Weeks, months, minutes. I don’t know time. I have my earphones on, the pulsing, driving bass, clash of cymbals. A doorbell intrudes. Muted, distant doorbell chime.
Voices. Vibrations. I unplug one ear.
Mom says, “I told you not to come here.”
“I have something for Nick.”
Jo! I spring out of bed, my earphones ripping off my head, and fly to the door. I fling it open. She’s here! On the porch.
Mom’s at the screen. “You can give it to me.”
I rush out the door and throw my arms around Jo. How long has it been? A week? A lifetime? Hers and mine. She’s warm and alive. She holds me hard, as hard as I hold her. We’re trembling.
“Let him go,” Mom says. “Nick, get in here.” She thrusts an arm out at me.
I lurch away. I won’t let go of Jo. She heard me, she came for me.
“Jo,” Mom goes. “I’m warning you.”
The air crackles with the tension between them. I don’t care. All I hear and feel are Jo’s heart beating against my face and her hot breath on my hair. Breath of life. Almost imperceptibly, she loosens her hold. I tighten mine. “I came to give Nick his phone back.” Her voice is monotone. “That’s all.”
That’s not all. She came to get me.
There’s a lull. Then Jo says, “This is bullshit, Erin. You don’t own him.”
“Neither do you,” Mom snipes. “And you have no rights to him. You know that.”
“Yeah. You’ve mentioned it once or twice.”
Another presence fills the space, the doorway. I sense her aura. It’s Kerri, behind Mom. “Hi, Jo,” she says. “What’s going on?” She’s wearing her apron, her chef’s apron from the hotel where she works. Garlic permeates the air. She’s always smelling up the house.
“Do you want to come in?” Kerri asks. “Nick hasn’t been out of his room for, like, a year. Maybe you can get him to rejoin the human race.”
Mom says, “Jo’s leaving.”
Jo says to Kerri, “I guess I’m leaving.” She takes a step back, and I move with her. She presses my forehead with her palm and peers into my face. We talk in that silent way we have. We say it all.
Jo’s nose flares, and it isn’t from garlic. “You reek. You need a shower.” She lifts a lock of my greasy hair and lets it fall. “There’s this new product they invented that I saw on TV. They call it shampoo.”
I burrow in to hold her again, but she clamps both hands on my rounded shoulders and applies pressure. “I gotta go, Nick,” she says. Her eyes fuse to mine. They scream, Please! Please. Don’t forget.
She takes a third step back. With me attached.
Mom reaches out and scruffs my T-shirt. She knows I’ll tear away. She hooks an arm around my neck.
Kerri clenches Mom’s wrist. I choke, and Mom slackens her grip. We’re locked in a chain, Mom, Kerri, me, and Jo. I don’t know who breaks the first link, but suddenly Jo’s free. She’s hurrying down the sidewalk. “’Bye, Jo,” Kerri calls. “Um, maybe another time.”
Mom hauls me inside, bodily. I suppress the urge to lash out. Jo stalls at the end of the driveway next to Beatrice. She turns around. She wants to say something. She wants to fight for me; I know she does. My heart pounds as she heads back, approaches the house. Near the edge of the porch, she stops and says, “I never thought it’d end this way. You know?”
Mom says all snotty, “Well, it did.”
“Just like that. You can wipe out all the years we had? Just erase them from your mind?”
Mom expels a gust of air. “People change. They grow up. They move on.”
No, I think. I’m not moving on.
My head tingles in back and I jerk around. Kerri’s touched me. She hitches her chin like, Let’s go. Let’s leave them alone.
She can move on, I think. She can move out.
“Couldn’t we just talk, Erin?” Jo says. “How could that hurt?”
“We’ve said it all, Jo. It’s over.”
“Not us.” Jo’s eyes search through the mesh of screen. “Me and Nick. At least let us talk.”
All the need and yearning and desperation I feel for her comes burbling up. I struggle to swallow down the gulping tears. Please, Mom. Please.
Mom doesn’t hear. She doesn’t listen. She shakes her head and shuts the door.