of his neck. More than ever, I want to give myself to him, if not all of me, everything, then at least something big, to make him feel good. “Well, they’re nice. It’s really nice in here,” I offer.
“Don’t go overboard.”
“I’m not. I’m serious. So, you never told me … Does your mom ever come home? Visit, at least? Something?”
It occurs to me how little I really know about him, at least personal stuff like that about his family. Only what he’s volunteered, which isn’t much. And I want to know everything.
“Nah, she’s a little too far for that.”
“Wait, where is she again? Japan?”
“Hong Kong.”
“Geez.” It’s hard enough that my father is in California. I don’t know how Max deals with her being on another continent.
“Sit,” he says. “Enough with the inquisition.” He nods at his bed, so I sit, and run a finger along the outline of the squares in his quilt wondering if he makes his bed every morning, or if he just made it today, knowing he was going to ask me over.
“Tell me why she went? I swear I won’t ask more after that.”
He pulls out the chair from his desk that’s across from me, a small wood one, like it’s meant for a kid in elementary school, and straddles it, facing me. “She got an offer to teach. They pay well there. And we needed the money. Plus it was a chance to get away from my pops. Enough?”
“But what about you?”
Max shrugs. “What about me? She wanted me to come, and I guess it’s pretty much a standing invitation. But when you’re fourteen, and all your friends are here, well, Hong Kong isn’t the first place you want to split to.”
He stands up, walks to his window, and peers out, and for a second I panic, like maybe he’s heard a car. But he lets the curtain fall back and says, “Or maybe I felt sorry for the bastard because he was a disabled drunk mess, and couldn’t bear to leave him all alone.”
“Your dad?”
“Yeah, who else? He’s a dick, but it’s an illness. And he wasn’t always the asshole he is now.”
“So, what about California?”
Max sits down again, rests his arms on the back of the chair, and looks hard at me. “What about it?”
“You’ll be leaving him soon.”
“This is true.”
“And?”
“And I guess I’ve paid my dues. And now I’m going to get us some beers. As for our parents, well, they gotta grow up sometime, right, Jailbait? Spread their wings and fly.”
JULY
BEFORE FIFTH GRADE
“Mom! Dad! I think they may be hatching!”
It’s a Saturday night and Mom and Dad couldn’t find a sitter, so they’re stuck home watching a movie. “Seriously!” I call, rushing back down the hallway to my room. I don’t want to miss anything. I plop myself at my desk and sit motionless like I have so many hours this past week, staring at the big glass bowl Dad bought for me when I said I wanted to raise butterflies at home, like we did in Mrs. Stanley’s class.
“You don’t even need a kit like she had, or anything,” I’d told him. “I watched a video and you can just pick parsley stems and put them in a big jar or bowl with the caterpillars right on them. No food or supplies. They do all the work by themselves.”
Dad had found me the perfect bowl, and I’d spent an afternoon parsleyworm hunting in Dad’s vegetable garden at the back of our yard. Two days later, at least a few of the caterpillars had attached their heads and tails to the stems like the video showed, and the next morning, like magic, I’d awoken to find those few disappeared inside pale green-brown chrysalises, nearly camouflaged amongst the fading parsley leaves.
Four days more and one of the chrysalises has turned transparent and is trembling, and Mom and Dad are going to miss it, and I’m starting to get sleepy, so I’m worried I might miss it, too. But I can’t sit still, and I don’t want to watch it hatch all alone.
I jump up, run to my door, and shout for them to come again. I can hear them in the living room, laughing and talking and probably drinking wine—or, worse, smoking—the volume on whatever movie turned up loud.
Can’t they pause it and come?
But it could take hours for all I know, maybe even till tomorrow, before it emerges, and anyway, I don’t want them with me if they’re going to act