You Take It From Here (32 page)

“You know, right now you seem just as stubborn and cocksure as she is. Must drive you nuts, how alike you actually are.”

He stood, and stretched his arms toward the ceiling before holding his hand out to me. “You coming to bed?”

Before I could decide, my cell phone rang. Tucker smiled. “Right on time.”

“She’s gone, she’s gone,” was all Smidge could get out when I answered.

“Jenny?”

“She’s not in her room, her backpack is gone. She’s not here, she’s not answering her phone. Henry’s out looking. I need you, Danny. Come help me look.”

“I’ll be right there.”

Tucker was already holding my purse. “A predictable ending to this evening,” he said. “It’s three in the morning; why wouldn’t you be headed over to Smidge’s house after an emergency phone call?”

“Jenny’s missing.”

“If it wasn’t that, it was going to be something. That girl has two parents.
Two.
It is their job to find Jenny, wherever she is. And you know she’s fine. We all know she’s fine! This town is the size of my Jeep. But this woman calls your cell phone in the middle of the night and suddenly you have to—”

“Tucker, shut up! I have to go do this, okay? It’s my fault she’s gone. You don’t know shit about what’s going on, so just shut up.”

He stood over me as I shoved my feet into my shoes. I knew I was about to lose this chance I had with Tucker, but I had to let go of this relationship. It was too difficult because we weren’t the only ones in it. We were outnumbered.

“This is how it’s always going to be with me and Smidge, and I can’t be with someone who doesn’t think very highly of me because of it.”

“It’s not about what I think of you, Danny.”

“Then how you think about women, I don’t know. But I have to do it this way. Not because she told me to, but because it’s right.” I reached for the doorknob as I said, “Goodbye, Tucker. Again.”

As I turned to leave he was suddenly behind me, his arms around mine, his hands clutching my wrist, keeping me from turning the knob. His mouth found my neck, his body pressed into mine. I could feel the heat of him, the urgency for me to stop.

“Don’t go,” he said into my skin. “Please. I want you. Listen to me, I won’t talk like this again. This is our last moment, if you go.”

“She’s dying, Tucker.”

I said it as I yanked the door open. I said it to stun him, to give me just enough time to be strong enough to escape his arms.

THIRTY

B
y the time I’d sprinted to The Pantry from Tucker’s I was fine to drive, but even if that hadn’t worked, I’d have been completely sober three seconds after seeing the state Smidge was in.

She was pale, gaunt, and gasping like she’d just run ten miles. I fished out the oxygen tank from where we’d hidden it in my trunk and forced her to use it. I told her she wasn’t coming with me, that someone needed to stay at the house in case you came home on your own.

Smidge adjusted the plastic tubing against her septum before checking her phone again. “She won’t answer my texts. She hates me.” She sniffed and huffed around the oxygen, struggling to calm down.

“She doesn’t hate you. We’ll find her. We’ll find her or she’ll come home.”

Smidge pressed her forehead to her hand. “She has to spend the rest of her life telling people her mom died of lung cancer. They’ll all think I’m a bad mother, a dirty smoker who didn’t take care of herself, who didn’t want to stick around to see her daughter grow up.”

“But that’s not what happened,” I reminded her.

“How does that matter? Like anybody’s going to do some research. They’ll hear ‘lung cancer’ and think
horrible mother.
”

“They won’t.”

“They will. I can’t handle them thinking that about sweet Jenny. That her mother didn’t love her. Just like how they thought about me.”

“People won’t think that.”

“I’m a monster, Danny. I hit my kid in the head with a spoon.”

“You were mad. You didn’t mean it.”

“She doesn’t know that.”

“She does. She will.”

“When, exactly? How long after I’m dead?”

I covered her hand with mine.

Smidge closed her eyes. “Do you remember when she was younger, she used to go to that summer camp? She’d have this list of things she had to take with her. I’d be so busy going to the store, getting her the right sunscreen, the right bathing suit, the right poncho. I’d talk to her about mosquito repellent, what girls she shouldn’t hang out with, and not to go skinny-dipping. I just hounded her with things she could and couldn’t do until she was sick of me, until she couldn’t wait to get rid of me. So she never once missed me the entire two weeks she’d be gone.”

This is where your mother cried, Jenny. It only took her entire life, but here is where real tears fell from her eyes.

“Well, this time it’s not two weeks. It’s forever. I keep thinking of other things I need to tell her and I’m just so mad that she doesn’t want to listen, and I’m even madder that I can’t remember everything I need to say.”

I picked up my phone and texted you.
Tell me where you are right now.

I don’t know why you chose to respond. I don’t know if you were scared or ready to talk. I just know you wrote back.

Scoreboard.

Smidge stopped crying pretty quickly after that. She hustled herself out of the car, easing herself around the oxygen tank she dropped to the lawn.

