Torn Away

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

I stormed onto the porch and pulled my backpack from behind the couch. My hands were shaking, and I still could hear the faintest ring of a siren in the back of my mind. I hated myself for letting them get to me. I hated myself for being scared. But mostly I hated being here. I wanted out.

I dug out my cell phone and called Ronnie’s number. He didn’t answer. I waited for voice mail.

“Ronnie,” I said, and as if someone had punched me in the gut, suddenly I couldn’t breathe. It was like when Marin was a baby and she’d fall down and hurt herself. You knew it was bad by how she cried. If she cried right away, it was nothing and you could probably ignore that it ever happened and she’d get up and toddle along on her merry way. But if there was a pause—especially a long pause—you knew it was bad because the tears had plugged up her throat. When she breathed again, you had to cover your ears. You knew she was going to let out a wallop of a cry. My throat felt plugged up like that, and I had to wait until my lungs would move again before I could finish my message. “Ronnie,” I begged. “Please. Please let me come back. They hate me here. They’re mean and they want me gone and I’m scared. Please, Ronnie. Mom wouldn’t want me here. She would want me with you. Please at least let me come up for the funerals. Tell me when they are. I’ve got a ride. You don’t even have to come get me.”

The voice mail beeped that I had exceeded my time limit. I thought about calling again. And again and again, leaving the same message over and over, begging until he relented, the way Marin used to do sometimes. Ronnie always gave in to her. Maybe he would give in to me, too. Maybe he would find it in his heart to let me have my way, even if only just this once.

But instead of calling Ronnie again, I decided to call Dani.

“Hey, Jers, what’s up?”

I sniffled, wanting to sound happy and excited to be talking to her, too, but hearing her voice only made the tears keep coming. She sounded normal, like her life was normal. It was unfair, and I missed her, and I wanted my life to be normal, too. “Hi,” I said.

“You okay? You don’t sound good.”

“I’m not good.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I hate it here. I want to come home.” I knew how ridiculous that sounded—there was no home to come to.

“Is it really bad?” she asked.

I told her about Meg and Lexi, about Clay’s claims that he wasn’t really my father, about Tonette saying I was fat, and about the girls shutting me in the basement. “I keep trying to call Ronnie, but he won’t answer his phone,” I said. “Did you ask your mom about letting me stay with you?”

Dani paused, and I knew her well enough to know that she was probably twisting the end of her auburn hair around two fingers nervously, her brow furrowed, her top two teeth sunk into her bottom lip while she tried to figure out how best to break bad news to me. “She talked to Ronnie,” she said. “Jers, he’s in bad shape. Mom said he’s a total mess and that the whole thing is really sad but she can’t get involved because she’s not related to you and she doesn’t want to get into some sort of custody issue. She said it would probably take some time and you would be homesick, but that you would get over it, and that living with your real dad is probably the best place for you to be right now.”

“She doesn’t know him,” I said angrily. “He’s a disgusting alcoholic. And he’s mean. He yells at me and his face gets really red when he’s mad and I’m scared of him. I’m scared of what he’ll do next. Tell her that. Tell her I’m sleeping outside and that I hear coyotes out here all night long and that nobody is going to fight for custody, because nobody wants me. Especially not here.”

“Maybe it’s not as bad as you think it is,” she said. She sounded uncomfortable, as if she were reaching for excuses. “I mean, I know it hurts to be called names, but it’s not like you’re in any sort of danger.”

“You don’t understand,” I said bitterly. “You don’t have to live on a porch. You…” I didn’t finish. You have a mom.

“I know. You’re right. I’m sorry, Jers, I really am. Maybe she’ll change her mind. I’ll keep asking.”

“Thanks,” I said. “Do you have power back?”

