Chapter 2

The leather of Jonny’s jacket rests cool against my cheek. He cradles my head. I guess I’m strong enough to show weakness after all. He was only keeping my skull from bouncing off the concrete floor.

“Should I call an ambulance or something?”

I manage a moan as I struggle to sit forward.

“Any more bandages and I’ll be a mummy,” I say, and then with the cold of the floor seeping through my jeans and into my bones, my head in his lap, I explain what happened last week. He knows a lot of it, but I try to recall everything, starting from the beginning, and he listens, but doesn’t ask a single question, only listens.

I tell him about how I cracked a credit card fraud case but then traded the information with the banker in return for a break on our mortgage payments. I explain how the cops had this weird hazing ritual where they gave me a fake laptop and told me it was a serial killer’s and I was supposed to profile it—and I did. But it turned out to the police chief’s old laptop and he fired me for thinking he was a murderer. And finally, I talk about last night.

Last night I saved Hannah from shooting a stalker and maybe something worse, taking her own life. I held her gun. Pushed the barrel of a Glock 22 against a man’s head, aiming it at his brainstem, and pulled the trigger. Started to pull the trigger … there’s a big difference. One’s messier. When I’m done, Jonny swears.

“Have you eaten anything? What can I do?”

I shake my head. “Bed,” I say. Janus is fairly strong.

With one arm around his neck and the other clutching a crutch, we limp to the elevator. I live in the computer recycling facility that my mom and I run. The elevator takes us to the office floor we’ve turned into a home.

“I bet this wasn’t quite what you expected when I invited you over.” My laughter is too high pitched and strained as the doors reveal a wide-open floor delineated by a couch, side tables, a recliner, an old IKEA table and some lamps. Open space is a good thing for a home with a wheelchairer like my mom.

Jonny doesn’t seem so nervous anymore—he’s stopped quaking. Out of the corner of my eye I see him rake his fingers through his hair. Then things begin to blur. My body sways, but I’m too tired to do anything about it.

Darkness has been hunting from my peripheral vision. It closes in for the kill.

Jonny doesn’t seem to notice. From far away I hear him talking: “Nope, but that’s okay. Not that you’re okay. I’m sorry about your mom and—”

I go boneless.

Jonny half carries, half drags me backward to bed. My shoe pops off from the friction against my heels. We’re so romantic. Me a sack of potatoes, him wheezing under my weight, thin arms finally giving out so that I flop on to my mattress. The ceiling spins, its galaxy of glow-in-the-dark stars swirling.

And I realize I didn’t call in the cavalry for desire, I did it out of desperate need. He bends, hooks one arm beneath my knees and the other my armpit, and hauls me deeper onto the bed.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asks.

“Yep,” I manage.

“I have to be home before my mom wakes up.”

With my dad gone, my mom hospitalized, and me lying in a dark warehouse, I’ve never felt less alone in my life.

“Don’t forget …” I start to remind him to set the alarm, but I’m already dozy.

In the office formerly allocated to the Vice President Sales, we spoon, me shuddering with cold, Jonny talking about what happened at school and ideas for graffiti designs, everything except questions. Finally my quaking subsides, and the jumble of my thoughts quiet. I sleep.

When I wake, light from the windows streams in; winter’s pale glare hurts my eyes but fails to warm. Jonny rolls over and a cool swirls between us.

“Jonny,” I say. “Your mom!”

It’s like he’s leaping up to catch a wave: suddenly he’s crouching, arms out. “My mom!”

“I’m late for school,” I shout. I can’t be late. The principal’s latest email was clear. If I miss one more day, I need to retake the semester. That’s not going to happen. Can’t happen.

I have fifteen minutes. My chest explodes with pain as I swing my legs to the side of the bed.

I bear down on the agony, reminding myself what it was for and that not five miles away my mother is in a psychiatric ward, being chemically paralyzed, preparing to suck up a gajillion volts of electricity in the hopes of jumpstarting her happiness.

“We can do this,” I lie.

Over the next five minutes I treat Jonny to the least sexy changing of clothes ever, me flopping around on my bed, trying to yank jeans past a cast and my butt, then his obvious disappointment when he helps change my shirt only to discover an impenetrable breast-eliminating bandage and a bruise that makes me look like I lost a fight with a giant squid.

My car’s been towed to the police department, so I grab the keys to my mom’s van and a banana. I don’t know why I didn’t think of the van before. Detective Williams says I can’t drive with my cast. But if I’m too handicapped to drive, then surely I can drive a handicapped van!

As I scrape the frost from the windshield, Jonny rubs his fist against the back to clear it, huffing breath on to his fingers to warm them.

Trin, our only employee, arrives to cover for me while I’m at school. He drives a white electric scooter and reminds me a bit of Snoopy from the Charlie Brown cartoon the way he’s wearing aviator goggles beneath a black helmet with a spike on top, scarf stringing out behind him.

“Take down the Red Baron on the way here?” I ask.

He pulls his helmet and arches a penciled-on eyebrow.

“Don’t mind me,” I say.

“How iz your mom?” he asks, the Haitian accent making him sound a little like French royalty.

“Shockingly poor,” I say. “But she’ll have more energy soon.” No one gets the joke.

There’s an inch of fresh snow on the ground. I know from doing the bills that my mom never paid the last snow plowing service—not to mention the mortgage. This winter, it’s me and Trin and two shovels to clear an acre of lot.

“Ready?” Jonny asks, holding a red hand to his cheek, having stowed his bike in the back of the van.

“Giddyup,” I say and wave to Trin, who flips the store sign to Open.

The morning reeks of optimism I don’t feel.

While turning the key in the ignition, I say, “Thanks, Jonny.”

He winks. “What are boyfriends for?”

And for once, I’m beginning to understand. Over the past week I made out with Jonny every chance I got, thinking that’s what a boyfriend was for, or needed anyways, and I’m not saying I didn’t enjoy it, but this … this is way more. For once, I think I might trust someone who isn’t an avatar.

The engine rumbles to life. My mom’s van has modifications so she doesn’t need the use of her legs to drive it. Although she’s had it for years, this is a first for me.

“How hard can this be?” I say, putting the van into drive.

Jonny braces himself with his feet up on the dash.

“You’re picturing that YouTube video with the guy with no legs or arms driving with his chin, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” I say, resting my chin on the steering wheel. “That was awesome.”