Home Again

“I’m sorry, I don’t have that date with me,” Chris said calmly.

“Why are you hiding the date?”

Chris nodded briskly. “Thank you for your time.”

Lights flashed, cameras clicked, questions rang out.

But the press conference was over.

It was quiet here in the early morning hour before school began. Thin yellow clouds spread across the tree-tops, and the first glimmering rays of the sun glanced off the metal bleachers. Lina could feel her feet sinking into the squishy, rain-soaked grass, and it made her feel strangely buoyant to leave a set of footprints across the football field. As if, for once, she was actually here.

She heard the kids talking long before she reached the lip of the ravine. Their chattering voices floated up from the dark copse of trees, accompanied by the sweet smell of marijuana.

She couldn’t wait to join them. She jammed her hands in her pockets and raced to the edge of the ravine, staring down at the crowd she’d tried so desperately to belong to.

They were down there, clustered together, passing a thermos around in one direction, and a joint in the other. The few kids who weren’t smoking pot were puffing away on their cigarettes.

Lina frowned, disappointed suddenly. Last night Angel—her dad!—had talked to her about drugs and booze and cigarettes.

She’d heard it all a million times before, but last night was different. First of all, Angel was her dad, and she wanted him to love her. But too, he seemed to understand her in a way no one ever had before. Last night, as they’d sat together on the porch swing, listening to the tinny clanks of her mom cooking inside, Lina had looked into her father’s green eyes and felt as if she were looking into a mirror. He was the first adult she’d ever known who remembered what it felt like to be a kid.

When she told him that, he laughed and said it was because he’d never grown up. But then, in the middle of all their joking, he turned serious. When she pulled out a cigarette and started to light up, he grabbed her hand and stared at her so long, she became scared.

“First of all,” he said, “you can’t smoke around me because of my surgery. But more importantly, smoking is for idiots, and you seem like a smart kid to me.”

His words made her feel small and stupid, and mumbling something, she put the cigarette away. After that, they lapsed into silence. Night fell slowly, drizzling across the untended yard, blurring the edges of the trees. A white moth came out of hiding and fluttered around the porch light.

Finally her dad spoke again, and this time she could tell that he was thinking long and hard before each word. “I’m an alcoholic, Angelina, and a drug abuser, and … worse. I know what sends a person out into the darkness, looking for a little bit of light—even if that light comes with a helluva price and only lasts for the length of an evening.” He turned to her then, and she saw the disappointment in his eyes. “I’ve ruined

my life—and drugs and booze were how I did it. Please, please don’t be like me. It’d break my heart.”

“Hey, Lina!” Jett’s voice cut through her thoughts.

Distractedly Lina looked down the ravine and saw Jett standing in his usual spot, clutching the thermos in one hand and a joint in the other. “You bring anything to drink?”

Lina frowned. For the first time, it bothered her that Jett always asked for something from her. “Nope,” she yelled down.

He looked away from her before the word was even finished. “Bummer!” he yelled, and everyone laughed, then he went back to passing the joint around.

Lina stood there for another minute, waiting for someone else to call to her, or invite her down. But the kids seemed to have forgotten her existence. Shoving her hands in her pockets, she made her careful, picking way down the loose embankment, her tennis shoes crushing the muddy ivy and mushrooms in her path.

She moved into place beside Jett and said nothing. In the distance the second school bell rang and everyone laughed.

Someone handed Lina the joint. She stared at it, blinking at the smoke that stung her eyes. Then she passed it to the next person in line.

Jett frowned at her. “You don’t wanna get high?”

She shrugged. “Don’t feel like it.”

“Why not?”

Everyone waited, breathless, for the answer.

“I met my dad last night.” She felt a rush of adrenaline as she said the words.

Jett took a long drag and held it in, then exhaled the smoke at her face. “Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah,” she said, grinning up at him. “He’s Angel DeMarco.”