I reach across the vinyl seat for the door handle right as Will springs up into the van like a pole-vaulter. “Sorry, sorry,” he says to nobody in particular. He drops into the seat beside mine, and I’m seized with hunger. My eyes search his pockets as he buckles his seat belt, looking for any sign of their contents. Mo was right. There are piranhas in the world, and we are the meat they feed on. My brain knows that, but my body doesn’t care. I want what Will has.
Will jostles Howard’s shoulder, his hand a shadow in the dark interior of the van. “You weren’t going to leave without me, were you?”
I glance at the rearview mirror. Howard’s face gives away nothing. He stares at an invisible spot on the windshield. “Shut the door, Will,” he says.
Will’s leg bounces a mile a minute next to mine. Cheerleader snoozes on the prepster’s shoulder, and the other girl draws invisible hearts on the rear window with her finger. No one says a word the whole ride back to LakeShore.
When Howard opens the door, we unfold like a clown car. I half-expect Howard to haul Will off, but he just leads our group back through the lobby, signs us in with the Front Desk Fascist, and then checks his watch. “You guys should probably head on to your rooms,” he tells us. “Lights out in thirty minutes.”
I know what’s going to happen when Will goes to his room. And Howard knows it, too. I want him to say something; I want him to search Will’s pockets. But he doesn’t. He heads off down the hall to his office, and the rest of us find our way to our rooms.
Directing my feet to my own room is a sheer act of mental force. I shut the door behind me, my fingers twitching as I imagine Will emptying his pocket on his bed, unfolding the tiny bag inside. Does he have a lighter? A spoon? A needle? A shameful thought slithers to the surface of my consciousness: Will would share.
The door opens, and I startle a little, skittish. “Lights out,” the orderly says. “You’re supposed to be in bed.”
“Dude, I’m changing,” I tell him. He takes a quick peek around the room, his nose quivering like a sniffing drug dog, then shuts the door behind him.
I’m putting on my sweat pants when my door opens again. “Jesus, I’m going to bed, okay?”
But it’s not the orderly standing in my doorway; it’s Red. His face is ashen and beads of sweat dot his upper lip. He shuts the door, leans against it like he’s afraid of what’s on the other side. His eyes are closed, and he’s panting, his body visibly shaken by the sheer effort of standing in one spot. “Eli,” he says, “whatever you do, don’t let me leave this room.”
And then I know. The hunger that gnaws on me has its claws in Red, too. “Please,” he begs, his eyes bloodshot and pierced with pain. And so I promise him. Neither one of us will leave this room. The hunger will subside or consume us, but we’ll wait it out together.
Red and I sit side by side on the floor at the foot of my bed. Red rubs his legs up and down. As the evening stretches into night, his body seems to relax, and we pass the hours by swapping stories of our lives before LakeShore.
Red tells me about his days as a street musician, before he landed any real gigs. How he almost beat up a twelve-year-old who tried to bogart his corner with break dancing. How he had to pick a new spot when the kid’s older (and much bigger) brother showed up the next day.
He tells me about the gigs, about the parties afterwards, the groupies, the girls. He tells me about Lisa, the girl from back home who meant more than all the rest. The girl who changed everything.
I tell stories, too. I tell him about Savannah and Alex—he listens wide-eyed to the stories about LionsHeart with its stone walls and golden lions guarding the entrance way, a far cry from the mountain sticks he grew up in, the cockroach-infested city slum he found later. I tell him about my dad—lacrosse in the backyard, cherry water ice, and counting the boats. And then I think about how upset Mom was when Dad brought me home that day, how she held me so tightly it hurt, and how some people you don’t get back.
We doze on and off until dawn’s grey fingers creep across the floor. Red’s scrawny elbow pierces my ribcage. “Eli? You awake?”
“I am now.” I push myself up off the carpet where I’ve been sleeping, my elbow as a pillow, drool pooling in the crease at my arm. I wipe the sleep from my eyes, surprised that Red’s still here.
