A scream like laugh bubbles out of me because she’s always been dying, or wanting to anyway. Killing herself over time because it was easier and for once I relate to her. I use my thumb to unscrew the lid, letting the warm brown liquid hit my throat.
38
Andy
Rain clouds hang heavy in the sky, just barely breaking so that the day’s last rays of sunshine can filter through. I scan the side street by my mom’s apartment, crossing my fingers that Delilah isn’t there. And I know it’s cowardly, but lying to Sloane somehow feels worse. Distance, I’ve decided, saves her from the knowledge that would wreck her.
But she must already be at the hospital for her mom’s treatment, or maybe she’s still at the conservatory. She wouldn’t, I imagine, want to see me anyway after what I said to Grant yesterday. I’m grateful when I round the corner and miss any sight of the red convertible on the small street, though it’s immediately followed by guilt at the relief, then resentment that those emotions exist on a continuous pendulum for me.
It’s why I’m here—I need to get off the ride. All this guilt…I don’t know what to do with it. Don’t know how to move forward. But here, with my mom, with Carm, I’m away from all of that. Even if it’s temporary.
A laundry basket sits on the floor when I walk in, my mom on her tip toes as she piles sheets on the top rack of the hallcloset. I do it for her, gently hip-checking her before putting the rest away. But when I’m done, and look down at her, her eyes are wet. Her arms are crossed, and she walks away from me, shoulders squared.
“What’s, uh…what’s going on?” I ask her, and just the look of disappointment she gives me is like a knee to my ever present bruise.
She glances down the hallway to Carmen’s room, whereHamiltonroars from her speakers. “You tell me.”
My gaze falls for a fraction of a second before I see the mulish slant of her jaw harden. “I’m lost,” I chuckle, taking her hand so we can sit on the couch. She yanks it away from me and I justknow.
She starts to speak, only for her teeth to clatter against each other. She has to press her lips together to still them, and it takes every ounce of my will not to run from this feeling as she finally manages to look me in the eye. “When did you meet him?”
The words fall from her lips like the heaviest thing we’ve ever carried, and die on the carpet of the living room floor. My stomach feels hollow, and I wouldn’t be shocked if the roof caved in. This has always been my worst case scenario. My one real nightmare, come true. I blink and I blink and I blink but my eyes wont stop watering.
“Senior year.” My teeth dig into my lip, and it’s not nearly hard enough. I breathe in shallow takes because it staunches the tears I haven’t shed since Luis died.
Her small gasp is unsteady as she covers her mouth with her hand. “What are you doing for him, Andrew?” she asks, and there’s a sea of knowledge there that I, pettily, wish she would’ve told me years ago.
“Nothing,” I lie, like maybe I can protect her from it. “It’s… nothing.” Pure disbelief floods her gaze when she looks at me. She’s never looked at me like that. Like I’m someone she doesn’t know.
“Then why didhefix her scholarship? Is it because he’s the reason she has one?” Fresh tears well in her eyes, the ones that mine mimic in every way, and she looks to make sure we’re still alone. “I never wanted you to know him. He’s poisonous and?—”
“I know,” I cut her off, looking down at my hands as they cradle each other. “I know that now.” I look up at the ceiling, exhaling as I scrunch my nose. “Fuck.”
“Language,” my mom mutters behind her tears. “You need to tell me everything, Andrew.”
“There’s no point,” I tell her, and the hopelessness of it rocks me. “It’s done. He…he paid for Astor. He got me on the team.”
Her head knocks to the side, horror laced in her gaze as tears stream down her cheeks. “Why? Why does he help you?”
I breathe, sniffing back the tears. “I tell him things…about people,” I shrug.
“About your friends,” she says, matter of factly, something hard gathering in her gaze. “Will.”
I knock my head to the side, looking past her, teeth grinding, head nodding.
“Who else?” she whispers, reaching for my hand in a move that sends a small wave of belonging over me.
“Don’t worry about?—”
“I’ll worry about whatever I want, because I’m yourmother.It is my job to worry about you, not the other way around. When—” her breath stutters as she swallows, flicking her gaze to the ground. “Luis would never have wanted you to put the world on your shoulders. To putuson your shoulders.”
I wet my lips, stifling the sob that gets caught in my throat. “It wasn’t fair. None of it wasfair.”
She nods, eyes red rimmed and glassy, and I wait for the invisible balm she’d always lather over my wounds when I’d come to her as a child, weeping, disappointed, fractured…but it doesn’t come. Her lips tug into a sorrowful curve, wobbles as she stays composed, and says, “No. No it wasn’t.”
The shift in her gaze now reminds me that I haven’t been that child in a long time. My small bones, my soft heart, grew and hardened into something I didn’t even let her bear witness to; I slid into a darkness I thought wouldn’t swallow me whole if I just moved into her light, Carmen’s light, sometimes, but it did.
I look at her, the filter of childhood innocence gone for the first time I think ever, and don’t only see exhaustion, and she looks at me like she sees a man and not her boy.
