Chapter 52

Jacky lurched awake in the dark. His bed smelled funny. Like pot and Doritos.

He sat up, and then he heard it: a noise, down in the kitchen.

An intruder? Jacky debated whether to call 911, or to grab his prosthetic arm so he could beat the intruder with it. He took the phone and stepped into the hallway. Almost immediately, relief flooded him. The guest room door was ajar.

“Ryan?” Jacky called out softly when he’d reached one of the bottom stairs.

Ryan sat by himself at the kitchen table, in the dim glow of the light over the sink. He was eating something out of a Tupperware container.

“Hi,” Ryan said through a full mouth.

“What are you eating? It looks disgusting.”

“I think it’s chicken pot pie?”

Jacky sat down at the table. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Ryan shrugged. “And I was hungry.” He scooped up a forkful of pot pie, then paused. “My mom’s funeral is on Saturday.”

He sounded tired, worn out. Jacky remembered feeling that way, too. Days when he had lain in bed without the energy to do anything. No point, he had figured then.

“And then…” Ryan started, swallowing, “And then I have to go live somewhere else.”

“I could ask my mom—”

“I can’t ask your mom to do that.” Ryan set the fork back in the Tupperware. “It’s better for me to get on with my life.”

“But you can still come visit, right? They can’t tell you not to see your friends.” Jacky gave a smile. “Monica won’t let them.”

Ryan’s mouth quirked up, a tiny little bit, and then it was gone. “I know I’ll still be at school here.”

“So we can still see each other. And I’m sure you’ll be able to call. Maybe it’ll be like college, or something. Like a dorm.”

“Maybe.”

Silence filled the kitchen, leaving that word to hang there. So many maybes. Everything so uncertain.

“If it’s bad,” Jacky whispered, “Like, really bad, you have to call me. I’ll come and get you. Or you run away and come here. I’ll hide you in my room until we graduate.”

Ryan didn’t even smile at that. Suddenly Jacky knew that Ryan was afraid it would be that bad.

“If they don’t let you visit your friends, I’ll go there. I’ll stand outside and bang on the door until they let me in.”

Setting down his fork, Ryan said, “I’m not hungry anymore. But I’m not tired, either.”

“Well, there is something we could do.” Jacky laughed at Ryan’s expression. “It’s not as exciting as making out. Uh, you remember our English project? That’s due on Monday.”

They went up to Ryan’s room. He’d brought the unfinished pages in his bag, and they took them into Jacky’s room. Ryan sat down at Jacky’s desk to do the inking, and Jacky used his big history textbook as a desk to color. There was something about the dim lighting and the quiet activity that made for a comfortable silence. When they finished, they looked at each other with grainy eyes and tired smiles, and Ryan crawled into bed with Jacky, and they fell asleep wrapped up in each other, Jacky curled against the wide plane of Ryan’s chest, their breath warming the air between them.

And that was how Jacky’s mother found them the following morning.

***

“I can’t believe your mother was cool about that,” Ryan said as they walked to school.

“Probably she would have reacted differently if we’d been naked or something,” Jacky sighed. “Then again, I think she has a soft spot for you.”

“Um, can I ask you a favor?”

Jacky looked at Ryan, trying to judge what this favor might involve. “Sure,” he said.

“I, um, I…” Ryan’s voice cracked, and he looked off toward the football field, away from Jacky. “Can you tell my friends? About…” Ryan swallowed thickly several times. Finally the words came. “About the funeral.”

“Yeah. Definitely,” Jacky said right away, only a few steps later understanding what that might entail. Actually walking up to Matt Welch and talking to him. Talking to any of them. Ugh.

It wasn’t until they hit the school hallways that Jacky happened upon the perfect solution: Monica.

But then Jacky didn’t see Monica right away. Where was she? Why wasn’t she up Ryan’s ass already? Lance was there, giving Ryan a manly hug (only the upper part of the chest touching, one thump on the back), and before Jacky could slide away, Ryan was giving Jacky a helpless look.

“My parents want to come to the funeral,” Lance said. “Is that okay? When is the funeral, do you know yet?”

Jacky resisted the urge to freeze when Lance looked at him like he was something small and squishable. “It’s tomorrow,” he said. “At two o’clock.”

Lance nodded. “Okay. Okay? I’ll be there, man. Do you want me to tell the rest of the team?”

Jacky nodded, even though he knew Lance was talking to Ryan and had already forgotten he existed. Ryan also nodded. Good. That took care of Matt and all those guys. But Monica… Jacky scanned the halls. No sign of her, even though he saw a clot of the other cheerleaders milling around the lockers by the girls’ bathroom.

