Emmy & Oliver

by Benway,Robin

  My mom narrowed her eyes at me, but ignored that comment, too. “Bed by ten,” she said again. “You stay up too late.”

  I bit back a comment about how ten p.m. is practially late afternoon, and instead just said okay again.

  “Call me if you need anything.”

  “Mom.” I closed my eyes, then opened them. “Okay.”

  She looked at me one last time, like she didn’t know who I was, like I was some stranger who had moved into her daughter’s room and was organizing her school supplies. “Bye,” she finally said, then went downstairs. I waited until I heard the garage door close behind her, then the sound of her car disappearing down the street, before I closed my textbooks and went downstairs to eat dinner.

  It was turkey meat loaf with a mustard glaze and red smashed potatoes, one of my top three favorite meals, and I wondered if it was a concession while I ate and watched an episode of the Kardashians. None of the Kardashians were ever grounded. One of them even made a sex tape! My mom would probably sacrifice me to the gods if I had a leaked sex tape. (Which, just to clear up any confusion, is not something that I will ever, ever have. Leaked or not.)

  I left the TV on as I loaded my plate into the dishwasher, then turned it off and put on music while I showered and changed into sweats and an old T-shirt that said SAVE THE HEDGEHOG on it (for the record, I don’t know why the hedgehog needs saving; it’s just a comfortable shirt). I was reading a book that Caro had loaned me that she had gotten from her oldest sister, Jessica, and I was about to start reading it when I saw Oliver’s light flick off, then back on.

  “Can I come over?” he said as soon as I poked my head out the open window. His voice was different, low and serious and shaky. “I need to come over.”

  “No one’s here,” I called back. “I can’t—”

  “I need to come over.”

  There was an urgency to him that scared me. I wondered if he and Maureen had had a fight, if that was just the latest trend on our street.

  “Okay, okay,” I said. “The back door’s open. Come on up.”

  He must have run because he made it up to my bedroom in record time. “Wow, that was—” I started to say, but the words died on my lips once I saw him. His hair was disheveled, his eyes frantic, and he was shaking.

  “What is it?” I asked, crossing the room to his side as he shut the bedroom door behind him.

  “Pull the blinds,” he said to me.

  “What?”

  “Just do it, Emmy. Please.” He sounded like he was choking and I realized that he had the envelope from Columbia in his hands, which were trembling as much as the rest of him.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, then closed them. When I turned around, Oliver was still standing there, still holding the envelope. His face was something I hadn’t seen, scared and lost and hopeful and sick, all at the same time.

  “It’s not from Columbia,” he said.

  “What?”

  “This. It’s not really from Columbia.”

  “Who’s it from, then?”

  “Emmy. It’s from my dad.”

  He shook out the contents onto my bed. A shiny, colorful letter-sized pamphlet spilled out, and Oliver picked it up, flipped it open, and pulled out a handwritten letter. “It’s from my dad,” he said again. “He sent it to me. He knew Columbia was my favorite and he . . . he sent it. It’s from him.”

  Was this shock? It was hard to tell now that I was shaking as bad as Oliver.

  “What . . . what does it say?” I said, sinking down onto the bed next to the papers. Oliver sat next to me, hanging on to the letter the way Caro used to hang on to her rag doll, Alice.

  “It’s, um, I don’t.” Oliver cleared his throat and I could see his eyes were starting to redden. “I just want to keep it for me, if that’s okay.”

  “Okay, yeah, of course.” I put my hand on his back, feeling him shudder under his hoodie. “But what does it say? Does it say where he is?”

  Oliver shook his head. “No. But he, um, he wants to see me. Tomorrow. At lunch. I guess he doesn’t realize I’m in school right now.” Oliver named a restaurant that was about twenty minutes away. I had been there with my parents once, but my mom hated their French fries so we never went back.

  “What?” If I hadn’t been sitting down, I would have needed to sit down. “He’s here? He’s here in our city right now?”

