Rodent (22 page)

I kiss his cold mouth and press his ear against my cheek to warm it. “I can’t believe you took the bus in this.” I ask him how long he can stay, and we work out the bus schedule.

“My mom’s working tonight,” he says, “but she usually calls around 11:00 on the home phone.”

“She doesn’t know you’re here, does she?” He shakes his head. So I’m not the only one sneaking around. “Well, I’ll try not to get pregnant,” I tell him. He laughs, and I worry Maisie and Evan might wake up.

We sit on the sofa and pull out our English stories, which was the plan. We don’t get too far.

“What’s yours about?” I ask.

“It’s science fiction. About a guy who discovers a new planet.”

“Is that what you read?”

“Mostly,” he says.

“Who’s your favorite author?” I ask.

“Ray Bradbury.”

Then it turns into a sort of question-and-answer session, with me asking all the questions. “Favorite food?” I ask.

“Lasagna.”

I try not to cringe. “Favorite color?”

“Anything but orange.”

I go on for a while, then make it more complicated. “Favorite moment?”

He thinks for a second, tapping his pen against the page. “The first time you kissed me. I thought you were leaving.”

That’s a personal favorite of mine too. I smile.

“How about you?” he says.

“I’m not done yet. Worst moment?”

His face falls thinking about this one. I’m almost sorry I asked. “There are a few—my parents’ divorce, losing you before, and seeing you with that guy at the dance.”

Jamie. Will still thinks about that? At this point, I know the
Q
-and-
A
can’t ever get to me. Worst moment? How would I choose? Any one of a thousand bad days with Mom. Seeing Claude hurt her. The time I hit her. Watching Maisie crumble on her birthday. And also Will, holding Amanda, smiling down at her. I understand why he deflated when I asked him this one.

But he’s here now. I take his hand in mine and run my thumb along his palm. Love these hands, these long fingers.

I can’t stop now. “What are you most afraid of?”

He doesn’t take long to answer. “Failing.” He looks away. “And this ending.” I envy him, that he can say the words I can’t say out loud. To his list I silently add: foster care, losing Maisie and Evan.

“Will,” I say, trying to pick the right words, “when did you start to like me more than as a friend?” What I really want to ask is,
Why do you like me?
Sounds too desperate.

The gray leaves his face. “I think I always liked you. I used to watch you in English.”

“Why?” My alluring beauty? Animal magnetism?

“I guess I felt like I already knew you,” he says. That’s pretty good too. “What about you?”

I can handle this one. “In the prop room. I thought you were a little weird before then.” I regret the words as soon as I say them. Watch his face to see how he takes it.

He laughs. We’re okay.

“Well, you were reading a thesaurus the first time I saw you,” I add.

“I’m glad you gave me a chance.” He slides our books to the floor and pulls me close, my face in the curve of his neck. My heart beats faster, floating. Everything disappears. He runs a finger up and down my arm, and his mouth finds mine. Slow, every move slow. A hand on my thigh. On the small of my back, his fingers against my bare skin. Breath on my neck. I’m falling somewhere warm, dark.

“What is this?”

Crashing back. Ice cold. Mom.

We’re on our feet in less than two seconds, not touching. Gasping like fish.

“Who the hell are you?” Eyes wild, she leans against the wall and swings an arm toward Will. His mouth opens but doesn’t make a sound. She’s already turned back to me. Stumbles forward.

I tap my hand against him. “Go.”

“You slut,” she spits. Words like a punch in the gut.

“Go.” I push against Will again. Instead, he edges in front of me, protecting me from this.

“You little whore. Always so anxious to get me off to work. Now I see why.” She charges forward, tumbling against me. Will grabs my shoulders to stop me from falling backward.

“Go, Will! Leave!” I shout at him. I can handle her, this. Can’t handle him seeing it.

She raises her hand to me in a clumsy slap. I catch her wrist and push her away. She falls to the floor.

“Get out of here!” I shove Will toward the door, still open to the hallway. He stands between Mom and me. Hands out, like he can hold us in place.

“Will, please.” I’m pleading now. He looks at me, something set in his face, and dashes for the door as Mom pushes herself up. He’s gone when she comes at me again.

“You and your secrets. How many have there been?” Ugly words, face twisted. I don’t want to hit her again. When she grabs me, hands pinching my shoulders, I push her away. Her knees buckle.

