I stood at the counter and stared out the kitchen window. I could see light in the big room, the one with the grand piano. I’d spent so many mornings watching Laurie’s fingers assault the ivory keys. All of those mornings, even the one the week before, felt like ages ago. Was I still sixteen? Or had I been standing in the kitchen for days, weeks? My toes were numb. They felt so cold and I couldn’t have told you why. Or if they even did. It’s possible that my body made it up so I could transfer the pain from my heart to another part of my body.
Someone knocked on the door, and I didn’t even jump. I thought it would be Meg, but it was Laurie. He was standing tall enough that I could see his shoulders and the tips of his blond hair through the window in the door.
What was he doing here? I didn’t answer the door, but I figured he would just come back. I didn’t understand why I didn’t want to see him. I just knew it made everything feel much more real than it would if he wasn’t around. I had been spending more and more time with him, and I knew him better than any other boy, ever, but I didn’t want him around for this. This was about to get messy. Everything that held the Spring house up was about to crumble. I could feel the floor humming beneath me; it was only a matter of time before it started to rumble. Then the cracking, then the crumbling—and somewhere down the line of Laurie’s lineage there was already too much crumbling and collapsing.
Laurie didn’t need to get involved. We were already too many, and with Aunt Hannah slurping away on Frank’s liquor, and Meg not even here . . .
“Who’s there?” my aunt said behind me, heading toward the door.
“Don’t!” I shouted, but it was too late.
Her hand swung open the door so fast that I realized she must have been expecting more bad news to be delivered. Laurie came walking in, a big smile on his face. He was holding a bag of Bugles in one hand and in the other a bottle of that fizzy apple drink he tried three summers ago in Munich and has been obsessed with ever since.
“Hey!” He walked around Aunt Hannah to me. His chin turned upward and he scanned my face with laser eyes. “What’s up? What’s wrong?” he asked, like he could easily read me in a second’s time.
I shook my head and untucked my stringy hair from behind my ears. He cleared his hands, dropping his stuff onto the counter. He didn’t stop walking toward me, even when the glass bottle rolled off the counter and dropped to the floor. Luckily it didn’t shatter, but I don’t believe he would have turned back around if it had.
“Jo, what’s going on?” Laurie turned to my aunt. “Hannah?”
She was immediately frazzled by Laurie. “Uh . . .” She looked at me for a second, then to Laurie. “It’s Frank.” She cleared her throat. “He—”
“Shut up!” I snapped at her just as Amy came into the room.
Her frail shoulders were shaking and she was wearing pajama pants that were too short for her blossoming legs. Her bottom lip looked like it had split open.
“Amy.” I moved to her, wrapping my arms around her shoulders. She pushed at me, ducking under my arms. She never liked hugs from anyone except Dad and Meg. Meg used to give pretty good hugs, though.
“Where’s Meg?” Amy hiccuped, and the oven starting screaming beeps into the room.
“Beth!” I snapped.
“Can you call her again?” Amy asked, tugging on the bottom of my T-shirt. She felt so small in that room, like she was eight again and had sliced her toe open on her pink Razor scooter. She’d cried and cried for Meg, until Meg came home from River’s house, albeit smelling like Smirnoff. Meg was lucky I never snitched on her, but I was starting to wish that I had every time Amy asked for her.
“I’ll call her again.” I patted Amy’s back, which was wet from sweat. “Laurie, can you call Meg please.”
The oven beeped again.
“Beth!” I shouted, and Amy cried harder. “I’m sorry,” I told her, rubbing. “You’re burning up.” I shook out the back of her shirt.
Laurie had my phone to his ear in no time and disappeared down the hallway.
“How long until we’ll hear from your mom?” Aunt Hannah asked us.
Wasn’t she supposed to know that? Or at least not be selfish enough to ask us that? We were kids, even me. Meg was the only one of us who was an adult. She had a car and paid her own cell phone bill and car insurance.