  “I don’t know! I don’t . . .” Oliver took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I don’t know,” he said again. “But he wants to meet me at this diner tomorrow afternoon. He said he wants to talk.”

  “Oliver,” I said. “Ollie, you have to tell your mom. You have to call the police. This is an actual serious crime!”

  “Yeah, I know, Emmy,” he said, and he jerked away from my hand and got up from the bed. “I’m actually really aware of that, but thanks.”

  “You can’t go meet him!” I cried. “You know that, right? What if he tries to take you again? What if he, I don’t know, what if he has a gun?”

  “My dad? With a gun? Seriously?” Oliver scoffed at me, but he also wouldn’t make eye contact. “Look, you don’t know him like I do, okay? He probably just—”

  “No!” I said, standing up alongside him. “You keep trying to defend him, Oliver! And I get it, I understand, he’s your dad, but people—active police officers—are looking for him. They’ve been looking for him for ten years! You have to tell someone!”

  “You don’t understand!” he yelled back, and now we were face-to-face. I had never seen him look so shattered before, so completely lost. “I just need to see him, all right! But I can’t drive—”

  “Oh no!” I said. “I’m not driving you to meet your dad! Are you serious right now, Oliver?”

  “I know when I left that it was hard on everyone but—!”

  “Stop saying that!” I screamed and he took a step back, surprised into silence. “Stop saying that you left. You didn’t just leave, Oliver! He took you away from us! He fucking kidnapped you!” I yanked open my closet door with such force that the doorknob slammed into the wall, climbing up onto the step stool and grabbing the dusty shoe box. “Here!” I said. “Look!”

  “Emmy—” he started to say, but I just yanked the lid off the box and threw my college application on the floor. There was nothing in that box, I suddenly realized, that was a secret anymore.

  The note was still lying at the bottom of the box, still yellowed and soft, and I pulled it out and let the box fall on the floor. “Look!” I said again, shoving the note at him. “This is all I had for ten years, okay? The last time your dad was here, this was all I had left of you.” I was trying not to cry and failing miserably at it. “And I don’t want it to be all that’s left, either.”

  Oliver’s face was stricken, and the note seemed so small between his hands. I could see his jaw tighten, his eyes filling with tears as he read the words. “Emmy,” he said, his voice strained. “I’m not going to leave you.”

  “Stop saying that!” I screamed. “You keep making it sound like it was your fault when it was all his fault!”

  “That’s what you don’t understand!” Now he was yelling, too. “All of this is my fault!”

  “What are you talking about?” I cried. “You were seven! That’s ridiculous!”

  “Not then! Now! All of this”—he waved an arm toward his house, toward the daily struggle of trying to return home after ten years somewhere else—“this is all my fault.”

  “How?” I yelled, throwing my hands into the air. “Because you let them take a fingerprint of you? Enlighten me, Oliver, please! How exactly is all of this your fault?”

  “Because I made sure my dad wasn’t in the apartment that day! That’s how it’s my fault! He wasn’t arrested because of me. I made sure of it.”

  It was like all the air got sucked out of the room. We were both breathing hard by now and for a few seconds, that and the blood pounding in my head were the only things I could hear. “What?” I finally said when
I able to speak again. “What are you . . . ?”

  “I told him,” Oliver said, and his eyes were rapidly filling with tears, so fast that as soon as he wiped them away, fresh ones took their place. “That next morning at breakfast, I told him about how they had fingerprinted me at the police station. He didn’t really say anything. He just said he had to go out for the day. And then he left.”

  He sank down onto my desk chair, the tears starting to come fast and furious, but I didn’t move from the bed. Oliver was full-on crying now, but I didn’t want to stop him from talking. “Did you—tell him that you knew?”

