My dad turns off the car.
“Yes, we can wait, Emmy. We can wait for a little bit.”
We sit in the car until it’s dark out and the lot lights pop on, yellowy and harsh, but Joey doesn’t come.
Then my father starts the car and we drive home.
35
MY DAD SITS IN his den, making more flyers. My mom has gone to sleep and Nana is nodding off on the couch, Fuzzy in her lap. I’m awake. I haven’t done any homework or eaten and I don’t care. I’m just sitting with my phone, endlessly typing words.
Texting Joey.
Please come home I miss you I love you Come back Please come back home
36
WHEN I GET THE mail the next afternoon, there’s a letter addressed to me from Arizona, but no name. I’m so excited to open it because it might be Joey, of course it could be, maybe it’s possible he drove all the way there, right? Anything could be possible.
I almost rip the letter in half opening it.
But the letter isn’t from Joey.
Dear Emory,
I know you probably don’t want to hear from me, but I needed to write this letter. First, I want you to know that I didn’t share those pictures. I never showed them to anyone else. I forgot to delete them. I should have done that right away when you asked, but I forgot. I just forgot. I’m sorry for that. Roly Martin found my phone on the field and he is the one who shared the photos. I am really sorry for the embarrassment and trouble that caused.
I’m in Arizona at the physical rehabilitation center. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here or even whether it will work. I’m not mad about it, even though my parents and the whole thing about your mom paying for this might make it seem that way. I hope everything works out, but I have to face that it might not.
I don’t really want to talk about myself here. I just wanted to tell you that I’m sorry for what happened with us. I’m not sorry for knowing you and how we were together, but I’m sorry for leading you on. I did things the wrong way. I didn’t ever want to hurt you. I just want you to know that.
Your friend, Gage
Your friend.
I keep staring at those words. His handwriting is shaky. I guess he used his left hand, since his right arm is messed up. Maybe it hurts him too much to write with it.
I think of the way his hands felt on me, soft and sometimes tentative and sometimes sure, and the way I felt all sorts of things: electric and seen and full of pleasure. How I would have done anything for that feeling, and did.
I wish I could feel that way now, to make all the awfulness inside me go away.
But I can’t. I just have to sit here, and feel all of it. Every last horrible thing.
37
LIZA MUNCHES HER SLICE of pizza. “I’m just not feeling it,” she says. “You seem wooden.”
“You think?” I answer.
Daniel leans back in the recliner in my room. “I have to say I agree. No offense, but your presentation needs work.”
“No,” Jeremy says, looking up from his comic book. “She’ll be fine. The right lighting and costume, that can all help. I can do that part. That’s my specialty. The little touches.”
I throw the Ophelia monologue on my bed. “I can’t do this.”
“You can,” says Liza.
“I can’t. For one thing, I’m not good at public speaking, and two, I kind of have other things on my mind at the moment, if you haven’t forgotten.”
They all look at each other.
“Think of it as a respite,” Daniel says. “Something to do to let your mind rest a little. You could read from The Portrait of a Lady.”
“I don’t think I’m compelling enough to pull off the density of Henry James onstage, Daniel.”
“Oh, I think you’re compelling enough.” He grins.
I look at Jeremy. “Have you…”
He shakes his head. “No, I haven’t heard from Luther. I’m not going to, Emmy. I’m sorry.”
I check my feeds to see if anyone has commented on my posts about Joey.
Nothing. A few people responded when I first posted, about seeing someone who maybe looked like him down by Frost Bridge, or by Hank’s Hoagies, and my dad and I drove around, but we didn’t see him. Some people just make rude comments, but I delete them. Joey’s eighteenth birthday has come and gone. My mother and father haven’t mentioned it, and I don’t want to tell my friends, because they’re trying to be supportive, but it’s a hole inside of me, this feeling that Joey has slipped far, far away from us.
I lay my phone carefully back on the bed, make sure the volume is up, so I can hear it in case he calls or texts.
“You should do something,” Liza says. “Anything. You used to play piano. Play something.”
“I haven’t played in a long, long time,” I tell her. “I’m not near ready enough for that.”
“Simon said you could write something yourself, didn’t he?” Daniel scratches Fuzzy’s head. Fuzzy has a thing for Daniel, I think.
“Yeah.”
“Well, what would you write about?” Liza asks.
“I don’t know.”
“Well, what are you feeling?” She picks some pepperoni off her slice and pops it into her mouth.
“I’ve never understood that,” Daniel says. “You’re literally eating a slice of pepperoni pizza, which has the pepperoni on it, yet you take off the pepperoni and eat that separately.”
“You eat your pizza your way and I’ll eat my pizza my way,” Liza tells him. “Emmy, what are you feeling?”
“I’m feeling…a lot. Too many things. I miss Joey. I’m worried about Joey. I want Joey to come home. I’m worried about my parents and I’m mad at my parents. I’m mad at myself for messing up with Joey. Not doing better. I miss Gage, in a weird way, not because of liking him, but because I miss…I miss being touched. Everything was messed up about that situation, but I needed it. And I think that makes me like Joey, that I let it go on, even though it wasn’t healthy, because I just wanted to feel better. And I’m mad that I got called a slut for that, but I’m also weirdly happy you came up with the idea of Hester Prynning the school, because I feel less alone. I’m mad that Lucy Kerr called Joey a druggie and a loser.”
Liza puts down her pizza slice.
“Then write that.”
“What? No.”
“No,” says Daniel. “She’s right. Write something like that. A monologue. A poem.”
“People will think I’m a freak,” I protest.
“Trust me, you don’t really have anything to lose at Heywood High at this point,” Jeremy says. “People have seen you naked.”
I give him a look.
“I mean, not me,” he says quickly. “I would never.”
“I looked,” Daniel says.
“Are you kidding?” I ask him.
“Sort of,” he laughs. “I deleted it before I got a good look. I promise. It’s all a blur, really. A very pleasing blur.”
“Enough,” Liza says. “Write it. You like poetry. Do it like that.”
“I like poetry,” I say. “I don’t write it.”
“I might be able to help you with that.” Liza smiles.