Page 96 of Cut Off
I open my mouth. “I have to get him back.” My voice isn’t loud.
“Then we will.”
That’s it. He doesn’t tell me it’ll be okay. He doesn’t tell me how. He doesn’t even tell me he loves me, which would be too much right now.
I stay on the step. He stays beside me. His hand stays on my neck. I close my eyes and listen for my phone, which is in my pocket, which is going to ring in eighteen minutes.
I try to remember how to breathe like a person who hasn’t just lost his kid from his own porch.
27
The Move
ZOE
I’d forgotten the five a.m. morning outside: gray light, crisp air, and the peacefulness that comes with a city asleep.
Now that Eli’s gone… Jesus, I can’t believe Gwen took him like that, Maddie’s able to come with me on the drive to Seattle.
This morning, my Jeep’s filled to the brim with all the stuff I had stored in my parents’ garage. I wear leggings, a hoodie I stole from Maddie, and the expression of a woman pretending to be a bad ass. Behind me, the front door bangs open, and my sister staggers out hauling a duffel bag.
“Okay, so I packed snacks,” she says. “And by snacks I mean I cleaned out the pantry. Mom’s gonna come downstairs and think we got robbed.”
“Did you grab thepretzels?”
“Obviously.” She drops the duffel at my feet, breathing hard. “I also grabbed those weird seaweed things because they were there. They’re going to Seattle now.”
“Seaweed deserves a fresh start.”
“Seaweed has been through a lot.”
She grins at me. I grin at her, and neither makes it far up our faces. We’re both terrible at this, and we both know it, which is honestly the most comforting thing about this.
I pop the trunk and we finish packing the car in the way people who’ve packed a lot of cars together do. Suitcase under the window. Box of books behind the suitcase. The big bag of toiletries wedged between the wheel well and the laundry basket filled with clean laundry.
Maddie hands me items like a surgical nurse. Scarf. Pillow. Plant. Backpack. “Coats in the back seat.”
“Right.”
“You want the playlist queued before we leave or after we hit the highway?”
“Before. I can’t deal with merging and DJing.”
“Got it.”
She climbs into the passenger seat. I do one last walk around the car. Tire. Tire. Tire. Tire. Trunk latched. Lights on. I look up at the house. The porch light is still on. Mom said her goodbye last night with a casserole and a long hug and the words “call me when you get there, or I will call the state troopers,” which is just Mom for I love you. Dad waved from the recliner and said, “Drive safe, sweet pea,” which is Dad for the same thing.
I get in the car and close the door. Maddie clicks her seatbelt and shoves her phone into the dock and pulls up a playlist titled, in her actual phone, “ZOE’S BIG STUPID BRAVE ADVENTURE.”
“I hateyou,” I tell her.
“You love me.”
“Both.”
I back out of the driveway onto the street that’s empty. I’ve definitely missed Dickens at this hour. I drive past the dark diner. Past the river, fog sitting on it like a damp sheet. Past the turn that would take me, if I let it take me, up the hill and over and into Jonah Holt’s driveway, where his porch light would also be on because he leaves it on for Eli, and where a Lego Death Star would be sitting on a dining room shelf, half-built, waiting for someone who’s not going to be there to finish it.
I don’t take the turn.
