43. Magic

Time scrapes by, the same needle on the same side of the same album turning around and around.

Mom comes and goes, doing a little better, staying busy. But sometimes I hear her come back home really late and then I see her the next morning and know her habits haven’t changed. I don’t have to smell her breath to know. Drinking somewhere other than home is still drinking. To avoid a lecture, she promises that we’re going to get cable and Internet.

I’m sixteen years old. I should be the one getting lectured.

Classes remain the same. Schoolwork remains the same. I’m uninterested and uninvolved. The same way 99 percent of the students are regarding me.

Jocelyn is a stranger. And all the words I summed up and scripted in a silly little letter remain missing, just like our brief friendship.

If that’s what I can call it.

Rachel reaches out to me, just as Poe seems to try to cast an evil spell on me every time I see her. In my mind they balance each other out.

Every now and then I see Ray. He talks to me like I’m part of the crowd at a pep rally, shaking my hand or patting me on the back.

This is life.

This is how I spend my days.

I long to be twenty-seven and grown up. Why twenty-seven? It just sounds good. Not married—no way. But living in a house. No, scratch that. Living in a cool loft in a big city. New York, maybe Chicago. With a serious girlfriend. With a bunch of guys I like hanging around with. With a sweet car. And an awesome job that pays way too much.

Is this too much to ask for?

Maybe.

It feels like a mirage. Like the promise of water when I’m in the middle of a desert.

The days in that second week of November smear away, leaving empty slots on a calendar I ignore.

The weekend approaches, and with it comes the promise of getting away from here, of getting away from the reality that I don’t have much to look forward to day after day.

Friday finds me alone at my locker, and I feel something touch my arm.

For the second time in a week, I see Jocelyn in tears.

“Chris …”

Then she gives me a big hug.

When she moves away, I see something in her hand.

Then I realize.

My note found its way to her.

“How did you—”

But she puts a finger on my lips and stops me from saying anything else.

“Later.”

“What?” I ask.

“Don’t say anything. Okay? Not now. Just wait for later.”

“Later?”

“Are you doing anything tonight?”

I chuckle. “Yeah, I have a double date I’m going on.”

“Seriously.”

“No.”

“Then meet me at my locker at the end of the day.”

“For what?”

She gives me a heartmelting smile that seems to say I adore you and I’m sorry and I’m yours all in some magical way.

Or maybe I imagined that.

Maybe I’m imagining this.

“Okay” is what I think I say.

Then she’s gone.