  Oliver shook his head. “No, it just happened that way. But I didn’t think I wouldn’t get to say goodbye to him, you know? I thought I could tell him or at least hug him once more or something. And now he’s here and I just want to see him again, Emmy. That’s all I want. I just miss him so bad and I fucked up everything and I ruined my mom’s new family and the twins and Rick and I thought it would be okay but it’s not and I’m sorry, Em, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. . . .”

  Oliver was about to say something else, but when he took a breath, the tears finally got the best of him and he pressed his palms to his eyes as his shoulders started to shake. He cried silently, in so much pain that there was no sound to equal it, and in that moment, he reminded me of his mom, of those nights when she would sob at our dining room table, aching for something she couldn’t have.

  I got up from the bed and walked over to him, sitting down on his lap and gathering him in my arms. He hung on to me tightly, so tight that I thought my ribs might crack, but it was okay. I could take it. I could do it for him. I stroked my hand over his tangled hair, protecting him from anything and everything that had happened, from everything that was about to happen, and I held Oliver while he sobbed.

  We sat there for long minutes, until he was gasping and shuddering against my shoulder. My sweatshirt was wet and cold with his tears, soaked straight through to my heart, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything except the fact that Oliver had been carrying way too big of a burden for way too long. I tucked his hair behind his ear, smoothing it off his forehead the way my mom would do to me whenever I woke in the night with a nightmare about Oliver.

  “Fuck,” was the first thing he said, and we both laughed a little. “Sorry. Wow. Sorry.”

  “Stop saying you’re sorry,” I murmured. “Better?”

  He nodded, and I started to get up to get some tissues for him, but he just wrapped his arms around my waist and held on to me. I sat back down, resting my cheek against the top of his hair. “I just don’t want the next time I see my dad to be in a courtroom.” Oliver sighed. “Or through a plate-glass window while he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit.”

  I just hugged him and didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say. Sometimes there just aren’t enough words to fill the cracks in your heart.

  Oliver sighed again, still sounding shaky. His breath brushed against my collarbone as he spoke. “You think I’m crazy.”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “I think you’re a kid who got put into a shitty situation that can’t be solved. But I don’t think this will end with everyone getting what they want, Ollie.”

  Oliver nodded and then sat up a little. His eyes were swollen and I pressed my thumbs against his cheeks to mop up the tears, just like he had done for me that night on the swing set, when he told me that coming home was like being kidnapped all over again. He looked up at me, his face tired, and I kissed his eyes, the leftover salt water stinging my lips. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.

  “For what?” he whispered back.

  “Just that you have to go through this. That I can’t help you.”

  “You help every day,” he murmured, then found my hands with his and twined our fingers together, holding them between us.

  “Do you want to lie down for a minute?” I asked, and he nodded.

  We lay on my bed in the dark for a long time that night, Oliver’s head on my shoulder and my legs tangled with his. Once the lights were out, I raised the blinds again so we could see out the window. It was a full moon that night and its light cast through the room, throwing blue shadows against my desk, my clothes, my bed.

  Oliver was quiet next to me, his fingertips stroking up and down my arm. “Can I tell you something?”

  “It’s a little late to start asking that question,” I teased him, but I kept my arms tight around him. “You can tell me anything, you know that.”

  “Remember last night when we were outside with Drew and he was saying that he was jealous of me?” Oliver paused for a few seconds. “The truth is that I was jealous of him, too.”

  “Why?” I asked him.

  “That night at the party. He had this huge house and the fact that his parents are married and he has this cool older brother that’s, like, always there for him. I thought he had it so easy. And plus, he’s known you all these years and I haven’t. He got to spend all that time with you.” Oliver shifted a little against me and I could feel his chest tighten. “You don’t think I should go see my dad, do you?”

  “No,” I whispered back. “But that’s just because I’m scared.”

  “Why are you scared?”

  I looked at him, trying to be brave. “Because I’m scared you’ll leave with your dad and I won’t know where you are again.”

  “I wouldn’t do that,” he said, and he kissed me as if to ground himself, to prove that he would stay. “I would never do that.”