Red stands, tugs his jeans where they’ve ridden up. He’s got sleep lines on his face, but he’s not as jittery anymore, and his skin has gone back to its normal shade of pale. “I’m going to check on Will. You coming?”
We slink down the hall, carefully avoiding the entrance to the staff lounge where the night orderlies play cards to pass the last few hours of their shift. We pause in front of Will’s closed door.
“You sure you want to do this?” I ask Red.
He nods, his eyes glowing in the dim hallway light. “I want to make sure he’s okay.” He raps on the door lightly, opens it a crack. The room is dark, and both beds are stripped. Will’s gone. There’s no sign that he was ever there at all.
Day 22
“I heard another rumor today,” Red says. He takes a long drag from his cigarette, flicks the dangling nub of ash into the grass. It’s Visitation, Easter Sunday, and we lounge on a picnic table outside, waiting for Red’s dad to arrive.
I lean backward against the table, my elbows propped on the edge, my face turned up to the morning sun. Over the last two days, as Red and I have tried to piece together what happened to Will, we’ve heard a handful of possibilities. An orderly searched his room at lights out, found the drugs, and hauled him down to detox. Howard searched the room himself and found Will in the bathroom, semi-conscious. Prison Tat, in the room next door to Will’s, swears he heard banging on a door in the middle of the night; Cheerleader Chick thinks Will left on his own, slipped out in the night, his pockets loaded with his stash. Even Howard, plugged with questions, refused to give up the truth.
“This happens sometimes, boys,” he told us. “We can only pray that Will finds his way back to recovery.”
“What was it this time?” I ask, squinting at Red in the sunlight.
He exhales, two plumes of black smoke puffing from his nose like a dragon. “Stretcher,” he says. “The kid at the end of the hall said he got up in the night for some Tylenol. On his way back from the nurses’ station, he saw the paramedics pushing a kid through the lobby on a stretcher.” He shakes his head, takes another deep draw. “I should’ve followed him,” he says. “If I wasn’t so fucking weak . . . maybe I could’ve helped him, I don’t know, convinced him or something.”
Red gives me this helpless look, and it’s the rawest I’ve seen him, even in group. His eyes tear, and he drops his head into his palms, pushing his fingers into his forehead. A leaning tower of ash hovers inches from his spiky hair.
Guilt grabs at me with hungry fingers. If Red had said he wanted to go to Will’s room, I would’ve led the way. But not to help him. That’s not the way the night would’ve played out.
My chest aches, and I rummage around for the right words. All I can think about is the last time I was on an airplane, the trip we took to Mexico over spring break sophomore year. The overhead masks and the narrow-waisted flight attendant’s morbid instructions to “put on your own mask before you help anyone who needs assistance.” I remember looking across the aisle at Benny, his Velcro sandals dangling above the floor, and thinking that’s bullshit, I would put his mask on first.
“You did what you had to,” I tell him. “It was the best you could’ve done.”
“Maybe.”
I stare into the distance; kids gather in small groups with their families, huddled together in the shade beneath the trees. “You think he’ll be okay?”
Red shrugs, takes a final drag from the nub in his fingers and flicks it into the grass. “Will any of us?”
Prison Tat hollers from the propped rec room door. “Red, your pop’s here.”
The table shifts underneath me as Red
climbs down. He grounds the smoking stub into the grass with the heel of his boot. “You’re a good friend, Eli,” he says.
I watch him slip through the door into the rec room. I think about the night we spent in my room, our shoulders pressed together at the foot of my bed, swapping stories that we hoped would save us. And I wonder if I helped Red or if he helped me. I wonder which of us needed the other more.
“No visitors today?” The Front Desk Fascist eyes me skeptically over a thick stack of folders as I stroll through the lobby. I pick a Cadbury egg (crème filled) from the bowl on her desk and plop down in one of the cozy leather chairs.
“Nope.” I hook my feet under Libby’s empty chair, drag it forward a little, and prop my feet on it.
“Make yourself at home,” the Fascist mutters under her breath.
“Thanks.” I stretch out, my belly full of the special Easter lunch the cook prepared. Red had offered for me to sit with him and his dad, and I did, until the “how are you’s” got too painful, and I had to bail.
