Beast(82)

I get to my knees and start to inch across the roof. “I’m going to bed.”

“No way. If I have to go to work, you have to go to school.”

“I promise I’ll be good tomorrow, but all I want to do is sleep until my doctor’s appointment,” I say. “It was going to be a half day anyway.”

Her mouth crunches up, but I can tell she’s thinking about it.

“Play hooky with me—have a sick day. Make waffles and watch Netflix.”

Now she leers at me with a wink. “Now you’re the bad influence.”

“Yay,” I cheer.

She goes in through my window and then I do. I shut it. She closes the lock. “You need to dust, Dylan. Good lord, look at this.” Mom shows me her filthy finger.

“Day off,” I remind her, and collapse into bed.

Pulling up my covers, she rubs my shoulder through the blankets. “I’ll wake you up when it’s time to go.”

The door shuts with a click and I’m out.

A heavy, deep hole opens up and I slide into it and close the lid. Warm and soft, I feel my dreams tiptoeing in after a while. Wild great things that make no sense and I’m along for the ride, until blackness hits me like a gong and I’m unconscious.

I dream of Jamie. That plane of hers is there and she’s coming down the ladder. I’m waiting on the tarmac, wearing a suit.

Something stirs me.

“Dylan?”

I don’t want to be awake. “Is it time to go?”

“Um, I don’t know,” says Jamie.

My eyes fly open. Sitting up, I see her. She’s red in the cheeks, her hair is a tangled mess, and she’s pulling at her hands over and over. “Is this a dream?”

“I’m afraid not.” She looks to her wet boots. Then, carefully, up at me. “Hi.”





THIRTY-SEVEN


Mom stays stuck to the floor in my room, eyes whipping back and forth between me and Jamie. I didn’t notice her before. “I’m going to the kitchen,” she says. “Does anyone need anything?”

We shake our heads no. I still can’t believe Jamie is here in my house, not just in my house, but in my room and breathing and everything. It is a dream. I’m speechless.

“Okay then, um, so that’s where I’ll be and I’m going to leave the door open, okay?” Mom tilts her head and glares. “The door stays open.”

“Fine. Open,” I mumble.

Behind Jamie, Mom gives me two thumbs up before she jets away, and I laugh at her. “Am I bothering you?” Jamie asks.

“No, my mom’s being a nut.”

“Oh.” Jamie paces the floor, leaving behind a spot of wet and dirty carpet from where she stood. I am so happy to see that mud, but she’s oblivious. Every movement is stiff with cold, and she rubs her arms inside the sleeves of her coat. Her light is dim. “I didn’t mean to come up here.”

“That’s okay.” I sit up in bed and pull the blankets in.

“I left JP’s house and walked. And walked and walked and walked. Fuck-it stomped all over town. Thinking. I thought about everything. Then around midnight, I saw your crutches lying in two different places a block away from each other. I was like, those are longer than mammoth tusks; they’re definitely Dylan’s,” she says. “I worried someone stole them or something. So I brought them here.”

“Someone did steal them.”

“Well, that’s a shitty thing to do.”

“Sometimes people are shitty.” Like me.

“Hmm,” she murmurs in agreement. “I was going to leave them on the front steps, but your mom saw me. She asked me if I wanted to come in.”

“It’s pretty cold out.”

“Yeah.” Jamie rubs feeling back into her ears. “So I thought okay, and then she asked me if I wanted to say hi because you were upstairs and I thought why not, so here I am. Hi.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Not really.” Jamie leans against my desk and takes in the shapes and sights of my room. “It looks a lot different in the sunlight.”

“I guess so.”

“I’ll be honest with you, I’m stalling for time.” Jamie hides holding a tissue to her eye and disguises it as a runny nose before putting it back in her pocket. “I don’t want to go home and hear ‘I told you so’ from my mom.”

“She doesn’t mean it like that.”

“The heck she doesn’t. She ‘doesn’t approve of my choices’ these days,” Jamie says. “And I don’t want more therapy. It took forever to get it down to two sessions a week. I’m tired of feeling like a project. I wish people would just believe me when I say I’m fine.”

She sniffs, but this time it’s not pretend. “Do you want a blanket?” I say, and reach for a folded one untouched at the end of my bed.

“Thanks.” Jamie unfurls it, wraps herself up like a woolen burrito, and sits on the far end of the bed. “I’m just not in the mood for ‘I knew you’d be one of those girls who stays out all night’ right now.”

“Understandable.”

“Just feel…” Her voice slips away. Jamie buries herself completely in the blanket. “I feel so alone.”