  “And I’m scared that your dad is on the run from the police and you might get hurt.”

  “He would never hurt me, Em.”

  I turned so we were facing each other, sharing my pillow. “He hurt you enough the first time.”

  He didn’t say anything after that, and I ran my hand under his shirt, stroking his stomach, then rested my arm in the curve of his hip. “Are you going to tell your mom?” he asked.

  “No,” I whispered. “Are you going to tell yours?”

  Oliver hesitated too long for my comfort. “You should,” I said. “You should tell someone besides me. Like, an actual adult who can make things happen.”

  “I know. But I keep picturing him sitting all alone in the restaurant, waiting for me and . . .” Oliver’s voice caught a little and I wrapped my leg around his, curling closer to him. “I just can’t do that,” he said when he could talk again. “I can’t have that image in my head.”

  “Okay,” I whispered, even though nothing felt okay, not at all.

  Oliver closed his eyes and was about to say something else when his phone started to buzz. “Shit,” he muttered, and then he was up and trying to find it. I snuggled into the warm spot he had left behind, smelling his shampoo on my pillow, trying to slow my brain down from its breakneck pace.

  “It’s my mom,” he said. His voice was raw after crying so hard. “She wants me to come home.”

  “Okay,” I said, sitting up a little. “Do you think she’s going to tell my mom that you came over?”

  “I’ll make it sound like we were just studying if she asks about it,” he said. “Can I?” He gestured toward the bathroom and I waved him in. I watched as he splashed water on his face, then used my towel to dry it off. I had to look away when he looked in the mirror. It hurt too much, watching him look for answers in his own reflection and not finding anything there.

  I got up and walked him downstairs. My hair was probably a disaster and my shirt was still damp, but I didn’t care. It was funny, I never cared about those things with Oliver. I didn’t worry about how I looked. All that mattered was how I felt.

  “See you at school?” he said.

  “You better,” I replied, then stood on my tiptoes to kiss him goodbye. “I mean it. I’m driving you there and back tomorrow.”

  “Noted,” he said, then kissed me one last time before pulling his hoodie up over his head and going out the door. I watched until he had disappeared into the dark, then locked the door, turned off all the
lights downstairs, and went back upstairs. Usually, it freaked me out to be home alone in the dark at night, but I was too exhausted to care that night.

  Even so, I lay awake for most of the night, blinking at the man in moon as he stared back at me. I heard both of my parents come home separately, and I also heard both of them open my bedroom door to check on me. I pretended to be asleep then, but part of me wished they could tell I was faking it, that they could figure out the truth without me having to tell them.

  But they just closed the door and walked away, their footsteps fading down the hall, and that night when I finally fell asleep, I dreamed I was chasing Oliver down the same hallway, his hooded figure getting smaller and smaller until I couldn’t see him anymore, until he was gone once again.

  UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

  HarperCollins Publishers

  ..................................................................

  School was a joke the next day. Between insomnia and nightmares, I was sort of a disaster and managed to forget my math homework, my lunch, and my house keys. “Trifecta,” I muttered to myself once I realized that they were all missing.

  When I wasn’t busy forgetting things, I was keeping an eye out for Oliver. I normally didn’t see him until lunchtime, but I caught a glimpse of him ducking into the counselor’s office at the start of lunch, which made me relax a little. Maybe he was telling her about the letter? Maybe they were calling the police right now?

  I spent lunch in the library, doing my calculus homework that was due next period. I kept glancing up, waiting to see Oliver standing in front of me, but he never appeared. I dashed through the problems, not even checking to see if they were right, and as soon as I was done, I went to where Oliver, Caro, Drew, and I had all eaten lunch the day before. (Had that really just been the day before? It seemed like a lifetime ago.) “Sorry!” Caro yelled when she saw me, and I froze. “The burrito queen is out of stock today! You’ve exhausted her benevolence!”