Every Other Weekend(3)

There was an apple orchard outside my window at home.

I pulled my phone out and hit Redial. Mom answered on the first ring. “Adam, sweetie?”

“Hi, Mom.”

“Oh, is it that bad?” She could tell from my two-word greeting that it was.

“No, it’s swell as long as I breathe through my mouth.”

“Two days and you’ll be home. You can do anything for two days. And Jeremy’s there.” My mother lived in denial about the state of my relationship with my brother. In her mind we were still the same little boys who’d built forts together. “Your dad misses you.”

I ground my teeth together to hold in my response to that oft-repeated comment. It wouldn’t do any good to remind her that if Dad missed us, he had no one to blame but himself.

She asked me a few more carefully worded questions about Dad’s apartment. For once I was less careful with my answers.

“It’s foul, like rats-wouldn’t-live-here foul.”

Mom laughed, which was what I wanted. “So I shouldn’t tell you I just saw a deer in the backyard?”

“Can you repeat that? I couldn’t hear you over the drug bust going on below me.” I heard a snicker—not from Mom—and moved forward, following the sound to the edge of the balcony.

“I miss you so much,” Mom said, then in a softer voice, “The house is so quiet.”

“Yeah, me, too.” Distraction leaked into my voice as I leaned around the dividing wall to look into the neighbor’s balcony.

There sat a petite girl about my age with olive-toned skin and a waist-length brown braid hanging over one shoulder. She was slowly panning a bulky camera past two pigeons that were perched on the railing in front of her.

“Mom, I gotta call you back.” I hung up. “Hey,” I said, waiting until the girl turned her camera toward me and then waiting longer until she lowered it. “You could have said something or, I don’t know, gone inside.”

“Sorry,” she said, giving no indication that she meant it beyond the word itself.

She was lounging in a foldout chair with her legs thrown over one side and the bright red glow of a cigarette illuminating her free hand. I was cold in my hoodie, so she had to be freezing in her jeans and black T-shirt that read SAVE FERRIS, but she didn’t show it.

“You must be Jolene.” Either that, or she was squatting on Shelly’s balcony.

She smiled. “I prefer Spawn of the Queen Bitch.”





   Jolene

It was kinda pretty, the way his face turned red when he realized that I’d overheard Shelly trashing my mom. One of the many perks of Oak Village Apartments was the utter lack of privacy. “Which one are you?” I asked.

“What?”

“Are you Jerry or Adam?”

“Adam.”

“In that case, thanks, Adam.” When his reddish-brown eyebrows drew together, I elaborated, “You told Shelly not to call my mom ‘queen bitch.’ That was nice of you.”

His eyebrows smoothed out. “Figured she might not be impartial.”

I laughed. Then I did it again. It took a lot of effort not to go for a third. “That would be a no. I mean, my mom is awful, but so’s my dad and his teenage girlfriend.”

“Wait, she’s not—”

“She was close to it when I first met her.” I mentally and physically shook myself away from that chain of thought.

Adam made a face that echoed my sentiments.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Is she for real?”

“Everything but her boobs. I’m pretty sure my dad bought those two—or was it three?—Christmases ago. I can’t remember. Wait, it was three. We couldn’t afford braces for me that year, but obviously my dad enjoys those more, so it was the right call.” I smiled, revealing the slight gap between my front teeth. In hindsight, I liked my gap, but my dad was still a tool. “Hey, do you smoke?” I held up my cigarette.

Adam shook his head.

“That’s too bad.” I lowered it without taking a drag.

He flushed a little more. “Maybe you shouldn’t either.”

He was cute. “I don’t.” I flicked off the ash. “Shelly says the smell makes her sick and forbade me to smoke, so.” I shrugged.

“But you don’t smoke?”

I wrinkled my nose. “I tried, but I felt like throwing up afterward, and the smoke messed with my shots.” She nodded at her camera. “Now I just let them burn and enjoy the results. Still, it’d be a lot easier if you smoked. All the stink in half the time, you know? It’s not exactly warm out here.” He surprised me then by swinging his leg over and jumping into my balcony, sending the two pigeons flying off. Very cute, I decided. He lifted the cigarette from my hand and took several long drags without hacking and coughing like I had. “Thought you didn’t smoke.”

It was his turn to shrug. “My mom used to. She caught me one time sneaking a cigarette from her purse, so I promised to quit if she did.”

My fingers itched to pick up my camera, but that might make him stop. When he hit the filter, he presented it to me like the diamond it was.

“And did she?”

“Yeah.”