Push

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I WAKE UP TO LIGHT STREAMING THROUGH MY WINDOW, HITTING me in the face.

“Miki?” My door creaks as Dad pushes it open an inch. “Okay to come in?”

“Um . . .” I look down to find I’m lying on top of my covers, fully dressed. “Yeah. All clear.”

He stands in the doorway, frowning as he studies me. “Everything okay? You were sleeping when I got home from work yesterday. I tried to wake you for dinner but you grabbed my sweater and threw an uppercut at my face.”

I sit bolt upright. “I didn’t.”

He rubs his jaw. “Yeah, you did. See the bruise?” He drops his hand. “Must have been some dream, huh?”

“Must have been.” I stand up and peer at his jaw. “Dad, seriously, please tell me I didn’t hit you.”

“You didn’t hit me.” He smiles. A real smile that reaches his eyes, just like it used to when Mom was still here. I can’t help but smile back. “Well . . . not too hard, anyway.”

I grab a pillow and toss it at him. “Dad! That’s not funny.”

“You didn’t hit me, Miki. You just mumbled something about some game and rolled over. You slept”—he glances at his watch—“for sixteen hours.”

I scrub my hand over my face. “It’s . . . Saturday?”

“Ten a.m. Saturday morning.” Dad walks over and rests his hand on my forehead. Sometimes I think he just needs to touch me, sort of reassuring himself that I’m not gone, like Mom. “You don’t feel warm.”

“I’m not sick, Dad. I think I was just really tired.” I respawned yesterday on my front porch in exactly the spot I was in when I got pulled. I didn’t get to see Jackson. Didn’t get to talk to him. My gaze slides to my phone. I want to check for a message from him, but I don’t want to do it with Dad here.

“Still tired?” he asks.

I laugh. “Not even slightly. I’m a ball of energy.” Then I crack my jaw on an enormous yawn.

“So I see.” He pauses. “I’m going grocery shopping. Do you want to come along?”

There have been moments lately when I wished Dad would reach out, sit down with me, and just talk. This isn’t one of them.

I make a vague gesture at my backpack. “Tons of homework.” Not a lie. I’m way behind on that English essay for Mr. Shomper.

Dad looks like he’s going to say something more, but then he just nods and goes. I hear his footsteps on the stairs, and the sound of the front door closing.

I snatch my phone. A ton of texts. Three voice mails from Carly, one at 8:09 last night, another at 10:06, and a third from 9:30 this morning. One text from Dee. One from Luka. Nothing from Jackson. My heart sinks until I realize that there’s a good chance he did the same thing I did—crashed for sixteen hours. He might even still be asleep.

I play the first message from Carly.

“Done with the family meal from hell. Where are you?”

My stomach clenches. I completely forgot I told her to come over after dinner last night. I exhale and press my forehead to my balled fist as I play her second message.

“’Kay. Guess you ditched me. Again. Whatever.”

I don’t want to play her final message, the one from this morning, but I do anyway because I need to know just how pissed she is before I call her back and grovel.

“Just came by and spoke to your dad. He told me you fell asleep as soon as you got in last night. I guess that panic attack yesterday really did a number. Don’t worry, I didn’t tell him about it. And sorry I got so mad. Hope you’re feeling better. Oh, and I left a skinny latte with your dad. It’s probably cold now but you can nuke it. I’m at work from ten till two. Junior class then the private lesson for the trouble twins, then me and Kelley are lifeguarding a birthday party. Call you after.”

I’m slammed by both relief and guilt. Relief that Carly’s not mad and, if I’m honest, that I don’t have to deal with her this morning.

What happened to the endless hours we used to share when we could do anything and everything and just be happy to be together?

That’s where the guilt comes in. I hate feeling that way about my best friend. I hate knowing it’s way more my fault than hers. Maybe I don’t deserve her easy forgiveness. I should have remembered to call her before I crashed. If this is my life now, the two worlds I jump between, then I need to learn to balance them both.

It’s on me, not Carly. I’m the one lying and hiding shit. I need to get my head together.

“Self-pity party, much?” I mutter, not very happy with myself right now.

I check my other messages. Nothing important. And nothing from Jackson.

I try Luka—first a text, then a call, but I can’t reach him.

After a quick shower, I head down to the kitchen. There’s a bowl on the table with about a quarter inch of milk at the bottom, a half-full mug of coffee, and an empty beer bottle.