Whatever, who cared about Monica. Where was Cody?

Funny how over the course of a week Jacky had grown used to seeing Cody in school every day. Of course Cody wasn’t here. He’d gotten super high last night, he was probably still sleeping it off. If he was lucky, Cody would show up in time for lunch.

Jacky edged toward his locker, feeling oddly torn about leaving Ryan alone. Ryan kept making sad eyes at him, but Jacky wasn’t friends with any of the people who came up to talk to him and Lance, and the group had migrated to Ryan’s locker, and Jacky really did have to get to his own locker and throw some of his books in there or he was going to be hauling around six textbooks all day.

He’d just dialed his combination and popped the metal door open when he felt a tug at the strap of his messenger bag. He sighed, expecting it to be Haylee bugging him about where Cody was, and turned to see that it was Ryan.

“You left me,” Ryan whispered.

“Oh. I thought you were okay. You were with your friends?” Jacky felt like an asshole. “I’m sorry.”

“We have English first period.”

“Yup.” Jacky started to pull his thick history book out of his bag. Ryan grabbed it and put it on the top shelf of Jacky’s locker for him. He tried not to let that bother him, but when he pulled out his chemistry notebook, Ryan took that too. “I can do it myself,” Jacky said.

Ryan withdrew his hand and curled in on himself. He didn’t say anything.

“Sorry,” Jacky muttered. He yanked out his chemistry textbook and stuck it in the top, then dropped his bag and took off his coat. The zipper stuck, a critical situation with one hand. Jacky ground his teeth together, feeling Ryan watching him. Finally he wrestled the thing off and chucked it into his locker and slammed the door shut. “Let’s get to English,” he said.

No Monica when they entered the classroom. As Jacky went to his regular seat in the back, he saw Ryan looking at him. And after Monica didn’t show even after the bell rang, Jacky felt bad. He could have sat in her seat next to Ryan. Jacky didn’t know why he was so worried about her. She was allowed to get sick, or have a dentist appointment or whatever. And what if she was just running late, and showed up halfway through class only to find Jacky sitting there at her desk?

He wished Ryan would stop looking at him like that. It wasn’t like Ryan was going to hold his hand in public. Like they could even do that stuff in the middle of class.

Jacky sighed. He already wanted this day to be over. He wanted it to be tonight, Friday night, when he didn’t have to think about homework or going to therapy. It was Ryan’s last night at his house. He wanted to spend as much time as possible with him. 

It felt like the school day would never end. Ryan tried to focus, but he kept thinking about tomorrow. He had to do his laundry tonight. He would need to go back to his house either tonight or tomorrow to get his suit. He didn’t want to go back to his house.

His classes were worse when Jacky wasn’t in them. When Jacky was there he could latch on to that presence with his mind. Without him, and without Monica, all of Ryan’s worries spun out before him uncontrolled. Lunch was a life raft he clung to, and once it arrived, he suddenly realized that he couldn’t just go over and sit with Jacky, not when Lance had found him. He made sure to sit so he could see Jacky over there, all by himself, at least until Nina and Haylee and Cody showed up. Even then, Ryan could tell that Jacky was feeling lonely.

He wished he could sit with Jacky, alone at a table, and they could talk like they did last night. But then Ryan’s friends wouldn’t understand why Ryan left them. “Are you gay or something?” Matt might ask, and then how could Ryan answer? He didn’t want to tell them. Oh, your mom had terminal cancer and died, and now you’re gay, too? What else aren’t you telling us? I feel like I don’t know you at all, Ryan.

And then he would lose all those friends, and all he’d have left was Jacky, and what if Jacky decided Ryan was too sad all the time? Then Ryan would really be all alone.

“Is Monica out sick?” he asked the people around him.

“I haven’t heard from her.” Peyton was the only one who answered with more than a shrug. She pulled out her phone. “Here, let me text her and see.”

No word from Monica by the end of lunch. Ryan hoped she wasn’t sick. She had seemed fine yesterday.

By the time last period rolled around, Ryan asked his teacher for a pass to go down to guidance. He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t sit through another class trying to keep up this front.

“You seem like you’re doing a little better today, Ryan,” said Ms. May when he entered her office.

“I guess,” Ryan told her. He sat down and pulled a pillow onto his lap.

“Is there anything in particular on your mind you want to talk about?”

He picked at a thread on the pillow. He’d noticed it yesterday, when he’d had his face inches away from it for several hours.

“Not really,” Ryan said.