Once Sawyer and I migrate to the living room with Trey and Rowan, I ask them, feeling a little ashamed, “You guys doing okay? I’m really sorry I blasted out of here.”
“It’s just weird,” Rowan says. “I feel so bad.”
Trey nods. “It sucks. It’s like we had this power to do something good, and we didn’t use it.”
“Not didn’t,” Sawyer says. “Couldn’t. We did our best. We did everything we could think of to stop it. But we can’t force some stranger to give us what we need.”
“And now it’s over,” I say softly. I still can’t believe it. “I mean, I think so. There’s nobody for Tori to pass the vision curse to.”
“Tori told us the vision is completely gone,” Sawyer explains, and he fills in the others on our visit.
And it’s a boring Friday night for the first time in forever. None of us are working. There’s no vision to ponder. Ben shows up after a while and we all hang out in Aunt Mary’s living room, even the cousins, and we play this game called Apples to Apples, and after months of stress, it’s like I’m finally starting to decompress. It’s over.
It’s really over.
When my dad comes home around nine, he doesn’t have pocketfuls of scavenged burned junk. He has ice chests and ice and bags of groceries. We stop our game and look up as he stands in the kitchen, arms laden.
“Two things,” he says in his old familiar, booming voice, and it shocks me to hear it again after so long. “First, our new landlord just called and said we don’t have to wait until the fifteenth—the house is ready and we can move in on Sunday.”
We try not to cheer too loudly because we don’t want to seem ungrateful, but we are all ecstatic over this news.
“And second,” Dad continues, holding up a bag of groceries, “Paula and I are taking Demarco’s Food Truck out tomorrow. And next week, and the next, and every day until we open the doors of our new, improved restaurant!”
The household breaks into applause, and I cheer too, at first, until the doubt creeps in and all I can do is clasp my hands together and stare at my dad’s flushed cheeks and triumphant smile, and wait for the cracks to come back and ruin it all.
Twenty-Two
Mom and Dad start preparing the sauce on Aunt Mary’s stove for tomorrow’s big day in the meatball truck. We go back to our game, eventually forfeiting so the little kids win, because Aunt Mary says they have to go to bed as soon as the game is over, and we just want to get rid of them because we’re selfish teenagers like that.
Nick sticks around and hangs out with us because all his friends are working tonight. He doesn’t say much. We don’t really have anything in common, even though he’s between Trey and me in age and we played together a lot when we were little. We haven’t been close since I started elementary school, even when he spent an occasional day working for the restaurant.
So things are somewhat quiet, and we can’t talk about what happened with the vision even if we want to. And strangely, I don’t want to. I snuggle into Sawyer and he drapes his arm over my shoulders, and it feels wonderful to be safe and stress free for once.
I think about the man who has to bury his parents. I look up at Sawyer and murmur, “Should we go to the funeral?” And I love that he immediately knows what I’m talking about.
“We can do that. I’ll try to find out when it is.”
I nod. He smiles.
When I get a text message, I look at my phone. “It’s from Tori,” I say. I open it and read: I’m so sorry.
That’s all there is.
I raise an eyebrow and mutter, “Jules is not impressed.” I shove the phone back into my pocket.
“What was that?” Sawyer says near my ear.
“Tori says she’s sorry.”
“Good. Maybe she understands it now. What did you say back?”
I grunt.
Sawyer shifts so he can look at my face. “Jules,” he says, “I know how you feel, but there are a few factors here that you’re not really considering. One, she couldn’t see the phone screen because of the vision playing out on it. Two, her mother dictates absolutely everything.”
“Her mother ought to be the one saying sorry,” I mutter.
“And three,” Sawyer continues in a louder voice, pretending he didn’t hear me, “Tori has been heavily medicated this entire time. Do you even remember when you were on your pain medication in the hospital? Do you happen to recall Trey on pain meds?”
“I do,” Ben offers from across the room. “He was . . . emboldened.”
“Whoa,” Trey says. “We agreed not to talk about that.”
I glance at Nick, who is playing some game on his phone and ignoring us.
“Anyway,” Sawyer says, “you can’t judge her equally with someone who can actually stay awake for a four-hour stretch and doesn’t appear to be stoned all hours of the day and night.”
I sigh. “You’re right, I know. I just don’t want to forgive her.”
“That’s up to you, I guess,” Sawyer says.
“Yes, it is,” I say. But I know Sawyer is the one being reasonable here. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”
• • •
Dad and Mom say they can’t afford to hire us to help them quite yet. We say we’ll work for free, but it’s like they’re having some sort of weird bonding time or something and they don’t want us along. So while they head off to the public market Saturday morning, Trey bolts for the shower, and Rowan and I are supposed to pack.