I unwrap the candy, thinking about my own family and how they’re probably spending the day. Mom still insists on hiding eggs throughout the house, even though Benny has a phobia of mythical holiday characters. It all started after one tragic episode of mall photography involving a particularly creepy bunny costume. That Easter morning, I’d gone into Benny’s room to tell him the Easter bunny had brought his basket, and Benny had sat straight up in bed, his face terror-stricken. “Is he still here?”
I’d wanted to tell him the truth right then and there, but Mom had given me a whole spiel about how it would “ruin the magic” or some crap like that. So instead I promised Benny that if I ever caught Triple B (“Big Bad Bunny”) hanging around our house, I’d kick him right in his Cadbury eggs.
The memory brings a smile to my face, and I pop the chocolate in my mouth. When I was little, and Dad was still coming around, I’d wake up on Easter to find a green basket filled with dollar store candy and cheap plastic eggs hidden all over the apartment. I remember the jelly beans Dad and I ate afterwards until our teeth felt furry and our bellies sick. Thinking about it now, it was all pretty chintzy, but back then, it felt like magic.
And then I know why Mom didn’t let me tell Benny the truth about the Easter Bunny. Because without magic, there’s only off-brand crème-filled eggs, plastic green grass, and a bleary-eyed Dad who shows up late and disappears just as quickly.
Because the truth will break your heart.
I crush the foil wrapper into a tight ball between my fingers and roll it until the colors merge, and I can’t see the creases anymore. I glance outside. Steven’s heading up the sidewalk, dressed in khakis and a blue button down, like he’s headed out to lunch at the club. For a split second, I feel like Benny, face to face with “Triple B.”
I briefly consider disappearing, faking a migraine and hiding out in my room until visiting hours are over. But I don’t. Because it’s Easter. Because there’s no such thing as magic, and because I don’t want to be alone anymore.
Steven steps through the glass, and I stand up. We stand there for a second, neither one of us knowing what to say. “Is Mom . . .” I finally ask, not sure what I want the answer to be.
Steven shakes his head. “You said you didn’t want visitors, and she wanted to respect that. But I . . .” His shoulders hunch a little, and he gives me sheepish look. “It’s Easter, Eli. I didn’t want you to be alone.”
I open my mouth to say something, but no words come out. Because all at once I’m realizing what I probably should’ve known all along: Steven’s the kind of guy who shows up.
And so I say the only thing I can think of, offer the only thing that feels right: “Want to get a cup of coffee?”
Steven and I sit across the table from each other in a quiet corner of the dining hall. Most of the visitors have already headed home anyway, back to their real Easter dinners with their non-addicted family members. I ask about Benny’s Easter basket; Steven tells me Mom’s on a no-high-fructose-corn-syrup kick, so everything in Benny’s basket came from Whole Foods. Carob bunnies and muted jelly beans.
“How could you let this happen?” I groan.
“Your mom’s a very scary lady when she sets her mind on something,” Steven protests. “It was one on one. You weren’t there to back me up.”
We laugh, but it’s awkward, because we don’t talk like this, not usually, and because we both know why I wasn’t there.
Steven clears his throat. “He misses you, you know? Benny.” His gaze shifts to the oily surface of his coffee, thick with cream. “We all do. Especially your mom.”
“Is that why you came here?” I demand. “To tell me to forgive her? Because you can forget it.” I shove my chair backward, the motion jostling the table and sloshing my coffee. “She lied to me, you know? She lied to me for fourteen years.”
I start to stand, but Steven holds up his hand to stop me. “I know,” he says. “And you have every right to be furious. But please, hear me out.”
The look on his face is so pained, so earnest, that I sink back down into my chair. I fold my arms across my chest and jerk my chin at Steven. “Fine. Talk.”
He sighs. His fingers wrap his Styrofoam cup like it’s the only thing keeping him afloat. “She wanted to tell you,” he says. “We both did. But how do you tell a little boy that his hero is a junkie?”
