“I’ll still need most of those in order to make decisions,” she says, “but don’t worry—I’m fine.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” she says, dragging me over toward her many-pillowed daybed. I sit gingerly on the edge and keep my hands in my lap and remind myself not to touch my face. I can already feel the sniffles threatening, and it’ll be much worse if I get doggy dander in my eyes or nose. “Just tired. Now, what’s wrong with you?”
“My dad appears to be taking a ‘prime directive’ approach to parenting,” I say, trying to couch it in ironic terms. “Prime directive in the cut-off-and-don’t-help kind of way.”
“Uh-oh,” she says, seeing through my front immediately. “What happened?”
I tell her everything. I try to keep my tone light— sarcastic/mildly aggrieved, like this is just the latest chapter of antics that we can laugh about, instead of a bomb going off in my life. But the news is really worrisome, and Emma’s expression gets more grim by the minute.
“First,” she says, “you can live here. I don’t even need to ask my parents. You can crash here all summer, no problem.”
“Thanks, Em,” I say. “But . . . Ben.”
“Crap, of course.”
“I’m good for a couple hours if I take medication in advance, but not to live full time. Even now, I haven’t touched anything and I’m already starting to feel it.”
“Okay then, second, I think you should talk to Jack.”
“Jack is busy with his hashtag beachlife,” I say, feeling myself tense. “What can he do?”
“He’s your brother,” Emma says. But in her family that means something different than it does in mine. She and Albert can squabble all day long, and he loves to pretend not to know her at school, but they’re solid. I used to think that was true of Jack and me, even though we’re further apart in age, but the last few years have made me wonder.
“Do you know how many times I’ve begged him to come home and work stuff out with Mom and Dad?” I ask, my bitterness coming through.
“This is different,” Emma says.
“You don’t understand. Every time I talk or text with him, I have to keep everything so light. The second I get serious, or start asking questions, he’s out. He either starts laughing or just suddenly has to go.”
“I’m sure he won’t blow this off. He’s the only person who knows your parents like you do. Plus . . .”
“Plus . . . ?”
“Maybe he still has some of his education money left. And if he’s not using it . . .” She cocks an eyebrow at me.
“No.” I shake my head. “No way I’m asking Jack for money. I’m not asking him for anything.”
* * *
—
But once I’m back home and surrounded by my Van Gogh–blue walls, the star mobile, the string of twinkling lights that Dad helped me hang above my bed like a canopy, it starts to hit me in a different way. I turn in slow circles, seeing the poster prints of famous paintings, the abandoned camera equipment, the guitar I really do plan to learn how to play, my (still in use!) squash racket, my yoga mat, a few ribbons from my short-lived track-and-field career, the soccer cleats and tap shoes up in the closet alongside a box of failed art pieces that I can’t bring myself to get rid of even though they never lived up to my vision. And finally, just above and to the right of my bed are the two beautiful sketches my friend Noah doesn’t know I grabbed out of the recycling bin after he discarded them at art club. One is of a bird in flight and the other is a kind of cubist self-portrait that merges into a super modern building, with Noah’s eyes staring from the wall. (Which sounds creepy, but is, instead, moody and cool and so him.)
What am I going to do with all of this stuff?
Who am I going to be without this room to come back to?
I want out of Pine Ridge, yes, but I always thought I’d be able to come back. Unlike Jack, I don’t want to just fly off and leave it all behind forever.
Speaking of Jack, I decide to take Emma’s advice after all, and text him.
Super hilarious crisis unfolding here. SOS.
It’s really early/late in Greece, so I don’t expect to hear back for hours, but he comes right back with: ???
Your fault, you totally ruined my life, lol.
This is hopefully light and jokey enough not to scare him off, but I’m still surprised when my phone rings about five seconds later.
“How did I ruin your life all the way from Greece?” Jack says without preamble.
“Got your attention, huh?” I say, trying to maintain my just-joking tone.
“How did I ruin your life . . . ?” Jack repeats.
“There’s a very strong case to be made that you moving to Greece in the first place ruined my life,” I say, stalking toward the window and pressing my forehead against the pane. There’s no way to really convey this to him—how we’ve been living with his ghost, and the specter of what he did, how Dad has only stopped picking fights with every other person he sees because he doesn’t actually see anyone anymore. How I went from trying like crazy to live up to the legacy of my smart, popular, sporty big brother to having to pretend he doesn’t exist. But that’s not why I’m talking to him. “To be fair, this time it’s more that Dad is using you as justification for him ruining my life.”
“Uh-oh,” Jack says, sounding entirely serious. “Tell me.”
Just hearing him say that, and having him not hang up, makes me feel better. I go through the whole story while pacing my room. Emma was right—he doesn’t blow it off. He lets me rant and rave and then speculate about what happened to the money and panic over not having nearly enough scholarship money or personal savings, and then finally he says, “Well, it’s not fair for him to blame me.”
“You did run off with your tuition money.”
“Sure, okay. But just trust me when I say you don’t know everything,” he says, “I had reasons.”
“Yeah, your hashtag wrong side of the sunrise hashtag partytime hashtag beachlife.”
“Ha ha.”
“Jack, please come home,” I ask him for the umpteenth time.
“I can’t fix this for you, Libby.”
“No, but you could fix things with them, and that would help so much. You don’t understand how messed up everything’s been.”