own anger vanishes.
“Dyl.” I reach toward her, but she jerks back. “C’mon, Dyl. You’re alive. They may not understand it or believe it, but you are. We can all see that.”
“Five months later, Lennie, and you’re more full of shit than ever. Don’t tell me they’re wrong and you’re right when the only thing we know for sure is that, as usual, you don’t have a fucking clue.” Dylan spits one hurtful word after another and then spins around to escape out the back door.
When I move to run after her, Smith refuses to budge. “Maybe give her a few minutes.”
I hesitate, listening to the dogs barking like crazy. Dylan always loved my uncles’ pack of mongrels. She’d bury herself in the midst of their furry bodies and become half animal herself as she rolled around and wrestled with them.
“Okay,” I say to Smith. “Let’s talk with my uncles while she cools off.”
But when we walk back into the TV room, my uncles are gone. “Shit,” I swear softly.
Pulling Smith behind me, I run to the front door, hoping they’re just out on the front stoop having a smoke. But again, there’s no sign of them. Or their truck.
Cursing my uncles for never being there when I need them, I go back inside and slam the door shut behind me.
“Leave it open,” Mom says from where she’s still perched on the bottom step. “Nice to get some air in here.”
I stare at her, a little shocked to hear her speak without prompting.
“Hey, Mom,” I say gently, the way you’d talk to someone who spooks easily. “Did ya see where the uncs went?”
She shrugs. “Heard them on the phone with Old Bill asking for a ride.”
Old Bill’s our next door neighbor who is passionate about the state of his lawn. In exchange for making sure the dogs never bend so much as a blade of his grass (much less whiz on it) he is my uncles’ on-call designated driver.
“That was it? Nothing else?” I can’t help but hope that they might have left some additional crumb of information behind.
Mom shakes her head, crushing any such ideas. Then she holds up a single finger and says, “Wait.”
I wait.
“They said . . .”
I lean forward, no longer hoping, but physically needing a way out of this before the burning pit of anxiety inside me explodes. I don’t care how impossible the solution is. A magic potion we cook up by retrieving an insanely rare flower from the world’s highest mountain. An incantation spoken in a dead language that only five people on the planet know. True love’s kiss from a prince without any lips.
Just something, anything that might lead to things getting better instead of worse.
“I got it now,” Mom says, her long-suspended finger finally falling. “You’re fucked. Totally fucked. That’s what they said.”
I groan, but Mom ignores me and keeps going. “But they were gonna try to clean up your mess anyway. And you’re to stay here, no matter what . . .” She sucks deeply on her cigarette and then exhales her next words along with a lungful of smoke. “Or else.”
It’s amazing that I remain standing. That I nod and say, “Of course,” while my chest squeezes so hard I feel like I’m dying and a part of me even wishes that I would.
“Let’s get Dyl,” I say to Smith in a flat voice. “And after that we’ll . . .” I trail off, having no idea what we should do next. My first instinct is to track my uncles down. I assume they’ll go looking for the epicenter of crazy, also known as Michaela’s house. But I never mentioned her name to them, much less her address. No matter how legendary Michaela’s parties may be, I don’t think news of them has made it to the forty-plus crowd. With any luck they’ll drive around for a while, blow off some steam, sober up, and then come back home so we can finally talk and I can get some answers. Which means that my grand plan is to sit on my butt and wait.
“Hide.” Mom interjects with another option. “Or run. Tried to keep you from him, hoped you wouldn’t get into the shine. No fixing it or fighting it now. Try and avoid him. Won’t go well, he’ll get you regardless, but if you’re fast it might be later instead of sooner.”
“What?” I gasp, trying to make sense of all these words flowing from her. I might as well