We sit in silence as we wait for my name to be called. Then Mom says, “I spy with my little eye . . . something blue.”
“Is it me?” I say sarcastically. Mom doesn’t appreciate it. “Just kidding.”
We play the “I spy” game, like I’m seven years old and sitting in the pediatrician’s office, instead of sixteen years old and waiting for my gynecologist to put me on birth control.
My head is stuffed in the pillow when I hear a tap on the window. I had the dream again—crying and crying and no way out—and the pillow isn’t really helping. I look out into the yard where the cactus used to be, but I see nothing. Rearranging the pillow, I lie back down. The only lights on in the house are the stars on my ceiling.
Another tap comes from the side of the house. I sit back up, pausing before deciding to crack open the window as quietly as possible. Cool air flows in.
“Esther?”
“Jesús?” I find him huddled against the house in the dark. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t a guy come see a girl in the middle of the night? Most people would find this moment romantic. It’s very Romeo and Juliet of me.”
“They kill themselves in the end. There’s nothing romantic about it. And you’re gay.”
“Maybe Romeo was gay and he just didn’t want to admit it.”
“Mercutio is gay.”
“He is?”
“Yes. He’s in love with Romeo.”
“Wow. Consider my mind blown.”
“Stop dodging my question. What’s going on?” I ask.
Jesús comes right up to the window, his face tired and dirty.
“You said I knew where you lived if I needed you.” He grabs my hands. “I need you.”
And I say what Jesús says to every customer who drives through HuggaMug. “Let me help you.”
“You can start by telling me something beautiful.” Jesús presses my hands to his cheek. “Tell me what it feels like to be in love.”
To put that into words is so hard, but I swim through my memories of Amit, searching for the right piece for Jesús.
“Amit told me about a woman in India named Amma. She sits in this temple all day, and people come from all over the world to see her.”
“Why?”
“So she can hug them.”
“Why does she hug people, Esther?” Jesús whispers.
Here is a notable thing about love. I’ve realized it isn’t as complex as people make it out to be.
“Because people don’t understand that love is that simple,” I say.
“You’ve felt love that simple?”
With my hand pressed to Jesús’s cheek, I change my theory. Maybe love isn’t lying. Maybe people just like to complicate things.
Because the truth is that the best kind of love is simple.
But because we’re not perfect humans, we mess it up.
“Yes,” I say.
“Why can’t my parents love me like that?”
“Because some people only see the ugly in life.” My hand moves to cup his cheek.
“Am I ugly?”
“No. You are beautiful.”
“I don’t feel beautiful,” he says. “I want to know simple love.”
After quickly closing my bedroom door, I open the window wide enough for Jesús to climb in. He stands right in front of me, and we see each other through the darkness. But the shadows mix with the night and fade away. I move in close, wrap my arms around him, and press myself into Jesús, like air fills the lungs. I cling to every piece of him as we stand in my room, hugging.
“Can you feel it?” I say in his ear.
His face rests on my shoulder. He breathes warm air onto my skin. The weight of what he’s carrying is palpable, but the longer we hold each other, the more I take from him. Jesús relaxes and says, “Yes.”
I won’t let him go back to the HuggaMug. Instead, I hide him in my clean closet. I knew getting rid of that baggage would be good for something.
We talk in whispers. The closet door is shut.
“Do you smell that?”
“What?” Jesús asks.
“Rain,” I say.
“I didn’t see rain in the forecast.” Jesús talks into my neck, his face close to mine.
“I can smell it.” I turn so our noses almost touch. “Do you think it’s raining in California?”
“Maybe.”
“Jesús?”
“Yeah, Esther?”
“I’m grounded forever because Mom and Tom found out about Moss.”
Jesús says, “It’s the pits.”
“Yeah. The pits.” A pause lingers between us. “Jesús?”
“Yeah, Esther?”
“Since I’m already grounded forever, things can’t get much worse, right?”
“You’re talking to a homeless teenager. It can get worse.”
“But you wouldn’t go home, even if your parents offered to take you back, right?”
Jesús thinks for a moment. “No. I wouldn’t go back. I have more respect for myself than that.”
“In a way, you’re free, then.”
Another second passes. “Yeah, I guess so.”
I roll onto my back and look up at the closet ceiling. Jesús does the same.
“Jesús?”
“Yeah, Esther?”
“I’m in captivity,” I say.
Jesús doesn’t say anything—I think because he knows I’m right and doesn’t want to rub it in.
“Sometimes it has to get worse before it gets better,” I say.
“That’s probably true.”
“You can’t stay in my closet forever. You have to tell Moss and Color the truth.”
“I know.”
We lie in silence and the truth for a while. “Jesús?”
“Yeah, Esther?”
“I think I want to make things worse.” I tell him I want to go to California and see the baby. And Jesús says he’s glad I’m done making excuses, and that he’s been keeping another secret for a while now, too. It turns out Color is giving me the best Christmas gift I could ever ask for—a newly remodeled station wagon, paid for with the profits of a garage sale held on New Year’s Day at an old, run-down Blockbuster.