And she wasn’t here.
33
meg
When we pulled up to the gate, I was relieved to see Reeder on duty. It had me assuming that we would breeze right through and pull into my driveway in less than two minutes, but instead, we sat under the awning and John and Reeder exchanged Hey, bro’s and John went on a few sentences about his time in town and I held my breath on and off, waiting for the conversation to end.
“John. Let’s go,” Shia said, his head appearing between the front seats. “Meg needs to get home.”
John whispered something to Reeder, something about my dad, and that got Reeder moving to open the gate. We drove through and I stared out the window. When we pulled up to the driveway, I ran up to the door.
Jo came barreling up, her arms flying in front of her body. “What the fuck, Meg?” she shouted into the air. She pushed hard at my shoulders, and I tumbled to the ground, my body hitting it fast. I thought she was going to hug me, not push me off my feet.
I scrambled to my feet, and Shia was standing in front of Jo, seeming to hold her back as she yelled at both of us.
“Amy’s been crying for you! And you weren’t fucking here! Where the hell were you? It doesn’t take that long to fucking drive back!” Jo looked at the three of us, her anger rising. “You probably stopped on the way back to blow John Brooke! Or both of them!”
I had never seen Jo so angry before. She kept coming for me, and Shia kept her at bay. I got to my feet and headed for the house.
Amy ran to me and sobbed in my arms. “Is he going to die, Meg? Is he?” Her voice was so high-pitched.
“No, babe. No, no.” I petted her hair. “Come on, let’s sit down.” I told her, not looking back at Jo, who had called me every name I had been called in the hallways of my high school in Texas. In the house, I went to Amy’s room to get her quilted blanket with the little patches of color and carried it out to her on Dad’s recliner.
My brain kept going back and forth between Jo’s being pissed at me—Jo, who always seemed so in control and didn’t need anybody or anything—and how my family was going to handle what was happening. I wanted to slap Jo for being such a selfish little bitch, but I knew it would just cause more and more drama in our family. I was so tired of drama. We had more important things to worry about now, like how our dad was holding up in the hospital and how we would make it weeks without my mom around.
34
jo
Amy was asleep on the couch, her cheeks still red two hours later. Shia covered her with a blanket while Meg slipped out from under her head. I sat on the floor staring at the three of them, with no words in my throat.
“Are you hungry?” Shia asked Meg.
The way she looked at him made me sad for her, for John Brooke, and, mostly, for Shia, who never stood a chance with my oldest sister. When Meg nodded, Shia immediately led her into the kitchen. Laurie was so quiet next to me that I had nearly forgotten he was there.
“You can leave, you know,” I told him, staring at Amy asleep on the couch. Sometimes she looked so young.
“I’m fine.”
I looked over at Laurie, and I couldn’t figure out why he lingered. It had been hours since he popped into our chaos, and yet he was still sitting on the living room floor, long legs stretched out, as always. He looked the same as before my life changed in an instant, only his eyes were glossy and his hair was wavier at the ends.
“You can go, seriously. I’m fine,” I told him.
He bent one of his legs at the knee and scooted closer to me. “Why do you want me to go so bad? I’m just sitting here.”
“Exactly,” I snapped. I
didn’t mean to be so harsh, but I didn’t have the energy to apologize.
Laurie didn’t say anything; he just leaned against the wall and shook his head a little. It pissed me off. Who did he think he was?
I was getting angrier and angrier with each passing minute. Laurie started clicking his tongue, and it pushed me over the edge. I shot up and went outside. It was cold, but the air was still sticky somehow. The porch was ice under my bare feet. The screen door slammed shut, and I kept walking into the yard. The door opened, and I groaned, spinning around on my heels.
“Jo—” Laurie called, and I watched him look for me in the darkness. I even thought about ignoring him and running as fast and as far as I could, but he spotted me.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as if my dad hadn’t been fucking blown up and my mom wasn’t on her way to Germany and my house was falling apart.
