She didn’t answer, just looked at me like she wasn’t sure who I was. I wasn’t sure either sometimes.
I took Jenna home. I knew I needed to apologize again, but I also knew it wouldn’t fix anything. I’d taken a perfect day and trashed it. I was sorry Jenna had had to see me like that. I was sorry that I’d flashed out and turned into the old Luke. But I wasn’t sorry for hitting that jerk, and I wouldn’t have taken it back if I could. I wished I’d punched him in the mouth. He deserved it. But I deserved worse because I was indeed trying to take Jenna for myself. Not that she was something to claim. No one was ever going to possess Jenna. But I found myself jealous of the time she spent with Ian and wishing she would stop. But I wouldn’t ask. I was afraid of her answer.
Her mom’s car was in the driveway, but the house was dark.
“Do you want me to walk you in?” I asked.
“No, it’s fine.” She tried to smile at me, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “I’ll see you later.” She slid out of the truck. I watched her walk across the shadowed lawn and open her front door. I didn’t pull away until the door shut behind her.
I hated the fear and uncertainty in Jenna’s eyes, and hated it even worse that I’d put it there. If Mom found out, she was going to chain me up in my room. I was supposed to be on house arrest, so I was glad the cops hadn’t been called. I didn’t need to add assault to my already long list of offenses. The old Luke had done plenty of community service and met numerous times with probation officers. Better that Jenna not know about that. But it didn’t matter. All the hope in the world meant absolutely nothing if I couldn’t behave myself. And I was obviously still having serious problems with that.
This was the first time I felt bad for something I didn’t regret. I pressed down on the accelerator, hoping speed would blow the shards out of my head. I couldn’t understand why I always did things I didn’t want to do and couldn’t do the things I knew I should. I didn’t want to lose Jenna. I should have walked away. It was too late for either now.
I was almost home. The pavement turned to gravel, and I took a corner too fast, almost fishtailing into the ditch. Something clattered to the floor. Jenna’s phone. I hit the brake. I didn’t want to face her, but I knew I was going to. Maybe I just wanted an excuse to go back. I turned around and headed to Jenna’s house.
The lights were on when I parked in the driveway. I knocked on the door, but nobody answered. When I heard a crash, I didn’t wait for an invitation.
I smelled vomit as I stepped through the door. There was an empty vodka bottle overturned on the carpet, and a half-empty bottle of rum sitting on the coffee table. Wads of tissue were everywhere. There was no sign of Jenna or her mom.
“Jenna?” Banging came from an open door off the living room. I walked into the dark room and toward a rectangle of light.
Jenna’s mom was laid out on the bathroom tile, her face pale, her hair tangled; Jenna was trying unsuccessfully to pick her up. The sick smell was even stronger in there.
Jenna jumped when she heard me, and her surprise quickly turned to anger. She wiped at her face—I was pretty sure she’d been crying. “What are you doing here?”
“You left your phone,” I said, holding it up. “Is she okay?” She didn’t look okay.
“She’s fine,” Jenna snapped. “She passed out.”
“Can I help?” I laid Jenna’s phone on the dresser and stepped into the tiny bathroom.
“No,” Jenna said. She looked fierce, her eyes hard and jaw sharp. Then she sighed and stood up. “Help me get her to the bed.”
I brushed Jenna away when she tried to help. “I’ve got it,” I said. I scooped her mom up off the floor. She weighed almost nothing. She looked less like Jenna up close. I laid her on the bed and stepped back.
“Thanks,” Jenna said. “Wait outside. I’m going to get her changed.”
I went into the living room. I knew Jenna didn’t want me there. She didn’t want an audience to her pain. I understood that perfectly. But I couldn’t make myself leave.
Jenna looked years older as she emerged from her mom’s room, and I got a glimpse of what she would look like as an adult. The world was already chipping away at her, and there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. I was stupid to have wanted to create a perfect world for her. I’d never be enough for that.
Jenna seemed to have forgotten I was there as she walked into the kitchen and returned with paper towels and a garbage bag. She started cleaning up the vomit next to the couch. I threw away the vodka bottle and some tissues.
“All of it,” Jenna said, finally acknowledging my presence. “Throw it all away. Even the tumbler.”