“Stop it, Mom!”

“So much to say about my life. Sneaking around like a tramp—” She looks around, her eyes frantic. Picks up Will’s binder and hurls it at me. I dodge. It bursts against the back of a chair, papers raining.

I back toward the bedrooms as she pulls herself up and staggers after me. Maisie and Evan. I dodge into their room. A crack of moonlight through the blind. I hold myself against their door.
Wham
. Her body slams it. Doorknob fighting against my hand.

“Open this door!” she screams, cursing.

Shadows move in their beds. Evan starts to cry. What was I thinking, coming in here? I wanted to protect them but led her straight to them.

“It’s okay, Evan. Maisie, it’s me!” I shout over her voice. Maisie squeals, terrified.

Bang
against the door, something hard. “You think you know it all. Whadda you know?”

“Stop, Mom!”

Evan clings to my leg, wailing. Mom goes on slamming things against the door, hurling words at me.

It’s quiet for a second. Then, “Isabelle, it’s me!”
Will?

“Get out of here! What are you doing?”

“Out of my way!” Mom’s hoarse voice. There’s a scuffle, then a thud and a cry from Will. She hit him with something?

The door gives a crack, and I slam it shut again. It’s harder with Evan hanging on me. I try to pull my thoughts together, form a plan. If I can hold her off in the hallway, Will could get Maisie and Evan out the door and down to the lobby. I might have to push her down to make a break for it myself. Then where?

Now I hear them, the sirens.
No!

“Go to Maisie!” I holler at Evan. Maisie cowers in the corner of her bed.

Will is shouting to me. Mom is screaming at him. The door bangs back and forth between us. Then come the loud voices, the knob suddenly quiet in my hands. I step back as they push through the door, the uniforms. Mom, restrained by strong arms, thrashes, swears. Will is pushed back. One of them flicks on the light, stinging our eyes. Evan and Maisie are wild, clinging to me.

“Are you okay?” someone asks. I can’t answer.

The uniforms move in, dragging Mom away, then reach for Maisie and Evan. I turn and see him, standing on the edge of it all. It was him.

“You did this!” I shout.

Will’s face is white. I lunge at him and scream every curse word I can think of. Arms hold me back, their voices in my ear. Maisie and Evan are hysterical behind me. Uniforms guide Will out the door, out of sight.

It all disintegrates before my eyes. Everything shatters.

TWENTY-TWO

I stare at the dark wall of Jacquie’s room, my arm stretched across Evan and Maisie. Evan is sleeping now. Maisie is still shifting next to me. It’s a narrow bed—no one can roll over tonight.

I’m numb. Every thought jumbled together. A vibration runs through me and overpowers every feeling. Just one survives—the feeling that something has been broken. Irreparably. I can hold on to the pieces, but it’ll never be whole again. I wish I could sleep, or at least forget for a few hours. Will’s face as I flew at him. Mom. I never expected those words from her, even during the worst of it.

After Will was escorted out, Maisie, Evan and I huddled together on the sofa. Evan curled up in my lap, Maisie glued to my side. The officer who came to talk to me said, “Can you tell me what happened here? Your boyfriend didn’t say much.” Will, still trying to edge in front, protect me.

I lied. Lied like our lives depended on it. Because they did. I found the words to mix truth and fiction, to spin it better, and fought to keep those small people by me.

I told him about Mom being stressed at work and with her boyfriend lately, probably had a bit too much to drink. How she came home to find me with my boyfriend, who she had never met before. She wanted to know what was going on.

“I was pretty rude to her,” I told him. “I said some awful things. She got mad.” He waited for me to go on. “She wanted to keep talking, but I told her to leave me alone. I closed the bedroom door and wouldn’t let her in. I guess Will got nervous and called the police.”

“Was anyone hurt?” he asked, watching my face.

“No, just yelling.”

“Has this happened before?”

“No.” I shrugged. “She’s usually an awesome mom.” I cringed inwardly—maybe
awesome
was overkill.

His eyes swept the burst binder, the papers all over the floor. “My homework,” I said. “I threw it when she wouldn’t stop talking to me.” Basically, I’m a jerk.

“What did you mean when you said
You did this
to your boyfriend?” he asked.

I thought fast. “I didn’t think it was a good idea for him to come over in the first place, but he kind of talked me into it. Turns out I was right.”
Sorry, Will
.

