else was I supposed to call? They almost couldn’t get me either. Maritza’s grounded and her parents took her phone and her car. JaKory had to call their house and tell them that I was stranded and no one knew where you were. Mrs. Vargas almost came and got me herself.”
“Maritza’s grounded?” I asked, momentarily distracted.
“Her dad caught her drinking his rum. It was the only thing JaKory asked her about. He didn’t seem like he wanted to talk to her. Probably because of that night you screamed at them on the deck.”
I turned away from him and stared out the window again. My stomach was in knots. “You don’t get it.”
“Don’t act all dramatic just because you’ve been a shitty friend,” Grant said, his voice acidic. “You probably think you’re cool now because you threw a party, but guess what, that doesn’t make you cool. You were cooler before, when you cared about people.”
“I still care about people!” I said, stung.
“Yeah, your new friends,” he said patronizingly. “You obviously don’t care about Maritza or JaKory or anyone in your family.”
“You don’t know how I feel,” I said, my voice shaking. “Everything’s been so easy for you. You’re athletic and outgoing and Mom and Dad’s pride and joy, and you’re—”
I caught myself; I’d been about to say he was straight. The word died on my tongue.
“Yeah, you’ve got me all figured out, Codi,” he snarled. “Get out of my room. You suck at apologizing.”
He threw himself into his desk chair, and I stormed out of the room.
* * *
It was a long week.
I went to work, helped uppity suburban moms find peacock-print bags, and came home to a quiet house, where my brother ignored me and my parents watched me like they still weren’t sure who I was. I tried to call JaKory, who screened my calls, and even talked myself into calling Maritza’s house phone. It was Mr. Vargas who answered, and he told me firmly that Maritza was grounded, and that he needed to get back to cleaning his fish tank.
Lydia came by a couple of afternoons to check on me. She brought me iced coffee from the café, and we talked over the kitchen counter about her math class, our work shifts, and the morning after the party over and over again.
“Have you talked to them yet?” she’d say, with her hand on the small of my back, and when I’d explain I hadn’t been able to reach them, she’d rub circles over my shirt and promise I’d figure it out.
Ricky and I texted back and forth, and on Thursday, after he got off work, he came over to tell me about his date. We went down to the basement with sodas and ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and he gushed about the jokes Tucker had told, and the liberating anonymity they’d enjoyed at the restaurant down in the city, and even the fact that Tucker had said his name.
“He never used to say it before—he’d just avoid calling me anything—but now he says ‘Ricky’ when he’s talking to me, and I’m just like…” He shook his head and pointed quickly to his torso. “It hits me right here.”
“Who knew you were such a romantic?”
“Shut up. You’re the only person I can tell, so you have to deal with all the mushy stuff.”
I looked at him. “Still don’t want to tell the friends you feel like you’ve known since kindergarten? Not even Cliff?”
He rubbed the crumbs off his fingers. “Feels like I’ve known you since kindergarten, too, and that’s enough for now.”
If my brother saw Lydia or Ricky coming and going, he didn’t say anything about it. He stayed shut up in his room, playing music and watching TV shows, or otherwise went out to hang with his friends in the neighborhood and didn’t come back until dinnertime. We didn’t speak to each other and generally pretended like the other one didn’t exist. It wasn’t until Friday night, four days after my failed apology attempt, that he acknowledged me at all.
“Did you ever ask your friend Ricky what kind of truck he drives?”
I looked up from my phone, where I’d been hovering over another unanswered text to JaKory. Grant wasn’t looking at me, but he had paused between bites of SpaghettiOs.
“No,” I said quietly. “I forgot to.”
My brother shook his head, not like a pissed-off fourteen-year-old boy, but like a tired, disappointed old man. He picked up his bowl and shuffled out of the kitchen without another word.