“It’s on one of the papers I gave you this morning, remember? I told you. I showed it to you.” She looks freaked again and her voice is on the fringe of yelling. “You have that sheet, right? Please check.”
“Oh, yeah,” I say. I’m sure she’s right. “Yeah, I have it. Sorry, I just forgot.” I watch her cautiously.
She waits for me to check, so I do. Sure enough, there it is. I feel her eyes boring into me. And for a second, I wonder why I ever left the freedom of the street.
She smiles, finally. “Good. I’m getting you a cell phone tomorrow. Please make sure you always let me know where you are. And can you memorize the home phone number? Please?” She’s calmer now.
“Great. Okay. I will,” I say. A cell phone? I have exactly no one else to call. It will be like a leash to my mother. Nice. Quite the reality check seeing the overprotective side of her.
And then we just stand there, quiet, awkward, so I start my homework at the table so Mama can hawk all over me.
I want to talk about things. I do. But it’s so hard. We can’t do it when Gracie’s around, and when we’re alone, it’s so hard to start the conversation. It’s like the words weigh a thousand pounds each. So I don’t say anything.
At dinner, all five of us sit around the table like a TV family and talk about our days. I have never, ever done this before. With Ellen, it was so laid-back—we ate whenever we had food, wherever we happened to be standing. Once again, I feel like I’m on a TV show. I wonder what each of them is thinking. If it’s as weird for them as it is for me.
I help with the dishes afterward, and then go and hide down in the basement for a few hours, making my space more comfortable with an old quilt I find in the bottom drawer of a beat-up dresser. And then I look for more treasures in my Ethan boxes. The building blocks and collectible cards and books, all neatly packed. Shoe boxes filled with school report cards and math papers and art projects Mama saved. And the photos. I stare and stare at myself, trying to absorb that part of my life, those first seven years. But it’s all still so cold. Looking at the photos is like looking at pictures of myself superimposed in strange settings. I memorize everything.
It’s each of us in our beds, in the dark, when Blake says, “You’re hooking up with Cami, I suppose.”
I hear jealousy in his voice, but I might be wrong. “No,” I say.
“Why not?”
I open my eyes and stare into the darkness. “She’s got a boyfriend.”
“No she doesn’t.”
“Yeah, he just doesn’t ride the bus.”
“Oh.” Blake doesn’t sound convinced.
Silence.
“So,” I say. “You want to tell me what it was like?”
Blake is so quiet, I think he’s sleeping. But then, after a while, he says, “I was just really mad at you. That’s what I remember. Being mad.”
“It’s okay.” I just want him to say it and get over it, so things aren’t so weird.
“Why did you do it? Why did you go with strangers in that car?”
“I don’t know, Blakey.” I heard Gracie call him that once.
There’s another pause. “You used to call me that. You’re the one who started that nickname.”
“I know,” I lie. I just want him to love me.
To forgive me.
He’s quiet for a minute. “You have no idea how you wrecked everything. Mama and Dad started fighting all the time. Crying. Nobody gave a crap about me. It was all about you. And then when we finally got a little bit used to you being gone, me all alone with them, Mama not crying ten times every day, there was the baby.”
“I’m really sorry.”
I hear Blake roll over, turn his back to me, and then he says, muffled, “It’s still all about you. Always will be. Both of you. You guys are like . . . I don’t know. The Lost Boy and the Miracle Girl who took his place.”
CHAPTER 16
I lie awake in bed for a half hour, thinking, before I climb out and go to the kitchen for a drink. Russell is roaming the house, stalking shadows. I picture him on the street, where we’d be enemies competing for food. Inside, we are friends. I give him a cat treat, take my water with me, and wander to the living room, where I see a soft glow of light.
Mama’s still up. She’s in her bathrobe in the dark, watching a late show with the sound on low. The only light is from the TV. She motions for me to come.
I sit down next to her on the couch. “Hey.”
“Can’t sleep?”
“Nope. You?”
Mama smiles. “Same. This is all really crazy, isn’t it. You doing okay?”
The TV flashes. “Yeah. Pretty much.”
“I set an appointment for you to see a psychologist. The one that CPS recommended to me is on vacation this week, so we’re in for next week. Okay?”
I bite the inside of my cheek and say the right thing. “Yeah. I suppose.”
“I know it’s got to feel really strange to be here. We’re all so glad you’re back, Ethan. We really are. It’s just going to take some adjusting for all of us.”
Adjusting. It’s pretty much all I do—I am an expert. “I’ve made adjustments before.”
“Have you? Like what?”
And there it is. An opening. I feel her lean toward me just a fraction. Eager, but not pushing me.
I take a breath and let it out. Deciding. “The woman who . . . had me. Um . . . Eleanor.” I’m not sure why I want to keep protecting Ellen’s name, but I do. “After a while, after everything—having me for all those years—she got rid of me. Couldn’t afford to keep me anymore. She drove me out to Nebraska to a youth home. You can drop your kids off there in Nebraska, did you know that? No penalty. Leave ’em for good,” I say. “And people do it. She did that.”