A Fistful of God (7 page)

Or mine.
Panic picked up my heartbeat’s tempo. “It’s stupid,” I said. “Hoping is stupid. It never does any good. Just wastes time.” Until everything crashed.

He grunted, and he looked as if he saw me for the first time—saw
me
and not my shadow. I wished I’d never said a word then took the wish back.

Miguel held out his empty can. “You want another one?”

I said, “Sure,” even though I hadn’t had a first one.

When he brought it back, cold and moist and something to keep my hands busy, he sat down, leaning close. “Your dad?”

“What?”

“Your dad’s a drunk?”

“He’s dead.”

“Oh. Sorry.” He stared at his can, wiped a ring out of the frost. “I saw your mom Sunday, and she looked OK.”

“She is.”

He laughed softly and in the back of his throat. He didn’t believe me, and I could tell I’d hurt him. He’d been open with me, after all. But how could I say anything more? And yet, before I could stop them, words poured out, words that I’d always heard in the silence of my head, when I cried to my Dad. I’d never even said them to the imaginary Jackson who cared.

“For right now, she’s OK. I guess. She says she is, anyway.”

And he nodded. “How long?”

I swallowed. “A week and a half. I think.”

“Is that long for her?”

I nodded. Please, no more questions, no more words, no more hurts, no more.

“Is she in a program?”

“A program? You mean like AA?”

He nodded.

“She says she is.”

“Yeah. That’s good, you know? They work the program, and it’s like they made a commitment. You’re lucky. It might stick. Not my dad, though. He won’t do no program.” He took a long drink. “My mom, she does it, works it like crazy all the time, especially when he starts. But him? Nah. He’s better’n all that.”

I forgot Mom for a minute. “
Both
your parents?”

“Yeah, but Mom’s been good for three years. Since my brother died. Guess how he died? Killed himself driving a motorcycle drunk. Idiot. And Dad’s like, he doesn’t even care. Me, I’m the one’s never gonna touch that stuff. Look what it did to them.”

As he talked, his voice grew rough, and I could tell he felt it. He wasn’t just making words. I wondered if I could ever talk about my mother the way he did his, say my mom has been sober three years, and be proud. I wondered if I could talk about these last two weeks with the same kind of pride, or if I should.

“I don’t want to do that either. Be a drunk. They’re disgusting.”

He snorted as the bell rang. I looked at him, but he seemed to have forgotten we were supposed to answer the door, so I let in what seemed like a dozen people, all armed with pizza boxes.

“Pizza’s here!” Wallis pushed past me. “Hey, it’s the quiet one. Where’s Lucy? Where’s the plates? I’m starving. Gonna eat the box too if she doesn’t save it from me.”

Lucy ran in, laughing, and in a minute they were all in the middle of a pizza party that headed to the kitchen. Miguel left, too, but I cowered in the dark room. I thought about sneaking outside, sitting on the porch until Mom showed up, but I couldn’t work up the energy to move.

“Three years,” I whispered to my hands. Dad had died almost seven years ago, when I was nine. And Mom had been drinking hard since then. I tried to look ahead three years. I’d be in college. Maybe. Maybe I’d be out on my own. I could see myself but not Mom. I put the can down carefully on a coaster and stood. I’d walk those few miles home.

“Aidyn?” Lucy tiptoed into her own living room. “What’s wrong? Come and eat, girl.”

“I’m not very hungry.”

“Then come in and just hang out with us, OK? That’s why we invited you.”

We? Who was we? The whole group? Couldn’t be. Shannon was part of it.

Lucy pushed me ahead of her into the lighted kitchen, and the first thing I saw was Miguel, wearing his clown-persona again, on his knees in front of Shannon, begging for something everyone else found hilarious but I hadn’t heard.

I leaned against the oven and let Jackson hand me a slice dripping with cheese and extra grease, the paper plate nearly transparent under it. I didn’t belong here, I never would. I had a secret, even if I couldn’t keep it. And maybe that secret wasn’t all about my mom.

After a while, people began moving around, and I threw what was left of my pizza in the trash. I followed a couple of kids I didn’t know into the backyard, and skirted a pool that reflected shine but no light.

I shouldn’t have come. How could I be so stupid? I’d left Mom, and now she was probably bombed. I’d let Miguel know I didn’t care enough to get excited that she’d managed a week and a half. And I’d ruined that all by myself. Not that it mattered. Nothing good ever lasted. I just reduced it to crap.

