gets it when she gets home.”
“You do that,” I said, already turning to go. I’d bought Jade a volume of Emily Bronte poetry and a fresh notebook for her own writing. I’d wanted to see her face when she opened them.
The door clicked closed behind me, and the chill of the winter air hurt as it entered my lungs. I felt removed from the earth, as if I were floating above my body, watching someone else operate it. I sat in the car and wondered how long I would have to feel like this.
I wondered if Jade felt the same way, and I hated myself for making her feel anything but perfect.
My phone buzzed, and for two seconds, I thought it would be Jade telling me thank you. That, or another angry text from Charity, who’d sent me at least fifty hate messages since I’d walked out of show choir three weeks ago.
Maybe Jade would invite me in, and we could talk, and I’d leave here having read some of her poems.
But the text was from Ivy, and it simply read running with Lance?
Yes, I typed, feeling more grateful for Ivy than I’d ever had.
Ivy kept up with us for the first mile, and then she dropped back, as usual. I focused on the steady intake of my breath and the rhythmic slap of Lance’s feet as we ran side-by-side. When we used to run in the summer, it was for conditioning. But this, this was to escape, and I pushed myself to the limit. Lance came along for every frantic step, every burning breath.
I pounded out my frustration about my breakup with Jade into six more miles before I slowed down. We found Ivy waiting on a bench, playing games on her phone.
“You’re going to kill me,” Lance said, pressing a palm into his side and panting. I felt the same way, but at least the physical pain was something that would heal. Suddenly, in that very moment, I wondered if this was how Lance lived every day. Jade had left me standing speechless in the hall, desperate to show her that I hadn’t done anything wrong.
Lance’s mother had left him at school, desperate for her to come back so he could show her that he hadn’t done anything wrong.
I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. Ivy sucked in a breath, her eyes wide and round. “Lance,” she gasped.
Lance straightened, his chest still heaving. I couldn’t get a proper breath, what from the insane pace of the run and now the hysterics bursting from my mouth. He strode toward me, his eyes fiery and fierce.
He grabbed me by the shoulders. “Mitch,” he said. “It’s okay.”
“I didn’t get it,” I said. “Not really. Not until now.”
The steel in Lance’s gaze helped me dam the emotion. I swallowed hard and cleared the tears from my face. I felt the strength come back into my shoulders, but I couldn’t forget that feeling, that realization, that Lance had lived with such emptiness for so long. He nodded a couple of times, his mouth flat and tight. “Let’s go home.”
The best thing about Ivy was that she didn’t try to stuff the silence full of words. We walked back to my house, and Mom fed us warm chocolate chip cookies. Drew engaged Ivy in talk about hair dye, and I escaped to the shower while Lance made jokes with Omar in the living room.
That night, I texted a quick thank u to her, and then yelled to my mom that Lance and I were heading to his house.
“Listen, man,” I said as soon as we were outside. It seemed like whatever had happened between us earlier could be talked about under the wide open sky. “I had no idea. I’m sure I still don’t. I’m-I—I don’t know. She sucks, you know?
“Yes,” he said. “She does.”
And that was it. We arrived at Lance’s house—the carport was vacant, as usual—and threaded through the kitchen, grabbing a box of crackers as we went. He ordered pizza online, and we crashed in his room, the movie blaring as we slept.
Lance, Ivy, and I ran every day, repeating our summer routine—at least after Holly stopped training with us. Ivy was a great friend who wanted to run every day, told lame jokes from her Laffy Taffy wrappers, and pushed my feet to a sprinter’s pace for the first mile before she dropped back. Lance deliberately slowed after she stopped, and I matched my feet to his. The upside was that I didn’t feel like puking afterward, but the downside was that I still had voices in my head that wouldn’t quiet.
Sometimes we’d find her sitting in the park, and sometimes she got tired of waiting and had made it back to my house by the time we had finished. Sometimes Mom and Dad invited her for dinner, and sometimes Ivy would go up to Drew’s room and show my sister how to do something new with her hair.
“I like her,” Drew said on the afternoon of Christmas Ev
e, after Ivy had left. She twisted as she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror, trying to see the back of her head. Ivy had done three braids in Drew’s hair and twisted them all up into a single knot.
