“No, not exactly.”
Penny shook her head violently. She needed information way faster than he was dispensing it.
“We had dinner. The band was excellent. It was time for dessert, you know coffee, cake, sopaipillas. It was that new Tex-Mex place downtown with the murals. . . .”
“Okay,” Penny said, trying not to throttle him. “You’re too slow and inefficient. Did she get food poisoning?”
Michael shook his head.
“Was there a car accident?”
He shook his head again.
“Is she drunk?”
“No,” he said, and cleared his throat. “She ate a weed brownie.”
Penny couldn’t believe it. “What? Are you kidding?” she seethed.
Michael glanced around nervously.
“What are you guys, like, twelve?”
“She’d never had them before,” he whispered. “And she ate a whole one, and then everyone was dancing so she forgot and ate another part when we all told her you were only supposed to eat, I don’t know, a quarter or an eighth.”
“Are you high?” asked Penny.
“No,” said Michael, insulted. “I don’t do drugs. Nor would I ever drive under the influence. I just snuck her out because she was panicking, and I brought her straight here.”
“Okay.” Penny breathed. “So she’s not in surgery. She didn’t have a horrific accident. She’s not poisoned or dead. She’s just exceptionally stupid and immature even though it’s her fortieth fucking birthday.”
Penny felt bad about cursing at a stranger except that the power dynamic here was clear. Michael and Celeste were in big, big trouble.
“I thought you should know,” he reasoned. “If it was my mom I would want to know.”
Penny was certain Michael’s mom wasn’t nearly as harebrained and melodramatic.
“Also, your mother and I are dating,” he said. “I don’t know if that’s appropriate for me to say.”
“How old are you?” she asked. Penny would’ve guessed twenty-five.
“Thirty-two. How old are you?” he asked.
“Eighteen,” she said. “Are you married?”
“No!”
“Okay, well, it’s nice to meet you,” she said begrudgingly. And then, because there was nothing else to do for it, they shook hands. His palms were calloused.
“You too. Circumstances notwithstanding,” he said solicitously. “I hope I did the right thing.”
Penny rolled her eyes and sighed. “You did,” she said. “Thank you.”
“She insisted someone tell you not to come to the restaurant.”
“Okay,” said Penny. “Thanks.”
She checked in with the receptionist, a short black woman with freckles even on her lips.
“Can you tell me the status on Celeste Yoon? I’m her daughter.”
The nurse checked her computer.
“We’re observing her,” she said. “She’s on the third floor, and she’s fine. We won’t be keeping her overnight. In fact, we’re wrapping up paperwork right now, and she’ll be discharged shortly.”
“Thank you,” she said, walking back to Michael.
“She’ll be down soon,” she told her mom’s boyfriend. He exhaled audibly.
“I’m going back to school.”
“You’re not staying?” he asked. “I’m sure she’d want to see you.”
“Nope,” said Penny. “I’m all set.” Penny wasn’t interested in wasting any more of her time in this fantasyland of headassery, where the adults were large babies.
When Penny got back to her car, Sam wasn’t in it.
Honestly, it was like herding cats with these people.
Sam popped out of the shadows. “Sorry,” he said. “I had to pee.” He looked mortified.
Penny started laughing. Her anger dissipated at the thought of Sam waiting in the car, executing complicated equations of whether or not he should go inside the hospital to pee. Or pee his pants. Or pee in a darkened patch of parking lot. It had probably taken him a good ten minutes to figure it out. The image was hysterical, and once Penny got going she couldn’t stop. The stress of the past few days, between Jude’s rage and her frustration at Celeste and the relief of her not being dead was too much. Penny gasped as her body shook with laughter, eyes streaming.
Sam watched her like she was nuts.
SAM.
He couldn’t wait to go to sleep.
The drive took three hours round-trip and when he turned onto Penny’s street, she touched the back of his hand.
“Can we go to your house?” she asked.
Sam looked at her questioningly.
“Jude,” she reminded him.
He nodded and headed for House. They only had a few hours before Sam had to get up for work.
The two of them trudged up the porch stairs at a glacial pace. Sam turned on his lamp and sat on his mattress. He undid the laces of his left boot and then his right, feeling as though he were performing a slow, tame striptease.
Penny yawned as she sat beside him and took off her high-tops. She was wearing frilly white socks with embroidered strawberries on them and cartoon squirrels on the heels.
They both stared down at them.
“I forgot,” she said. “These are secret socks.”
Sam thought about the secret sides of girls and how much he loved them.
“Do you want the bed and I can take the floor?” He’d have to give her his only pillow.
“I don’t want to kick you off your own bed.”
“Do you want a glass of water or anything?” he asked her.
She nodded. Sam figured she could sort out where she wanted to sleep while he fetched it.
When he returned, she was under the covers on the side closest to the wall. She’d left him his pillow on the outer side.
“Is this okay?” she asked, sitting up to drink the water.
He nodded and got under the covers. Since she was fully dressed he kept his clothes on too.
He turned off the lamp. “I’ve been meaning to ask you,” he said groggily.
“Hmm?”
“How do you think I should decorate?”
“Good question,” she murmured. “I know how disappointed I was that there wasn’t a giant black-light swastika above your bed. I thought I knew you.”
Sam smiled. They were quiet for a while and he drifted.
“Maybe a velvet painting of Juggalos,” she said, waking him up.
They both lay there with their eyes closed, smiling into the dark.
“Is your mom okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “Except that she’s dumb.”
“Everything’s such a mess,” he said.
“Yeah,” and then, “we should have told Jude.”
“Oh, completely. It’s so stupid but I didn’t want her to know how wrecked my life was,” he said. “I wanted her to think I was a grown-up with his shit together.”
Sam felt Penny’s hand shift under the blanket so it was a few inches away from his. He nudged his over to where the backs of their hands touched.
Penny’s fingers wrapped around his protectively. “Nobody thinks you’ve got your shit together,” she said, squeezing.
Her hand felt hot and soft. The entire right side of his body became agonizingly aware of how close the entire left side of her body was to it.
“You know her dad is this big-shot lawyer.”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
He thought about it.
“I don’t know. It’s just a hang-up but he was the first person I knew who’d gone to grad school.”
Sam thought about the eighty bucks Jude’s dad had left on his bed. That he’d left him for services rendered. Like a babysitter.
“His law firm had this scholarship every year, and one time Mr. Lange, Jude’s grandfather, said I’d be a shoo-in. I never believed anything that bastard ever told me but for some reason I held on to that one. I thought maybe he’d put in a good word,” he said. “Like out of guilt or something. For the way he treated us.”
Sam remembered the humiliation. He’d filled out the paperwork and written a cover letter about his plans and goals and sent it off. He’d never heard back. It was a need-based grant, and Drew of all people knew how much Sam needed it.
“Anyway, they never responded and that was fine, but then Jude shows up out of nowhere saying she wants to come to UT.”
Sam felt Penny shift toward him.
“Why did you bail on her so much?”
“That’s a good question,” he said.