“I didn’t know it was you,” he said after a long moment of silence. “Titus said there was a shooting at Casper and Farrah’s, and I thought—I hoped both of them were okay. I didn’t even know you were there.”
“I had Nova and Rumi drop me off there,” I replied. “I was going to stay the night with Gram.”
“Because you were pissed at me,” he said flatly.
“I—well, yes. Mostly because I didn’t want to go home and get questioned why I was there.”
He let out a huff of humorless laughter.
“I think he was following me,” I said, trying to puzzle it out. “It doesn’t matter where I was.”
“You think he woulda tried to break into my place?” he asked. “Or your parents’ place?”
“Yeah. For all he knew, Gramps was home.”
“Or he looked in the kitchen windows and saw you and Farrah were alone,” he said flatly.
“I guess we’ll never know,” I replied.
“Always comes back around,” he whispered to himself, so quietly I wasn’t sure what he meant.
“What do you mean?” I asked, reaching for my glasses that someone had placed next to me so I could see him.
He was quiet for a really long time. So long, I wondered if he hadn’t even heard me.
“I had a foster sister,” he said finally, his voice a whisper. “Didn’t tell you that before.”
My stomach clenched. By just the quiver in his voice I knew that whatever he was about to say was going to hurt. I barely breathed, waiting for him to continue.
“Her name was Josie. She came to us when she was eight and I was eleven, but she always seemed even younger because she had a lot of health problems.” He paused. “She was my little buddy. I let her follow me around for years because she didn’t have a lot of friends. She’d walk to the store with me, play video games, that kind of thing.”
I wanted to lay my hand on his back, but I was afraid if I touched him, he’d shatter.
“When I got older, I didn’t want a little sister around, and that really pissed her off. But I wanted to hook up with girls and shit. I was getting older, you know, tryin’ to find my own thing.”
My throat tightened.
“One night when I was seventeen, my mom went to the casino with a couple of her friends. She wasn’t allowed to be gone overnight with the fostering rules, but we all knew she’d get back pretty late. So me, Mateo and Arlo decided to have some people over. We told Josie that she had to stay out of the way, right? Don’t embarrass us. Don’t drink. Basically, stay in her room.”
I already knew which direction his story was headed, and I braced for the inevitable impact.
There was no way I could’ve prepared.
“So, the party’s goin’ and we’re all takin’ our turns keepin’ one eye on Josie and one on our friends. But at some point, we lost sight of her. Each of us assumed one of the others waskeepin’ track of her, you know? She was a freshman in high school, so it wasn’t like she was a toddler.”
He let out a small sob before swallowing it back.
“By the time we found her in her room, she was half dressed and already blue. Overdose. From what the police could piece together, she’d gone up to her room with someone and probably got the drugs from them. We never figured out who it was.”
“Oh my god, Bas,” I whispered, finally reaching out to lay my hand on his curved back.
“She was probably so fuckin’ scared,” he rasped. “She hadn’t been around drugs or any of that shit before. Doubt she even understood what was happenin’ until it was too late. She’d gone into foster care because her mom had mental health issues and was homeless, and Josie had too many health problems for her to handle. She needed regular meals and a warm roof over her head.”
“Is that when you left home?” I asked, rubbing his back in a slow circle.
“Yeah.” He shook his head, his voice distant. “You shoulda heard my mom screamin’ when she came in the house. Just completely lost it.”
That was twice he’d called Bernice his mom—he’d never done that before.