“I like her too,” I said, leaning in the doorway.
Drew patted her hair, but she switched her gaze to me. “Like, you like her? Or you like her?”
I swallowed, and that must’ve been enough to convey to Drew the hurt I had swirling inside.
“Sorry, Mitch,” she said. “Of course it’s too soon for you to like someone else.”
I nodded as my phone buzzed in my pocket. I used it as a distraction so I wouldn’t have to continue my conversation with Drew. It was Charity, and suddenly I wanted to keep talking to my sister.
Omar’s laughter—and the smell of baking bread—lured me downstairs. Mom was bent over, peering into the oven while Dad stirred something on the stove. “Dinner in a half hour,” he said. We had a family tradition of an early dinner, with a few presents after. Lance had been a regular at our festivities for years, but this was Omar’s first appearance.
“Okay.” I joined Lance and Omar in the living room, where they had a football game on TV. Lance acknowledged me, but Omar’s smile vanished as he focused on the screen. I doubted he even knew who was playing.
“What?” I asked.
“Nothing,” he said. Lance got up and left without looking at me. Almost like he knew Omar had something to say, but wouldn’t if he was there.
He didn’t without Lance there, either. We existed with the sportscasters filling the silence until Dad poked his head around the corner and said, “Mitch, can I talk to you for a second?”
I got up and followed him down the hall to his office, wondering what he had on his mind. There were so many things I’d been hiding, I wasn’t sure what to prepare for. My heart skipped, but I calmed it. I’d let Dad bring up whatever he needed to. Hopefully, it was just the college applications, though I wondered why he thought ten minutes before our Christmas Eve dinner was a good time to talk about it.
Mom waited in Dad’s office, and that made my heart stumble to the bottom of my stomach. I stopped just inside the door. “What’s going on?”
They exchanged a glance, my mother’s mouth drawn and thin. She nodded to Dad, who looked at me. “Mitch, we heard that you quit the show choir.”
I couldn’t read the emotion in his voice. Disappointed? Angry? Frustrated?
“Okay,” I said, neither confirming nor denying it. And who had told them? Did Charity call my father? Mr. Sellers?
“Did you?” Mom asked, not letting me get away with anything.
“Yes.”
“When?” Dad asked.
I shrugged. “A couple of weeks ago, I don’t know.”
“But you went to practice every morning,” Mom said.
“And you scheduled it on the calendar,” Dad added.
“Son.” Dad leaned against his desk. “Omar said you’ve been hanging out across the street from Jade’s house. That’s—”
My mind finally caught up to his words. “Wait. Omar told you?” Something violent tore through my body, hot and fast. I could barely swallow.
“It doesn’t matter,” Mom said. “Did you seriously get up early and go sit in your car at Jade’s house?”
Well, when she said it like that… “Maybe,” I said.
“Why did you schedule it if you’d quit?” Dad asked.
I pinched my eyes closed. “I knew you wouldn’t be able to go,” I said.
“Mitch,” Mom said slowly. “This is not normal behavior. This isn’t like you.” Her voice broke on the last word, and I looked down. I couldn’t look at my mom when she cried, especially if I was the cause of her tears.
Someone knocked on the door. “The timer’s going off,” Drew said through the wood.
Mom wiped her face and brushed her hands on her apron. “Let’s enjoy dinner. We’ll talk about this later, after everyone has gone.”
They filed out, and I followed, feeling very much like taking that something hot in my blood and screaming it out at Omar. I found him sitting at the dining room table next to Drew. Holly, her mom, and Lance sat across from them. Mom and Dad both scurried around the kitchen, putting out last minute dishes and shakers, but their places were at each end of the table.
The only spot for me was next to Omar. Every step, every breath accelerated the fury pumping through my body. I managed to settle into the chair next to him, but my fingers were curled into fists.
We said grace, then the noise started. Holly laughed with Drew, with her mom. Lance joked and ate the biggest pile of mashed potatoes I’d ever seen. I kept my head down, and my mouth full. No one tried to talk to me, and halfway through the meal, I realized how hollow being ignored made me feel.
I slammed my fork down. “I hate this,” I growled. A hush settled over the table. Lance caught my eye, a clear wariness in his.
