One Lonely Degree (29 page)

I take the application, still thinking about the look on Jersy’s face. I know I’d look that way if I saw him with some other girl. Audrey probably looked that way when I told her about us.

Whatever they had is over; I’ve heard it through the grapevine, but I can see it for myself too. They don’t let their eyes land on each other. The three of us are like a natural disaster, a hurricane or avalanche that can’t be undone. I don’t know how to fix it, and then there’s the invisible domino … the thing that never happened but that I haven’t entirely left behind. Later that evening I lie on top of my bedspread, thinking and thinking and thinking, with my almost headache burrowing into the right side of my skull and Samsam curled up beside my bed.

There’s no escaping the fact that there are three conversations I need to have as soon as possible. Maybe none of them will really change anything, but I have to try.

First I call Audrey. That she even picks up is good news, I guess, but my nerves make me frantic. “Don’t hang up,” I plead. “I have to talk to you.”

“I think we’ve already had this conversation,” Audrey says. “Please don’t keep doing this.”

Once I hear her voice, the thought of telling her about my conversation with Ryan seems ridiculous. From her point of view, there’s nothing new with me that matters.

“I’m not going to bug you anymore after this,” I tell her. “I’m sorry, Audrey. I’m so, so sorry.
Tell me what I can do.”

Audrey sighs, and she sounds nearly as sad about it as I feel. Maybe sometimes there’s nothing anyone can do to change things—the bad feelings catch and stick. “Do whatever you want,” she says finally. “It has nothing to do with me.”

“Audr—” I begin, but she’s already hung up. If I want to tell someone about Record Store Guy or anything else, from now on it will have to be Nishani, or maybe even Maggie or Billy. Somehow I still can’t believe this is where we stand, but I can’t let it stop me in my tracks. I give myself a few minutes to detox from my depressing call to Audrey, and then I sit hunched over on my bed with my stomach fluttering and dial the very number I’d sworn weeks ago that I wouldn’t.

On the third ring, I start debating with myself about whether I should leave a message. After the fourth, Jersy says hello. We haven’t said anything directly to each other since summer, and the sound of his voice makes me flinch. I can’t say who I miss more, the Jersy who was my friend or the one who pulled the covers over us and hugged me tight. Maybe the reason I miss him so much is that I’ve never been able to separate the two.

“It’s me,” I tell him, sucking back my nerves. Can I still be a
me
after all these weeks? “It’s Finn.”

Jersy’s voice deepens. “Yeah … hey.”

“Hey,” I say back. “I know this is … probably weird.” Jersy leaves me hanging and forces me to continue. I can’t blame him, but it’s hard. “I just … you know … I saw you outside the civic center earlier, and I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“Don’t worry about it,” he says. “You don’t have to explain anything to me.”

The emptiness between us sounds like regular old silence, and maybe that’s all it is. Maybe I read him wrong earlier and he doesn’t care about me anymore. “I know. I just … I didn’t want you to think I was with Ryan.”

“Is Ryan the guy from HMV?” Jersy asks.

“Yeah.”

We both go quiet again.

I get scared that he won’t say anything else, and I mumble, “I think you were right about talking to someone about what happened to me last year. I think I—”

Jersy interrupts me. “Finn, are you okay?”

Considering the mess the three of us have been through, I think I’m actually pretty good, but I could be better—and I want to be. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I’m fine. I just want to get some things straightened out in my head.” There are details I’m still scared to say out loud, but I’ve already looked up a number for a twenty-four-hour help line. I’m not positive that I’ll make that third phone call tonight, but I’ll do it soon; that’s a silent promise I make to myself while I’m on the phone with Jersy.

“Okay.” I hear him exhale into the phone. “That sounds good.”

“And what about you?” I chew my lip and dig my fingers into my front pocket. “How’re you doing?”

“I’m okay.”

“And Christina?” I ask. It’s impossible to get him to say more than two words at a time, but even hearing those few words makes me ache. I don’t know how to switch the feeling off.

“Yeah, she’s good too. She asked about you.”

“What did you tell her?”

“What could I say?” Jersy asks. “I told her the truth about us.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say.”

“Me neither,” Jersy says quietly.

He’s wishing he wasn’t on the phone with me, I bet. It seems I didn’t need to call him and let him know about Ryan after all. I’m just making things weirder. “Do you want to go?” I ask. I ache all over, even though I’m the one doing the talking.

Jersy takes a couple of seconds to answer. “Not if you don’t want to,” he says slowly. “We can talk.”

“Yeah?” I let myself breathe.

“Yeah,” he repeats, and he sounds like he means it. I haven’t had an excuse to take a good look at him in so long that my mind has to make up for it. I picture him in jeans and the same white T-shirt he was wearing earlier. He’s not frowning but not smiling either. Maybe he doesn’t know what to think. “So what happened with your dad?” he asks.

I tell him about going to the cottage with my father, how his new apartment is nice but feels small with the three of us there, and that I’m not really mad at him for leaving anymore. My words feel clunky, like I’m just starting to remember how to talk to him. Jersy says it’s cool that things are starting to work out, and I ask him how the rest of his summer was. I feel bad just using the words “the rest.” They make me think about that moment at my door when he realized that I wasn’t going to change my mind. Jersy sounds okay, though. He says that he spent the last week of summer in Kingston with his friends. They saw something weird in the sky while hanging out in his friend’s backyard late one night, and he asks if I believe in UFOs.

“I think there probably are some real ones, but I bet most of them are fake.” It’s so good to be talking to him again, about anything, that I’d stay on the phone spinning UFO theories with him all night if he wanted.

“Or experimental military planes the government doesn’t want us to know about,” Jersy goes. I open my mouth to agree, but he says,
“Shit
. My cell’s beeping a low-battery warning. Hang on, I have the charger somewhere …”

I picture him rushing around his room, searching under his bed and pushing crap around his desk in the hope of un covering his missing charger. He told me a long time ago that he’s always losing things, and I wonder if that’s because of his insomnia (or whatever he wants to call it) or if it’s just how things are.

I know our conversation has to end sometime and that Jersy probably won’t find his charger before his cell flatlines. My brain has been so consumed with the immediate situation between Audrey, Jersy, and me that I haven’t projected beyond our phone call, and even if I had, I’m sure I wouldn’t be able to predict what will happen to us after we’re disconnected. I haven’t been able to predict anything up until now. Why should this be any different? Adam Porter, my parents’ breakup, Jersy, Nishani, Record Store Guy laying his hand along my forehead—for better or for worse it’s all been a big surprise, and I brace myself for a dial tone, any second now …

I can’t hear anything from the phone. Maybe it’s already happened and I’m just listening to dead air. The silence sounds claustrophobic, but I don’t hang up just yet. I hunch over more and spread my left hand visor-like over my eyebrows, feeling the separation anxiety in advance of the dial tone.

One-one thousand.
Hush
.

Two-one thousand.
Hush. Hush
.

Three-one thousand.
Hush, hush, hush
.

“Got it!” Jersy declares triumphantly. “You still there, Finn?”

I wonder if he can feel the weight of my smile over the phone
line. My gaze lands on Samsam stretched out beside my bed. His paws are twitching joyfully in his sleep, like he’s dreaming he’s sprinting after squirrels with no one to stop him. The sight makes me smile deeper still.

“Still here,” I confirm. I hug my knees, feeling so good that I almost want to laugh.

Yes, Jersy, I’m most definitely still here.