He gives me a hint of a smile. “Exactly—which is why I’m moving in with you.”
“Ben, no.”
“I’m not asking for your permission.” His eyes flick toward the table and the snowstorm of pills spread over the surface. “Not after this.”
“What about Owen?” I ask.
“He’ll be fine by himself for a while. Besides, absence makes the heart grow fonder and all that.”
It’s not true. Despite what he says, I know being away from Owen for too long will drive him crazy. They’re perfect for each other, and they don’t need me getting in the middle of their relationship to screw it all up. I glance away and catch the edge of one of Noah’s long-ago juice stains peeking out from under the leg of the couch. It made me so mad when it happened. We’d just recarpeted the entire house. Now all I want is for there to be more.
My eyes burn. I want to tell Ben I won’t try to take my life again, that he simply caught me on a bad day. I want to gesture at the pills with a wink and a nonchalant wave of my arm and say,What this? This is nothing, I was just messing around.But I wasn’t messing around. Iwilldo something worse. And, selfishly, I don’t want him to be here to stop me when I do.
“Seriously, what are you doing here, anyway?” I ask, lifting mygaze.
“You mean besides stopping you from doing what you were about to do?” He leans back in the chair and smooths a nonexistent wrinkle from his jeans. “I didn’t think you should be alone today.”
Of course. Noah’s birthday.
“And there’s another reason,” he continues, crossing his arms.
I take a sip of tea. “Which is?”
“You need closure, Bay.”
“Closure?” I nearly laugh. “There’s no closure for me. There willneverbe closure.”
He brings a hand to his mouth and massages the corners of his lips as though he’s carefully considering what he wants to say next. Then he sighs. “I’m not so sure about that. I think it’s time we talk about Evelyn Nash.”
Chapter 16
REED
Scottsbluff, Nebraska
Age Ten
Reed stole the answers to the test on a Thursday.
He’d seen Mr. Matthews stash it in his desk on several occasions, plopped squarely in the center of the top drawer after he finished grading tests. Then, once lunch hit, Mr. Matthews would cap his red pen and take a stroll around the park behind the playground. So one day, after watching Mr. Matthews whistle past on his way outside, Reed slipped from the cafeteria, snuck into Mr. Matthews’ room, and swiped the magazine-sized book. He slid it up his shirt and left. That evening, Reed copied the answers to every science test into a spiral-bound journal. He returned the key the next morning before Mr. Matthews arrived.
Reed didn’t need the answers. He needed money.
Heneededa pair of Air Jordans.
He’d first spotted them on Mikey Penbrook, a sixth grader, who wore the shoes to the neighborhood bus stop. Snow white with red trim and an outline of Michael Jordan in midflight stitched on both sides. Reedhadto have them. There was simply no other choice.
But it wasn’t the shoes Reed wanted so much as it was Mikey’s confidence when he started wearing them. He seemed so confident and collected. So fun and cool. The girls noticed it, too. With his wiry mop of thick black hair and a pair of oversized glasses that swallowed his face, Mikey had never been all that popular. But that changed when he started wearing the sneakers. Girls talked to him now. They chased him around the playground. Mikey the nerd was now Mikey the cool.
Reed asked his dad for a pair of Jordans that night. When Reed told him the price, his father nearly spit out a mouthful of his beer. “One hundred and twenty dollars? Have you lost your goddamn mind? We don’t have that kind of money.”
Reed knew they didn’t. They’dneverhad that kind of money. All Reed knew of fashion was what came from the Goodwill on Henderson Street. His wardrobe consisted of hand-me-down jeans from strangers that never fit him right and T-shirts that smelled like other kids. He hated that scent, hated the shirts with their peanut-butter stains and frayed collars. The clothes made him look poor and needy. Which is exactly what he was—one of the free-lunch kids with scuffed shoes and holes in his socks.
So when Reed’s best friend, T.J. Reynolds, complained about their science exam—“I’d pay anything not to have to study for another stupid test”—the idea hit. Reed could steal the answers and sell them for five dollars a pop. Then he’d buy the shoes. Simple as that.
And it worked. Reed told T.J., who told Dillon Archer, who told Garret Thomas, who told Shane Velázquez, who told god knew who else. Yeah, it was dangerous, Mr. Matthews could find out. But Reed didn’t care. Kids were palming him fives at a record pace. He’d have the Jordans in no time. But when Reed was called to see Principal Sparks, he’d only managed to collect sixty-five bucks. Not nearly enough.
Principal Sparks sat behind his desk, looking like a mountain with his arms crossed when Reed entered his office. The man was amonster. Seeing him sitting there like that, looking at Reed like he was considering swallowing him whole, made Reed quake. But that wasn’t what scared Reed the most. What really made him want to turn and burst through the door wasn’t Principal Sparks at all. It was the man sitting next to him.