“What’s wrong?” I yelled at him, not giving a shit that none of this was his fault. “What’s wrong is that—” I stopped to dig for what exactly was wrong, besides the obvious. “Why are you still here? I told you to go hours ago.”
“I can’t just leave you like this. Your—”
“I can take care of myself, Laurie.”
He sighed and stepped closer to me. The streetlight was shining directly on him now, and I wondered at what point we had moved to the edge of the yard. “I never said you couldn’t, Jo. I’m just trying—”
“Trying what? To swoop in and try to make me feel better. Guess what? That’s not going to work here, Laurie, because you see, my fucking dad is lying in some hospital bed fighting for his goddamn life right now!”
I knew I was wrong for yelling at him, but honestly, it just felt so good in that moment.
“I’m only trying to—” He tried to explain, but I cut him off again.
“Well, stop. Stop trying.”
“Stop interrupting me!” he half shouted, and turned away from me. His fingers tugged at the hair closest to his scalp, and he looked at me again. “I’m trying to be here for you, Jo. Just fucking let me, for God’s sake.”
“God doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
“Jo, I know you’re upset and—”
I couldn’t let him finish a sentence, not tonight. “You don’t know anything. My dad actually loves—”
I stopped myself. Where was this coming from? Even this version of me couldn’t finish my hurtful sentence. But when I looked at Laurie, I realized that the damage had already been done. His face had fallen like a shooting star onto the grass, and I was struggling to find the voice I was spouting with only seconds before.
“You know what, Jo? Fine. I’ll go. Have a good fucking night.” His accent was so strong that I barely understood the last part as he dashed across the street and I stood there frozen inside and out, waiting for him to turn back around.
I never wanted to be the kind of person who lashes out at their family . . .
Laurie wasn’t my family.
He was a random neighbor boy who I had spent the last few months getting to know inside and out, and he had done nothing wrong but try to be there for me. He wasn’t my punching bag, and I needed to find it in myself to walk my ass over and apologize. I could smell bacon cooking from the kitchen, and my stomach growled despite the fact that I hadn’t eaten bacon in years.
I thought about Shia and his comforting words to Meg and Amy as Meg played with Amy’s hair until she fell asleep on her lap. John Brooke had left almost as soon as he arrived, yet Shia was still here. Swallowing my anger and pride, I crossed the street and knocked on Laurie’s door.
He opened it after a long pause, and I stood there, silent until he waved me in. Neither of us talked until we got upstairs to his room. He had already changed into his pajamas, a white T-shirt and blue plaid cotton pants. His bed was a mess, like he had been trying to sleep but rolled around instead.
He sat down on the edge of the bed for a moment before lying down. His long body was almost too long for the bed, and I sat down on the edge of it. I lay down next to him, just as I had many, many times, and he clicked the lamp off above his head.
“I’m sorry,” I told him in the darkness.
“I know,” he whispered back.
35
jo
Our house became something between a clinic and a funeral parlor after my dad came home from his hospital stay in Germany. The mood had changed significantly, and it was hard to remember what life was like before there were ten doctors’ appointments a week and people in and out of our house like someone died. Even Denise Hunchberg brought some sort of casserole over pretty much every day since the moment John Brooke helped Meg wheel Dad through the door. We had everything from bar food from Aunt Hannah’s late shifts at Spirits, to Denise’s Cheez-It casserole, to vibrant bouquets of flowers sent by Mrs. King herself.
Meg must have been getting better at sucking up to the woman, I thought.
The house became overcrowded and started to smell like an office-party potluck. I had finally gotten my license, so I could help take my dad to his appointments and take myself to work when I could. I thought I might have to quit my job at Pages if my dad’s doctors kept adding specialists for him to see. Unlike Meg, I liked driving on the post with my dad; we had started our own secret get-out-of-the-house club.
