Page 7 of On His Mind

Some guy slept in this exact room, in a house with a joke on the kitchen wall about the draft, and then ithappened to him.

My stomach turns over.

Josh sets my duffel on the mattress and keeps one hand flat on top of it. He’s scanning the room the way he scans everything — outlets, window latch, smoke detector, the gap under the door. Checking for what’s wrong with it.

And for one stupid second, standing in a room a guy left to go play in the NHL, I want him to find something. I want him to straighten up and sayno, and pick the duffel back up, and take me home.

Home.

I catch the word on its way through and it lands wrong, the way it always does, like putting weight on a leg that isn’t there.

Stanley rocks back on his heels. “We’ll let you unpack. House meeting at six. Dinner after. Somebody bought chicken. Nobody knows who’s cooking it.”

“That’s comforting,” Josh says.

Stanley points at me on his way out. “Freshman. You and Crayola across the hall are on dinner.” He winks at Josh. “Tradition.”

Benson grabs the back of Stanley’s shirt and steers him toward the hallway. “Come on.”

Stanley lets himself be dragged. “If you hear screaming, don’t panic. That’s just Hawthorne.”

Then they’re gone, their voices fading down the stairs.

The room goes quiet. Josh and I stand there with my life between us in one duffel bag.

He clears his throat. I hate that sound.

“Mary put something in the front pocket,” he says. “Don’t forget.”

“Okay.”

“She said there’s a towel in there too.”

“Okay.”

“And snacks.”

I look at him.

He shrugs. “Don’t look at me. I told her you’re not seven.”

My mouth moves. Almost. Not enough to call it anything.

Josh sees it. His face does something small and I have to look away from him and out the window instead, at the street, at the cars, at literally anything with a horizon on it.

Down there, families are still unloading. A mother wipes her face with the back of her wrist while her son studies the sidewalk very hard. A father hugs his kid one-armed and hits him too hard on the back twice. Somebody’s brother is being yelled at about a box. Somebody honks. Somebody laughs.

Everybody down there has people, showing up with folded towels and desk lamps, taking pictures to post about on social media.

And I have Josh, standing in a room that’s too small for the two of us, trying to work out how to walk out of it without making it strange that four years just ended in a doorway.

Four years in his house. The place the paperwork calls a foster placement and the school calls a residence and Mary calls, without any apparent difficulty,home. Placement number six. The one that didn’t end.

He’s the reason I’m standing here. Not part of the reason. Theonlyreason. There’s no version of this where he isn’t, and both of us know it, and neither of us has ever said it out loud.

“Call,” he says.

“I will.”