Page 48 of Big Balls
I strain to see if I can hear her breathing, the little sounds that let me know she’s alive and hasn’t hung up on me yet.
“Mmmm,” she finally says, a humming noise that is probably neutral but definitely feels like she’s disapproving somehow.
Probably it’s just leftover disappointment lingering in her voice.
“What did you want, Ethan?” Her voice is cool—unfriendly. It’s worse than when we were strangers, like before.
“I need your help. With Katy.”
There’s a long pause. Long enough that I look back at the phone to see whether she’s hung up on me. I hold it back up to my face and try again.
“Zoe, can you hear me?”
She sighs, a heavy sound that lets me know she’s alive on the other side of this phone call.
“This isn’t fair.”
“I know. I wouldn’t call and ask if it wasn’t an emergency.”
“Well, you’re in luck. I happen to love your daughter and need to say goodbye to her anyway.”
My pulse speeds up, a metallic taste in my mouth. “What do you mean you need to say goodbye?”
16
Zoe
I bring Katy a puzzle,because we’d had plans to work on a puzzle together, before The Sex.
This was the great demarcation line in my existence: before The Sex and after The Sex.
The worst part was that I knew better. I absolutely knew from the very first time I laid eyes on Ethan Alexander that I was going to end up being hurt by him, but I eagerly lined up for it anyway, didn’t I?
I feel so stupid. I know he didn’t do it to me on purpose, but the way that everything worked out hurt me in a way that I didn’t want to admit to myself, let alone to the person who inflicted the harm.
But I was willing to pretend it didn’t matter as long as he was willing to play along. It wouldn’t matter for much longer anyway.
Katy helps me piece together a waterfall, a little stripe of blue in the middle of the puzzle. “Katy, there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Her head whips around so fast I’m shocked she didn’t fall out of the chair. “Is this about Daddy sending me away to school? I asked him to have you come back, but he told me you couldn’t.”
I nod and watch as her shoulders fall and she crumples down into a little ball. “I wanted to come see you anyway and tell you goodbye. I wouldn’t be able to play with you even if you weren’t going.”
Her face pinches up like she’s going to cry. “I don’t understand why you can’t come back here and stay with me.”
I take her hand in mind and give it a little squeeze. A hand hug. “I’m going to take a job in California. It’s at a great tutoring facility, where I get to help kids who have problems in school like my big brother did. It’s a dream job for me, exactly what I went to school for.”
Her mouth drops open, and she starts to cry. This is going about as well as I expected, and I hate every minute of it.
“Hey, I still want us to be friends. We can write letters to each other.”
She shakes off my hand and stands up. “It won’t be the same. It’s not even a little bit the same thing as before.”
I stare at her solemn face, the two spots of color high up along her cheeks that indicate she’s not done crying just yet.
“I hate you,” she yells and storms off to her room. Her footsteps fade, and finally a door slams somewhere above us.
In the southern wing of the house, I guess. Because that’s how big the house is that we are in. It had sections you had to refer to by the cardinal directions.
