“Oh no,” Dad says, pushing open my bedroom door with the basket of folded laundry. “I thought we were done with this.”
From my bed, I peel my puffy eyelids open to look at him then close them again.
A rolled-up pair of socks hits me in the head.
“Dad!”
“Honest mistake.” He holds up the palms of both hands. “I was aiming for your face.”
I grunt and turn away from him.
Another pair of socks hits my head. I don’t react this time. He’ll eventually run out of ammo. I can outlast him.
“Hey, Rebecca, come on.” The corner of my mattress dips as he sits beside me and then his hand is resting on my head. “You gotta snap out of this.”
“He should have been back by now.” My voice is muffled because most of my face is buried in my pillow. “It’s been so long.”
Dad’s big hand strokes my hair. “I’m sorry.”
But that doesn’t help, I want to say. It doesn’t change anything. Ethan’s still gone. Instead I roll over and into Dad’s waiting arms. “He’s my best friend.”
“I know.” I feel a light kiss on the top of my head. “I know.”
Ethan has been gone five months this time, five months! That’s longer than he got to stay.
I hadn’t said it out loud, but this last time I was starting to think, to hope, that maybe his mom wouldn’t come back. That he’d get to stay.
And I’d get to keep him.
“I hate her,” I say.
“No, no.” His hands on my shoulders pull me back so I can see his face, and his round blue eyes under thick bushy brows focus intently on mine. “Don’t say that. You don’t ever want to have hate in your heart for another person.”
I can feel my chin quiver under his stern words. Ethan’s been in and out of my life for years and every time he goes away it hurts more than the last time. And he’s always different in little ways when he comes back, like pieces of him have been chipped away. He won’t laugh at our inside jokes the same way or the sight of something innocuous will send him into a silence so deep it takes me days to draw him out again.
Once he came back with only one set of clothes that he refused to change out of for a week. I finally pushed him the pool. In January. He stopped swearing at me only when I jumped in too.
Another time he came back with half his head shaved and bruises on his arms that he only ever showed me. I offered to partially shave my head too but my dad caught us with the clippers and eventually persuaded Ethan to let him even out Ethan’s hair instead.
And whenever I asked him about what happened when he was in California, he got so angry, like bash-his-skateboard-through-his-grandfather’s-windshield angry. I’d been so afraid he’d get into real trouble for that that I’d come up with this elaborate story about a freak haboob dust storm that made him crash into the car. I don’t know if the Kellys believed my lie, but the truth hadn’t been something either of them wanted to consider either.
He’s been gone for months and every time I look out my window to his empty bedroom I want to cry all over again.
“You can’t stay in bed again today.” Dad’s voice is softer now. “Mom and I are starting to get worried—”
Yeah, right, they’re both worried. That’s why mom is here with him right now instead of her office again.
“—about the smell.”
When I don’t even crack a smile, Dad hugs me again. “Can you call him or write him?”
I shake my head. “We don’t do that.”
“What can I do?”
I let him hold me. “Just don’t ever leave me.”
His arms tighten. “Easiest promise I’ll ever make.”