I think back to that instant when Dad laid his hand on my forehead. Did I smell beer? I don’t know.

I turn to the counter and see five more.

For a second, I’m blindingly furious at Dad. Then that anger turns on myself. The gray fog that’s slunk after me like a shadow for the past two years creeps out from whatever hole it was hiding in. I feel like two hands that are ten times normal size are pressing on my ribs, stealing my breath. The voice of condemnation shrieks and roars, blaming me for things that were never my fault, demanding that I blame myself.

But I’m not the girl I was two years ago. I push through the fog, bury it, and snatch the bottle off the table.

It’s time for me to stop feeling like I can fix whatever’s wrong with him, time for me to stop taking his choices on my shoulders. He’s an adult. He’s choosing to drink; he’s choosing not to get help and stop.

This isn’t on me. I can only let him know how I feel about what he’s doing—which I have. But it isn’t my fault and I don’t have to enable him or feed the problem.

This is Dad’s problem. His choices. No matter how much I want to control this, I can’t.

He’s gone to get groceries. That means he’s driving. Did he drink all these this morning or are they left from last night? I touch the rims of each bottle on the counter. Dry.

I’m hoping that means they’re from last night. If they aren’t, it means he had six bottles before 10:00 a.m.

For the first time in recent memory, I don’t put the empties away under the sink. I don’t wipe the counter. I don’t even clear Dad’s dishes off the table. I put the bottle from the table back exactly where I found it, grab a Pop-Tart—it’s Saturday, the one day I stray from my healthy-eating rule—microwave the coffee Carly brought me, and head back to my room.

I wonder what Dad will make of that.

I don’t even know what I make of that.

All I know is that I can’t keep hiding empty beer bottles under the sink, can’t keep cleaning the kitchen till it sparkles, pretending that’ll make everything okay.

I’m halfway to my room when I pause, sigh, clomp back down the stairs. I rinse Dad’s bowl in the sink, dump his cold coffee, stack the washer, wipe the table without moving that lone empty bottle. And I leave the other empties where they are on the counter and call that a victory.

Baby steps.

Homework takes up a couple of hours. I check my phone every few minutes, wishing Jackson would call. I’m not trying to do the clingy, needy thing. I just want to hear his voice, know he’s okay, know he made it back.

Which is in direct opposition to the part of me that’s still angry with him for getting me dragged into the game in the first place. We never got to resolve the little issue of his betrayal, the way he tricked me and sold me into the game. Like I told him in Detroit, I don’t forgive him.

I’m not exactly proud of that. But it is what it is.

And it leaves me tied up in knots.

He doesn’t call. Which isn’t all that surprising since I don’t think he even has my number. I don’t have his, which is why I haven’t been the one to do the calling—something I plan to remedy as soon as I see him.

I help Dad unload the groceries when he gets back, organizing the tins, labels out, shifting the ones from the back of the cabinet to the front, according to expiration date.

Dad glances at the beer bottles, one on the table, the others still on the counter, and frowns.

“You didn’t clear up the kitchen,” he says.

“Yeah, I did.” I look him straight in the eye. “I cleared away your breakfast dishes and wiped the table.”

I wait to see if he’ll bring up the bottles. He doesn’t. We stare at each other, and for the first time in a long time, we communicate.

Silently.

Meaningfully.

I’m the one to break the stare.

As I head back upstairs, he steps out of the kitchen into the hall and watches me. I slow down, giving him the chance: if he says anything, anything at all, I’ll stop, go back down, talk to him. But nothing has changed. He doesn’t say anything and neither do I.

Once I get to my room I pick up where I left off with Mr. Shomper’s Lord of the Flies essay. My concentration isn’t exactly the best. I check my phone, then my page online to see if Jackson messaged me there. Nothing.

I’m anxious, edgy.

The urge to go for a run is nearly overwhelming. I get as far as laying out my running gear on the bed when Carly calls. We talk about how awesomely hawt Matt, her fellow lifeguard, is—well, she talks and I listen and make humming noises at appropriate times.

“So, you want to do Mark’s Texas Hots on Monroe for dinner? Or Nick Tahou’s?” I ask as she winds down.

“Can’t,” she says. “Like I told you, Kelley and Sarah are coming over to work on that group thing for Español. We haven’t even started yet.”

Did she tell me that? If she did, I don’t remember.

