Page 37 of Something Good
Job
Failure
Homeless
Hunger
Jimmy
Will
Olivia
On and on it went, the words slicing through me like a million little papercuts, nearly invisible but so damn painful.Would they leave scars? Scars I’d never see but would always, always feel?
Will kept glancing over at me like he was afraid I would break. I wanted to reassure him I was fine. Pull on that bravado I carried around with me all the damn time and tell him I’d just had a weak moment, but I was fine now. I’d figure shit out like I always did.
The problem was, I wasn’t fine. I thought there was a decent chance this would break me. And I had no idea if I’d be able to claw my way out. I was in over my head so deep I was drowning in it.
I was fucking exhausted.
I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the headrest, and let myself drift.
Thunderstorms wereone of my favorite things about summer. Something about the sound of rain beating steadily on the roof was soothing. Tonight, it wasn’t a roof absorbing the pitter-pat of raindrops, but rather a tent Will’s mom had found secondhand at a garage sale. She’d helped us set it up in his backyard, and we were currently sitting crisscross inside, gorging ourselves on junk food. Will was looking at his collection of Spider-Man comics while I doodled in a notebook I’d found in Will’s room.
Mostly, I was distracted, thinking about the guy Mom had brought over to our house earlier. He smelled like beer and had looked at me in a way that made my skin crawl and a knot form in my belly. I’d been relieved when Mom had said I could go to Will’s. I’d talked her into letting me bring Jimmy, but Mrs.Hartley had insisted he was too little for camping, and they’d have their own sleepover in the house.
I wished Mrs. Hartley could be my mom. She was always so nice to me, and she smelled good, like vanilla, instead of the cigarettes my mom smoked. And even though Jimmy was just my baby brother and too little to be friends with Will and me, she always let him come over so I didn’t have to leave him at home.
Sometimes, I wondered why I had the kind of mom I had and Will had the kind of mom he had. But then I figured there wasn’t much use in wondering when you couldn’t change anything.
“My mom made me go to dinner with some guy last night.” He wrinkled his nose in disgust as he set his comic aside. “She got all dressed up and put makeup on and stuff and made me wear pants even though it’s like ninety degrees out.”
“Is he her boyfriend?”
“I guess?” He shrugged. “He kept making dumb jokes and called me ‘kiddo’ about a billion times.”
I didn’t think that was so bad. “Was he nice?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
I didn’t know what else to say. He seemed annoyed by it, but I thought it sounded kind of nice.
“I’m just afraid everything’s going to change. She’s gone on dates and stuff, but she’s never made me meet the guy. What if she wants him to be my new dad?”
“Would that be so bad?”
He shrugged and looked down, fiddling with the pages of the comic book sitting next to him. “Sometimes I hear Mom crying in her room when she thinks I’m asleep. I think she’s lonely.” He sniffled a little, and I thought maybe he was crying, but I didn’t say anything. “I want her to be happy, but I wish it could just be me and her forever.”
I pretended not to notice as he swiped at his eyes. When he looked at me, his eyes were red-rimmed and sad.
“You have me, too, you know. Not just your mom.”
He smiled, his eyes lighting up, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling right back.
I jerked awake,fragments of the dream mixing with reality, momentarily confusing me as I looked around, trying to figure out where I was. I wanted to slip back into the memory where things were simpler, and it was just Will and me smiling at each other in a tent in the middle of a rainstorm.
There was a weight on my thigh, and I looked down to see Will’s hand resting there, anchoring me. My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I scrambled to pull it out.