I tossed the rum and the red cup while Jenna sprayed something on the carpet to get rid of the smell, and then we were in the kitchen, rummaging through the cabinets and fridge, looking for the rest of the alcohol.
“Sorry about all this,” Jenna said, even though I was the one who needed to apologize. “I guess I should have mentioned it up front. Hi. My name is Jenna. My mother is turning into an alcoholic. What’s your dysfunction?”
I flinched—that one hit a little close to home. I set the bag, now heavy with some wine and whiskey, outside the back door and joined Jenna in the living room. She folded onto the couch and draped a blanket over her feet. She looked exhausted.
“I’m the one who needs to apologize,” I said, sitting next to her.
“Yeah, what was that all about anyway?” Jenna asked.
She looked at me, waiting for my explanation. I didn’t want to tell her anything. I wanted to tell her everything.
“The old Luke,” I said finally. “He’s a bastard. I don’t like him all that much.”
“Yeah, that was pretty intense,” she said. “Not that Kyle didn’t have it coming. He’s been needing someone to take him down a notch or two for a while now. He’s going to make your life miserable,” she told me.
I didn’t laugh, although the idea that the arrogant prick could somehow make my life any more miserable than it already was seemed absurd. “I can handle it,” I said.
“And while I’m not a fan of your method, I do appreciate you sticking up for me.”
“I’ve always had a little trouble with my temper. Got me into more scrapes than I can remember. I didn’t like him talking about you like that—thinking about you like that.”
“Just promise me you won’t get into any more fights on my behalf.”
I didn’t know if that was a promise I could keep. A fight between Ian and me was pretty inevitable at this point. But I wanted to stay with her, so I would promise her anything. I nodded instead.
It was getting late and I knew I needed to leave, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.
Jenna leaned forward and looked at me. “What do you want to do after high school?” she asked.
That was a loaded question. I knew what I wasn’t going to do. I wasn’t going off to college—I’d probably screwed my grades up too much for that anyway. I wasn’t going to join a frat or tailgate. I wasn’t going to do any of the things that Ian was. He’d followed the rules and gained it all. I’d been stupid and irresponsible and destroyed my future.
“I have no idea,” I admitted. “You?”
“I used to have all these plans,” she said. “But now I don’t know.”
“Why?”
“My mom.” Her voice was heavy. “My mom is screwing everything up. Her drinking is getting worse, and I’m afraid about what’s going to happen if I’m not here.”
“You can’t stay here just to take care of your mom. You’ll regret it forever.” I had experience with regret.
“I know. But I can’t leave her alone if she’s going to drink herself to death.”
“She can’t ask you to stay here and take care of her,” I said. “She’s a big girl.”
“If I’m not here, there won’t be anyone to put her to bed, or roll her over to keep her from choking on her own vomit, or help her get better instead of worse. I feel responsible.”
“She’s your mother. It’s
her
responsibility to take care of
you
. Period.”
Jenna looked down and picked at the edge of the blanket. Her voice was soft, hesitant. “I don’t want to end up like her. I feel so bad saying that out loud, because she’s not a bad person. But I don’t want to get stuck here. I don’t want to become an alcoholic like the rest of my family. I know I’m going to make mistakes, but I want them to be my mistakes.” She sighed. “But I’m scared to go off somewhere far away all by myself, even though it’s exactly what I want. I want to meet new people and do new things. I want to see the world. But I’m afraid of failing and being really lonely.”
I reached over and ran my finger down the side of her face. “You aren’t ever going to be lonely. No matter where you go, people are going to line up around the block to be with you.”
Jenna’s laugh was beautiful. “You’re just saying that so I’ll sleep with you.”
I loved being with Jenna. “Maybe. But it’s the truth, too.”
She shook her head. “It’s easy to live in a tiny town and talk about what I’m going to do. Actually going out and doing it is a different matter completely. Sometimes I get scared.” She pushed her hair behind her ears. Her face was as far away from afraid as it could be. “It’s like right before a race. I’ve been planning my strategy for weeks and I’m focused. My arms and legs practically hum with motion, ready to jump and push the second the gun fires. I chew on the end of my tongue and look down the tunnel. I don’t even notice anyone else, because it isn’t a race against them. It’s a race against myself, to see if I can be better, faster, stronger than I was yesterday. And all I can see is the course in front of me. I’m ready.”