“We got ours back last night. Which was good, because our phones were dead. But a lot of people still don’t have service. Who knows how long it’ll be before they get all the towers working? We’ve got air-conditioning again, thank God, because it felt like it was about ninety today. But they’re saying it’ll be another week, probably, before they get everyone else’s power on. Not that it really matters on the south side of town. Electricity is kind of useless when you don’t have a house to put it in, you know?”

I thought about our house. About Ronnie building it up again. And living in it alone.

“Have you heard from Jane yet?”

“Uh-uh. But I heard from Josie Maitlin that Jane’s house was totally destroyed, like yours. Josie didn’t know for sure, but she thought maybe Jane went up to Kansas City to stay with family.”

I sagged with relief. Generally speaking, Josie Maitlin was an endless source of toxic gossip, but for once her report passed on good news. Jane had made it through the tornado alive. “And she’s okay?” I asked.

“Josie said she thought she heard that Jane got hurt, but she didn’t know for sure. Nobody really knows anything about anybody right now. We’re all going on what we hear. Some people have been meeting up at the library, because it’s got power and computers and stuff. I saw a couple kids from theater club there yesterday. It was a real cry-fest.”

I felt a pang in my chest. I wanted to be there so badly. Dani’s mom was wrong—those were the people I needed most right now, not mean, drunk Clay Cameron.

We talked a little more, the mosquitoes coming out and pestering me as it got closer to evening. I was hungry, and I wondered if I’d be welcome inside for dinner with everyone else, or if they were all still pissed at me.

Finally, Dani had to go, but before we hung up, she said, “One more thing.”

“Yeah?”

She paused, and then said, “You’re not gonna like this.”

“Just tell me.”

“Okay. So… my mom said Ronnie told her it would be too hard on you to come to the funerals. He said he doesn’t want to cause you any more pain.”

Anger hissed through me. “Like he hasn’t already caused enough? Does he really think I’m not going to feel any pain if I don’t go to the funerals? Like, what? I’ll forget they’re dead?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “My mom tried to tell him how messed up it would be for you not to be there, but he said you’ve been through enough already and he wasn’t going to change his mind about it.”

“Well, too bad for him,” I said. “I’ve got a ride and he can’t keep me from showing up. When are they?”

There was such a long pause, I didn’t even need Dani to answer. I knew, deep down, what she was going to say. But when she did speak again, her words still punched me in the chest, gutted me. “They were this afternoon.”

She kept talking—saying something about the flowers and the crowd and who knew what else, but I had tuned her out completely. Mom and Marin were gone, buried, and I hadn’t been there to say good-bye.

“You there? Jers? I’m really sorry. I wanted to tell you, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She said it wasn’t our place.”

I pressed my fingers against my temple. “I should probably go,” I mumbled, trying to understand how my best friend could keep this from me, regardless of “place.” What was “place” when it came to dead mothers, anyway? Nothing. “Place” was being there for your friend.

“So I’ll call you if anything changes with Mom?” Dani said.

“Yeah,” I said through numb lips. “But I don’t know how long it will be before my phone’s shut off. Nobody here is going to pay the bill, that’s for sure.”

“Don’t worry, Jers, it will all work out somehow. It has to, right?”

I wasn’t sure if she was talking about the phone bill or the missed funerals or my mom or what, so I just agreed and hung up, feeling myself shut down bit by broken bit.

Before I put the phone away, I called Jane, but, as usual, she didn’t answer.

“Hey, Janie, it’s Jersey,” I said to her voice mail. “I thought you should know that I’m okay, but I’m living down in Caster City with my father. My mom and Marin died in the tornado and my stepdad is a real mess. I heard you’re in Kansas City. I also heard that you might have gotten hurt. I hope you’re okay. Give me a call as soon as you can. I don’t know how much longer I’ll have a phone. I miss you.”

I hung up, hoping she would call me back before it was too late. Suddenly it seemed as if this would be the fate of every connection I’d ever had—that I wouldn’t get a chance to say good-bye. They’d wonder how I was doing at first, but after a while they’d stop thinking about me as much. They’d move on. And eventually they’d forget me altogether. Out of sight, out of mind. It was one thing to lose the people you love. That happens to everybody.