No wonder Miguel gravitated to Shannon. Who wouldn’t? Normal Shannon lived a real life. Who would want to hang around someone who couldn’t even laugh?

And me. Miguel’s smile did more to my heart than jogging a straight mile. I couldn’t catch my breath. Didn’t want to. Out of nowhere, I fell for a pair of brown eyes when I’d been dying to catch the attention of blue. Fickle me. Did normal girls fall in and out of love and back in again, in an instant? But I’d abandoned lusting after Shannon’s boyfriend and latched onto the boy who lusted after her. Human, I might be. Sane, never. I hated being Shannon’s shadow.

More people must have come because they spilled into the yard and noise rose to match the pound of music inside. I ducked around a corner and found a tiny space where a cinderblock wall met a wooden gate. Hunched down, I stared at the light shimmering from the water. I wasn’t hiding, just waiting the party out. Just waiting to find out what kind of shape Mom had gotten herself into.

I’d call and ask her to come early. I should have done it a long time ago. Mom would have been a lot safer if I had. But I didn’t know where Lucy’s phone was, and I didn’t want to go looking for her and then have to interrupt her. I didn’t want to make everyone wonder what I wanted, wonder why I didn’t have my own cell phone, wonder why I had to call my mom in the middle of such a great party.

I’m sick. I need to go home
.

I stood up and heard Miguel’s voice, singing to one of the old songs Lucy played. “Have you seen her? Tell me, have you seen her?”

He danced across the concrete strip around the pool, and I slipped behind him and pretended I’d just come out of the house. No way would I let him catch me crouching in a corner like the kid everyone forgot during hide-and-seek.

“Yup, I’ve seen her,” he said as he turned. “Whatcha doing all by yourself?”

I shrugged.

“What scared you off? Did I scare you?”

“No. I’m not scared.”

Miguel jerked his head toward a bench at the end of the pool. I followed and sat next to him, wondering all over again. Some feeling filled me, and though I couldn’t name it, it pressed tears to my eyes.

Miguel sat with his elbows on his knees so he had to twist around to look at me. “You know, most people, they go to a party, they talk to the other people there. That’s how most people do parties.”

I had to laugh. “Yeah, but I don’t know anyone.”

“Oh, so I’m nobody.”

“Nobody
else
, I mean.”

“How you gonna know them if you won’t talk to them?”

I shrugged again.

“You mad ‘cause you told me about your mom?” Before I could argue, he leaned closer. “The first time is the hardest, you know? After that, you find out you don’t die when you tell someone. You find out it’s OK to talk about that stuff. It’s not your fault.”

What I’d told him wasn’t my fault, no. But if Mom showed up sloshed, or didn’t show up at all,
that
would be my fault. And that was something I would never tell anyone.

“Aidyn,” he said. “It’s OK for people to know.”

“I figured everyone knew anyway. Shannon must have told everyone. She must have told Jackson, at least.”

“And sometimes you think everyone’s talking about you?”

Except for the times I knew they don’t see me at all.

“Yeah, well, what does Shannon know, anyway?” He stared over the pool, his fingers twisting in complicated patterns. “It’s OK to have fun.”

“Yeah. Sure. I’m having fun.”

He grinned. “I know what it’s like. You get so scared, or so mad, and how can you have fun when anything could happen? But you have to. You’ll go crazy if you don’t.”

“So that’s my problem.”

That time he laughed. “Not hardly. You’re not crazy, Aidyn. Come on.” He grabbed my hand and pulled me to my feet before I could jerk away, and he didn’t let go until we got to the living room again, now dimly lit by candles and crowded with kids and the sound system’s vibrations.

The smell of cold pizza roiled in my stomach. I wanted my corner back, but if I ran out I’d look like an idiot, so I sat on the floor next to Miguel and reminded myself to pretend I was having fun. If only I could figure out how.

Miguel handed me another soda, though I didn’t want it. I’d already wasted enough of Lucy’s stuff. I hunched over it and pretended I didn’t mind that he didn’t stay with me but meandered around the room talking to others. After a few minutes, though, more kids wandered inside, and he made his way back to where I sat. He stopped for a minute to jibe at Dan, describing something from basketball practice, and made Wallis laugh.

