I ignored him and sat down at our table, my back to him. I heard the door slam shut a few seconds later.
“What was that?” Mel asked, appearing again behind the counter.
“Just Ro, being a jackass. Can you give me a ride home when you’re done? I mean, if that’s okay.”
Mel was wiping the counter now, but she looked up at me with a frown. “Of course it’s okay. Why would you think it wasn’t?”
Ro’s acting like he’s sick of me,I wanted to say, but I didn’t want to throw him under the bus. So I kept my mouth shut and simply shrugged.
“I’m giving you a ride home,” Mel said, letting me know there were noandsorbutsabout it. When I nodded, she turned and disappeared into the kitchen.
It was intensely inconvenient, being newly seventeen and still not having a car. Ro had managed to land a cheap secondhand Ford, even though money was much more of an issue for the Cohens than it was for my parents. Correction: money was much more of an issue for Mel and the boys. Dr. Cohen and the ER nurse he’d left Mel for definitely had no money issues, going by the lavish gifts Luke and Ro normally got for birthdays and Christmases.
Even though I’d gotten my license last year, my father still felt I wasn’t “ready” to have my own car. I think, in his mind, my having a car meant one more thing he had to worry about. He already had Mom and EyeCon, the eye clinic my parents owned. The way I saw it, it was onelessthing he had to worry about, because I would no longer be bumming rides off my friends or taking buses or walking, but as far as Dad was concerned, a car meant ample opportunity for accidents and mischief, and I had yet to convince him otherwise.
Over the next few weeks I continued to ask Rowan about that night. He would probably have used the wordharass,but I wouldn’t let it go. He had done this to me—making me question how the Cohens really saw me after all these years. I just couldn’t accept that any of what he’d said was true. Mel did not seem to act, in any way, like I was the pest Ro had made me feel I was. She was never short with me, never distant or annoyed or anything less than what she’d always been: kind.
I was used to feeling unsteady in other ways. For my whole life, my mother had been the biggest question mark in my world. I used to spend hours staring at the photographs lining the living room walls, pictures from when my parents were newlyweds, traveling through South Africa and France and the UK. I’d park in front of those framed photos, asking the pictures questions they couldn’t answer. Why the two people in them looked like strangers. Why my mother seemed happy and vibrant and round-faced in those early pictures, but haunted and gaunt and faraway in all the pictures taken after I was born. I’d ask the old Polaroids they took in grad school when that ever-present crease between Dad’s brows first appeared and what caused it—and why, if he turned away from looking at my mother for even a second now, it seemed she would break.
I was used to questioning so many things about my life, and now, in addition to the other things I could never figure out, I had questions about my place with the Cohens.
THEN
I went from spending every night at the Cohen house to every second or third night, even though, while Mel was undergoing treatment, I kind of wanted to be there all the time. I wanted to know when she was having a bad day. I wanted to be the one to watch scary movies with her and paint her toenails when she wanted to forget about being sick. I wanted her to know how much I cared.
Once, when I was nine, my mom had been in bed all day and I was hungry and cranky and tired of being quiet, so I kept inventing excuses to go into her room and talk to her. First I told her I was hungry. Then I asked if I could have a Popsicle. Then I asked if she knew it was raining. The fourth time I went in there, my dad, who had just gotten home from work, stopped me before I could say anything. He pulled me out into the hallway, shut Mom’s door, and leaned down to talk to me.
“Mommy’s really tired today. Let’s let her rest for a little while, okay?”
He tried to get me to follow him to the kitchen, but I refused to budge.
“Jessi,” he said with a sigh.
“Can I go to Rowan’s house for dinner?” I asked.
“Not tonight.”
“But why?”
Dad sighed again, this time through his nose. “You know, honey, sometimes people just need to be on their own.”
I knew what he meant—that the Cohens were their own family and we were ours. But it was also true of my mom, that most times she didn’t need or want me around.
I was remembering those words alone in my room one Friday night, the second week after Mel’s treatment started, when my phone rang.
I lunged for it, panic setting in when I saw the name on the screen.
“Luke,” I said as soon as I answered. “Is she okay? Do I need to come over?”
“Mom’s good,” Luke said, knowing right away who “she” was. “It’s not that. It’s Ro.”
I sat up straighter in bed. “What’s wrong with Ro?”
“He went to practice this morning and never came home. I told Mom he was with you, so she wouldn’t worry. He’s ... not, is he?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head as if he could see me. A sick feeling flooded my body. It wasn’t like Rowan to disappear without telling anyone. I wasn’t used to this distance between us—my best friend not confiding in me.
“Do you have any idea where he could be?” Luke asked.