“Go get my baby,” she said. “Tell her that I love her and make her believe it.”

THIRTY-ONE

I
’m still shocked you made me break into a high school to come find you. You were smart to know the last place anybody would come looking for you was above a football field. By the time I reached you I could tell you were ready to come down from your perch on that metal scaffolding under the giant Neville Tigers sign, but you stubbornly waited for me to climb up there to join you.

I was breathless by the time I finally made it to your side. I swung my legs over the railing and dangled my feet alongside yours.

“So, how was your day?” I asked.

There were pen marks on your jeans, a red heart drawn in marker. You’d pulled on combat boots from somewhere and had tucked your cuffs into them. A kelly green hoodie was pulled tight over your head, the string cutting across your forehead. You kept your hands shoved tight into your pockets as you leaned against one of the metal railings that ran in front of us. You left me to do all the talking.

“It’s scary up here,” I noted.

You shrugged.

“Aren’t you worried you’d fall? I almost fell coming up here in the dark. It’s not lit very well.”

“Don’t care,” you said. “So I fall. So I die.”

“Probably you’d just snap a couple of leg bones, which would feel worse than dying.”

You hunched yourself over even more. “Everybody dies,” you said.

“That is true.”

“Like my mom. She’s gonna die.”

I could hear a dog barking down the street and my heart beating in my ears. Like a sad little monkey, you curled around your knees, rocking yourself. “I hate you for taking her last days from me.”

“I didn’t—”

“She’s sick,” you said. “She’s so skinny, she’s coughing all the time. I don’t know why y’all are lying to me.”

“Lying about what?”

You sprang up onto your feet like someone had shot you with adrenaline. It took me much longer to find my own way upright, our age difference suddenly becoming more apparent.

“I was on her laptop,” you said, grabbing the top of your hood, yanking it backward. It parked itself on your shoulder like a deflated balloon. “I saw her cache. I saw what she’s been researching. DNRs? Morphine? I looked up Seconal. I’m not a little baby.”

I tried to step closer to you, but you pulled back.

“Tomorrow’s her death party, isn’t it? You think I’m too stupid to know what’s going on? My mother’s dying.”

It only took a couple of steps for you to be balanced over a tight space that made me extremely nervous. I wasn’t afraid you were going to jump, but there was a very real possibility you could fall, as upset as you were and hovering over the edge of that scaffolding.

“Jenny, come down.”

“Just tell me it’s true and I’ll come down.”

“Come down and we can talk.”

“Tell me it’s true!”

“You should talk to your mom.”

You sent one leg over the railing. “Tell me or I’ll jump.”

“Don’t.”

You leaned into it. Your foot twitched. “I should die before she does. That’ll show her. Why can’t she just talk to me? Why does she always have to talk so mean? I wished she was dead, and she just took it. Why’d she do that? Why didn’t she tell me what was going on? Why didn’t
you
?”

While you weren’t looking, I took a step closer to you. And then I took another. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“I’m telling my dad.”

“You can’t, Jenny. It’s not yours to say. That’s your mother’s right.”

“You got to see the world with her and I didn’t. One stupid cruise, and you know, she was crying, like, the whole time. She told me not to tell you. Why’s she always telling us not to talk to each other? Why do we do it?”

“She scares us.”

“I’m tired of her telling me what to do and not what is actually happening. I hate her. It’s not fair.”

Another step. “No, it’s not. And you don’t hate her.”

“It’s bullshit,” you said. “I don’t care anymore.”

You turned too quickly, lost your balance on the beam, and lurched forward, trying to compensate. It caused you to flip forward, going over the rail. You cried out as I grabbed you by the waist and pulled you back into me just in time.

We tumbled onto the metal grate beneath us. The wind was knocked out of me, and you’d smacked your head against one of the beams. Both of us stayed flat on our backs, silently rubbing our injuries.

It wasn’t until right then that I remembered you had much more living to do without Smidge than any of the rest of us.

And I realized none of this was happening because of Smidge. It was because of
you.
For you.

You were right. It was so not fair.

I found your hand not too far from mine, open and cold, waiting. I held it as I told you then, “Jenny, I’ll make sure you get everything you were supposed to get with her.”

“You can’t promise that,” you said.

“I can. I’m doing it, right now.”

After all these years of silence, Jenny, if I could ask you only one question and have you answer it truthfully, I would want to know if you thought I kept my word.

THIRTY-TWO

T
he party started well. I’ll give it that. I was shocked at the number of people who turned up. I hadn’t recalled the guest list being so large. Smidge must have made some extra invites. They were mostly ladies from various groups Smidge had jumped into and out of over the years. I was slightly uncomfortable when I realized I mostly knew these women from the gossip Smidge had told me about them; I was recognizing people not by their names, but by their awkward plastic surgeries, lesbian partners, or impermeable cliques.