A window slams shut behind us.
We both freak out for a second and find Brendan and Baby Freddy standing there. I jump to my feet like someone just caught me with my pants down doing something with someone I really shouldn’t be doing anything with. “Uh. Have you guys been caught yet?”
“Nah,” Baby Freddy says. “What are you doing?”
“Catching our breath,” I lie while Thomas simultaneously says, “Talking.”
Brendan is looking at us funny, but then his eyes widen. I turn to see Nolan coming toward us while Fat-Dave is struggling to come through the window. We run back to the window on the other side. Thomas is beside me one second, down on the ground the next. I have a tenth of a second to decide to keep going or to help him out. I stop to see if he’s okay.
Nolan grapples me. “Manhunt one, two, three. Manhunt one, two, three. Manhunt one, two, three.”
I’m caught but don’t really care. I crouch beside Thomas where he’s massaging his knee. “You good?”
He nods, whistling in and out, and then it hits me that he could push me down and make a run for it and leave me chasing after him the rest of the game. Fuck that. I grapple him. “Manhunt one, two, three. Manhunt one, two, three. Manhunt one, two, three.”
We all go back downstairs to search for Me-Crazy before the game ends. I pair with Thomas while Brendan and the others fan out in the garage. We run up to the balcony—Thomas limping behind a bit—and look for Me-Crazy in empty porches, behind barbecue grills, and under deflated pools.
“So I know a little about you and you know a little about me,” he says, wincing as he tries to keep up. “Tell me Genevieve’s story.”
“I’ll destroy you if you make a move on my girl.”
“Don’t worry about that, Stretch.”
“Genevieve is . . . She is just the fucking greatest. She gets obsessive when she discovers new artists and is always sending me rambling emails about her favorites and why they should be more famous. She stays up late for daylight savings time so she can see the hours change on the clock. Oh, and she used to rely on her horoscope when she was younger and took it personally whenever it duped her.” I look up at the sky and it’s in that weird blue-and-pink phase without any stars. “She wants to go to the park to look at stars tomorrow, but I want to top that.”
“Planetarium?”
“Ruled it out already. I’m scared she’ll want to grab lunch or something like that and I can’t afford it.”
Thomas knocks over a shovel leaning against a wall in one of the porches and it clatters loudly. He quickly hops out and hides against the wall before the neighbors can come and curse him out. I crawl over to him and we wait it out a bit before running back down the stairs. “You have anything planned so far?” he asks, once we’re safe.
“My mom’s coworker gave me a two-for-one coupon for a pottery session. So in the morning we’ll make something cool together, but I just need a good finish.” Something tells me sex in a crappy motel room wouldn’t count as a real gift unless you’re a complete arrogant bastard in a high school prom movie. “Any ideas?”
“Show her stars like she wants,” Thomas says. “I know where to get you some.”
He tells me his plan and it’s so fucking boss.
6
HER HAPPY BIRTHDAY
I like waking up from nightmares.
Sure, the nightmare itself is a mind fuck, but knowing I’m okay? That’s what I like. The nightmare I’ve just woken up from started off as a dream.
In it, I was a kid, maybe eight or nine. I was at Jones Beach with Dad, just the two of us. We were throwing a football back and forth. I missed one catch and chased down the ball, but when I turned around Dad was gone. The sand around me exploded like land mines and riding on a wave of red water was my dad’s corpse, and I woke up right after it splashed on me and took me under.
“Good morning,” Mom says.
She’s taking Dad’s college basketball trophies off the window ledge, throwing them into a box stuffed with his old work shirts.
I jump out of bed. “What are you doing?”
“Turning our home back into a home.” She bends over and picks up another box, packed with God knows what. “I’m done watching people lose their lives at the hospital only to come back to this graveyard.”
That’s why she’s home; another patient lost to drug overdoses, abuse, who knows what today.
And I get what she means. I can see a drawing forming in my head now of what it would be like if we could set our home on fire: warped windows, concaved walls, flames eating everything we didn’t want, and then all of us leaving our footprints in the ashes as memories melt and disperse around us. Except I would never draw myself surrounded by black smoke, because I’m not ready to watch it all burn away.
“Why do we have to do this now?”
Eric comes out of her bedroom, pulling himself away from the Stars Wars marathon he planned for himself on his day off. He actually helps Mom out with the boxes. This is the same guy who won’t wash a single dish or fold his own shirts.
“My son, it’s been four months already. What use do we have keeping empty cigarette cartons and unopened mail? It’s too much. I don’t like his ghost around me.”
“But he was your husband,” I say. “And our dad.”
“My husband used to bring me ginger ale when I was sick. Your father played with you beautiful boys throughout your childhood. But we didn’t lose that man—he took himself away from us.” Mom chokes on her words and cries as she admits, “Part of me wishes I never knew him.” I think back to the Leteo pamphlets on her bed.