by Ginger Scott
“Hold on,” I say, letting the belt slip back through my fingers.
Wes stops and shifts into park, turning toward my now-empty seat as I run the dozen or so yards to the mailbox, not even hesitating to push the flag down and flip open the front. This mail—it’s for me. My hands find a bundle inside, the contents nearly the same size as the box itself, and I have to work to slide the paper out without ripping anything. Thick rubber bands hold it together, and I don’t take it apart until I get back to the truck, setting it on my lap as I unbind everything.
Wes leans close, his hand in the middle of the seat between us, and he catches a few loose papers that threaten to slip to the floor as everything opens on my legs and between my hands. I recognize the book immediately—the sketches drawn by Shawn that I saw during my last visit. A small note is clipped to the top, and folded in the center of everything is a thick, yellow envelope, bound by more bands. I slide them away and bend open the flap to find a stack of hundred-dollar bills pressed tightly together. I check the date on one, expecting it to be new, but it’s not. I wonder if Shawn ironed them, or kept this money somewhere flat, like between heavy books.
“That’s a lot of money,” Wes says, taking the full envelope from my hand and thumbing through the bills, counting quietly.
I turn my attention to the note, folded perfectly in half, and I slide it from the clip recognizing Shawn’s writing.
“He wrote this to me,” I whisper, my finger tracing my name at the top of the page.
Wes moves closer to me, taking the note from my trembling hand then glancing at me, waiting for direction.
“Yeah…read it,” I say, afraid of what it says as much as I’m oddly hopeful about it.
Wes clears his throat and smooths out the fold in the paper, holding the note in one hand while his other palm massages the back of his neck.
“Josselyn, I’m confident you’ll find this. You are the girl who does not give up. You never have been, and I’m counting on that now. You were right…Wes is the one who could see things…”
His reading stops and his hand lowers an inch or two as he takes in what it says. His eyes shift to look at me, and I breathe steadily as I look back into his. Biting my lip, I let my lids fall closed, my chest tightening, knowing I’ll have to tell Wes not just about my mom and the garage, and how he found us, but about what else he can do.
“Keep reading,” I beg, my eyes still closed.
A few seconds pass, but eventually, I hear the paper crinkle in his grasp, and he speaks again.
“I never believed until the day he proved what he could do, the day we found you and your mom in that garage. You said Grace told you the story, and I’m sorry you had to hear it. I never wanted you to know.”
Wes stops for a second, adjusting his position where he sits, and I glance to his face, his lips turned down and his brow low.
“That’s when I started writing all of his dreams down on paper,” Wes continues to read. “It started as little notes I kept in a small spiral notebook, but then Wes started to forget the things he’d told me about, lose the details. That’s when I began drawing them, making them into stories he would be interested in, ones he couldn’t forget. He saw things until the day he was hit by your dad’s car, and whatever damage it did to his brain erased it all. He saw your life all the way until that last picture—the one on the cover. He saw it until your dad’s death, and then his dreams just started to become normal dreams. And I’m sure if you asked him now, he would tell you that he can never remember his dreams anymore. I don’t think he has any.”
The paper falls to his lap along with his hand and Wes stares out the front window.
“I don’t see things, Joss. If I did, you would know,” he says, his head falling to the side, his eyes sweeping to mine.
“You don’t anymore,” I say, the words coming out slowly.
His eyes don’t blink as he studies me, his jaw working, his neck muscles tensing.
“He lies, Joss. This is all just to get your hopes up. He’ll hurt you,” Wes says.
“I love you,” I say to him quickly. They’re the only words I think will work right now. I love him, and he protects me. And he’s right that Shawn lies. But he’s not lying about this. I look down at the paper and eventually Wes holds it in his hand again, ready to read.
“Grace told me you saw things,” I say now that his eyes are off me. “You’ve saved me more times than you know…than you remember. The first time, we were three. My mom was depressed…suicidal.”
I let the facts burn inside my chest for a breath while Wes digests them.
