LUKE: YOU BURNED DOWN THAT GUY’S HOUSE??
LUKE: JOEY WHAT THE FUCK
LUKE: THE COPS SHOWED UP AT MY DORM
LUKE: Where are you???
LUKE: I showed them our text history
LUKE: I’m so sorry
LUKE: I didn’t have a choice
LUKE: seemed like they already knew it was you anyway
LUKE: there was a witness
LUKE: WHERE ARE YOU
It’s seven in the morning and I just woke up to a relentless tap, tap, tap on the roof directly above my head. My brain barely had time to register they were raindrops before I swiped into my screen and saw that these texts have been burning a hole in my phone unanswered — along with an endless log of missed calls — for the past eight hours.
The nightmare I had overnight comes rushing back to me. A five-ton pit in my stomach tells me Luke’s texts are just the tip of the iceberg.
I gain control of my fingers just enough to tab out of the conversation and into Twitter.
The fire tweet blew up overnight. Thousands of retweets and replies drawing a giant spotlight on the destruction Mom and I have spent the past three days running from. Within moments of digging through the #ShortHillsFire hashtag, I find an updated Channel Four New Jersey story posted just an hour ago.
“Investigators have a lead in the mysterious Short Hills fire case…” the same reporter from Tuesday morning says; a selfie of Mom and me in her car flashes onto the screen. Mom’s Facebook profile picture. We took it on a random afternoon last fall when she was having an amazing hair day. “Police have issued a warrant for the arrest of thirty-four-year-old Gianna Rossi and her eighteen-year-old son, Joseph, both of Bayonne, who have been missing since Tuesday morning.”
My fingers go limp and my wrists turn to stone. My phone makes a muffled thud as it drops onto the carpeted floor of the loft.
Breathing? Nope. My lungs don’t know what that is. There’s not a single cell or organ in my body that knows what anything is. I’m just a frozen black hole of numbness — a frozen black hole of numbness who doesn’t know what the fuck to do next. I have to gasp for air.
This moment has been inevitable all along, I know. And yet I still can’t believe it’s happening.
How could our picture show up on the news without our knowledge? I think about all the pictures of everyday people — suspects, victims, whatever — I’ve ever seen flash in those little boxes on the screen over the years. I guess I’ve always just assumed it wasn’t a surprise to them. As if producers give a heads-up before the segment goes live or something. Hi there, we’re emailing to inform you that your mom’s profile picture will be used in tonight’s broadcast, in which you’ll both be identified as the primary suspects in an ongoing arson investigation. Tune in at ten o’clock!
I’m also thinking about all the pieces that must have come together over the past two days for the cops to figure this out. While Mom and I were driving up here blasting “Ring the Alarm,” they were searching for answers. While I was unsuccessfully making out with Will on the boat, they were searching for answers. While Mom and Marco were ripping each other’s heads off in the kitchen last night, they were searching for answers.
And now they’ve found them.
I almost fall several times on my way down to the living room. Climbing down a ladder in my current state is more difficult than riding a mechanical bull. Everything shakes and I can’t get a grip. It’s a miracle I don’t crack my head open.
The tap, tap, tap of the raindrops is the only sound in the house. There’s a certain peace in the air that totally betrays the chaos pounding and twisting and churning throughout my body. If it weren’t for my phone, this would be an extraordinarily chill Thursday morning. The view out the giant lake window is breathtaking in a whole new, dark way — an endless stream of water splashing into an endless puddle, a sky-consuming dark cloud where the sun used to be.
I barge into the guest bedroom and find Mom curled up on the floor. She’s weeping as the tap, tap, tap continues to assault the walls from all directions. Her face is buried in her hands, shrouded under her blanket of dark, dark hair. I can only imagine what her phone looks like right now.
“We’re on the news,” I say through a tear.
“I saw.” She looks and sounds like a ghost. “Richard texted.”
“Where’s Marco?” I ask. “Does he know?”
“No.” She stares straight ahead, out the window, as she answers. Her monotone is freaking me out. Shouldn’t she be hysterical? We should both be hysterical. “He left twenty minutes ago. Ran out of coffee.”
“We need to think of something!” I say. “Come on.”