I think of Benny in the backseat of Steven’s car on the way to LakeShore. Benny with his Blue’s Clues coloring book and his sticky hands checking me for fever. Eli’s not sick like you’re thinking of, Benny. He’s just not feeling like himself. I stare down into my empty hands.
“You were too young to understand,” Steven continues. “But we waited too long. By the time you were old enough, you’d already pulled so far away. I think your mom was afraid that if she told you the truth, she’d lose you altogether.”
I glare at him out from under the fringe of hair that’s fallen into my eyes.
“I know that’s not an excuse, and it doesn’t make it hurt any less. But sometimes, as a parent, there aren’t any good choices.” Steven runs his hand down his face. His voice is thick, and his eyes are bloodshot at the corners. “I’ve been thinking about that a lot, you know? Since you left. Every time I look at Benny, I think about you as a little boy, and I get so angry. I can’t fathom for a second what kind of cold-hearted person walks away from their son.”
My throat clenches, and my own eyes burn. Steven’s giving voice to the question I’ve been carrying around for days.
“I didn’t know your dad very well,” Steven says. “But I have to believe that something powerful had its claws in him so deep that he didn’t have a choice. I have to believe that he didn’t want to be the way he was, that he loved you, more than anything in the world, but he was too sick to show it. I can’t forgive him, not for what he did to your mom or for what he did to you. But in a way, I guess I owe him my gratitude. Because he gave me you.”
I blink, shove the hair out of my eyes, and struggle to meet Steven’s gaze.
“Look, Eli, the real reason I came here is because I want to make sure you know that you’ve never been some add-on, the price I had to pay to marry your mom. You are my family—you, your mom, Benny. We’re not a family without you. And what I really want to say . . .” Steven’s voice catches in his throat. “I know I’ll never be your dad. But I will always be here for you. No matter how hard you push, I will never, ever walk away.”
Something breaks inside of me, a fissure splitting apart stone. It hurts, but in a good way. I swipe the tears from my cheeks with the dirty sleeve of my hoodie and let Steven’s words settle like salve.
He clears his throat, wipes at the corners of his eyes, and tugs at his collar. “I know I haven’t always done a great job, but I want to be better. I want us to be better.”
I think of the morning after Winter Formal, my new suit stained with stomach acid, the disappointment sa
gging heavy under Steven’s eyes. I think of his constant presence at lacrosse, all the times he’s reached out, and all the times I’ve pushed him away. Steven’s words are a flickering coal under years of dust and ash. I want to lean into their warmth, but the walls I’ve built are tall and hard to scale. I give Steven a short nod.
“Okay,” he says. “That’s a start.”
Steven stays awhile longer after that. Coffee in hand, we stroll around the outskirts of campus, following the same trail Libby and I blazed only days before. It’s awkward at first, but I eventually relax. I tell him about the little things—about the food at LakeShore, and how Richard Fisher’s alright once you get to know him. But not the big stuff. I don’t tell him about Will disappearing. I don’t tell him about Libby.
Visiting hours are almost over by the time I walk Steven back through the lobby. The Front Desk Fascist has already left for the day. One of the counselors slumps lazily in her chair, flipping through the pages of a dog-eared book. She gives Steven a friendly smile as he signs himself out. Then he turns to me.
His arms move awkwardly in his button down, like he’s about to try and hug me, but then he sticks out his hand instead.
I take it, ignoring the counselor’s curious glance. Steven’s hand is warm and sturdy, and when we shake, I feel like we’re agreeing to something—a fresh start, a new beginning. “I’m glad you came,” I tell him, and then he yanks me closer and clasps me into a clumsy hug.
“Me, too,” he says. Steven smells like rehab coffee and spicy aftershave, and I let him hug me, because I’m tired of pulling away.
I watch through the glass as Steven heads back to his car. The Lexus’s headlights flicker when he unlocks the car. I wait until I can’t see brake lights anymore, until the exhaust fades into the afternoon air. Then I go to the desk, where the Front Desk Fascist’s fill-in greets me with a smile.
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