“You found us in the garage, and you told Grace your dreams told you to,” I say, knowing Wes is going to want to reject everything I just said, less because of what it means about him and more because of what it means about me. I’m the girl who almost died at the hands of both parents. I’m the girl who probably shouldn’t be here, and it’s quite possible the only reason I am is the boy reading me a letter from a man who ruined him.
Almost a full minute passes without a word between us, and eventually Wes begins to read again, his voice even softer this time.
“Before your mom had you, I promised her I’d keep you safe. I loved her. And because of that, I love you, as if you are my own. The money in this envelope should be exactly enough. The drawings on the cover and the last page should help you know what to look for. This is all I have left to give…I give you this, and I give you my son. You are both better off with each other. And in the end, just remember, Joss—you are just as special as he is.”
Wes stares at the page, slowly turning it over. Just like me, he hopes there’s more on the other side. There isn’t. In typical Shawn form, the letter is filled with mystery and half-answers. It’s also filled with hurtful things. I shouldn’t have let Wes read this. It was never meant for his eyes.
“He didn’t love me more than you,” I say, not believing a word, and knowing Wes won’t either.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his eyes flitting down to the space between us, his teeth scraping across his bottom lip as he hands the paper over to me. I stare at it, my eyes zeroing in on the hardest words—I loved her…I love you.
“I don’t think he’s coming back,” I say, turning back to look at the empty trailer, not a trace of Shawn Stokes left inside.
Wes nods slightly, pulling his lips in, his mouth a straight line as our eyes hold onto this sad moment, staring into one another.
“We should get back to school,” Wes finally says, breaking our gaze as he restarts his engine and shifts the truck into drive.
I watch in the rearview mirror as the trailer and the red mailbox blend into a blur, obscured by the overgrowth and eventually shadowed by the mountain. The truck rocks along the dirt and gravel, and when the wheels find the smoothness of pavement, Wes drives a little faster—not nearly as fast as he did on our way. Urgency is no longer necessary. We’re both in no rush for time to march on.
About halfway through our drive, I begin riffling through the things Shawn left for me again, rereading the note, hoping for some paragraph that got skipped. I shake the envelope out, wishing for a card to slip through the folds with a phone number or a clue—anything other than the pile of “cross your fingers and hope for the best” Shawn left us with.
By the time we’re about twenty miles out from school, my phone rings with a call from my dad. I hold it up for Wes to see, and his eyes slide to mine briefly.
“You should answer,” he says.
“It won’t be good,” I say.
“Yeah, but it’ll be even worse when you have to talk to him in person if you don’t answer now. Blame me—tell him I needed you to help with something,” he says, waggling a finger toward me, urging me to answer now that my phone is on the fourth ring.
“He’ll see right through it,” I say, and Wes’s shoulders slump as he sighs. I’m being stubborn.
“I’ll answer. I’m not going to lie, though,” I say, swiping my phone and p
ressing it to my ear. I don’t get the first words out, and I didn’t expect to.
“Please tell me that you’re just holed up in one of the school bathrooms sick, or that you accidentally fell asleep in someone’s locker. I just lied to the front office and said you’d be in class in twenty minutes, that you had to run home for personal things. Jesus H Christ, Joss…I said the word period. Where the hell are you?”
“I’ll be in class in twenty minutes,” I say, turning to look at Wes. He sighs, but pushes the pedal down more, the truck lurching forward.
“Good. You didn’t answer my question—where the hell are you?”
I open my mouth, half under the delusion that I’ll magically have something to answer him with, but no matter where I begin, this conversation is too long and unbelievable to have over the phone while Wes and I race back to Bakersfield. My bleak future, drawn in pictures, sits in my lap, and I breathe out a laugh as my eyes roam over the details in the drawings. Then I see the envelope with the money.
“How much do we owe?” I ask. My dad breathes in slowly, and I hear the frustration through the phone. “I’m not deflecting.”
“You are,” he says, and I grit my teeth, just as frustrated with him.
