One Lonely Degree (20 page)

I’m tapping my feet anxiously under the table and telling myself not to be such a moron when the phone rings. Daniel, who has the chair closest to the phone, reaches behind him and grabs the cordless from the wall. The eager look in his eyes tells me he’s expecting Dad, but his face falls as he cradles the phone. He hands it wordlessly to me, and I take it. There’s no way it can be my father; Daniel’s not that good an actor. It’s gotta be Jersy I know before I even press the cordless to my ear.

“Finn?” Jersy’s voice is deeper than it was last night.

I stare at the wall, ignoring Mom’s and Daniel’s presence. “Hi, Jersy.” The slurping sound behind me is instantly replaced by incessant crunching. Daniel sounds uncannily like Samsam when he eats potato chips. Actually, Samsam’s neater. He never leaves crumbs.

“I’m gonna have to cancel tonight,” Jersy says. “It’s not a good time. There’s some stuff going on here. I called your cell and left a message, but I wanted to make sure—”

“It’s all right,” I cut in. I’m more relieved than disappointed. “Don’t worry about it.” But his voice doesn’t sound all right. He’s
restless or moody or some other thing I can’t pinpoint. Audrey would know. “Is everything okay, though?”

“Yeah,” Jersy says hesitantly. “It is … it’s just … not a good time to use the pool and stuff, you know?”

No, I don’t know. “Okay, don’t worry about it. We can do it another time.” Of course, we never will. This is probably the last I’ll hear from him until September. Maybe now I’ll be able to finish my hot dog. Maybe I’m saved after all.

“For sure,” Jersy says. “Another time.” He hangs out silently on the other end of the phone line, waiting for me to pick up the slack.

“I better go.” I glance behind me at Daniel, Mom, and the dwindling supply of Pringles. “We’re in the middle of dinner.”

“Okay, see you later,” Jersy says.

“Yeah, see you.” I hang up the phone and immediately reach for another stack of Pringles. Now I sound like Samsam too. I bet he sits at the table and devours garbage like this in his doggie dreams. Or maybe he’s happy enough chomping down the contents of a torn garbage bag with no one standing over him to yell at him.

“Was that Jersy?” Mom asks, studying me.

“Yup.” She knows it was. The question’s redundant. “I was supposed to go swimming at his place, but he had to cancel.”

Mom doesn’t ask why, and I wait for Daniel to make some bad-seed comment. For once he’s quiet. He must be totally pissed off with me to be so quiet, and I wish I could reach over and tousle his hair, but making friends with the Anti-Me wouldn’t be that easy. He’d think I was making fun of him.

After dinner Gran calls, and I cram the conversation with trivial details about work so she won’t think we’re all falling apart
without my dad. Then I e-mail Audrey and fool around with stock photos I’ve downloaded from the Internet. One of the photos is of a teenage girl on a pier, her hair tied back in a ponytail. The other is a wide shot of the Milky Way, twinkling purple and black. Merging the two images could create something beautiful. In my mind I see a dreamlike vision of a girl surrounded by the mysteries of the universe, but not all my ideas work. I crop, scale, color, blend, and blur for hours, trusting that I’ll know when it’s done and ultimately whether to junk it or save it.

Like always, I forget to blink when I stare at the screen, and like always, my eyeballs are as dry as starched napkins. That’s what you get for concentrating too hard, and I take a break to rest my eyes and walk Samsam. When I get home, Mom’s telling Daniel to go to bed. My ears perk up in surprise. Is this a one-time thing or a hint of recovery?

“Finn,” Mom says, stopping me in the hall, “I’m going up to bed now too. Don’t stay up too late, okay?”

She says that like the last two and a half weeks never happened, like life without Dad is entirely normal and doable. Is this the same woman who ate a hot dog for dinner and only plucked her eyebrows again because Dad was coming over? Am I losing my mind?

“I won’t,” I lie. “Good night.” I kiss her on the cheek and feel my stomach clench. What was my family actually like before? I can’t remember. There’s only this constant weariness and layers of webs.

I’m in a fog.

I don’t understand why things went wrong. I don’t know how to make them right, and it’s too exhausting to try.

Like with Jersy We’re friends, but he’ll never know me any better than he does at this moment. Any more and he’d stop liking
me. He’d think everyone else was right after all. And that would be that.

I don’t know how much of that kind of thinking is me and how much is Adam. That scares me, and now there’s more. There’s our whole family breaking apart and me floating away like a balloon someone let slip from their hand.