35
Jesús tells Moss and Color the truth the very next day. That night they sneak over to Jesús’s old trailer and break three cartons of eggs on the outside. Color and Moss’s mom says that since Jesús is eighteen, legally an adult, he can live with them. She’s leaving again anyway. There’s a farm in Portland where she can spend the next few months trimming weed and making over ten thousand dollars.
Jesús tells me all of this as we lie on my bed in the middle of the night, looking up at the fake galaxy above.
“Did you tell them I’m grounded for infinity?”
“Yes, but Color wanted me to tell you not to worry. She’s got a plan.”
“I miss everyone,” I say. I know it’s been less than a week, but I do.
“Fungus misses you, too.” Jesús nudges me. “I’m so jealous. You get to make out. What’s it like kissing someone?”
I look at Jesús. “You’ve kissed someone.”
“Not for real, I haven’t.” He looks at me like duh. “Gay boy in a small town. The odds are not in my favor. There isn’t another gay kid for miles.”
Except for Beth, but she hasn’t told Jesús yet, and that’s not my truth to share.
Just the thought of kissing Moss makes butterflies threaten to explode in my stomach. “It’s wonderful.”
“Wonderful sounds . . . wonderful,” Jesús says, breathless.
“Jesús?”
“Yeah, Esther?”
“You know you’re free now,” I say.
“I can’t believe it took me so long to tell the truth. I could have saved myself months of sleeping on that awful couch in HuggaMug. And the bathrooms at the state park. Yuck.” Jesús points at the ceiling. “I see the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt.”
“They were
easy to replicate.”
I wiggle closer to him. Picking up Jesús’s hands one at a time, I count all of his fingers.
“Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose. Perfect.”
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing.” I wiggle back into the nook of Jesús’s arm. He pulls me into his side, snuggling me around the waist. Minutes pass. The night goes on. The fake stars shine above us.
“This is over,” I say. “You won’t be sneaking in my window anymore?”
“We still have tonight, Esther.” Jesús breathes deeply. “And I think you’re right about the rain. I can feel it, too.”
When I wake up, thick gray clouds that look like waves of condensation hang in the sky. Jesús is gone. I didn’t even feel him leave.
Mom looks at me weirdly when I stick my hand out the front door and check for rain, but the air is dry.
“I don’t think it’s supposed to rain today,” she says.
“Maybe the news is wrong.”
She pokes her head out the door and looks up. “Those aren’t rain clouds.”
“How do you know?”
“I lived in Ohio long enough to know the difference.”
“Do you miss it?”
Mom wipes her hands together, like she’s getting rid of dirt from her fingertips, but nothing is there. “How about grilled cheese for lunch?”
It’s amazing how long people will live with their lies, even when the truth will set them free.
36
It doesn’t rain for the rest of the week. Clouds cover the sky, but not a drop falls. I guess I was wrong. I was also wrong about my lying days. They are so not over. Jesús is right. Color totally has a plan. And it starts with Beth knocking on my door early Saturday morning.
Tom answers. “Beth? What are you doing here?”
The second I hear her name, I come running for the door. Beth barely has time to get out, “Hi, Mr. Ainsworth, I was wondering—” before I’m standing at Tom’s side.
“Hi,” I say, smiling.
“Hi.” Beth is wearing a T-shirt that I haven’t seen before. It says: JESUS CHRIST IS THE ONLY MAN I NEED. I have to control myself, even though I want to burst with hilarity. “I was wondering if you wanted to help me deliver Valentine’s Day cookies and decorations to the people at the retirement community.” Beth looks at Tom. “It’s for church. I offered to help Pastor Rick.”
That really does almost make me laugh.
“He’s doing some wonderful things with the youth at church, isn’t he?” Tom says.
“He totally is.” OK, Beth so does not sound like herself, and I love it. “It will only take a few hours, and I have my parents’ car.”
Beth motions over her shoulder to the driveway, where the newly redone station wagon is parked. Holy freaking hell.
“I don’t know . . .” Tom shakes his head. “Esther is kind of . . .”
But Mom comes up behind Tom, puts her hand on his shoulder, and says, “I think it’s a great idea. Hannah’s at church all day rehearsing. We could have the house to ourselves.”
Tom tries to counter. “But—”
“She’s been cooped up for over a week. She didn’t even go to choir practice. Let the girl go.” And when Mom says “let the girl go,” she says it in a tone that reminds Tom that I’m not his daughter. I’m her daughter.
“OK,” Tom says.
I can’t help but laugh when Beth pulls down the street and out of sight of my house, and Color, Moss, and Jesús pop up in the back of the station wagon.
“I hope you like your Christmas present, Esther,” Color says.
We laugh and laugh and laugh.
“Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose. Perfect.” I stared at the hospital wall, unable to move. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose.”
Stop counting, Esther. I heard the words in my head.
“I can’t,” I said to myself out loud.
Problem solved, Esther.
“But the baby wasn’t the problem. She was the solution to my problem. All I wanted to see was her eyes.”
No one heard me talking at the hospital. The nurse wasn’t due to check on me for a while.
“Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose.”
I knew the math—she was half me and half Amit, one full person.
“Perfect.”
The first thing I do at Color’s house is go straight up to Moss’s room and kiss him until I can’t breathe. His door is barely shut before my mouth is on his and we’re playing tonsil hockey.
We fall back on his bed, making out like we’ve never made out before, hands groping places Moss wouldn’t dare go a few weeks ago. He unhooks my bra like he’s done it a million times. I unbutton his jeans, and he wiggles out of them faster than I’ve seen him run. And we’re rolling around in his bed, hands all over each other. Grounding never works. The forbidden fruit only gets sweeter.
This is what I wanted, what I was desperate for. I kiss Moss over and over and tell myself I want this. I want this. I want this. I want this.
But the counting won’t stop in my head. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose. Perfect.
Stop it, Esther, I think to myself.
But I can’t.
The counting never stops if the problem is never solved. Or if the solution was taken away in the middle of the night, before I could ever see her.
“Wait.” I pull back from Moss.
“What?” he says, out of breath.
“This isn’t right.”
“What isn’t right?” Moss’s eyes search my face.
“This.” I point to the bed. “We shouldn’t do this.”
“But I thought it’s what you wanted?”
Me, too. I thought this was what I wanted, but the truth is—I want Moss. I want a relationship. I don’t want to lie to him or make hasty decisions. I don’t want the consequences of our actions ruining us forever. I’ve done that before. I want to trust him, but more importantly—I want him to trust me.
“I do want this,” I say to him. “But I also want time.”
I want Moss to come to my house and meet Mom and Tom. I want Moss to hold my hand without worrying who might see. I want Moss to run with me biking at his side, free of the past because it’s all out in the open. Because we trust each other with each other. We don’t need to hide because we have nothing to be ashamed of. I did that with Amit, and it tainted everything. We were broken long before we ever knew it.
“Time?” Moss says.
“To get this right.”
Moss traces my collarbone with his fingertip. “If you insist.”
“You’re making this hard.”
“Don’t say the word ‘hard.’”
I swat his hand away, and he laughs.
“Just make sure to tell me when time’s up, OK?” he says.
“OK.” I grab his hand and count his fingers. “Ten fingers. Ten toes. Two eyes. One nose. Perfect.” Moss’s gray eyes are so beautiful. “My mom used to say that all the time. She’d tuck Hannah and me into bed and count all our body parts, just to make sure we were still whole. We loved it because she always tickled our feet.”
We sit there in silence for a while as I fight the memories off. I’m so sick of fighting. I’m tired and worn out. And done. I am so done.
I get up and grab a blue tack from his dresser. “It’s high time we added another one to your map.”
“What?”
“I’m ready. I want to go to California.”
“Now? We’re supposed to have you back at your house in a few hours.”
Moss chases me downstairs. Color, Jesús, and Beth are sitting in the overgrown grass in the backyard when Moss and I burst outside.
“Done already?” Jesús wiggles his eyebrows at me.
“It’s time,” I say out of breath.
“For what?” Color says.
I look at Beth. “Is the offer still on the table?” She perks up, knowing exactly what I’m talking abo
ut, and gives me an enthusiastic nod.
“What is going on?” Jesús says emphatically.
“The journey is coming to an end,” I say.
“Does this mean what I think it means?” Color’s face lights up.
I say, “We’re going to California.”
37
OK, so going to California might be a stretch. First, we need an address of where exactly to go. That’s where Beth’s hacking comes into play.
She gets all excited and starts talking in terms I don’t understand, since Mom and Tom won’t even let me have an email address.
“All I have to do is get into the VPN for Christ Connects California, which requires a log-in, but I can easily obtain that with some social engineering tactics. From there, it should be easy.”
We all look at Beth like she’s a mad scientist, and I’m pretty sure she is.
“Is that all?” Moss says sarcastically.
“Beth, you are so hot right now,” Jesús says. “I can barely control myself.”
She turns red. “Just leave this to me. Do you have a computer somewhere?”
“You can use the one in my room,” Color offers. We all move to follow Beth like a pack of wolves, but she stops us.
“I prefer to hack in private. You understand.” She disappears upstairs then, leaving us to lie back in the grass and wait, sprawled as clouds roll over our heads, blocking the sun.
“I see a giraffe,” Color says, pointing at the sky.
Jesús traces a cloud with his finger. “I see a crown.”
“There’s a car with three wheels,” Moss says.
But the clouds shift too quickly for me, and the moment I think I see something, it dissipates into nothing. I’m distracted by the fact that at any moment, Beth might come outside with information that will change my life.
“Can I really do this?” I ask my friends.
Jesús says, “The better question is—Can you not?”
But it turns out that the answer doesn’t matter. Beth comes outside a while later. She doesn’t look happy.
“I couldn’t find it. I got into the VPN and everything, but nothing’s a match. I couldn’t find a birth certificate or the papers with your mom’s name anywhere.”
I stand up, but leave my heart on the ground, coated in disappointment. “That’s OK. You tried.”
The Infinite Pieces of Us Page 18
