Fifteen
Felix
I drive toward the hospital going ten over, hoping Ty doesn’t get carsick.
“Felix?” he asks.
“Yes?”
“Would you want to be my dad?”
I open my mouth and then close it again. That question is so loaded it might as well be a handgun. “Kid,” I say finally, “anyone who got to be your dad would be super lucky.”
“So will you be my dad?”
I glance at the cello case, as if he can see me. “Definitely not for four years.”
“But then?”
“Maybe then. It depends.”
“On what?”
“On whether your mom still likes me.” Which after this debacle I’m not thinking is likely.
“Do you think you’ll still like her?”
Maybe it’s the limerence, but I can’t imagine ever not wanting to be with Jenna. “Yes.”
“So when you’re my dad, will you make me a little brother?”
I run a yellow light. “Do you know how that works?”
“You have the sex to make the baby. Do you want to have the sex with my mom?”
Oh, god. I can’t exactly say no. “Yes, but I can’t.”
“Are you a dad?”
“No, I don’t have any kids.”
“So you’ve never had the sex.”
Now I give the cello a look I wouldn’t dare give Ty if he could see me. “It just—It doesn’t—” I take a deep breath. “It doesn’t always make babies. Just sometimes.”
“So your penis doesn’t work.”
“Ahhhh,” I say. “It works just fine, thank you very much.”
“So you can make me a brother.”
This kid. There is no dodging his questions, and I have to respect him for it. “Theoretically, I could make you a brother. I have the equipment, and it works.”
“What does theoremically mean?”
“Theoretically.” That’s another hard one. “So, like, theoretically you could throw a baseball through a window, right? But you wouldn’t.”
“So you could make me a brother, but—”
“But your mom probably wouldn’t want me to, and also it’s against the rules.” I desperately need to get him off this subject, even to something mostly adjacent. “You know parents don’t get to choose if they have a boy or a girl, right?”
Silence. “Really?”
“Yeah. You just get what you get.”
“But that’s not fair.”
“Yeah, kid,” I say. “Tell me about it.”
We reach the ER and I haul the case through the double doors as gently as I can. I walk up to the registration desk and put my case down in front of it. “There’s a kid stuck in this cello case.”
The nurse looks down at it. “Is he conscious?”
“Yes,” I say. “Say hi, Ty.”
“Hello!” Ty calls. “Felix took good care of me. He gave me juice and Cheetos. But I have to pee.”
The nurse gives me a withering look, no doubt weighing the quality of my parenting and finding me wanting. I don’t point out that I’m not his parent. This could only complicate things further.
She hands me a stack of paperwork. “Fill these out. We’ll call you back when we’re ready for you.”
I look down at the case. “But he’s stuck—”
“I heard you,” the nurse says. “Fill out the forms and we’ll call you back.”
The waiting room is crowded, and I see several people eyeing my now-battered cello case in confusion. I slide the case over to the nearest empty chair and sit down in it. “Hang on, kid,” I say. “We’re going to get you out of there.” I check my phone, but there’s no response from Jenna. I start to fill out the paperwork. “Ty, is your last name Rollins like your mom?”
“Yes,” he says.
“Do you know if you have insurance?”
“I think so.”
I check the appropriate boxes, though even if he’s right about having insurance, I’m certain he doesn’t know his insurance number. “What’s your address?”
“You know my address. You came to my house.”
He has a point. I pull out my phone again and copy it over from my text messages. “What about your phone number?”
“Didn’t you call my mom and talk to her for a long time?”
I freeze. “Were you listening to that?” Especially at the end, things had gotten pretty . . . intense.
“No,” he says. “But my mom was yawning this morning.”
Ha. Good. “All right. Yes, I also have your phone number.” But apparently not enough brain to remember that I do.
There’s a long list of things that might be wrong with Ty ranging from obesity to glaucoma. “Ty,” I say. “Do you have any health problems?”
“What are those?”
“Like, where you’re sick. Like asthma, or . . .” I look over the list. “Brain trauma.”
“My friend Declan has asthma.”
“That would be helpful if I were filling out a form for Declan. What about you?”
“Sometimes I get colds. Or throw up. One time, I threw up in my mom’s purse.”
I bet Jenna loved that. “Great. No health problems. Are you allergic to any medication?” I stare at the form. “You don’t need medication. You are in a cello case.” I walk back to the registration desk and slap the papers down on the table. “There. Can we please get the kid out of the case now?”
“We’ll call you back when—”
“When you’re ready,” I say. “Right.”
I stalk back to the case and sit beside Ty with my head in my hands. I have a text message on my phone: On our way!
Jenna is definitely going to kill me.
We’re waiting now, I respond.
Jenna doesn’t answer.
It takes another fifteen minutes for the nurse to take us back. Ty amuses himself by regaling me with the similarities and differences of being inside a cello case and driving in a pope mobile. The nurse brings out a stretcher, onto which we load Ty, case and all. Twenty minutes later, the doctor is cutting Ty out of the case with a cast saw, and Jenna comes into the room.
She doesn’t even look at me.
“Ty!” she says, as the doctor lifts the top of the case away.