She peels herself off the floor and messily folds herself into my arms. I brace for her to start sobbing harder — probably while yelling some variation of “I’m sorry” over and over again — but she doesn’t. We just stand there hugging as the windows continue to collect drops of rain. Tap, tap, tap. Minutes pass before either of us comes back to life.
And then she yells.
“How could you do that, Joey?” She pulls away and hits me on the chest. It’s like a switch has been flicked. “GPS coordinates? What were you thinking?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask. Mostly as a reflex. It really doesn’t matter anymore. “I don’t kno —”
She throws her phone at me.
RICHARD: You psychotic bitch
RICHARD: Your kid sent his boyfriend a location tag from my house
RICHARD: WHERE THE FUCK ARE YOU?
“I’m sorry.” I break into tears until my face is indistinguishable from the rain-soaked windows that surround us. “I’m sorry.”
“And you lied to me about it!” she weeps. “How could you keep a secret like that from me this whole time?”
I’m reminded of her secrets… but I can’t even think about those right now.
“I wasn’t thinking,” I stammer. “I mean, at the time I thought it was smart. I was showing him we weren’t at Rutgers. As proof that we didn’t trash his car.” I bite my lip and force a breath. “How was I supposed to know we’d end up burning the house down? That wasn’t a part of the plan!”
“We’re fucked,” Mom says. “We need to go back to Jersey and deal with this.”
“What? Why?” I ask. “Nobody knows we’re here.”
“There are warrants out for our arrest, Joey.” She pulls her hair back so hard I’m surprised it’s not coming out in clumps. “Do you know what that means? They’re looking for us. Marco and I have a history. It’s only a matter of time before they question him.”
“Maybe we can tell him the truth,” I say. “Maybe he’ll cover for us.”
“Then he becomes an accomplice! We’re not dragging him into this.”
“We’re not turning ourselves in.” I can’t believe she’s even suggesting something so extreme. After everything we’ve been through. “That would be insane.”
“Our faces are out there,” Mom says. “You sent Luke proof. It’s over. Maybe if we just tell the truth, we can make it out of this with a punishment that won’t completely destroy our lives.” She wipes her eyes. “No one got hurt. That has to count for something.”
“Mom.” I grab her by the shoulders. “We’re not the guilty ones here. Luke cheated on me. Richard lied to you about getting divorced — for two years. How is it fair that we’re the ones who should get arrested? We’re victims.”
This logic isn’t quite as comforting now that I know Mom is also a cheater — or at least has been, in the past. But it’s still enough for me to feel like turning ourselves in is not an option. We still have time to get back on the road. We haven’t spent any of the cash we came with — that can keep us afloat for a while until we figure out where we’re going.
“We have to go home,” Mom cries. “We have no choice.”
“We can get back in Nonna’s car!” I say. “And just keep driving.”
“Let’s be real. If we leave here, where are we going? We have four hundred dollars. We don’t have credit cards or passports. We don’t have another Marco living out in the wilderness somewhere who can take us in. We’ve run out of options. We’ll be living out of Nonna’s car.”
Maybe that’s true. But giving up? Driving down the highway, directly toward our own demise? It feels wrong on every level. I’m not ready to leave the lake. I’m not ready to stop believing this could all be nothing more than a bad dream. I’m not ready to let Luke and Richard — and every other man who’s ever treated us like we’re worthless — win.
I pace back and forth for a few seconds, as if the movement will somehow inspire a solution. The rain intensifies.
I look out the window and see Will’s house across the way — it’s about the size of a small jewelry box from this distance. I wonder what the three of them are doing right now. Probably sleeping, unaware it’s the end of the world. It kills me to think that up until just a few minutes ago, I was like them: unconscious, totally oblivious to the cancer lurking in my phone.
Actually? Maybe that should be our next move.
Sleep.
Denial.
Avoidance.
The end of the world is only happening digitally — on our phones, on Twitter, on local New Jersey news channels. Here in the physical realm, it’s just raining. I lean against the chunky wooden dresser in the corner and roll this idea around in my head.
The worst case scenario is that they track us down today and we get arrested. The best case scenario is… I don’t even know. I’m not delusional enough to believe that any of my starting-a-brand-new-life fantasies could actually come true now. But maybe we can at least steal another day, week, month of the lakeside illusion that everything is going to be okay. If we go back to Jersey right now, that illusion officially dies. Everything will stop being okay immediately.
