What You Left Behind

by Jessica Verdi

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  Copyright © 2015 by Jessica Verdi

  Cover and internal design © 2015 by Sourcebooks, Inc.

  Cover design by Jeanine Henderson

  Cover image © Cynthia Valentine/Arcangel Images

  Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.

  Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.

  P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410

  (630) 961-3900

  Fax: (630) 961-2168

  www.sourcebooks.com

  Verdi, Jessica.

  What you left behind / Jessica Verdi.

  pages cm

  Summary: Seventeen-year-old Ryden’s life was changed forever when his girlfriend discovered she was pregnant and stopped chemotherapy, and now, raising Hope with his mother’s help and longing for the father he never knew, he meets smart and sexy Joni and gains a new perspective.

  (alk. paper)

  [1. Babies--Fiction 2. Teenage fathers--Fiction. 3. Single-parent families--Fiction. 4. Fathers and daughters--Fiction. 5. Dating (Social customs)--Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.V584Wh 2015

  [Fic]--dc23

  2014049306

  Contents

  Front Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Back Cover

  For my mom.

  Chapter 1

  If there’s a more brain-piercing sound than a teething baby crying, I can’t tell you what it is.

  I fall back on my bed, drop Meg’s journal, and rake my hands through my hair. It’s kinda funny—in an ironic way, not an LOL way—that even with the endless wailing filling my room and ringing in my head, I notice how greasy my hair is. It’s gross. When was the last time I washed it? Three days ago? Four? I haven’t had time for anything more than a quick soap and rinse in days.

  And to think I used to purposely go a day or two without washing it. Girls have always liked the chin-length hair that falls in my face when I’m hunched over a test in school and that I have to pull back with a rubber band during soccer practice. But now it’s gone past sexy-straggly and straight into flat-out dirty.

  God, I would kill for a long, hot, silent shower. I would lather, rinse, repeat like it was my fucking job.

  Ever since Hope was born six months ago, I’ve been learning on the fly, getting used to the diapers and formula and sleeping when she sleeps. I spend all my time reading mommy blogs, figuring out which supermarkets carry the right kind of wipes, and shopping at the secondhand store for baby clothes, because they’re basically as good as new and Hope grows out of everything so fast anyway.

  The learning curve has been pretty damn steep.

  I sit up. Tears squeeze between Hope’s closed eyelids and her little chubby feet kick every which way. Her pink, gummy mouth is open wide, and you can just begin to see specks of white where her teeth are coming in.

  Her crib is littered with evidence of my attempts to get her to please stop crying—a discarded teething ring, a mostly full bottle, and this freakish, neon green, stuffed monster with huge eyes that my mom swore Hope liked when she first gave it to her, though I have no idea how she could tell that.

  I pick up Hope and try massaging her gums with a damp washcloth again like they say to do on all the baby websites. It doesn’t do much. I bounce her on my hip and walk her around my room, trying to murmur soothing, shhhh-ing sounds. I rub her head, as gently as my clunky, goal-blocking hands can manage. Her hair is soft, dark, and unruly, like Meg’s was. But nothing works. The screams work their way inside me, rattling my blood cells.

  Yes, I changed her diaper. I even brought her to the doctor last week to make sure nothing’s actually wrong with her, some leftover sickness from Meg or something. There’s not.

  She always cries more when I hold her than when my mom does—but it’s never been this bad. This teething stuff is no joke. According to the Internet anyway. It’s not like Hope’s giving me a dissertation on what she’s actually feeling. Whenever I get anywhere near her, she shrieks her head off. Which means no matter how hard I try or how many books I read or websites I scour, I’m still doing something wrong. But what else is new?

  Lately I’ve had this idea that I can’t shake.

  What if I’m missing some crucial dad gene because I never had a dad of my own? What if I’m literally incapable of being a father to this baby because I have zero concept of what a father really is? Like beyond a dictionary definition or what you see of your friends’ families and on TV.

  I have no idea what that relationship’s supposed to be like. I’ve never lived it.

  And inevitably that thought leads to this one:

  Maybe finding my dad, Michael, is the key to all of this making some sense. Maybe if I tracked him down, I’d finally figure out what I’ve been missing. The real stuff. How you’re supposed to talk to each other. What the, I don’t know, energy is like between a father and a kid. Not that I’m into cosmic energy bullshit or anything.

  If I could be the child in that interaction, even once, for a single conversation, that could jump-start my being the father in this one. Right? At least I’d have some frame of reference, some experience.

  But that would require getting more info about him from Mom. And I’ve already thrown enough curveballs her way to last a lifetime.

