“But…,” I said. Anything I might say seemed both not enough and also too much. “You go to our school….”
He sighed. His arms reached for my waist, pulling me closer, so his forehead rested against my stomach. “My dad died when I was a kid,” he said. “There’s a trust in my name. I get a monthly stipend, in addition to using it for school tuition—but I don’t control it yet. I can’t just go get the money whenever I want.”
“Oh,” I said. So he had money, and his mom and stepdad didn’t.
“It’s not like I’m rich and they’re not,” he said. “It’s not going to last forever. But it will get me through college, maybe help with my first house….”
Then he pushed me back, abruptly, and stood on top of his bed, reaching up for the ceiling fan. The base was a metallic semicircle, and when he unscrewed the bottom, there seemed to be nothing there but the exposed wiring, tucked inside.
But he reached inside the metal compartment and pulled out an envelope.
He opened the top of the envelope, and I saw the thick stack of money. My eyes went wide. “You keep it there? What you get each month?” Banks are safer, I was thinking; there’s a reason for them, so our money is safe and insured.
He set his jaw, as if debating what to say. “You can’t be the only signature on a bank account until you’re eighteen. Some of the money already gets put toward the house bills, to keep me living in the lifestyle to which I am accustomed.” He said it in an official capacity, like he was repeating the words his mother or a lawyer had once used. “I’m trying to keep an eye on the rest.”
It took me a moment to understand what he was saying. That whoever else might sign the account with him could also take the money. I couldn’t imagine a parent doing that, and it made me angry on his behalf.
Though we were separated by the expanse of his bed, I thought we couldn’t get any closer than this. This sharing of secrets. The bond tightening between us. He counted off a stack of bills, replaced the money, and motioned for me to follow down the steps.
When we reached the kitchen, he left the money on the table and exhaled. “I have to get out of here.”
I pulled his hand, leading him back toward the front door, thinking Then let’s go. He followed me out to his car.
Sitting in his car, he turned the ignition, rested his head back, and said, “I can’t wait until I’m eighteen. And then college.”
And I realized he meant more than leaving his room, his house, in that moment. And that I too would eventually be left behind.
—
I think, now, of the things kept just out of sight in this room. Max has uncovered the hidden space between the mattress and box spring. The only thing there is the sealed strip of condoms, now on display. This was the point at which Max had stopped. When he’d frozen, and remembered I was standing here, watching. When he realized that he was unearthing not just Caleb but me.
I throw them into my purse—the things a mother shouldn’t see—and right the bed again.
I stand on the mattress like Caleb had once done, and unscrew the bottom of his ceiling fan. It falls off quickly in my hands, before I’ve had a chance to turn it. It’s empty. And inside, the wires are pulled lower, torn apart, as if someone has already been through here, and did not like what they found.
There’s nothing here. Nothing left. I wonder if maybe Caleb found a new hiding spot. I can still hear the blood pulsing inside my skull. Trying to understand Max’s words. Money, taken. Money stolen. It makes no sense, because Caleb had access to money, if he needed it.
But still, the thought lingers: money that maybe Caleb had used for something else that day, something that has nothing to do with me. Somewhere else to shift the guilt. Another possibility.
And yet: It was money that Max needs. And he took this room apart, in his fury.
I’m still standing on the mattress in the middle of the mess when I hear Eve and Mia come in from the backyard.
“Try the lights up there,” Eve says.
Someone walks up the steps, and I panic.
The shelves are a mess. The floor is a mess. The room is nothing like it should be, and I give up on trying to maintain an ordered chaos.
I jump down onto the carpet and start stacking all the books on the floor into a box.
But the footsteps stop at the bottom, at Mia’s room. “They’re not working,” Mia yells.
“Jessa?” his mother calls from down below. “Are you up there?”
“Yes,” I call. “The power’s off.”
“Just a short,” she says. “Hold on.”
I get back to work, and eventually the house reboots. A door closes below, and I know Eve has been out to the garage, to reset the power. The power source under his desk glows red. The light in the corner clicks on, the gust of heat from the vent lifting the hair off my neck, like a breath.
I keep stacking, trying to put the room back in some sort of order, in case Eve comes upstairs. One of the books, a paperback purchased Used (so says the yellow sticker on the back that he never peeled off), has tears in the edges of the back cover. When I flip to the front cover, it catches me around the throat in a heartbeat, remembering the last time I saw this. I found it for him near the end of the school year. Under the seat of his car.
We were driving to one of Julian and Max’s ball games in late May, some big playoff game, and I had my phone out, directing Caleb. The windows were rolled down, and the air smelled of spring and exhaust.
“Oh, crap,” Caleb said, craning his head at the sign overhead. “Toll.”
“How much?” I asked, scrambling.
I opened the glove compartment, but only found the car manual, a mini-flashlight, his insurance and registration cards. I ran my fingers through the cup holders, the side compartments in the doors.
“Check under the seat,” he said.
I pulled out a candy wrapper, three quarters—“I knew it,” he declared when I raised them in victory—and a book, facedown, spine broken down the middle.
“Some light reading?” I asked, holding it up to him. “What, can’t possibly get enough of The Grapes of Wrath?”
He grabbed it from me with one hand, his eyes drifting from the road momentarily. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve been looking for that forever. I had to go sit at the school library for thirty minutes until I finished, because Mrs. Laverne wouldn’t let me check it out, since there was a wait list. Not that anyone actually came to check it out that week, I might add.”
“And how exactly did it end up under your seat?”
He shrugged, slipping it into the gap beside his seat. He paid the toll, took the exit. “Guess it fell out of my bag. You must’ve kicked it under the seat.” But he was smiling when he said it.
I gasped. “Me?”
“Yeah. You can never sit still.” He put a hand on my leg for emphasis. The leg that I’d just tucked under the other, unbuckling for a moment to get more comfortable.
Then we passed a small sign with a town’s name on it and his fingers tightened slightly, kind of in play, kind of not. “Hey, I want to check something out first. Okay?”