“You don’t ever get the feeling that something bad is going to happen, some truly awful shit, and the only way you can keep it from happening is to be on edge all the time?”
“No, I don’t.”
But.
When Tean had first started disappearing in the middle of the night.When Jem would wake up, and heknewsomething was wrong.Something was going to happen.And he had to stay awake so it wouldn’t happen.
“You won’t let anybody help you.”
“I don’thaveanybody to help me.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“You know what I mean,” Jem said.
“You have to do everything yourself because you know everyone’s going to let you down.”
“This is some grade-A bullshit, Tin.”
But.
There had been social workers.There had been people who talked to him.Tried to help.At the beginning, when he first got out of Decker, there’d been a transition program.And instead, he’d found that empty apartment in Glendale, and he’d started hustling, and he’d done it all on his own.
“No self-destructive behaviors?No times you feel like you need to fuck everything up so that somebody else doesn’t fuck it up first?”
Tean’s face.Even through the fog of weed, Tean’s face when he’d shown up high.
“Memory gaps,” Tinajas said.“Losing time.”
Sitting with that stupid vow book.Staring at the pages.
That day.The chunk of minutes that were just gone, and he went from biting down on Wendell to being trapped in that bathroom, his weight slamming into the door as he tried to force it open.
Tinajas was still talking.“Or times when you feel like you’re watching yourself doing something, like you’re outside your body, or maybe like none of it’s real.”Her voice softened.“How’d you say it when you were telling me about the diddler?It was like you were following yourself?”
And that voice in his head.That voice asking,What are you doing?
He wanted to sound normal, and he realized he was going to have to clear his throat.One hand was gripping the table.“I’m fine,” he said.“That was twenty years ago.It was weird seeing him.It messed with my head.That’s all.”
But it wasn’t just Wendell.It was the vow book.And staring at those blank pages.It was Tean talking about the wedding, and then waking up in the night, thinking Tean would be gone again, or the house would be on fire, or—
It was the perfect yard for baseball.
—something.It was all of it, and it was too much.
His eyes stung.He forced the wave of emotion down.He blinked.Up in the sky, the plane shivered and came apart, and then he blinked again, and the tears were gone, and the plane was gone.Had moved on.
“It doesn’t matter that it was twenty years ago,” Tinajas said.“It comes back.It comes back when you’re scared.Or it comes back when you feel safe.It keeps coming back.That’s what this shit does.”
Jem nodded.His head was hollow and loose on his neck.Tears came again, and he wiped them away.His voice was thick when he said, “Well, fuck.”
Tinajas stood and came around the table.She wrapped her arms around him, his head against her stomach, and rested her chin on his head.“I know, baby.It’s going to be okay.”
31
Slowly but surely, Tean’s panic was starting to mount.
“Because it looks stupid,” Daniel said.His voice had taken on a shrill note and was steadily getting louder.“What don’t you understand?”
