Page 172 of Wrath

"I don't think you want that."

"Is it so terrible?" I manage.

She stops in the middle of the sidewalk, looking at me with wide, furious eyes. "You don't want to do this right now, Joshua."

"Yes I do. I want to do it right now. Let me have it, Mom. Just fucking say it, so you don't have to keep acting weird and awkward."

Her mouth rounds into a small “o” when I use the F-word. Then she wheels around and nearly jogs toward a nearby parking deck. I jog after her, my stomach feeling topsy-turvy. I've never seen my mom act like this.

As soon as we get into the shadows of the parking deck’s first floor, she turns back to me, and there are black lines snaking down her cheeks.Mascara dripping.

"I don't want to do this right now," she says in a stern, I'd-rather-be-mad-than-cry voice.

My stomach flips so hard, I feel sick.

"Do what?" I rasp.

She looks around. There are a few students, none too close to us. She steps closer to me, pointing her finger like she might jab it into my chest.

"Tell you that I'm disappointed," she says in a quiet voice. "Tell you that I can't believe you've done some of these things you’ve done since November. Mostly" —her voice shakes— "tell you I don't know how we can send you here if you can't get your head back on straight." Mom starts crying. "It's my fault, though. I noticed how you looked at him and I should have said something sooner. We were too—"

"Stop it."

"Permissive. And the two of you got overwhelmed, and then he—"

"Isaidstop talking about it!”

"I know it's my fault, and Carl's. We were the adults in the house. And I know you're hurting, Josh, and confused! But you can't—"

"I'm not confused, Mom.” I can’t help a soft laugh. “You think I'm confused? I'm not. I know exactly what went down, and it's not what you think. You and Carl didn't know shit about him."

"Help me understand, then."

Tears start sliding down my cheeks with no damn warning. "He was messed up. No—not that." I wipe my face. "He wasn't messed up." He was perfect. "People hurt him. Carl didn't keep in touch enough. His mom was—I think his mom messed him up. And by the time I met him, it was done and I couldn't help him."

My throat feels too tight. Then I'm crying in a parking garage. At what's maybe my future college. Mom is crying, and she's looking at me like she thinks I'm six years old and I just crashed my bike, and I don't need that.

"If it was anybody's fault he left, it was my fault,” I say, wiping my eyes. “I got too close to him, and I don't know if he liked it."

"He did like you, Josh. I could always see it. It wasn't that he didn't like you."

He said he loved me. I'm not telling my mom that.

"Doesn't matter," I tell her. "It's over now."

We do the whole tour, after we dry our eyes. I can't eat the pizza they give us in the student portion of things. On the way home, all I think about is getting in my bed and going to sleep.

I do okay faking things with mom—at least I think I do. She seems upbeat when we do dinner at the kitchen table with Carl.He grilled burgers while we drove home.

Finally I go upstairs, shower, and climb into my bed. I pull his shirt out from beneath my pillow and unwrap the bottle ofvodka inside it. I drain the bottle dry, so I don't feel like I'm in my bed anymore.

Then I look through photos in my phone. The ones of my car—mangled in the junkyard. For the thousandth time, I want to text one to him. Really pull the fucking lever, see if any part of him still cares.

But I can't. It's too pathetic—even for me.

I reach in my nightstand drawer and find one of the small, white pills. It's only Xanax. I don't take them every night. Just when I feel like my chest is on fire.

I chew it like Ezra did and lie in the dark till sleep takes me.

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