Maybe Mom had read it, and that was why she’d burned it.
Maybe it just said “Happy Birthday.”
Maybe it was just a card that he’d signed.
Maybe he hadn’t even signed it.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
I didn’t have my keys. So I knocked.
And he didn’t answer.
I knocked again. And I kept knocking. Rap, rap, rap. Boom, boom, boom.
And then I was crying in the hallway.
And it was my birthday.
And he wasn’t there.
He was never there. He’d probably never been there. No one ever was. No one wanted to be there.
Mrs. Cho was gone, and Cherry had been gone for longer than I’d realized.
My knuckles hurt, so I switched hands.
And then I stopped knocking on a door that would never open.
I turned until my back was to his apartment, and I slid down to the floor. So what if there had been a card or a note. So what. There’d been nothing—less than nothing—for so long, it wouldn’t have mattered. Nothing he scrawled on a card for my birthday would undo the fact that I’d barely seen him since my last one. All of my insides squeezed tight, as memories from all those missed birthdays piled on top me. It was pathetic, and it didn’t matter. And I had a car. That was great. Tons of sixteen-year-olds would love to get cars on their birthdays.
A tear splashed onto my cheek.
I could go anywhere, do anything.
Another tear, another splash.
It was my birthday and I was free.
And I cried.
The hallway made my eyeballs crawl. It had to have been designed intentionally ugly. The carpeting on the lower floors had been replaced during the past month, but Adam’s dad hadn’t gotten to our floor yet. It had the old forest green carpeting with tiny burgundy swirls everywhere. And it looked dirty. The carpet was packed with so many years of accumulated filth that it no longer matched the paint on the walls. And I’d been sitting on it for hours, even knowing that my dad would most likely never show up. Maybe especially knowing that he would never show up. He probably had a different place, a nicer place where he actually lived.
I turned my head with an indifference I didn’t have to fake when I heard footsteps dragging up the stairs.
It wasn’t Dad or Shelly or anyone I knew. It was a guy in his thirties with thinning blond hair and pale blue eyes. I vaguely remembered him from months ago when I’d been waiting for Adam so that we could build a snowman. He carried a bag of groceries in one arm and a bicycle helmet in the other.
I didn’t scramble to my feet and try to rush past him. I didn’t move at all.
“Hey,” he said with slightly narrowed eyes. He’d stopped with one foot on the top step, the other still down behind him.
I didn’t reply.
“Forget your keys?”
“Yeah, that’s it.” I turned back to the wall in front of me, staring at the ugly paint.
