You'd Be Home Now (12)

I need my fix. I need to lose myself, too.



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I take the bus to the mall in the city instead of an Uber, because you can never tell which driver will be chatty. The bus stop isn’t far, and the air is filled with the cherry-ish scent of heliotrope. Mill Haven is filled with them. People take expensive pride in their lawns in our neighborhood: yards are landscaped lushly, each mound of clean gray rock and tumultuous spray of lavender arranged just so.

The mall isn’t too crowded so early on a Monday morning, which makes me and my knee grateful. Maybe a few kids here and there, but none from Mill Haven. I feel relieved.

I head to the Gap. The things on my mother’s list are not what Joey wears. He’s usually in dirty hoodies and saggy jeans and anime T-shirts. I finger some clothes on the racks, picturing him in this soft chocolate T-shirt, that pair of artfully faded jeans. Joey’s jeans have holes in them because he wears the same pair forever, unwashed, until they die. These jeans come with holes. It’s almost like my mother is trying to re-create him, turning him into someone else, a popular, clean boy, like…Gage.

    Gage Galt has lived next door to us forever. He’s lean and handsome and has shining white teeth, the right amount of tousle in his hair, unlike Joey’s permanently messy and tangled hair, and he has a million-dollar pitching arm. At least, that’s what the papers say. He couldn’t be more destined for greatness if he literally had success! tattooed on his forehead. He lives, sleeps, and breathes baseball.

His is the bedroom window I gaze at from my room. Sometimes, during the school year, I can see him, slumped late at night over his homework, forehead creased in concentration. Smarts don’t come as easy for Gage as flinging a ball; he has to work at it, because as much as scouts lick their lips every time he sets foot on the mound, his father wants him to get a college degree and do something that doesn’t destroy his body. And if he doesn’t keep up his grades, he can’t play ball. And if Gage can’t play ball, Gage won’t be Gage.

My mother loves Gage. Or, perhaps, the idea of him: strong, uncomplicated, local boy making good.

I know I shouldn’t, it just makes me nervous and jumpy and jealous, but I take out my phone and look at his feed.

Back to my hometown soon can’t wait to see you miss you all

You are delicious, says CharleeZ.

So fine, says Aimee443.

I look at each and every word, trying to find something, but I’m not sure what. Is you code for me? Does he think of me when he’s away? Does he miss me?

I’m not sure I miss Gage the person, since we don’t actually talk very much when we’re together. He’s more like a series of sensations I crave: deliciousness, a secret, one that I want to stretch out as long as possible, something that is only mine. Away from everything, like my family and Joey. And it can’t be bad if it feels good, right? I mean, it’s not drugs.

    I look around the store. The salespeople are folding clothes, chatting behind the counter, looking at their phones.

Look at me, I want to say. Notice me.

No one does.

That’s the thing about Gage. At least, in those moments with him, I feel like someone sees me. I’m not the plain girl in the big house on the hill.

I sigh, shoving my phone back in my purse. And then I see it.

It’s pretty. A caramel-colored bracelet, soft and sweet in the bright lights of the store. I haven’t done this in so long, but I can’t resist.

There’s just a thin tag, papery, nothing like a bulky security tag that has to be detached at the register.

The salespeople are still bustling around, chatting.

I lift my shirt slightly, like I’m scratching an itch, which maybe I sort of am, and then I carefully tuck the bracelet between the waistband of my leggings and my hip. I slide my purse around my stomach.

Better. I feel better.

And then take a deep breath to clear my head. I’m on a mission for my mother and I can’t fail.

In just four stores, I buy Joey a whole new life.



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I keep my secrets in my closet where no one can find them. Innocently hidden in the open, in my great-grandmother’s black velvet hatbox on the top shelf.

    My mother has never had to tear my room apart in anger, searching for reasons, for evidence, about why I don’t match, because I try my best to match. I don’t have room to not match. Someone has to be the good one.

I stand on tiptoe, ignoring the flare of pain in my knee, and bring the box down. Peel back the creamy red satin cloth inside.

Pearly costume jewelry from the thrift store on Rose Street: pins and brooches, necklaces with tangled chains. Crumpled ones, tens, twenties from my father’s pants pockets left in the basket in the laundry room, clothes that Goldie will dump in the washing machine twice a week and then artfully iron and hang in his closet. A watch left in the library from freshman year. It was beautiful, shiny and expensive, and who would leave such a thing? They didn’t love it, so I made it mine. Hair ties left on benches in the humid locker room at Heywood High. An expensive pen abandoned on a side table at a dinner party in the city my parents took me to. It glittered in the soft light of the foyer. It was so easy to tip it off the table with a finger, slide it into my purse. The adults were wearing exquisite clothes and drinking. They weren’t paying attention to a teenage girl.