“So then what if we just stay here?” I finally ask Mom. “Let them find us.”
She looks up from the floor and rubs her GIA necklace between her fingers for a moment. This means she’s absorbing the idea. Good.
“Our phones,” she finally says.
We exchange intense stares for a few seconds before coming to a nonverbal understanding. We know what we need to do next.
It’s anybody’s guess how much digital evidence we’ve already emitted with our phone activity thus far. Was my call to Nonna traceable to a nearby cell tower? Can they just track our GPS coordinates even if we don’t have GPS turned on? Maybe they can only do any of this shit if the phone actually exists. If it’s destroyed, how can anyone trace it? Mom had the right idea the day we got here. Our phones are nothing but liabilities — not to mention constant reminders of how fucked we are. Our eyes stay locked until we finally just mutter “the lake” in unison.
She springs into action — running into the living room, through the back sliding door, out onto the porch. She races barefoot down the steps without even looking back to see if I’m keeping up. Which I’m not. My feet are moving carefully — too intimidated by the slickness of the porch, the steps, the ground to really launch into a sprint.
She zooms down the hill toward the dock. I’m doing my best to catch up, but it’s kinda hard to run with water continuously assaulting my senses from all directions. It’s like I’m in the center of an endless waterfall that follows me around like a spotlight.
Mom seems to be unfazed. She glides over the swampy ground like some kind of Olympic relay star — except with a black spaghetti-strap tank top instead of a uniform and a soaking-wet cell phone clutched in her hand instead of a baton. And also with a flailing posture than I’m guessing any real Olympian would have addressed several training sessions ago.
I finally get into a groove by running on the balls of my feet, using the slipperiness of the grass to launch into each new step.
My anticipation builds as I look ahead. I think about the way we’re going to hurl our phones out into the vastness of the water — with all our might — never to deal with any of that bullshit again. A few days ago, the thought of losing my phone would have been on par with the thought of losing some kind of essential organ. Now I can’t think of anything more freeing.
My speed increases just enough to make it out onto the dock at just the same time as Mom. The wooden surface is slimy against my feet but a very welcome change of texture. It almost feels like solid ground.
“We should have worn shoes for this!” I yell through the panoramic sound of rain beating against lake.
“You think?” Mom sarcastically yells back.
We both start laughing at the absurdity of this entire situation. There’s no turning back now. Even if we don’t throw our phones in the lake, they’ve probably suffered enough water damage from the run alone to stop functioning properly. But I’m not even close to having a change of heart. The more we stand out here like drenched lunatics, the more I realize just how much hatred I have for this stupid little device in my hand. I know the real root of this entire problem is the pain Luke and Richard caused us — but it’s our phones that set everything into motion. Our entire breakup saga took place over text message. Mom found out about Richard’s house being on the market through her goddamn Zillow app. The angry text messages, the retweets, the news reports — none of this would have existed without a network connection.
Good fucking riddance.
I look at Mom and realize that at some point our laughing fit has evolved into a crying one. Our tears are impossible to differentiate from the rain, but the look on her face and the feeling of mine give it away. We wipe our eyes simultaneously — more as a reflex than anything — and swap knowing nods.
Good fucking riddance.
The dock unfurls like an airplane runway ahead of us. We do a final death sprint toward the water and, upon reaching the dock’s edge, wind our arms up. One, two, three — throw. Our phones are airborne. We’ve hurled them with enough force that there’s actually a decent shape to the way they arch up before nosediving down and sinking into the water like a pair of bombs. Between this and my batting skills from the other night, we should probably just join a softball league.
“Holy shit,” I say breathlessly through a zillion raindrops.
The magnitude of what we’ve just done hits me all at once.
We’re… free. We’re also lost, disconnected, unreachable, and fucked — totally out of touch with reality from here on out. But then again, isn’t this reality? Mom and I standing out here in the rain — no one around to witness us but each other — soaking, sobbing, surrendering. Giving in to the unknown. No more tweets or articles to keep us informed on the status of our impending demise. No more bzzz-es from Luke or Richard. No more anything — other than what’s directly in front of us. All we have is each other.
“Yeah.” Mom looks at me with equal parts relief and terror. “Holy shit.”