—love him, still love him, do I love him?
I don’t know—
I don’t want to be alone but I love him but I don’t know, I don’t know—
Her agonized confusion, her loneliness, her desperation and love roil through me like a flood, and I feel tears spring to my eyes. Before they have a chance to spill over, I make some halfhearted excuse and run up to my room. I could feel how close to tears she was herself, how many emotions were surging just under the surface, yet she was so calm. She made it sound so simple.
Sometimes I feel like I don’t really know anybody at all.
None of us does.
But for some reason, now that I can find out more than anyone else can, I feel even more lost. And there’s an undercurrent of worry that won’t go away, because I’m not sure Auntie Mina is over Uncle Randall, no matter what she says.
On Friday, Cody corners me after school in the parking lot. When I go to my car, he’s leaning against the driver’s-side door, flipping his Zippo open and shut and smiling that little secret smile. It brings a smile to my own face in response.
Things have been different between us since the weekend. It feels like we have an unspoken understanding, something that goes deeper than ordinary friendship. He saw me at my worst, my most vulnerable, and he didn’t freak out or get scared. He just held me closer, gave me the silence I needed.
It makes me feel a lot less alone.
When I walk up and jingle my keys in front of him point-
edly, his smile broadens and he says, “Give me a ride to my house?”
The bottom drops out of my stomach for a second. Am I going to have to meet the Parents from Hell? Part of me doesn’t care if they’re there or not; part of me wants to go inside his house, see inside that part of his life.
“Earth to Sunshine,” Cody says, and laughs at his own turn of phrase. “Ride?”
I swat his arm. “Sure, but it’s a lot easier to drive people places when I can get into the car.”
“What, you can’t walk through walls?” he says jokingly. He gives my ponytail a tug and walks around to the passenger side. I unlock the doors and he slides in, not bothering with the seat belt. I refrain from making a snide remark about his fender-bender. In fact, as we drive away from school, I have trouble thinking of anything to say. Cody is thrumming with edgy energy, tapping his fingers on the dashboard, flipping radio stations back and forth, and smiling to himself.
“So,” I say eventually, “What’s the deal?”
“Turn here,” he says, pointing at a stoplight that goes into a ritzy housing development I’ve never been in before. It isn’t gated, but palm trees line the entry road and everything seems to be painted in trendy colors. There are a lot of fake columns and stonework facades and SUVs.
“Here,” he says again, pointing to a cul-de-sac on the left with five or six big houses on it. “Hang on—you can park right there.” He points at the curb next to a two-story house with giant glass picture windows and two cars, a Hummer and a Lexus, parked in front. The silver Lexus has been backed into the driveway, and I can see the crumpled part of the front bumper. I wince as I pull up to the curb and turn off the car.
“It’s fine,” Cody says shortly. “I’ll be able to pay it off by the end of the school year if I can get a cashier job at Thumbscrew. “
“But if you can’t drive there … ” I trail off, not wanting to piss him off.
“Pop says I’ll have to take the bus. Not that there’s a bus stop anywhere near this neighborhood. Nobody wants the noise or the diesel fumes or ‘those kinds of people’ wandering around here.” His voice is sarcastic. “Or I might be able to—I don’t know.” He fidgets with his Zippo again. He’s all serious now, and he turns to look at me intently.
“So what is it?” I tilt my head and smile at him a little, trying to lighten the mood. It feels like we’re trapped in a heavy silence.
“I—okay, listen,” Cody says, sounding urgent now. “I have to ask you something. A favor.”
I nod warily. He leans toward me, close enough in my little car that I can smell his shampoo. He closes his eyes for a second, then opens them, but his expression is hard to read. “That accident—that wasn’t the only reason I got in trouble. I didn’t tell Mikaela everything that happened.”
“So, what else was there?” I ask. Even though I’m worried, I’m the one he’s taking into his confidence this time, and it feels good.
He sighs. “Since I’m not allowed to drive for the foreseeable future, I invited some of those people you met at the solstice thing to have their meeting at my house on Sunday. It turned into kind of a party, I guess. My parents were supposed to be at a charity dinner, but Mom came home early and caught some of them smoking pot in the backyard and drinking Pop’s scotch. And they broke one of his highball glasses. It wasn’t on purpose, and I didn’t mean for them to find out. But my parents were fucking pissed. I’ve never seen them so … ” He swallows. “Anyway. I just thought maybe you could help me. You know. With your … ” He taps the side of his head, and I have a growing feeling of unease.
“Cody, I—”
“I’m a little freaked,” he says, putting his hand on my hand where it’s resting on the gearshift. There’s a crease of worry between his eyebrows. “More than a little. I just want to know if they’re planning on—I don’t know what they’re thinking. But I need to know. I just want to be ready. There’s going to be some kind of ‘big discussion’ and I have to be prepared.” His voice is hard, but then it softens. He looks right at me, his eyes intense. “I wouldn’t be asking you this if I didn’t think it was really important.”
“I know,” I say, still shaken that Cody, of all people, would admit that he’s actually scared. Of course, he really screwed up this time. But that doesn’t mean Mikaela was wrong about his parents being tyrants.
“It wasn’t your fault, though,” I point out. “The party got out of control. Can’t you explain that?”
“I tried,” he says flatly. “They don’t want to listen to me.”
I squeeze his hand. “Okay,” I say. “I’ll try. But … I can’t guarantee anything. They might be thinking about something totally unrelated.”
“Not a chance,” he says, looking away from me and staring out the front windshield. “I’m supposed to check in with my mom right after I get home from school today, so I’ll just go in the front door, pick a little fight, and then let her rip about what a big screw-up I am. You’ll definitely hear something.”
His voice is desolate; bitter. I can’t control my frown or the sick feeling that wells up in the pit of my stomach, but I try not to let Cody see just how painful it is to hear him say that. I don’t want to be yet another source of stress in his life. Instead, I lean back a little in my seat, put my hands loosely in my lap, and close my eyes.
Unlike last week, Cody doesn’t say anything to prompt me. He just breathes loudly and tensely in the seat next to me for a moment, then gets out of the car and slams the door. I go through the visualization process on my own, trying not to think about Cody trudging heavily up to the door of his house, trying not to fixate on the hopelessness in his voice.
After a few minutes of silence, I start to relax, and my mind drifts.
My awareness, my sense of myself, is in that nothing-space, and it’s starting to seem more familiar, less … terrifying. Though it’s not really a space, but something intangible I can’t quite describe. I sort of nudge myself toward Cody’s house, picturing my mind drifting through the walls of the building not thirty feet away and looking—feeling, really—around for other thoughts.