Shannon plopped on the couch across the room. I could see she’d been crying. Funny how, even after three years of not even talking to her, I still knew her so well. I saw the way her thumb tucked through her belt loop, and knew it meant she’d relaxed. She knew how to have a good time, even if she’d started out a mess.

Jackson, picking his way between legs stretched across the carpet, stopped to say something to her and Shannon grinned but didn’t move. That surprised me.

“Aidyn, this is Stephanie.” Miguel had to yell next to my ear so I could hear him. He pointed to the girl on my other side. She waved, and I waved back, and we settled into the privacy of too much noise.

The music pounded across the floor, up through my bones and out my fingertips. I couldn’t hear voices, just saw faces mouthing, laughing, frowning, flirting. The room kaleidoscoped in my head, breaking something open, hurting. I decided I hated parties. I’d given it a try and now I could say I didn’t party, if anybody ever asked me again.

I snorted. Who would ask me?

The music went dead and surprised voices called out.

“Circle time.” Lucy carried a sheaf of papers to the middle of the room, nudged aside a few feet, and threatened to use somebody as a chair before we’d shifted enough to make room for her. Someone scooted me toward Miguel. I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them.

“Hey, you know the rules,” Miguel shouted. “You come to a party at Lucy’s you gotta pay. I mean, pray.”

Lucy made a face at him before she laughed with everyone else. People shoved closer, and I couldn’t back up because of Miguel’s shoulder behind me.

“We’re supposed to pray,” Lucy said, and began as simply as she had on Sunday, with the same request for centering. I wished I knew what that meant. I wished I had the guts to ask, but that’d show my stupidity. She’d know how very much I didn’t belong if I let on how much I didn’t know.

“God, You have blessed us so much, even in our need You have given Yourself to us.” I squeezed my eyes shut and clenched my hands. Blessed? I
really
didn’t belong here.

Lucy stopped. I waited for her “amen” but she left us in our silence. I studied the other kids, their faces solemn or blank, each of us alone with our own thoughts. I had no idea what I was supposed to be thinking or praying.

I almost choked when beside me Stephanie said, “God, thanks for the help on that cruddy test. I had to pass it, and You didn’t let me down.”

We had to pray out loud? That was worse than writing prayers on paper. I tried to roll to my knees, to bolt, but had no room. I swallowed my panic and tried to melt into the silence that followed her prayer. I would
not
pray out loud.

Wallis spoke up. “Those people who lost their homes in the flood, God, we pray You bless them. Provide what they need.”

I am so stupid, I don’t even know what flood he’s talking about.

Another voice. “My dad might lose his job. His company’s downsizing.”

“My brother got caught shoplifting. He’s fourteen.”

“It seems like half the people at school are doing drugs lately. Please make them stop using. Please.”

The prayers came from islands of faces in the darkness. I couldn’t always tell who spoke, and hoped no one would notice that I hadn’t.

Lucy’s voice. “My little brother’s thinking of moving in with his girlfriend. Pray for guidance.”

Another silence. “Praise report. I got accepted at the art school I wanted,
with
a scholarship.” At that, more voices chimed in, thanking God.

“My dad’s drinking again,” Miguel said.

I turned to watch him, but he had his head down, hiding his eyes. “Mom said if he hits me again, even if he doesn’t break anything this time, she’ll call the cops.”

“Good, we’ll pray for your mom to be strong,” someone said.

“Yeah. Thanks. I know it’s coming. If I hadn’t come tonight I’d’ve been pulp.”

After another silence, and he added quietly, “If Mom doesn’t call the cops, pray I live through it so I can.”

I felt movement and glanced back. Stephanie had her arms around Miguel’s shoulders, rocking. His head tipped back, now, his eyes closed, and he leaned into her the way I’d seen Lucas fold into his mother. The sight sent shivers over my arms.

“Praise report.” This time it was Shannon. “I forgot to tell you guys because I was so mad at her, but now I have to say thanks, because I really do love my mom. Anyway, her cancer is in remission.”

Shock ripped through my stomach, and I stared at her. How could someone like Shannon’s mom get cancer? She wouldn’t
let
it happen, would she?

“And then pray she can let me make some of my own decisions.”

I turned and saw Miguel watching me. He reached out and covered my hand with his, exactly the same way Mom had in the car. I choked and looked up, ready to say a prayer, ask for their prayer, at least. God would listen to them, wouldn’t He, even if He didn’t want to hear from me?