Then I turned around and crept back into the house, up through the basement, and onto the second floor.
My brother’s light was on. I knocked very softly, hoping my parents were already asleep.
“Go away,” Grant said.
I knocked again, and then again, until he finally opened the door.
“What?”
I almost felt stupid, now that I was standing here in front of him, but I took a short breath and plowed ahead. “I’m trying to fix things with JaKory and Maritza. I’m sneaking out, and Ricky and I are driving to Alabama. In his truck. Do you want to come?”
My brother looked hard at me. He seemed confused, and after a second he went to the window.
“I don’t see him,” he said, his voice doubtful.
“He parked down the street so Mom and Dad wouldn’t notice.” I felt my phone vibrate and knew it was Ricky, wondering why I was taking so long. “You don’t have to come, but I just wanted you to know you were invited.”
My brother paused with his hand on the window. After a second, he asked, “Can I ride shotgun?”
* * *
Ricky and Grant took to each other immediately. Ricky loved all the questions Grant asked about his truck, and Grant loved all the questions Ricky asked about basketball, and they agreed that my taste in music was nothing short of deplorable.
“Oh, ’cause your music taste is so much better, Mr. Nickelback?” I asked.
“Don’t listen to her,” Ricky told Grant. “She’s making shit up.”
“Oh, yeah, no question,” Grant said, sitting taller in his seat.
There were very few cars on the road, and we reached JaKory’s neighborhood within minutes. “Turn up here,” I told Ricky. “Grant, show him where to go.”
Grant proudly guided Ricky to JaKory’s house. Ricky shut his lights off immediately, and I left the two of them sitting in the front while I crept out and snuck up JaKory’s driveway. It was after midnight now, and the only sound was the sprinklers in the front yard.
I’m in your driveway. I have a car. Let’s get you to Alabama.
JaKory slipped out the front door a minute later. He squinted through the dark at the truck in front of his house, then looked back to me with his eyes practically bugging out of his head. “What in god’s name did you smoke tonight?”
“I don’t have time to apologize like I want to,” I said hastily. “Especially because you deserve a very eloquent apology that I wish I had the words to say. But I know you want to meet Daveon, and I know today was the day you’d planned on, and Ricky and I are totally game to drive you there, if you still want to. Can we make it happen?”
JaKory stood rigid for a long beat. Then he snapped out of it and made a phone call.
I stood a few feet away from him, listening to the spritz spritz spritz of the sprinklers, my mind still filing through the logistics of this plan.
“He can do it,” JaKory said, his voice urgent now. “Give me five minutes.”
He dashed back inside, and when he reappeared at the door of Ricky’s truck a full seven minutes later, he was dressed in a linen button-down shirt and that goddamn fedora.
* * *
JaKory directed us out of his neighborhood and down the roads that led to the interstate, but there was one more thing we needed to do first. I told Ricky to make a left, and JaKory sat back and shrugged like he already knew what I was planning.
It didn’t feel right to go without Maritza. Somehow I knew that if we went to Alabama without her, our friendship would never recover. She would want to be a part of this, and she deserved to be.
The lights were off in her house. I didn’t bother texting since her parents still had her phone; instead, I slipped to the back door, felt in the birdhouse next to the overhang, and pulled out the Vargases’ spare key. I thought I must have been crazy—after all, I was technically breaking and entering—but I turned the key in the lock anyway.
The house was dark and silent. Mr. Vargas’s fish tank was illuminated in the family room, the electric pink and orange fish darting around in the blue light. I crept past it and up the stairs to Maritza’s room, my heart thudding. When I reached her door, there were TV noises coming from behind it, and I breathed: Maritza watching Netflix was something