“The thing about scars, though,” she says. “Nothing you can do except wear them with pride.”
“Says the girl with flawless skin.”
“Says the girl who destroyed her tooth enamel from chronic forced vomiting. Says the girl whose boobs could be outshone by a nine-year-old boy because I starved myself through a key development stage. There’s different kinds of scars, brother.”
I watch the flashing, silent, nonsense images of dogs wearing costumes. “You going to be okay about Mom running for Congress?”
“Does it matter? She didn’t actually ask us, did she?”
“She thinks we’re all better.”
“Are we? Aren’t we?”
I repeat what I said to Jared. “It won’t be for months. We’ll be out of here.”
Mel – who has that combination of total self-belief and utter self-doubt which is more common than people think – is planning on medical school while doubting she’s going to pass History. She’ll probably do both, and if her final grades are what they should be – and they will be – she’s going to a college way on the whole other coast, thousands of miles away.
You shouldn’t say this about your sister, but I kind of already miss her, even though she’s sitting right here.
I wake up at 3:43 a.m. because my dad has sat down on my bed.
He’s crying.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” he weeps. “I’m so sorry.”
He’s still in his work suit. He stinks.
“Go to bed, Dad,” I say. “I’m okay.”
“No, you’re not,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re not okay at all.”
“All right then, I’m not okay. But it’s the middle of the night and you waking me up is kind of making everything less okay by the minute.”
He makes a little sobbing sound. “I should kill myself. I should just drive off a bridge and make all your lives better.”
“That’d be a waste of a good car. Especially if it belonged to Uncle Rick.”
“I could park the car and jump.”
“What bridge, though? There aren’t any around here high enough. You’d only just break your leg and then you’d be even more of a pain in the ass than you are now.”
He sighs. “You’re right. You’re so, so right.” He starts crying again.
“Dad–”
“You’re a good kid, Mikey. You’re the best kid…” His voice breaks.
“Seriously, Dad–”
He slides to my bedroom floor, still crying. Within minutes, he’s snoring.
I take my blankets and go sleep on the couch.
CHAPTER THE SEVENTH, in which Satchel and the rest of the indie kids share their grief for Kerouac by throwing stones soulfully into a nearby lake; wandering off on her own, Satchel takes the amulet in her hand and sees a vision of the single most handsome boy she’s ever seen in her life; Dylan, finding her, takes the opportunity to kiss her, and though his lips taste of honey and vegan patchouli, she pushes him away, revealing what the amulet told her; “The Immortals are here,” she says.
I don’t go to school on Monday. I’m feeling a lot better after Jared’s healing, but I’ve still got a broken nose, two black eyes and an ironclad reason to stay in bed. So I take it.
My phone is still pinned in the wreckage of Henna’s car, so Mel calls me at home with the info she gathers: Jared’s not in school either, maybe still recuperating from the healing and/or still trying to sneak into Henna’s hospital room, which of course is where Henna still is.
“And don’t freak out,” Mel says. “Another indie kid is dead. Kerouac Buchanan. That’s whose dad we saw in the ER.”