“You all are just ignoring me. This is stupid.” I stood up, but Dad put his hand on my arm.
“Sit down, Mitch.”
When I didn’t, he dug his fingernails into my flesh. “Sit down!”
Holly looked scared; Drew’s bottom lip shook. Mom watched me with resignation in her face.
I sat down. No one spoke. No one continued eating.
“Let’s talk about it,” Dad suggested. When no one moved, he continued. “Who has something they’d like to say to Mitch?”
Still, the silence weighed heavily over us. Finally, Lance said, “If I knew which Mitch I was going to get, I might have something to say.”
I glared at him, beyond annoyed that someone else was telling me that I wasn’t myself. Maybe I didn’t know who to be. Or how to be that person.
“Okay, now I know,” he said. “I have nothing for this Mitch.” He picked up his spoon and shoveled another dollop of dressing onto his salad.
“Mitch—” Mom started, but I leapt to standing again, effectively cutting her off.
“You shouldn’t have told them.” I turned toward Omar. “You had no right.”
“No right?” His voice screeched out. His chair flew backward as he stood. “I have every right! You’re not okay, and someone needed to say something!”
“I’m fine.”
“Sitting in front of some chick’s house for hours every morning is called stalking,” he fired back.
“She’s not some chick!”
“She is!” he yelled. “How long have you known her? Six months? Eight?” He threw down his napkin and seemed to calm himself. “She’s not your friend, and you’ve been treating us all like crap.”
Every word made my heart rate increase. Just looking at his stupid face made me want to rearrange it. I blinked; the world went soft; my vision turned white.
I had never experienced this level of anger before. Running would never chase this rage away.
I cocked my fist back and drove it into Omar’s nose.
Someone grabbed me. Chairs scraped. Voices yelled and spoke. Drew screamed. My breath came so fast, I couldn’t get a deep enough drag of oxygen. I was moving, though I wasn’t telling my legs to go anywhere.
A door opened, and I got shoved through. I stood outside on the deck in the freezing cold, the wind whipping through my hair. A deep breath out here hurt my chest. I turned back to the house to find the door closed and locked. Lance stood nearby with his back toward me, his arms folded.
I watched through the glass as Mom and Drew cleaned up the blood, as Holly and her mom settled back into the dinner, as Omar returned and took his place at the table.
My family’s dinner table. Mine.
I splayed my hands against the glass, a sudden need to be with them. To join them, and be included the way I once was. Just like at Homecoming, when the glass acted as a microscope, I saw their mouths move, their gazes glance off each other. I saw them all with clarity, and I wanted to be with them.
I knocked on the window, but that only earned me a glare from Lance.
“Please!” I yelled. “I’m sorry!”
They all looked at me then, and the pain on their faces dropped me to my knees. I couldn’t go back in there with them. I couldn’t face them, not after punching Omar—my best friend and my sister’s boyfriend.
Heat crept through my body, despite the winter temperatures, but this time it wasn’t anger. It was shame.
I tore my eyes from theirs and stood. I fled down the stairs and into the storm.
31
I knew I was in serious trouble when I couldn’t get my jaw to stop shaking. Still, I huddled underneath the slide on the playground not far from my house, watching fat snowflakes fall. I’d met Omar on this playground—the site of our youth group activity one Wednesday night when I was twelve. I still wasn’t entirely sure he’d shown up for youth group, or if he’d just been caught loitering on the playground.
No matter what, he helped dig down the dirt and fill the play area with bark. He laughed with Holly, and we found out that he lived just a few blocks over.
I couldn’t believe I’d hit him.
The wind howled. I hugged my knees to my chest tighter, trying to conserve body heat. I couldn’t tell if my face was wet because I’d been crying or from the winter storm. I did know that I didn’t like the person I’d become.
A person who was more concerned about how a girl felt than how his friends were doing. Someone who lied to his parents, snuck out, and skipped school. A guy who abandoned his responsibilities so he could sit in a parked car and watch the dark windows of a house.
I put my head down, and the water of my face was definitely coming from my eyes.
“Mitch!”
I heard the voice and lifted my head, afraid to hope that it could be real. The call came again, and I scrambled out of my hiding place. Sure enough, Omar stood on the sidewalk bundled against the elements, his gloved hands cupped around his mouth.