“But you could come, too,” she says. It comes out more as a question than a statement.

I hesitate, not sure what to say. Carly made plans on a Saturday night. Without me. The only other time she’s done that is when she’s had a date.

Finally, I ask, “And distract you from your work? What kind of a friend would I be?”

She laughs. It’s a strained, uncomfortable sound. Or maybe I’m projecting the way I feel onto her.

When I end the call, it’s almost three o’clock.

I close my laptop, put my running gear away. While a run might ease the tension, it won’t get me answers.

I’m done waiting to hear from Jackson. I need to see him. I want to touch him and know he’s real. I want to feel his arms around me. I want to see his trademark Jackson smile, white teeth, and that killer dimple in his cheek.

And then I want to give him a piece of my mind for what he did to me in the first place.

I press my lips together and stare out my window. I’m so tired of being angry with the people I love.

I unplug my phone from the charger and shove it, along with my textbooks, into my bag. I might not have Jackson’s number, but I have his address. Nothing like showing up unexpectedly at someone’s door to catch them at their best. But it isn’t like he hasn’t done the same to me the night he climbed through my bedroom window. I guess turnaround’s fair play.

I pull my hair into a ponytail, change out my sweats for jeans and a cute top that’s a silvery gray. It reminds me of Jackson’s eyes. I don’t usually wear much makeup, but I add a little mascara and lip gloss, then grab my jacket and my backpack and call bye to Dad as I head for the door.

“Wait.” He comes out of his office, frowning. “Where are you going?”

“Heading over to a friend’s. Then maybe the library.” Truth—maybe isn’t the same as definitely. There’s always a chance I could go to the library.

That’s how Dad and I get by: mostly honest but sometimes not.

“Which friend?”

Precisely the question I was hoping to avoid.

“A guy from my English class. We have an essay.” Again, truth. Jackson is in my class and we do have an essay, just not one we need to work on together.

“That boy Luka?”

“No.” I take a deep breath, remembering how Jackson told his mom all about me. “His name’s Jackson,” I say. “Jackson Tate.”

Dad frowns even harder. “Why can’t he come here?”

“Do you want to call his mom and ask?”

Dad rears back in surprise.

“Sorry,” I say, meaning it. “Dad, seriously, I’m not doing anything sketchy. Have a little faith.”

He mulls that over for a few seconds, then asks, “What about Carly?”

“Group project.”

His expression lightens. “Oh, okay.”

Uh-oh. I think he took that to mean we’ll all be working together. I choose not to disabuse him of that idea.

“Keep your phone on. And call me to let me know if you’ll be home for dinner.”

“’Kay.” I give him a quick kiss on the cheek. His arms close around me and he hugs me a little tighter and a little longer than usual. He smells like fabric softener and spicy shaving cream, just like he did when I was little. He doesn’t smell like beer. I close my eyes and hug him tighter, too.

Then he lets me go.

I swallow, hesitate. After my pep talk to myself about letting Dad take ownership of the drinking thing, I know I ought to leave it alone, let him make his own choices. I shouldn’t push. But there’s this part of me that needs to be in control, and that’s the part that says in a rush, “There’s this meeting. Actually, meetings. Plural. They have them on the weekends and during the week after work. We could go tomorrow. I think there’s one on Elmwood in the morning. And one at the church on Park in the afternoon. I’ll go with you, if it’s allowed. We could check online.”

Does he know that I mean AA meetings? Will he take the hand I’m offering?

He stares at me for so long I think maybe he doesn’t have a clue what I’m talking about. Then he scrapes his palm along his Saturday-stubbled cheek and says, “Not yet, Miki. I’m not ready yet.”

Disappointment settles on my shoulders like a cloak. Then it kindles and flares to full-on anger. I fight the urge to snap at him, to ask if something terrible has to happen before he is ready. But then I remember what the website said: If you want to drink, that’s your business. If you want to stop, that’s our business.

I cool down a little, enough to recognize that he didn’t shoot me down. He didn’t admit that he has a problem, but he didn’t pretend that he doesn’t. This is progress.

He says he’s not ready yet? Maybe tomorrow or the next day he will be. Dad has to want to make this someone’s business other than his own or it won’t work.

I have to keep the door open.

I want to say something else, but I have no idea what. So I just do this awkward smile-with-my-mouth-closed-and-nod thing as I heft my backpack and head out.