But it was another thing to lose them because you just… faded away.

I didn’t want to fade away.

I started to put my phone in my backpack but decided that if I was going to drop off the radar, I wanted to talk to Kolby once more. To thank him for being there when I had nothing. Or maybe simply to hear his voice. I missed him.

I dialed.

“Hello?”

I blinked. I had been expecting Kolby’s voice but was greeted instead by his little sister.

“Tracy?”

“Yeah? Who is this?”

“It’s Jersey. Is Kolby there?”

“No.”

“Oh. You know when he’ll be back?”

There was some clicking, and muffled noises of movement. I thought I could hear her mother’s voice getting softer and fading into the background, and then I could hear Tracy breathing into the phone. Finally, she said, “No, he’s in the hospital right now.”

That was not at all what I’d been expecting to hear. “What? Why? What happened?”

“It’s not really a big deal or anything, I don’t think, but he’s got some kind of infection on his arm. Where he got cut. The doctors said something about it being a fungus and they’re just wanting to be safe. It’s really gross-looking.”

I remembered how I’d tried to wrap his arm with that bandanna, to keep the wound clean, and immediately I felt guilty. I’d been calling to thank him for taking care of me those first couple days, and here he was in the hospital because I hadn’t taken good enough care of him.

“Is he going to be okay?” I asked.

“Yeah, you know Kolby,” she said. “I’m sure he’ll be fine.”

“Okay,” I said. “I’ll call back. Tell him I said I hope he gets better soon.”

“Okay, Jersey.”

I hung up, thinking about how randomly we’d all been affected by the tornado. I’d lost everything. Jane was missing. Kolby was in the hospital. Dani was totally fine. It didn’t make sense.

I dropped the phone into Marin’s purse and pulled out a piece of gum. I chewed it, the flash of flavor making my mouth water, and thought about all the times I’d called Marin a nuisance, had made her feel unwelcome and unwanted, the same way I was feeling now. Not being wanted was the loneliest feeling in the world, it seemed, and if I could have had one more moment with Marin, I would have been sure to tell her I didn’t mean it. She wasn’t a pest. I loved her. She was wanted. More than she could ever know.

I didn’t have a picture to draw on this piece of foil. Only a message, so I wrote it in careful bubble letters: Marin is not a nuisance.

I folded the foil and stashed it in the zippered compartment, liking the way the pieces bounced against one another in the open pocket, glinting at me happily.

Unsure of what to do next, I pulled out Mom’s lipstick, rolled it all the way to the top, and smelled it. The waxy scent reminded me of Mom, who had given the lipstick to Marin one night out of the blue.

“Marin,” she’d said, holding out the little tube in the palm of her hand. “I don’t think this color really works for me. Would you like it?”

I didn’t wear lipstick and my mother knew that. But Marin lived to squish makeup onto her face. Anything to make her feel more grown up, more like Mom.

Marin, who had been sitting on the other end of the sofa, sat up, her thumb popping wetly out of her mouth as her eyes grew wide.

“Yes!” she gasped, and stampeded over me with her hand outstretched. Mom had placed the lipstick gently in her hand and admonished her, “Only around the house, okay?”

“Okay, Mama,” Marin had responded, pulling the lid off the lipstick and peering down into the tube earnestly. “It’s for special only.”

She’d run off and put it in her purse. She’d never worn it. Not one time. Marin, who loved lipstick like nothing else. She’d kept it special, like she’d promised.

Once I asked her why she didn’t ever wear it.

“It’s for special,” she’d replied. “I like it sharp.”

I knew what she’d meant. She liked the way the lipstick angled up into a tip. She liked how new it was.

I spread some on my lips and pushed them together, smearing it around. Then I capped it quickly, afraid that if I left it open too long I would lose the scent of my mom forever. With her face already receding from my memory, I couldn’t afford to lose any more pieces of her. I licked my lips, liking the way the wax felt smooth against my tongue, liking the way it tasted.

