Jared’s made it very clear what he thinks of you. If he wants any more of your help, he can damn well ask for it.
5
THE ROCHE LIMIT OF LOVE
The moments during the long car ride when Jared managed to drift into sleep kept sending him to the airless world where the coy wolves thrashed and moaned and died. Georgina simply watched him and he could feel her attention across the universes. He woke from the last brief nap struggling for breath, then touched his temple where a headache bloomed. Lack of sleep. Flop-sweat smell of fear. Stomach roiling with guilt and self-loathing he couldn’t seem to shake.
“I wish I could scrub my brain,” Jared said.
When Kota didn’t react, Jared wondered if he’d said it out loud or if he’d just thought it. His cousin kept staring forward, the lights of oncoming traffic highlighting the bones in his face.
“You need a pit stop?” Kota said.
“No,” Jared said. “Just something to take the edge off.”
“Like I need your mom, Aunt Mave and Hank blaming me for another relapse.”
“I was joking. Mostly. Ha ha.”
“Not fucking funny.”
Kota pulled off at an exit and scowled at his phone until he found an early morning Alcoholics Anonymous meeting in the burbs of Vancouver and he took Jared there without asking if he wanted to go. They plunked themselves in folding chairs. Afterwards, Jared shoved his third white chip in the back pocket of his dad’s slacks. He might do his ninety in ninety. He might not. Given how weird his world was now, what was the point of sobriety? He didn’t want to argue with Kota, though, until he wasn’t depending on him for a ride to Mave’s. They helped stack the chairs back into a closet and then sat outside on a peeling wooden bench in the drizzly rain while Kota chain-smoked and jiggled his leg.
Kota exhaled upwards. “I should have told your mom David was following you.”
“Don’t ‘should’ on yourself.”
“I’m not blaming myself, you goof.”
Normally, at a time like this, Jared would check his phone, but he had nothing to pretend to be busy studying. The windbreaker his dad had given him was not waterproof and the rain leaked through the shoulders.
Kota stood and crushed out his cigarette butt. He strode towards the Canuck bug without looking back to see if Jared was following.
Jared felt muddled and uneasy as he got off the bench and went to the car. Kota glared into the middle distance while Jared opened the door and slid quietly into the passenger’s seat. Maybe Kota was tired from driving all night. And Kota, for all his pissy moods, was the easiest member of his family to deal with. God, this was going to be messy. Just get through it minute by minute. No overthinking things.
“Did I do something?” Jared finally said.
Kota glanced at him. “I’m angry. You’re part of why I’m angry, but it’s not about you. It’s my own shit.”
I don’t think I deserve to live, Jared wanted to say to his cousin, but couldn’t. I’m afraid of what I’ve become.
—
They pulled onto Graveley Street, where Mave’s building was. All the parking spots on the street were taken, so they drove around to the rear through the alley and down into the underground parking garage. Kota shut off the car and grabbed his phone, scrolling through his messages and then hunting and pecking furiously.
“Ready?” Kota said, putting his phone away.
“Nope,” Jared said. “But let’s get this over with.”
He felt as if he’d been away forever, as if he was returning to his childhood home after being gone for years. The micro parking stalls, the slow elevator, the greying colour of the carpet as they stepped into the hallway all brought him back to what was only a week earlier. Had he changed so much? How much did it matter that he wasn’t the same kind of human as everyone else in this apartment building? This country? This world?
At the other end of the hallway, Jared noticed a bunch of people. But when he turned to see if he knew any of them, he realized some were faint and some were shredding the way ghosts did when they were older and couldn’t hold themselves together anymore. They crowded against one particular door like shoppers anxiously awaiting Black Friday. It was the door to Eliza’s apartment, his little cousin who, like him, could see the supernatural.
“Is Eliza okay?” Jared said.
“Her dad died while you were gone,” Kota said. “They took him off life support.”
“Oh,” Jared said. He hesitated, not wanting to involve Eliza and her mother, Olive, in his insane life, but also wanting to see that they were okay.
“Come on,” Kota said, holding Mave’s apartment door open for him.
When he stepped inside, Jared could tell it was empty of all ghostly visitors. For a moment he could feel the familiar presences—Sophia was a deep thrum like the lowest note of an electric guitar—but his mother drowned everyone else out. When he entered the living room, her power growled like thunder. The hair on his arms rose, his hackles stood up, and he was dizzy. Other people were in the room. He could hear them. But he could only see his mother, could only feel her fierce joy as she ran to him. They crashed together as if they were in danger of being pulled apart for good, and Jared couldn’t tell if he was screaming or she was. They rested their foreheads together. His mind was filled with her terror, her worry, her focus fuzzy from the drugs Mave had given her. He had always loved her, always, always, in ways
