You'd Be Home Now (67)

I think about all the things I want to say to Joey at this moment. How mad I am. How scared I am, for him. None of them seem right. None of them seem like they will change a thing, except make him more ashamed.

When we get to the outpatient clinic, Joey parks the car in the lot and we sit, for what seems like forever, until he finally speaks.

    “They’re going to test me, I know it,” he says. “I can feel it. Oh my god.”

He’s breathing heavily. Panicking.

“I had one hundred and thirty-one days clean and I messed it up.” His face is paler than usual.

My god. He had so many days and because Lucy Kerr is grieving and I wanted a boy to dance with me, that’s gone. But a little voice in my head murmurs, Was it all me? Why didn’t Joey…

“Joey.” I keep my voice calm. I don’t want to make him ashamed. Accuse him. “Why didn’t you just find me? I was right there.”

Joey whispers, “Everything just…came down on me. I know you’re here, but I’m alone in this. No one gets that. I wish you could get that.”

We are noise for Joey, just like he said. The world is noise for Joey. A constant beating down, like rain on rooftops.

Hands shaking, I unzip my backpack.

I lied for Joey and now I’m going to cheat for Joey. Because I don’t want him to get sent away to a military school, or another rehab. Not right now.

“Mom is going to kick me out when the test turns positive. I’m so sorry, Em. I don’t know what to do.”

I pull out the baggie filled with my pee and hold it out to Joey.

“What is that?” He looks horrified.

“For your test. It’s mine. Some people were talking about it one time when we were here. Take it,” I say. “You can use it. I’m definitely not pregnant or on drugs, so you’re clear there. Some tests can tell the difference between male and female pee. Those ones are expensive, though. I don’t know what kind this place uses, but this is your only choice if you want to save yourself right now.”

    There is a part of me, a really large part, that wants him to say no. That is aching for him to say no.

That wants him to say I shouldn’t have gotten high under any circumstances and I should take my chances, I messed up and now I have to deal with what that means.

But he doesn’t. Just like I didn’t make the choice to tell our parents.

We’re just two liars, sitting in a car.

He carefully takes the baggie from me and tucks it under his hoodie and shirt, in the waistband of his store-bought holey jeans.

After his outpatient, when we are in the parking lot heading to the car, he says, “They didn’t test me. I dumped it down the sink.”

He looks relieved, but I’m not. Maybe part of me hoped he would get tested, and the test would somehow pick it up, or see that it was female urine, and then everything that probably should happen would happen, but without me betraying Joey to his face.

In the car, I tell him to drive me to the hospital so I can see Gage. I just want to see him. And I want him to tell everyone that he just slipped, that Joey didn’t attack him. I want to chip away at all the bad things being hurled at Joey right now, so it can be a manageable mess instead of a hurricane.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea,” Joey says slowly.

“Then stay in the car,” I tell him.



* * *



—

    When I walk in, Ryleigh is sitting next to Gage’s bed, holding his hand. His other arm is suspended in the air, in a heavy brace that’s wrapped all the way around his shoulder. His eyes are closed.

I wonder if he’s feeling the same ocean I felt when I was in the hospital. The endless waves of morphine ocean.

Looking at him makes me feel weak, too. His perfect mouth, his soft skin. Everything I wanted so much, and I feel guilty and queasy for thinking that, while he’s here in this bed, hurt. Just like I was in the summer.

Here I am, visiting him, but he never came to see me.

“Ryleigh,” I say quietly.

She turns. She looks happy to see me at first, and then her smile dies.

“Emmy. My mom’s in the cafeteria.” Her lips tremble. “She’s really mad at you.”

“I know.”

Gage’s eyes flutter open.

He looks like Joey looked the night of the accident: heavy-lidded, dulled down.

“Ry,” he mumbles. “Go outside. Just for a sec, okay? Keep…keep Mom busy if you see her.”

She gets up and squeezes my hand as she passes.

“You,” he says when she’s gone. His voice is thick. “I didn’t think you’d come here.”

I step closer to the bed.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “It was an accident. Joey didn’t mean it, Gage.”

“You told your brother.” His lips are dry. “We had a deal.”

“I thought…You said maybe we could hang out a little at the dance. I thought maybe things were changing, just a bit.” Slowly, it comes to me, how wrong I was: Gage was only appeasing me. To keep me quiet, keep me his. He didn’t think I’d really go through with it. The truth sits inside me, a cold stone, as cold as his eyes looking at me from the hospital bed.