Ty pops up, his hair sticky with juice and orange Cheeto dust. “Hi, Mom!”
I sit there in agony as Jenna lifts Ty out of the cello case and looks him over. Fragments of Cheeto fall to the floor.
“Jenna,” I say. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for this to happen, I swear.”
I’m ready—as ready as I’ll ever be—for her to glare at me. To yell at me, even, for endangering her kid like this. But instead Jenna laughs, and dusts off Ty’s shoulders. “I guess I should have told you about his affection for small spaces.”
I stare at her. “He’s done this before?”
“Oh, yes,” Jenna says. “One time he got his arm stuck between a restaurant booth and the wall. They had to cover him in butter while I sat on the floor feeding him chicken fingers. Once at a movie, he decided to slide down the back of his seat, and it took a guy the size of the Hulk to pry the seat apart. And once my mom took him to the art museum, and he got his head stuck behind a statue. They had to remove it to get him out. We may have inspired them to put up signs and gently suggest we don’t come back.”
Huh. No wonder he wasn’t scared—or even surprised—when he got stuck.
Ty grins like these are his proudest accomplishments, and Jenna hugs him. Orange dust sticks to the dark sequins of her dress. She cringes at me. “Sorry. He hasn’t done this in a while or I would have warned you. I’ll pay for your cello case.”
I shake my head, shell-shocked with relief. “No, I’m sorry. Don
’t worry about the case. I have another one. And I should have been paying more attention.”
“You were paying attention,” Ty says. “You were getting me a snack.”
Jenna runs her hand through his sticky hair. “I can see that.”
I grimace. “He was hungry . . .”
“And now I need to pee so much,” Ty says.
“All right,” Jenna says. “Let’s get you to the bathroom, and then I need to give them our insurance information and we’ll get you home.”
“When can Felix watch me again?” Ty asks.
“I’m pretty sure your mom isn’t going to want me to watch you again.”
“That’s not the case,” Jenna says. She gives Ty a look that tries to be stern, though her lips are quirking up at the edges. “But I’d understand if Felix didn’t want to be responsible for you after this.”
“Why not?” Ty asks. “We had fun, didn’t we Felix? And I need your help on my secret project.”
“Yeah,” I say. “We sure did. And I’d be happy to help you if your mom’s okay with it.” I look at Jenna. “I really am sorry.”
Jenna smiles, and her hand half reaches toward me before it drops to her side. “Really. It’s okay. But I’d better get this boy to a bathroom, and Alec’s waiting outside. I’ll call you after I get Ty to bed.”
“Yes, please,” I say.
Jenna ushers Ty off, leaving me alone with the remains of my cello case.
And I try not to desperately wish I was the one taking them home.
Sixteen
Felix
Since we have practice the next morning, I crash at Gabby’s instead of driving all the way out to Valencia. Will’s home, so my communication with Gabby is limited to her questioning looks when his back is turned, which I answer mostly with shrugs. I know she’s going to interrogate me at her first opportunity, and it’s not like I mind.
Gabby and Will have just gone to bed when Jenna calls. I curl up in the dark on Sarah’s mod sofa, under Gabby’s fuzzy throw. “Hey, beautiful,” I say.
“Hey,” she says, with a smile in her voice. “You know, you left a special someone here. I think she misses you already.”
I chuckle. I’d realized about halfway to Gabby’s that I’d left my cello behind when Ty and I fled for the hospital. I’d been seriously tempted to turn around right there and head back to Jenna’s to get it, but I know that would have been way more about seeing Jenna again than any need to play some late-night Rachmaninoff.
“Yeah, well, I miss her already, too,” I say, softly.
“I assured her I’d bring her with me to practice tomorrow and she could see you again then. She very reluctantly supposed she could live with that,” Jenna says, the smile still teasing in her voice.
I smile back. “Yeah, I reluctantly suppose I can, too,” I say. “So how’s Ty?”
“He’s fine. All the way home he couldn’t stop talking about what a good time he had.”
“I bet Alec loved that.”
Jenna groans. “There was that.”
Suddenly I remember Ty’s touching game. “Um, so when he was stuck in there, I was trying to explain to him how to move his hand up to grab the Cheetos. We were basically playing Simon Says, you know? Move your hand up to your waist. Now to your shoulder. Now to your face. Right?”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound like she’s heard this before, which gives me hope I’ve gotten there first.
“So then Ty is like, ‘This is a fun game! I’m touching myself in all the places!’”
Jenna laughs. Also a good sign.
“And without even thinking about it, I’m like, ‘Don’t tell your mom we played that.’ And then I realize now he’s going to tell you we played that game and I said not to tell you—”
“Yeah,” Jenna says. “He’s not supposed to keep secrets from me. It’s a rule.”
“I figured,” I say. “I thought of that as soon as it came out of my mouth. Sorry.”
“I’m just sad Ty didn’t tell me this first.”
“Yeah, well. I’m sure it’s coming.”
Jenna is silent, and I wonder if she’s biting back the same joke I withheld last night.
“I think Ty wants to move into your cello case,” she says. “In typical Ty fashion, he seems to have learned nothing from this experience.”
