She was his victim, and the notion of me being so low and terrible that I could even fathom being angry at Jerri made me hate me and then I thought I better get the hell out of bed and go eat a sandwich, which Grandma Berba would prepare and which would taste much better than Kwik Trip white bread with a hunk of cheese on it. She bought some ham, which was good. Wheat bread.
Even when I ate, I boiled in my guts about everything.
Grandma Berba bought lots of stuff. For example, she bought me new clothes that fit.
“You can’t go back to school in high waters. Here, try these.” She threw me jeans. (I could only hope they fit in a month—they do, by the way.)
She bought Andrew a whole wardrobe full of little polos and blue jeans and tossed out his pirate wear. (“Thanks, Grandma,” he beamed.)
She did lots of other stuff too. She cleaned up and threw out the Schwinn Varsity. She weeded the jungle garden. She mowed the lawn. She washed every corner of the house for hours on end.
“Why is all this junk pulled out of boxes?” she asked.
Andrew shrugged.
On the third day, she drove Jerri to Dubuque, Iowa, to see doctors and therapists.
I didn’t like Jerri going to Dubuque. I didn’t like her not being close by. I had a job. When I wasn’t sleeping those three days or on the computer or delivering papers or eating, I’d be next to Jerri watching TV in her room, laughing too hard, to make everything normal. That’s what I had to do. My job was to make Jerri know I think she’s great and know she can count on me because I’m not like my dead dad, who I missed more and more every hour, which really pissed me off.
Very upset.
Grandma Berba came down to my room before they left for Dubuque, after I asked to go with, then pleaded, but was turned down.
“Felton,” she said. “You can’t fix your mom.”
“I can help.”
“It isn’t your job. You’re the kid, okay?”
“I want to help.”
“Be a kid, Felton.”
“I want to…”
“No. I’m here to take care of you. Your job is to be a kid.”
Oh, man.
It was decided in Dubuque that day that Jerri would leave. She was put on serious medication, which made her sort of dull and retarded but resistant. To get better, to make sure she wouldn’t hurt herself, she’d go away. She’d be checked into some kind of mental health facility in Arizona that Grandma knew about (it looked like a freaking vacation ranch with doctors—I checked it on the Web). Jerri was leaving.
“She can’t leave!” I shouted at Grandma Berba.
“She needs to get better,” Grandma said back.
The voice in my head said: She’s leaving you.
And so, three days passed. Three days closer to Aleah leaving, which didn’t seem to matter anymore. Three days closer to Gus coming home, giving me an opportunity to officially lose my only friend. Three days closer to school starting, which I didn’t want to think about at all. In four days, Jerri would go, which made me cry. And it was three days closer to my sixteenth birthday, which happened to be in three days.
Who cares about birthdays? I didn’t want to. I probably did care though. I know I did.
CHAPTER 54: HONKIES DUMP TRASH
Do farmers sometimes dump on your property?” Grandma Berba asked.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with Jerri on Wednesday, two days before my birthday, eating lunch, a ham sandwich and some cold tomato soup and another sandwich and some broccoli with ranch sauce and another sandwich.
“Dump what?” I asked.
“Trash.”
“Farmers? No.”
“Somebody just dumped some trash.” Grandma Berba stood at the picture window and pointed.
I wiped my mouth on my sleeve and pushed back from the table. I joined Grandma Berba at the window. There were a bunch of black trash bags down at the end of our drive and hundreds of loose pieces of white paper blowing around in the breeze.
“Farmers never dumped before. Jerri?”
Jerri was stirring her cold soup around, staring at it. As usual, she was about ten feet deep in the haze.
“What?” she asked.
“Farmers ever dump trash on our property?”
“Umm, no,” Jerri said quietly, looking up from her soup. “I suppose I used to find beer bottles every now and then, just kids partying probably. Not farm waste.”
“I saw a pickup truck out there. I didn’t see anyone throw trash. It was just leaving when I looked. I assumed farmers.”
“Pickup?” I