Page 67 of The Kiss Principle

“The best thing that’s happened?” From the pocket of her sweats, she produced my watch. The watch Augustus had given me. “I found this in his stuff.”

“You went through my stuff?” Zé asked.

Everything was happening too fast. I held up a hand. “Hold on—”

“And some of my jewelry,” Mom said. “Pieces I didn’t even know were missing.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” I said.

Zé was trying to get to his feet again. He seemed to have forgotten about his cane, and he was using the couch to lever himself up. “That’s not true.”

“I found it!” Mom screamed at him. She had a great set of lungs; she’d been taking vocal lessons as long as I’d been alive. Igz startled in her arms, and then she began to wail. CradlingIgz’s head, Mom brought her voice back down as she said to me, “He stole it, Fernando.”

I shook my head and looked at Zé. “No, this is some kind of misunderstanding.”

He was pale, and he leaned on the couch like he couldn’t quite stand upright. “I didn’t touch her stuff. I never went into her room. I wouldn’t steal anything.”

“Wrong family, sweetheart,” Mom said and glanced at, of all people, Chuy. “We’ve played this game a time or two before.”

Chuy leaned against the wall, his body closed. His eyes met mine only for a moment before skating away.

“What does that mean?” Zé asked. No one said anything. “Fernando, I swear to God, I wouldn’t steal.”

“I know.” I shook my head again. “Mom, Zé is the last person—”

“He’s an addict, Fernando.”

She delivered the words with cool pity as she adjusted Igz, still wailing, against her shoulder. Cannon hovered behind her. It looked like the broccoli-haired bro was trying not to smile.

Zé looked awful: his face washed out, his body contorted as he tried to prop himself up on the couch, braced like he was cowering under a blow. His breathing was rapid and shallow.

“No.” I started to shake my head again, but that hadn’t seemed to work, so I stood there. After a moment, I knew I had to say something else, but all I could come up with was “No.”

“Yes. We followed him tonight. I knew something was wrong. I knew he was hiding something. All those nights he had to leave, and he couldn’t explain where he’d been.”

My brain was automatically doing the math. I remembered those nights too. The nights Zé left, and when I asked where he was going, he’d say,I have something to do, and when I asked when he got back, he’d say,out. All the nights I’d wondered if he’d been hooking up. But he hadn’t been hooking up; he’d toldme that—unless, a part of me observed, that had been a lie too. So, what had he been doing? I didn’t know. He’d never told me. He’d always found a way not to tell me.

Zé wasn’t moving. I didn’t even think he was breathing, except I could hear those softy, raspy breaths.

“Mom,” Chuy said, “why don’t you and Cannon and I—”

I turned toward Zé, and he flinched. He looked gray. He rubbed his mouth, and his eyes found mine and darted away again.

“He was at an NA meeting,” Mom said. “He went straight there. I heard him. I listened to him talk about pills, Fernando.”

I nodded. A part of me thought, NA is good. I’ve been trying to get Chuy to try NA for a long time. But it was hard to think clearly because there was this high-pitched noise in my head, and it drowned everything else out.

“I know you asked,” Zé said, his voice drawn so tight I thought it might crack. “I know, Fernando. But I’m sober. I haven’t used in almost a year—”

“So,” I said. “It’s true.”

“Fernando.”

“I asked you,” I said.

“I know.”

“I told you what I was dealing with. I told you—” Everything, I almost said; I told you everything. But I managed to change it into “—how important that was. I told you I didn’t want anyone who’d been in that life.”

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