Upstander by James Preller (free ereaders .TXT) 📕

Her phone dinged. A text from Griff: Found him.

15[staying]

Less than an hour later, a car pulled up in front of the house. Jonny got out, gave a two-fingered salute goodbye, and a dented green atrocity of a car sped off. Barefoot Jonny swerved up the walkway. He was dressed oddly, wearing clothes Mary didn’t recognize: shiny baby blue gym shorts and a ratty green sweatshirt. Not his clothes, Mary decided. I wonder what happened to them? Anyway, a weird combination to wear in August. Mary glanced at her mother. She was clenching and unclenching her fists, staring straight ahead. She blew air out of her mouth in a long, slow, determined exhale.

Trying hard to stay calm.

“Here comes Jonny,” Mary whispered, recalling that scene from The Shining. It was a bad joke that didn’t land. The timing was off. If Mary and her mother had laughed just minutes before, it now felt like a hundred years ago. Jonny stood before them like a diaphanous phantom. He looked light, delicate, and insubstantial, his skin pale to the point of translucent. If it was possible, he seemed dramatically thinner than just two days ago. Had he eaten anything at all? Had he slept? No matter how bright and shiny the drugs made him feel, this was how he looked when he crashed from that euphoric high. There were scratch marks on his right cheek, near his eye.

“Oh, Jonny,” his mother gasped. “I’ve been worried sick.”

He ran a hand through his unkempt hair. “I can explain.”

“Please.”

Jonny’s eyes cast about. He seemed unsure whether he should stand or sit or collapse on the floor. “I lost my phone.”

“You lost—?”

“I knew you’d flip out,” Jonny snapped. “That’s so typical!” He flailed an arm, a wild gesture that nearly pulled him off-balance.

Mrs. O’Malley closed her eyes, paused, opened them again. “I will try,” she said, her voice cold but steady, “to not flip out. I apologize. Where is your phone?”

“I lost it,” Jonny said. “So how would I know where it is? That’s a ridiculous question.”

Mary interrupted. “Do you want some water? Or juice?”

Jonny looked at her and nodded. “Juice. Thanks, May.”

Mary got up, poured a tall glass of orange juice, and brought it to Jonny. He sat hunched over, elbows on his knees, facing his mother. He took a long drink of juice, and Mary could hear the glug, glug, glug as it went down his parched gullet.

“I didn’t know where you were.”

“I couldn’t call. I lost my phone,” Jonny insisted.

Mrs. O’Malley shook her head. “You could have borrowed a phone. You could have—”

“I didn’t remember your number,” he countered. “No one remembers numbers anymore, Mom.”

“I called the police. Every hospital. Your friends from school…”

“Mom! What is the big deal? I lost my phone. Okay, yeah, granted, that sucks. I’ll get a new one. I’m nineteen years old. I lived away at college, remember? I’m used to having my freedom—”

“I thought you were dead,” Mary’s mother said. Her lips trembled and her voice cracked at the end, that last word splitting in two. Everyone in the room, including Jonny, rocked by the wake of that utterance. Even he had to hear the raw pain and heartbreak of that stark declaration.

I thought you were dead.

“I—” Jonny stopped himself, his hands traveling to his temples. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so, so sorry, Mom.”

He tried a new tact. “The truth is … I was afraid to call. I knew you’d be angry.”

“Wait, no,” Mary’s mother said. Her voice took on a sharper edge, the decibels rising. “This is my fault? You didn’t call and it is my fault?”

“Mom,” Mary said softly.

Mrs. O’Malley glared for a moment, then nodded. “Mary, I’m not sure you should be here right now. Please give your brother and me some time alone. This is a private conversation between Jonny and myself.”

“I don’t agree,” Mary replied. She made no move to leave. “This is my family, too. I’m not leaving.”

16[choices]

“I know I make you miserable,” Jonny said, shifting strategies once again. “I know you hate me, Mom. I don’t blame you. Just let me go.”

“I don’t hate you. Don’t ever say that,” his mother shot back. “I hate what these drugs are doing to you. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. But I will never let you go, so forget that. Not an option.”

She opened a drawer from the coffee table and pulled out a handful of objects: a ball of aluminum foil, a plastic medicine bottle half-filled with blue pills, a lighter, a pipe, a spoon, a baggie of weed. “I found this in your room,” Mrs. O’Malley said. Her hand trembled slightly as she held it out like an offering. “This is yours, right? This is what you bring into our home?”

Jonny didn’t flinch. He just shook his head. “You went searching around in my room?”

“Don’t, don’t even,” his mother warned.

Then she surprised both of her children. Mary watched as Mrs. O’Malley took a deep breath, sat up tall, back erect, and calmly dropped the items to the floor. Somehow she had transformed before their eyes. She spoke in a slow, clear voice that surely required her every ounce of self-control. “I’ve learned some things over these past two and a half years,” she began. “Slowly, painfully. Mistake after mistake. And number one: I can’t do anything for you, except love you.

“I’ve tried yelling, and threatening, and spying—and I see now that it hasn’t worked. You need to make your own choices, Jonny, for your own reasons. You often remind me that you are nineteen years old. That’s true. Legally, I can’t force you to do anything, and,” she raised a hand, “I would not, even if I could, because I no longer believe it would help in the long run. Change has to come from you. I’ve been wrong and I’m sorry. I am so sorry for my failures and my mistakes. But now you have to move out. You can’t live in