“Fine, I’m on the road between the lake and Bakersfield; Wes is driving. We went to a trailer where Shawn, his uncle who helped the Stokes adopt Wes, used to live. Shawn, who is actually Wes’s real dad, disappeared, but he left a bunch of money behind. I’m supposed to use it, and I think I’m supposed to use it to pay your debt. Oh, and don’t talk to Wes about the Shawn thing, because it’s sucky for him. And don’t bring this up to his parents either—let him tell them when he wants to, if he wants to, not that you talk to anyone’s parents, because you’re like a hermit or whatever, but damn it, Dad…can you just tell me how much money we owe now?”
My dad’s quiet, and I worry that I’ve stunned him with information. I’m also pissed.
“Are you high?” he asks. I grip the phone in both of my palms and hold it in front of my face, staring at the screen as I groan.
“No, Dad! I’m not high!” I shout into it. I exhale hard and bring the phone back to my ear. “I’m telling you the truth. I’ll pee in a friggin’ cup if that’s what you want! Just tell me how much money we owe.”
I can hear my dad swallow, and it’s silent for a few more seconds. I close my eyes, ready to fail.
“After your grandmother’s money, I’d say we still have maybe…about forty-seven thousand to pay,” he says.
“Forty-seven thousand,” I repeat, looking to Wes. His eyes leave the road for a moment to meet mine.
“Forty-seven thousand, two hundred and two,” Wes says, leaning his head toward the envelope.
I repeat the number to my dad, and after a few more seconds, he tells me that’s how much is left on his debt—down to the dollar.
“It’s exactly enough,” I hum, using Shawn’s words. “I’ll find you after lunch. Thank you for lying to the school. I love you, Daddy.”
I hang up before he can question me anymore, and I begin to flip through Shawn’s comic book feverishly, memorizing everything and feeling the familiar images in the center of my chest. Things in here have happened. My friends are in here. Everyone’s names are different, but that’s probably because Wes didn’t know us yet when he had these dreams. There’s only one name that stands out among the fictional ones—it’s for the heroine, the one on the cover being dragged somewhere by a pair of strong arms and dirty hands.
“Grace,” it reads.
My middle name.
The name Christopher knew—his ticket into the race.
“Shawn sold it all to pay my dad’s debt,” I say, holding the stack of cash up in my fist. “It’s exactly enough.”
My mouth aches to curl, and I give in the smallest bit, smiling and laughing quietly, my head a little crazy with relief, possibility, and fear. I can see Wes’s mind working behind his eyes when he glances at me, his expression guarded, not ready to celebrate. He’s looking for the flaw—the trick that will somehow backfire. For once, I don’t think there is one. Shawn gave me a hero, and he gave him the pieces to help me fight. That crazy man might just save my father.
Twenty-One
There have been a few moments over the last few years, before he got sober, when my dad was really a dad. The night before my fourteenth birthday, he told me exactly what present I was getting the next day. He was buying me a new glove, an expensive one with flexible webbing that would translate well no matter what base I played. His eyes lit up when he talked about it, and he told me that it was a special order from Fresno, and the shop was breaking it in.
That night, I didn’t sleep. I laid awake with my old glove on my hand, the fit small and the webbing brittle. I pretended to toss a ball and catch it as I stared at the ceiling, bathing in the warmth that flooded my chest because my dad really did love me. I couldn’t focus on a thing, and I knew that my life would live on pause until I got that new glove in my hands. The glove never came. I remember hating him then, thinking it was a cruel joke he pulled, promising me something he knew I’d want so badly that I’d lose sleep imagining it, just to take it away in the morning.