I laugh. “They cut the latch off. It’s of no use to me. But I’d still be afraid he’d find a way to get himself locked in it again.” I have an idea. “Unless I could find some way to brace it open. Then he could squish in there to his heart’s content.”
“He would love that.”
“I’ll see what I can do.” Frankly, I have no more idea how to permanently brace open a cello case than how to sail around the world. I’m pretty sure one involves brackets and the other boats, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. “Though I hear he’d much rather have a popemobile.”
Jenna laughs. “Ah, yes. I really need to show him pictures of the actual popemobile, but I don’t want to crush his dreams.”
I don’t dare tell her about Superpope. I promised, and besides, I don’t want to ruin the surprise. “So the pope thing. Are you Catholic?”
“Ooooh,” Jenna says. “That’s right. We haven’t talked about politics or religion.”
“Well, I know you don’t like the news.”
“I don’t. But honestly, I’m not that political. Too much fighting and yelling. It stresses me out.”
“I used to be conservative,” I say. “I grew up in Brentwood.”
“Wow,” Jenna says. “Rich boy.”
“Ha. Yes. That was before my parents went bankrupt and got divorced. But I grew up near a lot of people who have millions, and don’t want the government moving around said millions. But then I moved to New York where people believe polar opposite things, and now I’ve landed somewhere in the middle.” I pause. “But you didn’t answer my question about being Catholic. I just wondered, what with the pope references and Ty’s school uniform—”
Jenna’s laugh cuts me off. “It’s not a school uniform. He’s not even in school right now, since it’s summer break. He just has this thing where whenever he leaves the house, he likes to, as he puts it, ‘look like a grown-up.’ Even though it’s not like any adult we know dresses that way. It’s so weird.”
I grin. Somehow I can totally see this about Ty. “And super cute.”
“Definitely that, too,” Jenna says. “Anyway, we’re not Catholic. You?”
“Atheist. Or at least, I was.”
“Really?” Jenna says. “Not anymore?”
I immediately regret bringing this up. The truth is, I was the staunchest atheist around until I started the program. The steps are all about putting your faith in God, giving up control over your own life and asking him to fix you. When I was in rehab the first time, I tried to get out of doing the work by saying I didn’t believe in God, and one of the therapists gave me the version designed for atheists. It was all about believing the actual steps have power over your life, and yielding control over to them.
By the time I was ready to do the work, I’d come around to thinking maybe I didn’t know everything about the way the universe worked, and I’d rather believe in God than believe that words some guy wrote down have magical powers to keep me sober.
“I guess I’m agnostic now,” I say. “I’ve done things I’m not proud of, and maybe it’s wishful thinking, but I’d like to believe there’s such a thing as absolution and forgiveness.”
“I get that,” Jenna says quietly. “I grew up Mormon,”
“Really?” I say. “I had a Mormon friend in high school. He had a hard time even looking at girls.” At the time I teased him that he’d promised himself to Jesus, but I think the truth might have been that he was just shy.
“I don’t remember much ab
out it. We stopped going and joined a Methodist church, and around the time I was in high school and started to rebel, my mom joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses and decided my soul would be saved by not celebrating Christmas or my birthday.”
“I take it that didn’t go over well.”
“Ha. No. But that didn’t last long, either,” she says. “As for me, I’m not sure exactly what I believe, but I definitely believe in God. I have to think Rachel still exists somewhere.”
My whole body tenses. I know what she means, but I don’t know how to explain without telling her everything. I need to tell her about the drugs. I know I do. But the idea of having to tell her about other things makes me want to put a needle in my arm.
Especially about Katy.
“I want that to be true,” I say.
“I think it is. It has to be.”
I try to shake off the dark memories. “These last few days have me thinking that, too. I’ve never believed in fate before. But then I met you, and well—here we are. So the universe can’t be random. There’s no way I’m that lucky, and I sure haven’t earned the karma.”
Jenna makes a soft humming noise that lets me know she likes this idea.
“If something like this can happen,” I say, “who knows what else is out there.”
Jenna is quiet for a moment. “What is it you want to be forgiven for?”
I close my eyes and draw the blanket up around my chin. There it is. A direct question. I can’t lie to her, but I can’t tell her the whole story, either. I don’t know why, but I know it in my bones. I want to believe it isn’t because I already know that’ll be the end.
“I knew a girl who overdosed,” I say. “I was there when it happened.”
“Oh, god, I’m so sorry.”
I’m not the one she should be sorry for. Katy is the one who’s dead.
“So, yeah,” I say. “I want to believe there’s an afterlife, even though I never did before.”
“That makes sense,” Jenna says. She pauses for a moment. “Were you in love with her?”
There’s the same hint of jealousy in her voice I must have had when I asked if she was in love with Alec. “No,” I say. “It wasn’t like that at all.” I know I should tell her the rest of the story, but the idea of the way she might react—with silence, or with anger—it’s too much. Maybe Cecily is right. Maybe I need this too much, maybe I’m putting my sobriety at risk by depending on her approval, and her affection and attention.
Everything We Are Page 15