She looked ready to face anything, no matter what she believed. She put so much pressure on herself to be perfect, to be better, and she didn’t even realize how wonderful she already was.
“But when the gun goes off,” she continued, “in that nanosecond between hearing the gun and jumping across the line, I only feel fear—because I have no idea how it’s going to end. Weeks of training and mental preparation all come down to that one single moment, that one race on that one day, and what if I fail? Of course, once my legs jump and I’m in motion, all that doubt goes away and I just run. But sometimes it feels like there’s an eternity in that nanosecond.”
I wasn’t a runner, but I knew what she meant. I knew exactly how long a split second could be. “Come on.”
Jenna gave me a half-smile. “Where are we going?”
I took her hand and pulled her off the couch. “Temperance movement.”
Luke grabbed the bag full of alcohol, and we climbed in his truck. I rolled the windows down and turned up the radio as we pulled onto the highway, hoping the music would fill my head and push out all my unwanted thoughts, willing the wind to snatch them up and blow them away. I smelled freshly cut grass and baking asphalt and summer.
We drove out of town, letting the warm breeze blow the night off us. The headlights caught snatches of conversation between trees. Luke waited until there was nothing but stars and countryside before opening the garbage bag of liquor. He stopped at the stop sign at the end of the dirt road and handed me one of the bottles.
“Hit the sign,” he said.
“With this?”
Luke’s stare was penetrating. “Hit the sign.”
I leaned out the window and tossed the bottle. My aim was off, and it slammed against the green pole instead, but there was a satisfying sound of shattering glass. It felt a little like success.
Luke drove again, gaining speed, and I pulled out a bottle of rum. I held it out of the window by its narrow neck, then tossed it up as I passed a speed limit sign. Dead on. This time I laughed. Luke drove faster and I kept smashing the bottles, tossing out the whiskey, and the Chardonnay, and finally the Merlot, which left a crimson smear on the white wooden sign advertising cattle for sale.
“Sometimes you just have to release the pressure,” Luke said.
And that’s exactly what it felt like. By the time we’d made it almost to the lake, the bag was empty and my head was lighter. Luke understood. He didn’t have to say a word—it was carved into his every pore, and if I knew nothing else, I knew we felt the same. Somehow, Luke knew what it was like to be in my skin.
Luke pulled up at the cove. Our spot. He grabbed the blanket, which was still a little damp from the rain, from the backseat and spread it on the soft dirt. We lay down and counted the stars. Luke’s chest pressed against my back, his arm around my waist and the other curled underneath his head. I listened to our breathing and felt his heart pound and knew the moment that our hearts were beating at the same time. It only lasted a few beats before mine was a half-second ahead, but in those few beats the world could have caught fire and I wouldn’t have noticed.
His heartbeat pushed away my anxiety. His skin blocked out the rift between my mother and me. I knew my problems were waiting in the shadows, ready to pounce, but they weren’t gnawing at me just then.
I rolled over and pressed my face into his neck. His skin was warm and smelled like cut wood and soap. I kissed his jaw, and he looked down at me and smiled. I reached up and ran my fingers through his hair.
“Why are you here?” he asked.
The question caught me off-guard. “Do you want me to leave?”
He didn’t smile. His face was still and sharp. “Why are you here with me?” He pushed my hair over my shoulder, his fingertips brushing along my collarbone. “You picked the right brother the first time.”
“You’re right,” I said.
He looked hurt, then resigned.
“I picked you the first time I met you,” I explained. “At the hospital.”
His look was careful. “What are you talking about?”
“That was you at the hospital, wasn’t it?” I asked. “Pretending to be Ian?” When he hesitated, I added, “Don’t lie.”
He just nodded. And I wasn’t surprised. I had suspected it that night in my room, the way his hand had hovered over the half-whittled seagull. But I hadn’t been sure. I wasn’t sure why he hadn’t told me either.
“Why lie?”
“I didn’t lie,” he said. “I never told you I was Ian. If my mom hadn’t hollered Ian’s name, I never would have told you I was him. He’d agreed to keep quiet so I could pretend to be him and get out of the state. Away from my dad. Away from my life, if only for a little while. I wasn’t supposed to meet you. And then it was just easier to pretend that it hadn’t been me. Ian is better for you.”