  The music blasting from Mom’s home office shuts off. Fi
ve o’clock exactly, like always nowadays. She loves her job making custom, handmade wedding invitations for rich people, and before Hope, Mom would work all hours of the day and night. But it turns out babies cost a shitload of money, and despite how well Mom’s business is doing, it’s not enough. So the new arrangement is that during the day, Mom gets to turn her music on and her grandma duties off while I take care of Hope, then Mom takes over when I go to work at five thirty.

  In a few days, that schedule’s going to change, and I don’t know what the hell we’re going to do. That’s another topic I haven’t brought up with Mom. She keeps saying we need to talk about our plan for “when school starts up again,” like she’s forgotten that soccer practice starts sooner than that. Like it doesn’t matter anymore or something.

  But I can’t not play. Soccer is the one thing I kick ass at. It’s the whole reason I’m going back to school this fall instead of sticking with homeschooling, which I did for the last few months of last year after Hope was born. Fall is soccer season. I need to go to school in order to play on the team. And I need to play on the team because I’m going to UCLA on an athletic scholarship next year. It’s pretty much a done deal. I’ve spoken to their head coach a few times this summer. He called me July 1, the first day he was allowed to according to NCAA rules. He’s seen my game film, tracked my stats, and is sending a recruiter to watch one of my games in person. He wants me on his team. This is what I’ve been working toward my whole life. So Mom’s delusional if she thinks I’m giving it up.

  I wipe the tears from Hope’s face and the drool from around her mouth even though she’s still crying, then set her down in her crib. She grasps onto my finger, holding on extra tight, like she’s saying, “Do something, man. This shit’s painful!”

  “I’m trying,” I tell her.

  I meet Mom in her office, where she’s sitting on the floor, attempting to organize her materials. Stacks of paper and calligraphy pens are scattered among plastic bags filled with real leaves from the trees in our yard. Three hot glue guns are plugged into the wall, and photos of the Happy Couple glide across Mom’s laptop screen.

  “Hippie wedding in California?” I guess, nodding at the leaves. The people who hire Mom to make their invitations always want something unique to who they are as a couple. Mom and I started this game years ago—she tells me what materials she’s using, and I try to guess what kind of people the Happy Couple are. I’m usually pretty good.

  Mom shakes her head. “Hikers in Boulder.”

  Or I was pretty good. Now everything is so turned around that I can barely think.

  “That was my next guess,” I say.

  Mom smiles. She’s been so great about everything. She’s not even pissed about me making her a thirty-five-year-old grandmother. She says she, better than anyone, gets how these things happen. But this is not your typical “oops, got pregnant in high school, what do we do now?” scenario, like what happened to her. This is the much more rare “oops, I killed the love of my life by getting her pregnant in high school and ruined my life and the lives of all her family and friends in the process” situation.

  And I know that deep down, Mom knows our situations are not the same at all. Her eyes are green, like mine, and they used to sparkle. They don’t anymore. It’s not because of the baby—she loves Hope to an almost ridiculous level. It’s because of me. She’s sad for me. Even though the name “Meg” is strictly off-limits in our house, I can almost see the M and E and G floating around in my mom’s eyes like alphabet soup, like she’s been bottling up everything she’s wanted to say for the past six months and is about to overflow. I need to get out of here.

  “So, I’m out,” I say quickly, clipping my Whole Foods name tag to my hoodie. “Be home at ten fifteen.”

  Mom sighs. “Okay, Ry. Have fun. Love you.”

  “Love you too,” I call back as I head to the front door.

  She always says that when I leave to go somewhere. Have fun. She’s been saying it for years. Doesn’t matter if I’m going to school or work or soccer practice or a freaking pediatrician’s appointment with Hope. Have fun. Like having fun is the most important thing you can do. Like you can possibly have fun when you’re such a fucking mess.

  • • •

  I’m restocking the organic taco shells in the Mexican and Asian foods aisle, trying to block out the Celine Dion song that’s playing over the PA system, when I notice a kid climbing the shelves at the opposite end of the aisle. His feet are two levels off the ground, and he’s gripping onto a shelf above him, trying to raise himself up another level.

  “Hey,” I call. “Don’t do that.”

  “It’s okay. I do it all the time,” he says, successfully pulling himself up another foot. He lets go with one hand and stretches toward something on the top shelf.

  “Wait.” I start to move toward him. “I’ll get whatever you need. Just get down.”

