Isaiah!” Echo pops her head around the halfway-open door to the bedroom. Her red curls flow over her shoulder.
“Hey, Echo,” I say in return as she closes the door. A trail of shoes, Noah’s shirt and Echo’s sweater make a path from the couch to the bedroom. Looks like the two enjoyed my belated Christmas present to them: time alone.
Noah picks their clothes up off the floor. He knocks on the bedroom door, opens it and mumbles something as he hands her the sweater. Noah has tried to play it off for a couple of weeks, but he’s worried about her. To be honest, so am I. Echo began covering her arms again last week.
He touches her face as he talks to her. It’s a simple touch, but one she responds to by hugging him. I once thought I had found what Noah and Echo share: love. But I was mistaken, or maybe I was too late. Either way, I fucked up.
Noah shuts the door, giving Echo privacy, and clears his throat. “Thanks, bro.”
“No, problem. Is she, ah...okay?”
He shrugs his shirt on. “Her mom’s been screwing with her, using the excuse of the anniversary of Echo’s brother’s death in order to do it. I don’t understand why Echo gives her the time of day. Her mother is a worthless pile of shit.”
Noah pauses, waiting for me to agree, but I’m not interested in being a hypocrite. I spent two hours last week stalking my mother in a parking lot. Evidently, Noah is a magnet for people with mom issues. Not that he would know it. The only person I told about my mother’s release from prison was Beth, and I haven’t talked to Beth in over two months.
“Everything all right?” asks Noah when I say nothing.
I think about it—telling him that my mom was released from prison over a year ago and has just now requested a visit. Noah and Echo are the closest thing I have to a family and it would be nice not to carry the burden of the secret around by myself. To have someone empathize with what it’s like to have been thrown away as a child.
I could even tell them why she went to jail and how I was part of it.
As I start to answer, my eyes rest on Noah’s new stack of college textbooks. Noah wouldn’t get it. Technically, he wasn’t a throwaway. “I’m good.”
I open the door to the refrigerator and find the same scene as this morning: two beers and nothing else. “Guess we should have hung a stocking in the fridge, man.”
“Fuck that,” says Noah. “We need to put a stocking in a savings account.”
He sits on the only piece of furniture in the living room besides the television: the couch we bought for thirty dollars at Goodwill. Noah and I live simply. We have a closet called a bedroom, two mattresses with box springs, one bathroom, and one larger space that contains our living room and a kitchen. Kitchen is a loose term. It consists of one sink, the refrigerator, two cabinets and a microwave.
Noah holds his hands between his knees and bends his head as if he’s lost in prayer. My best friend isn’t a heavy guy and this load he’s shouldering—it’s weighing down the room.
“Your student loan didn’t come through, did it?” I ask.
Noah kneads his eyes. “I need a ‘responsible’ adult to cosign.”
“That’s bullshit.” It’s like the world wants people like me and Noah to fail.
“Is what it is.”
“Did you ask anyone to help?” Noah’s got some nutcase therapist he’s been close to since last spring, and he’s been working things out with his younger brothers’ adoptive parents.
“Cosigning a loan isn’t asking for gas money.”
He gives no indication of whether he let pride get in the way or whether he sought help and people said no. Because of that I let the subject drop. Me digging would only be shoving the stake in further.
“I hate to ask,” says Noah, “but how much can you contribute to bills this month?”
Not much. Business at the auto shop where I work has been slow and what little work they do have is completed while I’m in school. Plus what money I have scraped up after bills, I’ve given to Echo to pay off a debt I owe her.
A debt I took on because of Beth. When the familiar ache flashes through my chest, I immediately deflect all thought to the subject at hand. “How much do we need?”
Noah cracks his crazy-ass grin. “All of it. I used my last paycheck to buy the books I need for next semester and that jar of peanut butter we’ve been eating from this week.”
His smile wanes and the heaviness returns. “When we agreed to move out of foster care together I thought I’d be taking on more hours at the Malt and Burger instead of dropping them, but you know...”
Noah looks away. His grades took a nosedive in the first semester of his freshman year. My best friend is a smart son-of-a-bitch, but the transition from high school to college kicked his ass. In order to raise his GPA, the hours at work went down. That student loan was his last-ditch effort to find a way to exist.
“Ask Echo to move in,” I suggest. “You spend all of your free time together. A third body could help with bills. You two can have the bedroom and I’ll crash on the couch.”
He cocks his head as he contemplates, then shakes it. “Her scholarship covers everything and she’s too focused on school and her art to make decent money.” A rat scurries from one corner and disappears into another. “Besides, visiting is one thing. Living here is another.”
True. His depression becomes contagious and I lean against the refrigerator. “Say what you gotta say, man.”
“The one advantage of graduating from foster care is that the state pays for my college tuition. They’ll also pay for me to stay in the dorms.”
My stomach sinks like I’m falling down a damn well. He’s looking to take advantage of the deal he gets for being a system kid and he wants me to return to the foster home we shared before he turned eighteen and graduated. “I can’t go back to foster care.”
“You have five more months until you graduate,” Noah says. “Shirley and Dale weren’t that bad. They were the best foster home I had.”
“And they’re Beth’s family,” I snap. At my side, my fists open and close. I gave the girl everything inside of me and she still walked. There’s no way I can crawl back to her aunt and uncle and beg for them to take me in again, and I’d rather die than go into another home. “There’s got to be another way.” There has to be.
“I get it,” Noah says. “I was there in hell right along with you, but we’re drowning here.”
“What if I find a way to make it work? What if I raise the money?”
“How?” Noah’s mouth tightens.
“Just let me fix this.” ’Cause I can, but in ways Noah doesn’t want to know about.
Neither one of us blink as we stare at each other. Yes—we’ve both experienced hell, and Noah promised me when he graduated from the system that he wouldn’t leave