I dug around a bit more, then picked up the playing cards, spreading them out to play a quick couple games of Chameleon.

I played until the house was dark, except for the blue of the constantly running television flickering onto the porch from the living room. I stashed Marin’s purse and went inside.

As quietly as I could, I tiptoed to the bathroom, hoping to go unnoticed. But as I passed the living room on my way back, Grandmother Billie’s voice cut through the recorded laugh track of whatever sitcom she was watching.

“I don’t know if you think you’re gettin’ outta doin’ those dishes tonight because of that scene with the door, but you’re not,” she said.

With a sigh, I went into the kitchen and bellied up to the sink, which was positively overflowing with dishes. They must have had a feast. I filled the sink with water and started scrubbing, hearing Marin’s little voice in my head, singing the song she always sang in the bath. “B is for bubble. Bubble, bubble, bubble…”

I made a mental note to draw that on gum foil later. I didn’t want to forget the bubble song.

When I was done, I opened the fridge and took inventory. I had no idea what dinner had been, but whatever it was, there were no leftovers. Instead, I made myself a sandwich and cut up a few slices of cucumber. I didn’t know if the ingredients were spoken for, but I figured they couldn’t starve me. If nobody was going to take care of me, I would have to take care of myself and live with the consequences.

As I sat down with my food, I heard the sound of footsteps on the wooden basement stairs. Aunt Terry appeared at the top of the steps, holding the laundry basket I’d left behind earlier in the day. She extended her arms toward me.

“I brought your laundry up,” she said, setting the basket on the table next to me.

I swallowed. “Thank you.”

“I heard what happened this afternoon.” She pulled out a chair and sat down. “Clay’s all upset because he’s got to do a little work. It’ll be good for him.”

I wiped my mouth on the back of my hand and set the sandwich on my plate. “I just wanted out of the basement. I kind of freaked. It’s stupid, I know.”

Terry waved her hand. “It’s not stupid. I get it. Listen, don’t take what they say to heart.” She ran her fingernail along the side of the basket, tracing the squares. “Lexi and Meg. They’re just jealous of you.”

“Jealous? Of me?” What did I have that they could possibly be jealous of? They were prettier, they had a mom and dad, and from what I could tell, they had everyone in the house—except for maybe Terry—eating out of the palms of their pretty little hands.

“Maybe I should’ve said they’re threatened by you. They think you’re gonna steal their daddy.”

I took a breath. “I feel like nobody wants me here.”

“They don’t,” she said. “But maybe they’ll come around. You never know. Weirder things have happened.”

But something told me that wasn’t going to happen. Even if Lexi and Meg found a way to completely ignore that I existed, they would never “come around.” Not really. If I was looking for friendship, I was in the wrong place.

“I should probably get myself to bed,” Terry said, pushing up from the table with a grunt. “Hey, did you ever find out about the funerals? Are they sometime soon?”

I shook my head. “I missed them.”

She froze, and I nearly melted under her sad gaze. “Oh,” she said. “I’m so sorry.” And then, seemingly struggling with what else to say, she gave up and disappeared down the hall toward her bedroom.

I ate my sandwich in silence, hating how it seemed like everything in my life suddenly could be summed up by that one sentence: “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

After I finished eating, I washed my plate and changed into a pair of Terry’s pajamas, then went back outside, staying on the porch like the family dog. The air felt crisp and cool, summer night air, and I rolled all of my new clean clothes into tight rolls and slipped them, one by one, into the backpack, which I shoved into its spot behind the couch with Marin’s purse.

I curled up in my blanket and listened to the night sounds around me—crickets and frogs and cicadas and barking dogs—and tried not to think about this being my new reality, even while I knew it was.

Nobody was coming to rescue me. Nobody was going to keep me safe. It was all up to me now.