  But there’s a determined set to his jaw, and he keeps reaching higher, the tips of his fingers brushing a bag of tortilla chips. I keep walking his way, but I slow down a little. He really wants to do this on his own, you can tell. I’m a few feet away, and he’s almost got a grab on the bag, when his grip on the edge of the shelf above him slips and his Crocs lose their foothold. Suddenly he’s falling backward, nothing but air between the back of his head and the hard tile floor. I move faster than I would have thought possible, given how tired I am. I shoot my arms under his armpits and catch the boy just before he hits the ground.

  The kid rights himself, plants his feet safely on the floor, and looks at me. My heart is beating way too fast, but I tell it to chill the fuck out. The kid is fine. Crisis averted.

  “Thanks,” he mumbles.

  “No problem.”

  He ducks his head and starts to walk away.

  “Hey,” I call after him.

  He stops.

  I grab a bag of chips off the top shelf—funny how easy it is for me to reach; sometimes I still feel like that little kid who the world is too big for—and hand it to him.

  He takes it, no thank you this time, and disappears around the corner.

  I’m dragging my feet back to the taco shells, back to the monotony, when there’s a voice behind me.

  “Why, Ryden Brooks, as I live and breathe.”

  My spine stiffens. Apparently today is Weird Shit Happening at Whole Foods Day. I haven’t heard that voice since before I left school in February. I turn and find myself face-to-face with Shoshanna Harvey. Her soft, southern belle accent comes complete with a delicate hand to the chest and a batting of long, thick lashes. I fell for that whole act once. Before I found out about a little thing called real life.

  I saw Shoshanna in the store about a month ago but ducked down a different aisle before she saw me. This time, I’m not so lucky. “You do know we live in New Hampshire, not Mississippi, right?”

  Shoshanna purses her lips and studies me. Her ponytail swings softly behind her, like a metronome on a really slow setting. “How are things, Ryden?”

  “Things are great, Shoshanna. Really, just super.”

  “Really?” Her eyes are bright. Clearly, she’s never heard of sarcasm. “That’s so great to hear. We’ve been worried about you, you know.”

  “We? Who’s we?” You never know with Shoshanna—she could be talking about her family or she could be talking about the whole damn school.

  Just then, another familiar voice carries down the aisle. “Hey, Sho, how do you know when a cantaloupe is ripe?” It’s Dave. His hands are placed dramatically on his hips and he’s got three melons under his shirt—two representing boobs and one that I’m pretty sure is supposed to be a pregnant woman’s belly. A flash of rage burns through me, but I smother it deep inside me to the place where all my unwelcome emotions reside. It’s getting pretty crowded in there.

  “Dave,” Shoshanna loud-whispers, her ey
es doing that as-wide-as-possible thing that people do when they’re trying to get some message across to someone without saying the actual words.

  He follows Shoshanna’s nod toward me and drops the doofy grin. “Oh. Hey, Ryden.” He relaxes his stance, and the cantaloupes fall to the floor, busting open. Orangey-pink cantaloupe juice oozes from the cracks. Great. Now I’m gonna have to clean that up.

  I look back and forth between Shoshanna and Dave, and it all clicks. They’re the we. My ex-girlfriend and my former best friend are together. That kind of thing used to require at least a “Hey, man. Cool with you if I ask out Shoshanna?” text, but I guess we left the bro code behind right around the time my girlfriend up and died and I became a seventeen-year-old single father. Yeah, Dave and I don’t exactly have much in common anymore.

  “You work here?” Dave asks.

  “Nah, I just like helping restock supermarket shelves in my free time.”

  “Oh. I thought…” Dave looks at my Whole Foods name tag, confused.

  “He was kidding, Dave,” Shoshanna says.

  Ah, look at that. Sarcasm isn’t completely lost on her after all.

  “Oh. Right. We’re, uh, getting some food for the senior picnic tomorrow down at the lake. You coming?”

  I stare in Dave’s general direction, unthinking, unseeing. I forgot all about the picnic, even though it’s been a Downey High School tradition for pretty much ever.

  Dave keeps talking. “Coach said you’re coming back to school in September. You are, right? We really need you on the te—”

  “Hey, Ryden, can you help me with a cleanup in dairy?” a female voice asks, cutting him off. “Some asshole kids decided to play hacky sack with a carton of eggs.”

  I blink a few times and push the picnic out of my mind.

  The source of the voice is a girl with short, brown hair that is juuust long enough to fall in her eyes, skin a shade or two lighter than her hair, earrings stuck in weird places in her ears, and tie-dyed overalls over a black tank top. She looks like she works in a Whole Foods.

  “Uh, yeah. Sure,” I say. I turn back to Shoshanna and Dave, glad to have an excuse to bail on this happy little reunion. The cantaloupe juice can wait. “Gotta go.”