Time gives perspective on things. For me, it took four years to understand that my dad wasn’t playing a joke. He was deluding himself for a moment, too—believing that he could afford to give me a gift like that. A four-hundred-dollar glove is half of our mortgage. We never talked about it, but I’m fairly certain he was just as crushed telling me the glove wasn’t going to happen after all. I got a used one a few weeks later. For a while, I abused it—left it on the field hoping it’d get stolen, let it bake in the sun or soak in the rain. Eventually, I forgot that I resented it. It’s the glove I wore for the photoshoot, and it’s the one that’s been on my hand for every diving play I’ve made out on my high school field. I still thought of the expensive one, though. I thought about it often. I still wanted it.
Obsessions work that way.
I can feel the weight of the money Shawn gave me in my bag. My mind will not stop trying to conjure an image of the people my father owes. I don’t know what they look like other than the rendering the police sent home with my dad. My dad calls one of them Mike; he’s the guy who works at the loan store. He’s not the one who loaned the money. He just knew a guy who knew a guy. According to police databases, the guys Mike led my father to don’t even exist. They’re ghosts.
With the bundle from Shawn stuffed in the bottom of my backpack, I rush out to the parking lot to meet my dad where he’s waiting to take me to my session with Rebecca. I find him leaning on his car, his arms folded as he’s ready to scold me for ditching this morning and spouting off things I’m sure he thinks are crazy. His foot starts to tap and his head dips, like it did when I used to hide my report card from him only to have him find it under my mattress weeks later and still unsigned by a parent.
“You drive, I’ll talk,” I say, not letting him lead the direction this all goes. I keep my bag with me, tucking it between my knees as we both get into the car, and the second my dad pulls out of the lot, I unzip the bag and remove the envelope of money.
“Forty-seven thousand, two hundred and two.”
I toss it into his lap and he jerks a little, his head swiveling to look at me while his left hand picks up the thick packet of bills.
“Where did you get this?” he says, scanning around the intersection we’re stopped at before peeking inside to see that I’m right about money being in there.
“I told you, Wes and I went to a trailer by the lake, where his dad-slash-uncle lived, and…”
“Joss, I know who the hell Shawn Stokes is. The man can’t stand me; why the hell would he give you money to bail me out of trouble?”
My dad tosses the cash back to me, almost disgusted by it, and I stare at his face as I pull it into the safety of my lap. This cash is the key—it’s all I have. It has to work, and we can’t afford to lose it.
&nbs
p; “He wanted to help,” I say.
“Bullshit,” my dad says, looking both ways before turning left and hitting the highway. He chuckles as he shakes his head. “I bet that money’s stolen, marked or something, and the minute I hand it over to someone I’ll be caught in a big sting operation or something.”
“You’re being crazy,” I say, my voice growing louder.
“Psh, I’m crazy. Listen to you…with this whole Shawn and Wes, and he’s really his dad, and he secretly left this money for you, and it’s exactly the right amount. Did you even count it? I bet it’s not even real money.”
My dad’s face is growing red, and I’m not sure if it’s because he knows the real reason Shawn would bail him out or because he’s genuinely mad and suspicious. I decide to quit pretending I don’t know the truth, though, and I toss the envelope back into his lap, infuriating him for a brief second before I speak.
“He left this money for you because he was in love with mom, and he loves me because she told him to. It’s all there. Wes counted it. There’s no way it could be the exact amount you need if what I’m telling you wasn’t real. Wes is Shawn’s son, and for some strange reason, this universe has decided he needs to protect me. He was the boy who saved me…he saved me when you drove the car at our house…”
I take a deep breath, still not used to saying this next part, but knowing it’s the part he needs to hear. He’ll know I’m right then.
“He saved me when I was three, and mom was home alone with me, in the garage…the motor running…”
My dad’s eyes close just as he pulls to a stop at the red light. His fingers work around the wheel, his grip tightening and relaxing, the tension falling from his face and his mouth sloping down on the ends.
“I know she was sick. I know how hard it was, for you…for her. I know that it wasn’t about either of you not wanting me. But Wes knew I was in that garage, Dad. He saved me. Shawn knew this trouble was coming, and he left money for me to find. Sometimes, Dad, you have to just believe in things. If you don’t pay these guys off…”