He asked if we had any relatives to stay with that night, with Mom in the drunk tank. Which was pretty funny.
We’d have been better off if I’d just stayed with Maisie and Evan myself, but I couldn’t say it.

“We have an uncle,” I said.

I called Uncle Richie to come and pick us up—luckily caught him at the beginning of a binge, so he’d only had a few. Still, I clutched the door the whole ride to his place and wouldn’t let him go over thirty kilometers an hour. He showed us to Jacquie’s empty room, still just as she had left it. Rumpled clothes on the floor. Unmade bed. Makeup still open on her vanity. One last blow at the end of it all.

* * *

Every time I drift off, my body jerks awake, ready to run again. I sleep sometime after the sun comes through the curtains. Maisie and Evan are still sound asleep after last night.

Evan wakes me up in the late morning to go pee. When I take him out, I find Uncle Richie at a table ridged with brown coffee rings. He’s holding a newspaper, a box of donuts at his elbow.

He pulls me aside while Evan’s in the bathroom. We whisper in the kitchen, the counters heaped with crusty dishes.

“I talked to your mom this morning. Her man, he broke up with her at work last night. She had a bit too much to drink.” He swallows, rubbing at his charcoal stubble. “It got kind of ugly. She lost her job.” As an afterthought, he says, “I’m sorry you kids had a rough night.”

Had a rough night
.

He must see my nostrils flare, because he adds, “I’m going to pick her up this morning. Just try and go easy. She's had a rough life.”

Compared to our walk in the park? I can’t even speak.

He drives us home first.

A patchwork of papers over the carpet. A gash in Maisie and Evan’s door. It
did
happen. I gather the remnants of Will’s binder and run a finger over his black, scratchy writing. A bruise in my chest.

They still won’t leave me, Maisie and Evan. But when Mom comes through the door, Evan runs to her. Kisses and apologies. Maisie stays next to me on the sofa, her eyes cold. The first crack in my frost, first pang in that numbness. Not because she rejected Mom, but because I see myself. I see it all starting again, no matter how hard I try to make it different for her. Broken pieces in my hands.

We pass, two silent bodies moving around each other. Mom waits until later in the day, when I go to our bedroom to get the laundry basket.

“Isabelle, I’m sorry.” Her voice breaks like a twelve-year-old boy’s.

“Don’t talk to me.” I push past her back into the hall. “Don’t ever talk to me.”

I want to run far away from this place, but Jacquie’s gone. Will’s gone. Nowhere in this world for me. I drag my cot out of her room and jam it into Maisie and Evan’s.

“Like a sleepover!” Maisie says, and Evan hops back and forth between my bed and his.

Later, when they’re asleep and snoring, I let myself think the thought. Let myself admit it wasn’t just her. I relive the moment when I flew at Will and said those unthinkable words.
No, Isabelle, that wasn’t Mom. You lost Will all on your own
. Then I cry.

* * *

Over the weekend—strange, disjointed days—a plan takes shape. A vague plan. Saturday, I take a bus to the mall and buy a new binder for Will, the best one I can find. Evan and Maisie tag along, and I spend a buck on the kiddie rides for them.

Then I park myself in their room, papers spread across all three beds, and try to piece things together. Check dates. Put the pages in order, which is an accomplishment. Will is a prolific note taker. In the end, it looks pretty good. I stick a new piece of loose-leaf in the front and sit there with a pen for a long time. What can I possibly say after all that happened? I end up writing
Sorry, Will
across the top line, knowing it’s not nearly enough.

Monday morning I hang out at Maisie’s school until I know I’m late. Hallways empty. I sneak into the library. Ms. Hillary watches me unload my books but doesn’t say anything as I disappear in a copy of
The Catcher in the Rye
.

The bell rings after the first period. I wait. Then a little more. Now everyone must be gone. I can’t face those people right now, especially him.

Mr. Drummond is at his desk, wiry hair going in all directions, scribbling away at something. He looks up at me. “Isabelle.” Drops his pen. “We missed you this morning.”

I go to the door and ask if I can close it. He nods. I pull up a chair without being asked. “Mr. Drummond, I have a request,” I say. He waits for me to continue. “Something happened at home this weekend, something bad. And Will was there.” He cocks his head, probably wondering why I’m telling him this. “I’d like your permission to transfer out of this class and finish the term in another English class.”