her finger marking the page.
“Mom.”
“I was worried.”
“Sorry.”
“Where were you?”
“It’s not like I could call or text, and I was kind of far away.”
“I know you’re eighteen, but as long as we’re sharing a roof, you need to let me know where you’re going and when you’ll be back. You can stay out all night when you’re at Columbia, though please don’t tell me if you do. But I’m not exactly thrilled about you doing that here.”
“Because there’s so much trouble I can get into?”
“Actually, yes. I’m thinking specifically of poisonous snakes and alligators.”
“I just lost track of time.”
“So let’s set some ground rules. Back by one a.m., no later. And you let me know what you’re doing.”
“Fine.”
“Thank you.”
We stand in the hallway looking at each other. This is the most I’ve ever talked back to my mother in my life, and my heart is beating fast and loud.
She says in this quiet voice, “I worry about you.”
“I worry about you, too.”
“You know I’m here and you can talk to me. I’m still your mom. I found a therapist on the mainland who seems good. I thought we could go over once a week and get you started with him. You need to talk to someone.”
Right now she sounds like a therapist, or like an adult trying to reason with an angry child. Her quiet, quiet voice is making my skin crawl. I stand perfectly still, but I can feel the storm brewing inside me, gathering fast and dark. I fold my arms to keep it there, in my chest, in my lungs, but I know she can see it in my eyes and feel it in the air around us. “Now you’re telling me I need to talk about it?”
“Yes.”
“Because one minute you say I can’t talk to anyone, so I don’t. I left my best friend without saying a word. So I’m here, cast away on this island where there’s zero cell service, and now you’re telling me that I need to talk about it, now that I’m finally used to not talking. You need to make up your mind.”
All at once, everything collapses—her shoulders, her face. She shakes her head. “I know. And I’m sorry. So incredibly sorry. I should never have gone along with that.”
There’s more I could say, but I don’t. Because as angry as I am, I love her. And she feels bad enough. The two of us stand there, and the only sound is the tick-tick-tick of the old-fashioned clock on the wall in the living room.
A minute later, she says, “You know, Aunt Claudine never had children, but when her niece, your grandmother, was old enough to visit, Claudine traveled to the mainland to pick her up and then traveled back again to see her off on the train. Claudine was hard of hearing, so she couldn’t hear the train until it was close by, but she could feel its vibrations from miles away. Apparently she stood there for a long time after the train had left until she couldn’t feel it anymore.”
“How does that relate to me?”
She smiles. “I’m always here, no matter what I’m going through, even when you’re not in front of me or when I’m off in my own head or over at the museum or trying to sleep. You can talk to me.”
And she hugs me and I hug her back, but I can feel it there—the divide between us.
* * *
—
I shut my bedroom door.
Lean against it.
Him, I think.
Not Wyatt Jones.
Jeremiah Crew.
There’s something about this person who knows nothing about me other than that I’m here right now, that my name is Claude and I have red lips and I kiss boys on beaches. Him. Jeremiah. I kissed him on the beach.
This person who, after one night, actually knows more about me than anyone right now, more than Shane Waller ever knew about me after two months. There’s nothing to lose and I don’t have anything to prove and there is no expectation of me, of him, of us ever being an us. There’s no expectation at all.
I won’t be losing anything. Or giving anything up. Or letting anyone take something from me.
I’ve already done all that, been through all that. There’s too much of that happening already. No more Claude, go here. Claude, go there; goodbye, Claude, I never want to see you again. This will be me taking charge of my life again and deciding what I do and where I go