at Willow Lake felt like a distant dream, misty and surreal. It was another world, like the world inside a book.
To make sure the other kids didn’t torture him at his high school, Julian had to pretend he didn’t like books. Among his friends, being good at reading and school made you uncool in the extreme, so he kept his appetite for stories to himself. To him, books were friends and teachers. They kept him from getting lonely, and he learned all kinds of stuff from them. Like what a half orphan was. Reading a novel by Charles Dickens, Julian learned that a half orphan was a kid who had lost one parent. This was something he could relate to. Having lost his dad, Julian now belonged to the ranks of kids with single moms.
His mom had never planned on being a mom. She’d told him so herself and, in a moment of over-sharing, explained that he’d been conceived at an aerospace engineering conference in Niagara Falls, the result of a one-night stand. His father had been the keynote speaker at the event. His mother had been an exotic dancer performing at the nightclub of the conference hotel.
Nine months later, Julian had appeared. His mother had willingly surrendered him to his dad. The two of them had been pretty happy together until his dad died. Julian’s high school years had been spent with his mom, who seemed to have no idea what to do with him.
He didn’t have a cell phone. He was, like, one of the last humanoids on the planet who didn’t have one. That was how broke he and his mom were. She was out of work again, and he had an after-school job at a car dealership, rotating tires and changing oil. Sometimes guys gave him tips, never the rich guys with the hot cars, but the workers with their Chevys and pickups. His mom had a mobile phone, which she claimed she needed in case she got called for an acting job, but the last thing they could handle was one more bill. Their phone service at the house was so basic, they didn’t even have voice mail.
At the library, he could surf the web and access his free email. He quickly found the ROTC site and used the special log-in provided in his welcome packet, feeling as though he’d gained membership to a secret club. Then he quickly checked his email. That was how he kept in touch with Daisy. They weren’t the best at corresponding, and there was nothing from her today. He had school and work; she’d recently moved from New York City to the small town of Avalon to live with her dad. She said her family situation was weird, what with her parents splitting up. He felt bad for her, but couldn’t offer much advice. His folks had never been together, and in a way, maybe that was better, since there was no breakup to adjust to.
Email only went so far, though. He wanted to call her with his news. And to thank her for reminding him college wasn’t out of his reach. Her suggestion, made last summer, had taken root in Julian. There was a way to have the kind of life he’d only dreamed about. In a casual, almost tossed-off remark, she had handed him a golden key.
The apartment he shared with his mother was in a depressing faux-adobe structure surrounded by weedy landscaping and a parking lot of broken asphalt. He let himself in; his mom wasn’t around. When she was out of work, she tended to spend most of her time on the bus to the city, going to networking meetings.
Julian paced back and forth in front of the phone. He finally got up the nerve to call Daisy. He wanted to hear her voice and tell her in person about the letter. The call was going to add to a cost he already couldn’t afford, but he didn’t care.
She picked up right away; she always did when he called her on her cell phone because nobody else called her from this area code. “Hey,” she said.
“Hey, yourself. Is this a good time?” he asked, thinking about the three-hour time difference. In the background of the call, he could hear music.
“It’s fine.” She hesitated, and he recognized the song—“Season of Loving” by the Zombies. He hated that song.
“Everything all right?” It was weird, he hadn’t seen her since last summer, but her It’s fine struck him as all wrong. “What’s up?” he asked.
She killed the music. “Olivia asked me to be in her wedding.”
“That’s cool, right?” Julian was going to be in the wedding, too, because his brother was the groom. He’d never attended a wedding before, but he couldn’t wait because it was going to take place in August at Camp Kioga. Suddenly it occurred to him to check his ROTC schedule to make sure he was free that day.
“It’s not so cool,” Daisy said, her voice kind of thin-sounding. “Listen, Julian, I’ve been trying to figure out how to tell you something. God, it’s hard.”
His mind raced. Was she sick? Sick of him? Did she want him to quit calling, make himself scarce? Did she have a boyfriend, for Chrissake?
“Then tell me.”
“I don’t want you to hate me.”
“I could never hate you. I don’t hate anybody.” Not even the drunk driver who had hit his dad. Julian had seen the guy in a courtroom. The guy had been crying so hard he couldn’t stand up. Julian hadn’t felt hatred. Just an incredible, hollow sense of nothingness. “Seriously, Daze,” he said. “You can tell me anything.”
“I hate myself,” she said, her voice low now, trembling.
The phone wasn’t cordless, so his pacing was confined to a small area in front of a window. He looked out at the colorless February day. Down in the parking lot, Rojelio’s wife was bringing in groceries, bag after bag of them. Normally, Julian would run down and give her a hand. She had a bunch of kids—he could never get an accurate count—who ate like a swarm of locusts. All she did was work, buy groceries and fix food.
“Daisy, go ahead and tell me what’s going on.”
“I screwed up. I screwed up big-time.” Her voice sounded fragile, the words like shards of glass, even though he didn’t know what she was talking about. Whatever it was, he wanted to be there, wished he could put his arms around her, inhale the scent of her hair and tell her everything was going to be all right.
His mind scrolled through the possibilities. Had she started smoking again? Was she failing in school? He waited. She knew he was there. He didn’t need to prompt her anymore.
“Julian,” she said at last, a catch in her voice. “I’m going to have a baby. It’s due in the summer.”
The words were so unexpected, he couldn’t think of a single thing to say. He kept staring at Rojelio’s wife, now on her second trip with the grocery bags. Daisy Bellamy? Having a baby?
At Julian’s school, pregnant girls were pretty common, but Daisy? She was supposed to have, like, this privileged life where nothing bad ever happened. She was supposed to be his girlfriend. It was true, they’d parted ways in the summer having made no promises, but it was an unspoken assumption between them.
Or so he’d thought.
“Julian? Are you there?”
“Yeah.” He felt as if he’d been punched in the gut.
“I feel really stupid,” she said, crying now, sounding scared. “And it can’t be undone. The guy … he’s somebody from my school in New York. We weren’t even, like, together or anything. We got drunk one weekend, and … oh, Julian …”
He had no idea what to say. This was not the conversation he’d imagined when he’d picked up the phone. “I guess … wow, I hope you’re going to be all right.”
“I pretty much changed everything for myself. I told my parents, and they’re, like, in shock and everything, but they keep telling me it’ll all work out.”
“It will.” He had no idea if it would or not.
“Julian, I’m so sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
“I feel terrible.”
So did he. “Look, it is what it is.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if you never wanted to see me again.”