Page 128 of Across His Line

“Good. I think good.”

I lean on the porch railing. My breath goes up white into the Christmas lights. She asks if I liked my birthday, and I say yes, and she says she’s sorry she was late with her text, she had a crazy day, and I tell her it’s okay. She asks when I’m coming home for Christmas, and I tell her the twenty-second, the bus that gets in at four, and she says, “Oh, good, okay, good.”

And I let myself relax. A little. Just a little. My shoulders come down. I’m standing on a stranger’s porch in the cold talking to my mom, and it’s normal, and I didn’t know how much I wanted it to be normal.

Then she says, “Listen, baby. I need a favor.”

Here it is. The truth as to why she’s really calling me and being kind.

“My car is a piece of shit,” she says. “It’s the transmission, or something with the transmission, I don’t know, the guy explained it. It’s four hundred bucks. And I need it for work, Tess, I can’t get to work without it, and if I miss any more days, they said—” She stops. Starts again. “I just need to get through the month. I’ll pay you back. I get paid on the fifth, and I’ll pay you back the fifth, I swear to God.”

She’s not going to.

I’m already doing the math, though. I can’t help it. It just starts.

The eBay balance, which is more than it was, because December’s been good. The bus home on the twenty-second, which is already paid for. Grandma’s present from Goodwill, which is already wrapped in the back of my closet. The nice dinner on Christmas I promised myself. What’s in my checkings. What’s in the envelope in my tote bag. What I don’t touch, ever, no matter what. Four hundred dollars. I could. I could do it. It would hurt, but I could.

“Dylan says your business is doing really good,” my mom says.

I stop doing math.

“What?”

“Your little selling thing online. He says it’s really taking off.” She sounds proud, almost. Like it’s good news. “He says you don’t even keep it in the bank. You keep it on the website, so nobody can touch it. He says you’re smart like that.”

I stand very still on the porch.

I never told Dylan. Dylan knew about my bag. He knew about the envelope. He didn’t know about the rest. He couldn’t have.

I told my grandma before Thanksgiving when she asked me how I was managing up here all by myself. I told her I was being careful. I told her I left the money on the site, so nobody could get it, so it would be there for Christmas. She said, that’s my smart girl. I remember. I remember being proud she said it.

And now it’s in my mother’s mouth, on a Friday night, coming from Dylan.

Maybe my grandma was bragging. Maybe she was sitting at the kitchen table telling someone at church how well I’m doing, and Dylan was on the couch. Maybe she told him on purpose, to make him feel bad, to tell him to be more like me. Maybe he just heard her on the phone with me. I don’t know. I’m never going to know.

What I know is that I told one person. The one person I thought it was safe to tell. And it went from her to Dylan to my mom, and now my mom is on the phone asking me for money like she’s entitled to it.

The cold comes up through my shoes.

“Why are you talking to Dylan?” I ask.

A pause. Just a short one. “What?”

“Why are you talking to Dylan?”

“He’s family, Tess.”

That doesn’t mean shit, and I know it. “When did you talk to him?”

“I don’t know. A couple times. He’s been checking on me.”

“Checking on you,” I say. It’s a deep thought. I visualize it, and I hate what I see.

“Yeah, Tessa. That’s what families do. They check on each other. He’s been nice to me. Not everybody’s been nice to me.”

“Are you hanging out with him?” I ask.

She laughs. “What is that supposed to mean?”