At least, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t.
But they know about my family. I can tell them this.
“My dad,” I say finally. “He texted me this weekend.”
“Holy shit.” Jayden grabs my hand, and I curl my fingers through his. Makayla and Anna stop their conversation at his exclamation and turn to us, and I repeat what I told Jayden.
“Have you replied?” Anna asks.
I shake my head.
“What did he say?” Makayla asks.
I open my phone and show them the message. “He’s never gone to inpatient before. I don’t know what to think. Maybe he’s really taking it seriously this time, but...” I trail off. “Dad” and “taking it seriously” don’t really belong in the same sentence. When I was a kid, he was always joking around, with sarcasm or bathroom humor or a prank—obvious ones, like switching the salt and sugar, but he loved to trick me other ways too, by pretending we were out of my favorite cereal when we weren’t, or convincing me that a random noise outside was actually a serial killer, or a rabid dog, or an escaped zoo animal.
“Psych!” he’d yell once I believed him, and I’d groan, or get mad. Either way, he’d laugh his ass off. Sometimes his jokes were funny, but a lot of the time they were just annoying. He acted like a kid, and I wanted him to grow up.
My throat constricts, tears stinging my eyes. “Can I hug you?” Jayden asks. I nod, and his arms encircle me, squeezing tightly.
“I’m sorry your dad is a butthole,” Anna says.
“Bigbutthole,” Jayden mumbles in my ear.
“Cavernous,” Makayla adds.
I snicker, and then we’re all laughing. The tightness in my chest loosens, and gratitude floods in—for the relief of tension, for the laughter, for my friends.
I had a couple friends scattered across elementary and middle school, but I was shy and anxious and rarely saw them outside of the school day. First it was because I was afraid Dad would be drunk when they came over, and after thedivorce, it was because the apartment Mom and I lived in was so run-down. When I met Jayden, Anna, and Makayla, though, it was like I’d been a piece of a puzzle waiting under some cosmic couch for a giant hand to pick me up, and then one did and placed me with them and, together, we made a picture. Literally and figuratively; the Polaroids of us on my wall at home are proof of that. They’d all come here from different schools; Anna from another state entirely. But we’d found each other. Our jokes, our interests, our personalities; everything aligns.
I hope nothing ever messes it up.
When Mom gets home that evening, I’m in my usual seat at the table, working through a math assignment. She sets her backpack on the coffee table, sits down on the couch with a groan to unlace her oxfords, then groans again as she pushes herself up to standing.
“How about we order some pizza tonight?” she asks, shuffling past me toward her room.
I give her a thumbs-up. Shar goes to an Al-Anon meeting every Wednesday night, so it’s just the two of us, and Mom’s not much of a cook. “Can we do mushrooms and olives?”
“You got it.” She vanishes into the back hallway. From the cat tower next to the window, Earl Grey watches me, slow blinking when she catches my eye. That’s how I know she likes me, even if she hardly ever lets me touch her.
Mom reemerges, and gone is the tailored pantsuit of a high-level marketing executive at a company whose name I can never remember; instead, she just looks like my mom, insweats and an old Green Day T-shirt. She sits down across from me and taps away on her phone screen for a few minutes, then smiles at me. “It’ll be here in twenty minutes. Working on homework?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s good.” She watches me. Her brow is furrowed slightly.
“What’s up?” I ask.
“I ...have some news,” she says. “Your dad called me. He went to inpatient rehab this summer. Court-ordered after a DUI, but it sounds like he took it seriously. Anyway, he’s been out for a few weeks, he has a job, and he wants to see you.”
I stare at her, all the pieces clicking into place. Dad went to inpatient because he had to. Because he finally got a DUI, after bragging for years about how he’d never been “nailed by the po-po,” as he put it. And there’s that word again:seriously.Is he really taking it seriously, or is he just saying what he knows we want to hear? And if I believe him, will he just mess it up again?
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” Mom says gently.
I shake my head. “He already told me.”
Her mouth closes, head pulling back slightly. “He what?” Her voice is casual still, but I know that face; it’s the expression she gets when she’s angry but she doesn’t want you to know, when it’s just simmering under the surface.
“He texted me Sunday,” I say. “I’m sorry. I should have told you.”