Audrey would say she’ll be back soon. Dad would tell me he misses me and that I should come up to the cottage. Why can’t those things be enough?

Why am I crying again?

At first I fight it. I sit at the computer and continue working. Tilt. Resize. Change transparency. The tears keep coming, blurring my vision. Drops snake down around my nose, making me sniffle. Then my cell phone rings. It’s nearly twelve-thirty, and I jump before reaching over my bedside table to pick it up, sure that Dad would never call this late.

“Hello?” a male voice says. “Is that you?”

“Who?” I ask. My voice sounds warped from crying.

“Finn?” The voice is flat, almost mechanical. “It’s me, Jersy. You awake?”

“Yeah, I’m awake.” And panicked. Why does he sound so strange? “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” Jersy pauses. “Sorry I scared you. I was just thinking about coming over—if you’re not just about to get into bed or something.”

It’s after midnight, and he hasn’t been to my house without Audrey since he was six. I hold the phone firmly in my right hand, my brain stalling.

“Bad idea,” Jersy says slowly. “Okay.”

“No, it’s fine,” I tell him. “You just caught me off guard.” I can’t say no after running over to his place like it was an emergency
room—twice. Somehow I’ll have to snap out of this crazy meltdown; somehow I’ll have to act semi-normal and smile when he makes a joke.

“Just say no if you want, Finn. It’s like one in the morning, I know. I just thought since I had to cancel earlier—”

“Just get over here, Jersy.” Something’s obviously going on. “It’s cool.”

“Okay.” He doesn’t give me another chance to change my mind. “I’ll be there in two.”

He hangs up first and I shut my computer down, slip quietly onto the front step with Samsam, and watch Jersy tear up my driveway on his skateboard, summer wind tugging at his oversized sweatshirt. “My mom and brother are asleep,” I say. The entire neighborhood’s asleep. Trees rustle and air conditioners hum. If an alien landed on my driveway, he’d think this was a peaceful planet. How could people with such green grass possibly be unhappy?

Jersy bows his head like he’s about to say something. Then he looks into my eyes, steady and serious. “Can we go inside or do you want to stay out here?”

Samsam doesn’t pad forward to greet Jersy like he normally would. He sits by my side and watches us like he’s sizing up the situation. “We can go in,” I say. “I just didn’t want you to ring the bell.”

I open the front door and let Samsam in first. He turns and stares back at us in the hall, waiting for us to catch up. I lead Jersy into the family room, where we automatically occupy opposite ends of the couch. The empty middle seat feels like an awkward reminder of Audrey’s absence; if Samsam were allowed on the furniture, I’d call him up to fill the gap. Jersy reaches for Samsam, scratching his ears and running his hand down his back.

I watch the two of them the way Samsam was watching us a minute ago. I don’t know what to do or say or if I should even ask Jersy why he’s sitting on my couch at nearly one o’clock in the morning.

“Do you want to watch TV?” I ask finally.

“Sure.” Jersy’s hands disappear into his sleeves as Samsam sits down in front of him.

“He really likes you,” I say. “He likes pretty much everyone, but he likes you a lot.”

“I like him a lot too.” Jersy nods, but thick lines pop up on his forehead. “He’s your dog, isn’t he?”

“Mostly. Me, then my dad.” I turn on the TV and flip through
Blind Date, MTV Cribs, The L Word, Bones
, yada, yada, yada. I’m as bad as my brother with his mad anxious tic.

Jersy slides his hand loosely over his head like he’s still adjusting to his new buzz cut. “We used to have a dog too. Silver. She was an escape artist. Half the time my parents couldn’t figure out how she got out. The last time we couldn’t find her. We drove around for weeks, called all the shelters, posted flyers everywhere—but we couldn’t find her.”

I stop flicking and rest the remote on the arm next to me. “You never found her?”

“Never found her,” Jersy confirms. “She could be somebody else’s dog now.”

“That’s so sad.” I can’t imagine losing Samsam; he’s practically part of me. “What kind of dog was she?”

“Australian shepherd.” Jersy’s right hand slips out of his sleeve. “The blue merle kind. Her eyes were blue too.”

“She sounds gorgeous.”

“Yeah, she really was.” He’s using the past tense, I notice. Maybe he doesn’t believe she’s someone else’s dog now.