My dad stared up at the clock on the wall in the waiting room. “They always make me wait so long,”
“Yeah, they do. I bet this will still be faster than Dr. Alaban,” I said.
The pages of the People magazine I was scrolling through were stuck together, and I wiggled them apart. Apparently Jennifer Aniston was pregnant with twins! For the tenth time in the last year. And it was determined that they would most likely have her genetically superior locks of brown hair.
I would never understand people’s obsession with her becoming a mother. So what if she didn’t want to have children?
“No way. Dr. Alaban is just thorough, Jo.”
I looked up from the faux news story on the page. “Thorough? Dad, he takes an hour to even get to the room and has to listen to your heart like ten times before he gets it.”
My dad rolled his eyes. “Your generation is so impatient.”
I rolled my eyes right back at him and leaned forward, tucking my leg under my body in the typical cushioned waiting-room chair. “We just don’t like to waste time. Unlike yours.”
He laughed at that. “Oh, you’re not wasting time on the internet?”
“Learning, yes.”
“Learning what? How to bully people or create hashtags for catastrophic events?”
“Touché.”
The woman behind the desk smiled at me when I looked at her. She was on the phone and seemed to be happy at her job. She remembered my dad’s name each time we came to the neurologist. She was pretty, probably in her twenties. She looked like Angela from Boy Meets World.
“But your generation raised my generation to not like to sit around and wait for stuff.”
“You also don’t know what hard work is. You expect stuff to come to you. Not you.” He waved his hand at me and smiled a little. I was getting used to the chip in the corner of his front tooth. Meg bothered him about fixing it, but he didn’t want to.
“We expect things like free health care and some Social Security,” I teased. It was true, but it wasn’t either of our faults.
“Touché.” He raised his fist and playfully tapped mine in a fist-bump. He drew it back and made a weird little whishhh sound, and I tried not to laugh.
“Dad.” I bit down on my lip and shook my head. “No. Just no.”
He shrugged. He told me I was no fun, and the office phone rang again. My dad ran his fingers over the healing skin on his neck. I felt like every day it got easier to look at his wounds. The first time Meredith gave him a bath, we heard her vomiting down the hall afterward. To drown out the noise, Beth started playing the piano Laurie’s grandpa had given her, but Amy had already heard. I saw it in her cotto
n-flower-blue eyes when she stared down the hallway, then picked up her phone and went back to her cyberland. Sometimes I wanted to check her search history, but I couldn’t go against my essential beliefs of privacy. No matter how badly I wanted to.
Amy was acting out; we knew it had to do with my dad’s being home and everything changing so fast. Amy had to start helping Beth around the house, which, of course, Amy didn’t want to do. But Meredith was busy, and so were Meg and I. Within the six weeks since our dad had come back, Amy’s teacher had already emailed Meredith about Amy’s behavior. Dad said she was seeking attention, and I thought maybe she was, but of course she was. She was twelve and her dad not only looked different now, but he was a little different inside, too.
But of course he was; four deployments and rolling a Humvee over a roadside bomb on a residential street and barely surviving will do that to a person.
I could still see more of my original dad than my sisters could, but they barely spent time with him.
His jawline was so sharp, like Beth’s and like Meg’s. I thought I looked more like him than my sisters since I got his height. Our hair was the same dried-mud, milk-chocolate brown color.
His leg was still plastered, and the skin on his cheek had started to heal into a waxy coat. The skin they used to replace the skin he lost was so red. The week before, I showed my family a video about a group of doctors in Brazil who were testing tilapia skin on humans with burn damage. Basically a skin graft. Only my dad thought it was interesting and amusing. Meredith left the table.
I got my phone out of my pocket and had a text from Laurie. He asked what time I would be done and said he wanted me to come over when I got back from running around with my dad.
“Who you talking to that has you smiling that way?” my dad asked.
“Smiling? No one.” I tucked my hair behind my ear and licked my lips. I wasn’t smiling.
“Uh-huh.”