He looked down at his sling again. “Why would I have told them? It’s nobody’s business but mine.”
“But when you didn’t keep playing football, they must have questioned you,” I pointed out. “Like, one day you were in the locker room and the next, you were gone. They must have wondered what was going on.”
“I sat on the bench for the last game of the season in my senior year,” he said. “They didn’t have to know the reason why. Then I did the next semester at home, distance learning. I was done with it.”
“And if you run into them now? Or when you text or call? Don’t they ask what’s happening with you?”
“It’s nobody’s business,” he repeated.
I decided that statement included me, too, so I shut my mouth and ate my vegetable lasagna. I had my own fish to fry, but not literally because I didn’t like fish, including salmon.
We finished the meal in silence, and with nothing resolved except that I was glad he was with me. I was very, very glad.
Chapter 9
Ilooked at myself in the little mirror above my dresser—at least, I looked at the section of myself that it reflected. Then I swiveled, changed positions, backed up, and stood on my tiptoes so I could view another part.
“Ok, not bad,” I muttered out loud. I didn’t need to worry about being quiet, though, because the house was totally empty. My mom and Morgan had gone to look at a place for rent today, one that they thought would work for us as long as Max didn’t break up with his girlfriend and suddenly need somewhere to sleep.
“When that happens—I mean,ifthat happens, you and Morgan can double up,” my mom had told me.
It might have seemed odd that they were suddenly able to look for a new place to live. You might have asked yourself, “How will they put down a security deposit? How will they ever pay rent?” And those were questions that I definitely asked myself and then my mother. She’d had the answer: the funds would come from a secret bank account into which she had been depositing moneyevery month for quite a while. It was money that came from the restaurant, of course, which meant that it wasfamilymoney.
“And now we’ll use it for our family,” she’d explained. “We’ll use it to get a new place to live.”
We would need one, since this house was on the market. Despite the issues with the foundation, the poor drainage, the lack of landscaping, and the hoarder situation in the garage, the real estate agent felt good about getting it sold, especially with the lowball price she’d slapped on it with my mother’s approval.
They were doing this quickly, without my father’s involvement, because he was nowhere accessible to be involved. But luckily for everyone, our previous financial problems and his gambling losses over Christmas had led him to make a big change: he and my mom had put the house into her name only.
So she could sell it, just like that. Thefamilyhouse was no more.
Thefamilybusiness was hanging on by a thread. It was still closed and apparently there was not enough money in my mom’s secret slush fund to pay for the needed roof repairs and to cover the salary of a new cook. I had collected all the food we could conceivably use ourselves and Mom had asked Max to clean out the rest. But besides that, no one seemed very concerned about Walter’s because they were busy looking at rental listings and running around as if my dad, our home, and our restaurant had never even existed.
I leaned in close to apply lipstick and then also checked my teeth in the mirror. There, I was totally ready and I had to get going. I had to pick up someone along the way.
“Wow,” Shane said when I got out of my car in his driveway. “Look at you! You’re beautiful.”
He had three sisters and had talked about how his parents were happily married. With those influences, he had learned to give a good compliment. “Thank you,” I answered. “You look nice, too.” He had put on a tie for the occasion, although the knot looked a little askew. His cast was off but he still had the sling, so he was awkward with how he used his arm. But he did look more than nice—“so handsome that you would drool a little” or “cute enough that you’d want to do inappropriate things in public” would have better descriptors of his appearance.
We had no time to drool or to be inappropriate. I was driving, which I had said was because I had a student parking sticker for my car and anyway, he was nearly on the way to Emelia Schaub College. Actually, I was doing my part to minimize his time behind the wheel but there was no need to bring that up today. It was supposed to be a celebration, even if it didn’t feel much like one.
Shane noticed my joylessness. “Aren’t you happy?” he asked. “You worked hard to graduate and now it’s here.”
“It’s here,” I echoed.
“You had to take your exams and finish those papers and projects under a lot of stress because of your family situation, but you did it,” he told me. “You should be very proud.”
“Thank you,” I said again. “I mostly feel relieved. Also, apprehensive,” I added.
“That’s normal when you’re confronting a big change in your life. You’ve been in school for a long time.”
“Too long,” I said. “I should have already graduated and started on the next phase of my life.”
“What is it going to be?” he asked, and that was exactly what was making me so damn apprehensive. I should have had a very clear response—I should have had a signed contract for a new job and a lease on an apartment in a different city like Miami or Dallas.
“We’ll see,” I told him. My voice cracked and I gripped the steering wheel for the remainder of the ride.
When we arrived at the auditorium, he found a place in the stands and I gathered with the other graduates in an anteroom. Then, as the audience clapped, we all processed to our designated folding chairs. There were a lot of speeches exhorting us to follow our dreams and believe in ourselves, but I didn’t think that any of us were paying much attention until it was finally time to walk across the stage and receive our diplomas. The announcer asked the audience to hold their applause until the end of the ceremony, but there was a loud cheer for Jessie Abraham and for every student that came after her.
