In the Middle of Somewhere (Middle of Somewhere, #1)(107)

“No, Rex, I need to go home, now.”

“I know,” he says. “You need to go to Philadelphia. But your car’s dead and you’re in no condition to drive anyway. A last-minute flight will be very expensive. I don’t have any jobs lined up this week. Let me drive you home. Let me help you take care of everything.”

Let me help you. Let me help you. This is it. This is the moment that everything we’ve talked about has been leading to. Either I trust Rex enough to let him help me or I don’t.

“I can’t ask you to—” I start to say.

“You didn’t ask. Daniel, look at me.”

Rex pulls my chin up. I can’t quite breathe.

“Baby,” he says again. “I’m so sorry. Please, let me help.”

I nod, and Rex is in action immediately. He puts me in his truck, starts the ignition to get some heat, and runs inside. He’s back five minutes later, carrying a duffel bag and thanking someone on the phone. He hangs up and gets in the car.

“Okay,” he says.

We pull up in front of my apartment and Rex leads me to the door. I look up at him, confused.

“You need to grab some clothes,” Rex says. Right. Of course.

Fortunately, I think I have some clean underwear and a pair of jeans that aren’t too dirty. I start to put things in a backpack robotically. Rex runs his hand over the wood of the kitchen table he built, which is currently home to stacks of library books.

“Daniel?”

Has he been calling my name?

“Huh?” I say.

“It’s freezing in here.”

“Sorry,” I say. “I can try and turn it up.”

“No, baby, we’re not staying. I just meant…. Never mind,” he says, and crosses to me. He brushes my hair out of my eyes. “Do you have a suit?” he asks gently.

I stare at him, unsure why I would need a suit. Rex clears his throat.

“For the, um, the funeral?”

Right. The funeral. What a strange word. Fyooneruhl. Not very many words with an f and then a long U-sound. Future. Fuchsia. Fumarole. Fugue.

“Daniel?”

I take my only suit out of the closet and roll it up into my backpack. I add my toothbrush and toothpaste to the bag.

“Do I have to do something with the pipes?” I ask Rex. “So they don’t freeze or something?”

“We can call your landlord and let him deal with it.”

“What about Marilyn?” I ask, suddenly remembering the dog.

“I called Will. He’s going to take care of her. Is there anything you need to see to at school?”

I shake my head. I submitted grades before I went to Rex’s the night before and I’d dropped the essays off in the main office.

“Okay,” Rex says, and as we walk back out into the Michigan snow, I have the strangest feeling that it’s the last time I’ll ever see my apartment. But of course that’s ridiculous.




IT TURNS out that Rex is one of those people who know how to get places. He has an atlas in the truck, and I ask him if he wants me to look up directions, but he says he doesn’t need me to. For the first few hours, I keep expecting him to ask me to check something, but he never does. Rex doesn’t talk to me, for which I’m grateful. I have no words right now and to demand any of me would be cruel. I can’t even answer no when he asks if I’m hungry. I know I should offer to take a turn driving, but when I gesture vaguely at the steering wheel, Rex just shakes his head and squeezes my knee.

I’m not sure if I sleep or not, but it’s been dark for hours before I notice. Rex gets off the highway in Youngstown and the Springsteen song starts playing in my head. Good song. We pull into the parking lot of a motel.

“Are we stopping?” I croak.

Rex nods. I bite my tongue. I want to keep going, but Rex has been driving all day and he must be tired.

In the room, Rex tells me he’s going to go get some food and starts the shower for me. It feels like it’s been months since we showered together this morning. I get into the shower like he says. I have the strongest memory of the week my mother died. I didn’t quite understand at first, but when I realized she was never coming back I started to make a wish when the clock turned to 11:11. A kid at school had told me that if you wished on 11:11 it would definitely come true. I would stay up late so that I could make the wish twice a day, that whole week. I wished for my mom to come back and my dad to be gone instead.

Rex opens the door and the water has gone cold. Again, I haven’t even washed my hair.

“Come here, love,” Rex says.

“Sorry,” I mutter. “I think the hot water’s gone.”

“It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”

Rex has laid out Subway sandwiches on the small table by the window.

“I got you turkey,” he says, but I’m not hungry. I shake my head and lie down on the big bed.

“Daniel, you haven’t eaten anything all day. I know you’re not hungry, but you need to eat. Just a little.” I close my eyes. “Please,” Rex says, and when I open my eyes I see how tired he looks. How worried. About me, I guess.

I nod and haul myself up again. Rex is clearly starving because he finishes his sandwich in about two minutes. I take a bite and it tastes like glue. When I try to swallow, it’s like I’ve never eaten before. The sensation is so strange. Like a brick has lodged itself in my stomach. I take another bite and chew until it’s paste, hoping it’ll just slide down. I swallow it, but on the third bite my mouth refuses to open. I know I’ll throw up if I try.