Jersy touches his scar with his fingertip. “My parents were kinda losing it earlier,” he says. “That’s why we couldn’t go swimming. Christina does this thing where she takes off, and it freaks them out.”

“You mean she runs away?” Why would Christina Mikulski ever run away? She has the perfect family.

“Not really.” Jersy squints at the television, where some vaguely familiar blond actress is talking up a kitchen gadget that’ll change our lives for only five installments of $19.99. “Usually she goes to see her best friend at Western for a couple weeks. Just to get away from things.”

“What things?” Christina Mikulski could have anything she wanted. She’s one of those girls. You can tell just by looking at her.

“My parents, for one.” Jersy’s hand climbs back into his sleeve. His voice is flat, like it was over the phone. “They worry about her all the time. Even worse when she’s gone and they don’t know what she’s doing every second of the day.” Jersy blinks slowly. His eyes focus on mine, then peer away.

“Her and her best friend are like you and Audrey,” Jersy adds. “She’s fine there. They just freak.”

I press my lips together as I stare at him. He’s worried too. He has to be. What else would he be doing here? “Can you call her?” I ask. “To check up on her? Will she e-mail you or anything?”

“Sometimes she does.” His body sinks into the couch like someone let the air out of him. “Finn.” His voice turns stern. “Don’t ask, okay? I shouldn’t even be telling you any of this.” Pink patches bloom on his cheeks. “Everything’s fine. She’ll be back soon.”

“Okay,” I tell him. His ears are turning pink too. I’d never have noticed that before the haircut. “Don’t worry. I’d never say anything anyway.”

Audrey must know what he’s talking about. Maybe the Chinese girl too. But you shouldn’t share your secrets too freely. I never do.

A shiver pinches at my insides, stealing my breath. Mr. Mikulski said he wanted their house to be a safe place. Why would he say that? My neck prickles cold as I gulp in air.

I know without anyone needing to tell me. I don’t want to know, but I do. I can’t look at Jersy; I can’t get the words out.

“I know you wouldn’t,” he says. “It’s not that.”

What happened to Christina is dense in the air between us. My gums taste like rust and rot. Jersy and I shouldn’t be talking about this, even though we’re
not
. I don’t want to fill in details with my imagination. I want him to go.

“What about your dad?” he asks. “Have you talked to him?”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk to him,” I snap. The prickles creep over me like fur. I could scratch all my skin off, but it wouldn’t quit creeping.

Jersy’s brown eyelashes blink in surprise. “I know, but you have to talk to him sometime.”

“I don’t have to do anything.” I glare at his chin. “Why does everybody keep telling me to talk to him all the time?”

Jersy’s silent next to me. Then he hunches over to pet Samsam. “Maybe they think you’ll be sorry if you don’t.” Jersy stares up at me, his eyes wide.

I turn away, feeling raw. If I opened my mouth, my jaw would click with tension.

“Can I?” Jersy motions to the remote. He must be the most clueless person alive. Anyone else would know they should leave.

I let him take the remote and flip over to videos. What does that make me?

“Hard Road” fills the TV screen, and we watch Sam Roberts
rock away like a musical Jesus, his shaggy dark hair spilling down to his shoulders. We sit quietly for another thirty minutes or so, watching video after video, barely looking in each other’s direction. After a while I calm down a little and begin to remember that Jersy has his own problems. I haven’t been the most sympathetic person in the world.

“Do you want something to eat?” I ask. “I can microwave some frozen pizza.”

“Nah, it’s late. I should go before I fall asleep on you again.” He stands up, arms hanging loosely at his sides. His gaze shifts as I stand too. “Thanks for letting me come by,” he adds, flashing a hint of a smile.

“Hey, no problem. I had to return the favor.” I clasp my hands tightly behind my back. “We should still go swimming sometime.” That’s a nervous tic too. The night’s been so strange that I don’t know what else to say. “Later, when it’s okay.”

“Oh, yeah.” Jersy nods. “Anytime.”

That sounds a hell of a lot less definite than tomorrow night, but I can’t let it get to me. I walk Jersy to the front door, Samsam a step behind me. I’m about to tell him goodbye when he steps up and folds his arms around me. “Thanks,” he says.

His sweatshirt smells like the same fabric softener Mom uses. It’s safe and warm, and my arms wrap snugly around his back as I press my face into his neck. I’m bigger than him all over, but somehow we feel right together.

“I’ll call you when it’s safe to come swimming,” he says, suddenly letting go.