David John tells him to go lie down for a bit. Don’t worry about Jewel, he says. He’ll call Jessup’s mom. She’s at Wyatt’s house, visiting with Wyatt’s mom, but she’s got to go to the grocery store anyway; she can grab Jewel on the way home.
He does. He doesn’t expect to fall asleep, but as soon as he closes his eyes he’s waking up, the afternoon gone by. He can hear the television, the gentle electricity of his mother laughing at something, Jewel asking a question, David John responding. It’s light out still, but it’s fading. It’s not snowing anymore, a temporary break in the action, the sky still pregnant with clouds. He checks his phone. The forecast calls for two to four more inches overnight, cold tomorrow, but then warming up Wednesday. The weekend is supposed to be sunny and in the fifties. He’ll go duck hunting.
Football practice.
He’s missing practice. They’re on the field right now. Still warming up, only half an hour in. If he hurries out the door right now, he can get there. He hasn’t missed a single practice in high school, not once, and he thinks, if he just tells Coach Diggins . . . Tells him what?
He sits up, puts his feet on the floor, but he knows he’s not going to practice. Not tonight. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’ll go. He’ll ask Coach Diggins if he can talk to him before practice. He’ll apologize. He’ll be a man. Look him in the eye and say he wants to address the team, wants to tell them they are his brothers. All of them.
From out of nowhere he’s overcome with thirst. As if he slept in the desert, the sun baking him, sucking the moisture from his body, and he wobbles to his feet. He goes to the bathroom, sticks his mouth to the faucet. The water is cold. Take me to the river, he thinks. Baptism.
When he walks into the kitchen, he sees his family sitting at the table. David John is scrunched in next to Jewel, helping her with her math. He’s got his reading glasses on again and is holding a pencil, working through the problem set with her. His mom is reading another library book. He can’t tell what it is, but he knows her, knows it will be something inspirational. Something about faith and family. There’s a bowl of popcorn on the table, and David John has his free hand in there, rooting around. He glances up and sees Jessup.
“How was your nap?”
“Good,” Jessup says. And it was good. He needed it, he realizes. “I could have slept forever.”
His mom reaches for him, takes his hand. “We need to talk. It’s important. Can you sit down for a minute, honey?”
He does. David John and his mom are staring at him expectantly. It scares him, except Jewel is still working on her math. Whatever this is, she’s heard it already.
“What is it?” He knows he should be afraid that the cops have figured out what happened with Corson, but that feels like it happened so long ago that it never even happened. Instead he’s seized with the sudden fear that they are about to tell him that Ricky is dead.
But that’s not it.
“We’re moving,” David John says.