“Shutup!” Forrest yells.
“Never!” she hollers in reply, and turns on the toe of her platform boots, racing away down the hall.
“I don’t know how she runs in those things,” Forrest says, shutting his locker.
“My feet hurt just looking at them,” I say.
“She says they’re the most comfortable shoes she owns,” he says as we fall into step beside each other.
I laugh. “She’s such a goth.”
“How was the rest of your day?” he asks.
“It was ...a day,” I say as we push out of the doors and into the chilly November air. Watery sunlight breaks through the clouds, warming my face just a little.
“That’s real,” he says.
“What about you?” I ask, glancing at him. “You know about my tragic family life. What’s going on in yours?”
“Ugh,” he says, making a face. “Don’t even get me started.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I don’t want to bring you down even more,” he says. We turn the corner onto the main street and head toward the train station. It’s louder here, the street busy with cars and businesses.
“You won’t,” I say. “Seriously, I need to think about someone else’s problems for once.”
“Fair enough,” he says with a laugh. We pass a tree and he reaches up, plucking one of the few bright red leaves stillhanging on to its almost-empty branches. “They’ve just been fighting a lot. My dad makes way more money than my mom, but he’s trying to nickel and dime her for everything. She wants to split custody, but he thinks we should stay with him. And I don’t want to. Like, I love my dad, don’t get me wrong, but if we’re gonna stay with one of them, I’d rather be with Mom.”
“I know what you mean,” I say quietly.
“Yeah?” He glances over, twirling the leaf in his fingers.
“My parents fought over me too, but it wasn’t really much of a fight. My mom won custody and Dad has visitation rights.” I scuff my feet through the leaves piled on the sidewalk.
“I’m hoping my mom wins custody of us too,” Forrest says.
“They ask you,” I say. “During the court proceedings. You get a chance to say what you want.”
“Really?” He looks over at me. “Did you ...?”
I nod. “They had a therapist interview me. They usually wait ’til you’re twelve, I think, and I was eleven, but it was almost my birthday so I guess that was close enough.”
“So you didn’t have to say it in front of your parents?”
“No.” I grimace. “God, that would have been so awkward.”
“For real.”
We enter the station, tapping our fare cards on the card reader, and ride the escalator down to the platform. As we near the bottom, lights flash in the tunnel, and the train emerges just as we step off. The seats are full, so we stand, clinging to the overhead railings as the train zooms away tothe next station. I can see us in the dark glass of the window, reflected back like a parallel universe.
The night before the therapist was supposed to interview me, Dad took me out to the arcade and won me a stuffed animal. Afterward, in the car, he cried, asking me to pick him, saying he loved me, that it wasn’t fair, that he was trying to get sober and having me around would help. But even then, I knew it was bullshit. I’d seen him try over and over, and I just wanted it to end.
In the therapist’s office, staring at her soft blue carpet, after I’d answered her questions about life at home, about my relationship with my parents, I’d said it. “I want to stay with Mom.” She nodded, and noted something on her pad.
“So the new season of my show just dropped,” Forrest says, bringing me back to the present. “I binged the entire thing this weekend. Do you want to hear about it?”
I nod and he’s off, catching me up on everything that’s happened in the past few episodes, and the sound of his voice anchors me in the present again.
