Every Other Weekend(73)

“We worked on our project and we...”

“What? You what?” Jeremy kept veering into the lane next to us as he shot looks at me.

“We talked about Greg,” I finally said.

The tension didn’t leave Jeremy’s body, but it shifted so that I was no longer concerned he’d run us off the road.

I rolled my shoulder to try to alleviate some of the discomfort I suddenly felt weighing on me. “She remembered some things about him from when we were kids, him saving cats and stuff.” Shifting again, I remembered that each one of our kisses had been prompted by me talking about Greg, reaching that breaking point of grief where I wanted to feel anything else, even if that meant kissing a girl who wasn’t the one I really wanted. More than that, I realized that talking to Erica about Greg had been entirely different than talking to Jolene.

With Erica, I talked about Greg, but not about what it’d been like to lose him, not about what I felt. And whenever I’d reached that point where it hurt too much to go on, I’d stopped. With Jolene, I hadn’t wanted to hold back. I’d wanted her to see and feel and know not just who my brother was, but who I’d become since he died. I felt the pain of losing Greg, but with her I hadn’t wanted to hide it.

With one, I’d talked; with the other, I’d shared.

The difference felt huge.

“I’m glad she knew him,” Jeremy said after a while. “I mean, it’s not—” He rolled his eyes. “We’re not together yet. We had fun at the dance, and not just because we got to stick it to you. I like her and if something more happens between us... I’m glad I won’t have to deal with trying to tell her about him.”

“Yeah,” I said, my throat squeezing the word so that it barely came out. “It’s hard.”

“But you did?” he went on. “Tell Jolene?”

I nodded. “Yeah, it was after we...we actually ran into Daniel.” I hadn’t intentionally withheld that fact from my brother; it was just that we didn’t talk, except to fight. I lowered my head though, because, intended or not, I should have said something.

I made sure not to look at Jeremy when he spoke, but I heard the break when he did.

“You did? When? Where? Is he...okay?”

I told him the details, feeling worse with every word. Daniel had been more than Greg’s friend, he’d been ours, too—both of ours.

“He’s still got the Jeep.”

Jeremy’s mouth lifted. “Does it still smell like every animal in the state has pissed in it?”

I laughed. “Every animal in the state did piss in it. Do you remember when he and Greg got the badger in the back seat?”

“No, the time they had the two swans...”

And that was how it went for the rest of the drive. My abs hurt from laughing, and for the first time since Greg died, the tears in my eyes weren’t from crying.





   Jolene

It was late when I heard the front door open, but not as late as I was expecting. I was normally dead asleep by the time Mom got home from a date with Tom, but they’d been gone only a couple hours. I was still finishing the last few bites of the early individual-size birthday cake—pineapple upside-down—that Mrs. Cho had left me along with her thoughts on the most recent films I’d suggested to her—she’d gotten the bittersweet coming-of-age brilliance of The Way, Way Back but couldn’t get past that scene in Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin lays into the lady from the car rental place. The cake was supposed to be for tomorrow, but I hadn’t been able to wait. And Mom’s unexpected appearance meant I didn’t have time to wash the caramel off the plate. It didn’t matter that I could shove the rest of the cake in my mouth. She’d know. I decided to enjoy my cake, because I was going to pay for it one way or another.

I was lifting a bite to my mouth when Mom entered the kitchen. She froze like she’d walked in on me snorting a line of cocaine off the countertop, which I guess, in her mind, might have been the less grievous action. If I was on drugs, she could send me to rehab. The same couldn’t be said about consuming processed sugar.

I took in the mascara streaks under her red eyes and knew that I’d made the wrong decision by not hiding my cake—and myself. This wasn’t going to be a film starring movie-studio Mom. This was going to be the underground, black-market edition that only the most twisted people would watch.

I had no choice but to costar.

“Don’t,” she said, raising a shaking hand in my direction.

I took the bite.

She screamed, smacked the plate away from me, and threw it into the sink so hard that it shattered.

I turned my fork over to lick the other side clean.

She pulled it from my mouth with enough force that one of the prongs sliced the inside of my lip. I tasted blood.

“It’s a cake. Why are you acting like this?”

“It is not a cake. It is poison that makes you fat.”

“Well, it was delicious.”

One eye twitched. “You think I didn’t look like you when I was your age? That I couldn’t eat garbage all the time? Well, I did until one day, bam!” She clapped her hands in front of my face and I flinched back. “I’m a fat middle-aged woman whose husband is screwing his personal trainer!”