Lucky Caller(43)

“Awesome.” Jamie nodded. “Thanks. For that.”

I nodded back.

He shifted from one foot to the other for a moment and then said, “Well, I, uh…”

“Why are you stressed?”

He shook his head. “It’s not really about school or anything.”

I smiled a little. “Would I only care if it’s about school?”

“I don’t know,” he said, in a way that made me think he really believed that, and it broke my heart a little bit.

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t you have dinner?”

“It can wait.”

I stepped to the right of our door and sat down with my back against the wall. Jamie smiled a little, leaned against the opposite wall, and sank down too.

“I’m just worried ’cause…” He shook his head, the corners of his mouth pulled down. He shut his eyes after a moment and rested his head back against the wall.

“My grandpa can’t really work anymore,” he said eventually. “But my gram is working a ton. She works for this nonprofit, but it’s kind of been struggling this year, and she might … like, she keeps playing it off, but I think they might have to let her go. And I feel like shit because she was basically retired already from teaching when they—when I came to them, and she had to start working again, and if she loses her job, I don’t know … With Papa’s health stuff, and—” He cut off, shrugged. “It’s just a lot.”

I’m sorry or I wish I could help or Is there anything I can do? were all things that I could have said. Should have said. But I was me. I was supremely versed in Not Knowing How to Deal with Things, the Chief Executive Officer of Feelings Are Uncomfortable. So I just made a sound kind of like hmmmmyah in the back of my throat and studied the carpet—black, patterned with white diamonds, low pile, a staple of the Eastman for probably the last twenty years at least—and only looked Jamie’s way when I was sure he wasn’t looking back.

Right now he was staring off in the direction of apartments 903 and 901, which faced the front of the building. 901 still had their Christmas wreath up, all these weeks later.

“Existential Dead probably has a good song for this kind of thing,” I said eventually, because I couldn’t stand a silence for too long. I was too much like my dad.

“You think so?”

“For sure.” I screwed my face up in thought. “You know, something like … Grandma’s working hard for bucks … A cruel twist of fate steals well-earned luck … Then, you know, the chorus.” I shrugged. “Eat my face, eat my face … eat my face, eat my face, eat my face.”

Jamie just looked at me for a second and then burst out laughing.

I felt weirdly proud. “It’s called ‘Lament for the Lost Souls Who Wander and Wait for the Bus That Never Comes.’ It’s a bonus track from their unreleased 1996 album … Satan’s Shoehorn.”

“Oh, for real?” he said, still laughing. “It’s a bonus track?”

“Yeah. It was a live recording from a concert they gave in the basement of a Chili’s in Muncie. On the night of a lunar eclipse. They played that song only, and then they torched the Chili’s. Like, literally burned it to the ground.” I leaned in and dropped my voice conspiratorially. “You know the wildest part is, their original bassist was still inside.”

Jamie buried his face in his hands, shoulders shaking, and when he looked at me again, there was a wide grin on his face, moisture in the corners of his eyes.

I dropped my gaze back to the carpet, and I don’t know why I said it now, except that there was something in his smile, in making him laugh, that was so deeply gratifying that I felt like I couldn’t enjoy it—like I didn’t deserve it—until I did this one thing right. The way I should have done it before, originally, or at least a long time before now.

“Hey, Jamie?”

“Mm. Yeah?” He was wiping his eyes on his sleeve.

“Remember in middle school…” I swallowed. “You know that dumb thing … like, with Alexis…”

I dared to glance at him, and he met my eyes, the smile fading, his expression shifting to something neutral.

The carpet was my friend, my constant companion.

“I’m … sorry about that,” I said. “I’m really sorry.”

It was quiet. I couldn’t make myself look up at his face.

“Nah, it’s…” Jamie’s tone was even, just a touch hesitant. “I mean, that was just … kid stuff. Right?”

“Yeah, but … no,” I replied, because Sidney was almost the same age now that I was then, and I knew she was perfectly capable of not acting like a complete and utter dick to someone she cared about. “It was … a jerk thing to do. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” Jamie said. “No worries.”

There were still worries, though. I wanted to apologize more, to press him further, and I wasn’t even sure why. That would just make it even more about me and about making myself feel better. Maybe sometimes you just have to ride out the discomfort of your own guilt. I don’t know what more I wanted from him other than No worries. To demand the exact words I forgive you? That was absolutely unreasonable.