You'd Be Home Now (16)

“Emmy, I was stoned when I did those. I don’t even remember what I was thinking.”

“Maybe, but if you just tried, I’m sure—”

Joey rolls over and looks at me. “I know you want to be helpful, Em, but can you…not? Not right now. I just…I just need to be alone, okay? Sorry.”

“Oh, okay,” I say. “Sure.”

“Sorry,” he says. “Wait, I’m not sorry. I’m not supposed to apologize for needing space.”

He takes a deep breath. “I just need some space, okay?”

I know I shouldn’t feel hurt by that, but I do, just a little. “Yeah,” I say. “I get it.”

In the hallway, I lean against the wall outside his room.

I knew when he came back he might be different. I knew that. I mean, he’s supposed to be different, because of the sober thing. Maybe I thought he’d come back the version of Joey I like to remember best, the one when we were younger. Like that part of him would be allowed to rise to the surface again.

I didn’t expect to have to get to know a whole new brother.



* * *



—

When my mother is asleep that night, I go down to the pool. I’m slipping in when Ryleigh, Gage’s little sister, peeks up over the brick wall separating our yards. She’s got a ladder on her side. It used to drive Maddie crazy when she’d be out in the pool with her friends and suddenly this little kid would pop over the wall.

“Hi, Emmy,” she chirps.

    “Hello, Ryleigh. Back from camp?”

“Yep. And I think I got Zika from all the mosquitoes. I was like their pincushion.”

“I don’t think you can get Zika from a summer camp in New Hampshire.”

“Then I definitely got something from all the mosquito repellant they sprayed on us. All organic, my butt. Anything that repels those suckers has to be toxic. I’ll probably be dead by morning.”

“Probably.”

She waits.

“Well, if you’re in your suit, come on over,” I say. “Where’s your mom? It’s late.”

She hoists a leg over the wall, slides down. Her swimsuit is pink and green. “Asleep, like always. Like yours. Do all moms go to bed early?”

“Yes. It’s to get away from rotten kids like us.” I walk around inside the pool, testing my knee.

Ryleigh stands by the pool steps, the lights from under the water casting a milky glow over her body.

“You got really tan,” I tell her.

“All that sunscreen is probably toxic, too. I stopped wearing it and then I thought about skin cancer, but by that time it was too late and here I am. Brown as a nut, my dad said. He’s working late at the paper again, in case you were wondering where he was.”

“Well, the news never stops, I guess.”

She looks around the pool. “What happened to the swan floatie? I liked that one.”

“I don’t know. But it was some sort of plastic, so it was probably toxic, too, and you’re better off.”

    She plops into the water. “I was watching earlier. Joey’s home?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s good. I like him. I was worried. Did you know that nearly twenty-one million people in the country struggle with drug addiction? That’s more than the number of people with cancers combi—”

I hold up a hand. “Stop.”

“Okay.” She dips under the water. Her body swivels past the underwater pool light, like a skinny mermaid. She pops back up in the deep end. “I’m going to be in sixth grade.”

“I know! Very exciting. Did you get your school clothes?”

“Yes. I did my research and had Mom order ethically made clothes, but then I thought about the environmental cost of shipping and was that really ethical or just more environmental damage and maybe I didn’t do the right thing. Maybe I should make my own clothes. Maybe that would be better, like in olden times. The air was better then.” She sniffs the humid evening air. “Heliotrope smells nice.”

“It’s a hard choice to make. That might be fun, to learn to sew. Probably come in handy for the future apocalypse,” I say, letting water drizzle through my fingertips. Ryleigh dives back down and shimmies up next to me.

“Look.” She uses her fingers to spread her mouth wide.

“Oh my gosh! No more braces! Cool you! Someone will definitely fall in love with you this year, for sure. Sixth grade is middle school. You’ll have dances now.”

She takes her fingers out of her mouth.

“No,” she says. “That won’t happen. I’m too difficult. That’s what Mom says, anyway. She says I talk too much and tire people out and I should probably see a doctor. I don’t know why I need to see a doctor for talking.”

    When I was in the sixth grade, I asked my mother if she thought I was pretty and she put down her phone and took off her glasses and said, “That’s not something you need to worry about, Emory. There are far more important things to be worried about than looks.”

I still think about how she just didn’t say Yes. How it shouldn’t be hard for a mom to just say Yes, you’re pretty. They tell us plenty of critical things, how hard is it to throw some positives in there? A B is always “Well, if you’d applied yourself” and never “That was a hard class for you, good job.” It’s like they’re constantly paring us down, whittling us away so the only part that remains is the one they think is most acceptable.