Page 123 of Don't Let Me Go
“I know, I know. I’m the one who supported your decision to come here and live with your aunt. But, baby, I have been regretting that decisionallsummer long. I mean, let’s be realistic. Your aunt is a very kind, very generous woman, but she isn’t capable of taking care of you or giving you a stable home. Look at the people she’s letting you consort with!”
I open my mouth to defend Aunt Rachel and my friends, but my mother stops me.
“Not that they aren’t pleasant enough kids in their own way, I’m sure,” she backtracks. “But, Jackson, look how confused they’ve made you. And look how unhappy you are. Even at the height of that whole Devon Sanderson fiasco, you never refused to get out of bed for days on end. You never stopped showering and eating and taking care of yourself. You never had your whole family worried you might do something—drastic.”
The worddrasticcatches in her throat. For the first time, I see the fear in my mother’s eyes. And despite all the awful, ignorant things she’s said about Aunt Rachel and Riley and my friends, I can’t help feelinggrateful.
All I’ve wanted since the day that I told her about Riley was to know she still loved me. And even though she hasn’t said the words, I can tell from the way she’s looking at me with desperate panic that she’s terrified of losing me.
“That’s why,” she continues, “your father and I think you should come home.”
It takes a second for my brain to catch up with my ears, but when it does, my jaw drops. “Youwhat?”
“We discussed it last night, and we really feel like it’s the only solution. I know you wanted to move here so you could escape everything that happened last year. But don’t you see? You’re only making things worse for yourself. You’re not thriving here. You’re flailing. Even your aunt can see—”
“Wait,” I interrupt. “Does Aunt Rachel know you want me to move back home?”
“Of course she does.”
“And what does she think?”
My mother tilts her head in confusion as if Aunt Rachel’s opinion is about as relevant as a stack of expired coupons. “Your aunt wants you to be happy, Jackson. Weallwant you to be happy.”
“You think I’ll behappyin Tallahassee?”
“I think you’ll be a lot better off at home surrounded by a family who loves you andrealfriends who want the best for you, instead of wasting away in a strange city with well-meaning but dubious people who have confused you and made you miserable.”
“They didn’t confuse me,” I protest. “And they didn’t make me miserable.”
“Then why am I here, Jackson? Why am I getting frantic phone calls from your aunt telling me she’s at her wit’s end because she’s worried sick about you? Why do you look like a walking corpse?”
I don’t know what to say. I want to tell her about Jocasta, tell her the only reason I’m miserable is because I had to break up with Riley to save our lives. But I can’t. That would only convince her that I’m even more screwed up than she thinks I am.
“Baby, justthinkabout it,” she says, her voice gentle but insistent. “If you came home, you could finish your senior year with all your friends, you could rejoin the football team—maybe you could even get back together with Micaela. Everything could go back to the wayit was, and we could forget all about this confusing summer and just move on with our lives.”
My mother stares at me with wide, pleading eyes. They’re the same shade of blue as my own, a reminder of the bond we share. As mother and son. As family. But I have zero desire to return with her to Tallahassee.
That old life, the one she looks back on so fondly, the one that made me utterly miserable, is something I will never return to. Not as long as I have any say in the matter.
I open my mouth to tell her that, but the words stick in my throat.
Returning to my old life might very well be hell, but it’s not like there isn’t another hell waiting for me here in Orlando.
Come the fall, every day will be its own special purgatory. Every day I’ll have to see Riley at school and pretend that he means nothing to me. That my arms aren’t aching to hold him. That my heart isn’t empty without him.
How am I going to survive that? How am I going to survive seeing him over and over again and not die a little every day?
At least in Tallahassee, I’d be spared that torture. In Tallahassee there wouldn’t be the constant daily reminder of what I’ve lost. Of what I can never have.
My mother senses my wavering. Quick as a flash, she leans across the table and takes my hand in hers, her eyes shining with hope.
“Jackson, baby,comehome.”
Chapter 50
Riley
“Consider yourself kidnapped,” Audrey announces, eyeing me in her rearview mirror as I buckle myself into the uncomfortably tiny back seat of her Volkswagen Beetle.
