I wait for him to come back, checking out the window, looking for his dad’s car. But he doesn’t come home until three days later, and he looks different. When I see him after that, he is distant. He locks eyes with strangers more than he does me. He peels the skin off oranges, and does not eat them. He picks up a joint and does not light it. He smiles at Mo, and it does not reach his eyes. Where has Judah gone?
At first, I wonder if it’s because of how much I’ve changed. I’ve lost almost fifty pounds. I’m not the girl he met in either shape or mental form. Perhaps my ability to make this change bothers him. While he is stuck in his wheelchair, I am free to walk off my weight. But, no. That’s not Judah. The fortune of others does not turn him melancholy. He doesn’t wish for what he cannot have. That’s what drew me to him in the first place. So I move on. When did it start? I think. When did he start pulling away?
Was it after I killed Vola? Lyndee? I remember the way he looked at me that day after I came back smelling of smoke, with dirt smeared across my knuckles.
I must have reeked of it that night—death and smoke. I hurried back to the eating house and sat at the kitchen table, staring down at the scars on the wood until I eventually climbed the stairs to my bedroom. The next day it all felt like a dream. Sometimes, I almost forget it happened.
The following week Judah tells me that he’s moving to California. I feel all the blood rush to my head.
“What? Why?”
“My dad is going.” He hands me the bowl of popcorn and wheels himself into the living room. “He said I can live with him while I go to school.”
I trip on the rug by the front door, and popcorn goes flying everywhere.
“Jeez, you okay?” Judah bends down to grab my hands. I pull them away from him, my face burning. “You can live with your mom and go to college, too.” I try to say it casually as I scoop kernels from the floor, but there is a slight tremor in my voice. The idea of the Bone without Judah is unbearable. Some days I’m not even sure how I made it through eighteen years of my life without him.
“My doctor thinks it will be good for me to be there. I’ll be in Los Angeles,” he says. “Everything will be easier, even getting from one place to the next without getting soaked.”
“It’s just a little rain,” I say limply. I make to eat a piece of popcorn I find on the floor, and Judah knocks it out of my hand.
“Stop it,” he says. “We can make another bag.” I watch as he goes back to the kitchen. I want to cry. I want to beg him to stay. I eat the rest of the popcorn I find on the floor. When he comes back, I am slipping on my coat to leave.
“What are you doing, Margo?”
“I’m going home.” I reach to open the door, but he throws an un-popped kernel at my head. It bounces off my forehead, and I glare at him.
“We had plans!” I yell at him, and then I cover my mouth with my hand, hoping Delaney didn’t hear my outburst from her bedroom.
“To get out of the Bone,” Judah says.
“Together,” I insist. “I can’t do it alone.”
He stares at the blank TV screen, absently pushing pieces of popcorn into his mouth. I want to confess about eating the popcorn on the floor, but I know he’ll be really upset with me.“You have legs,” he says finally. “I have to go where I have an extra pair of legs to help me. At least for now … until I’m done with school.”
“I can be your legs.”
“You need to be your own legs, Margo. Look, I don’t want to be a burden on anyone’s life. I want to be able to do things for myself. My dad has money. He said that if I come out to California with him, he’ll pay for my school. He wants to buy me one of those custom cars that I can drive. A cripple’s car.”
When I don’t say anything, he glances at Delaney’s bedroom door and lowers his voice. “He stopped paying child support when I turned eighteen. I suddenly became really expensive. I can’t be a burden to her. I have to be able to work, carry my own weight.”
I look down at my legs, and suddenly I hate them. I hate that they give me an advantage over Judah.
“Stay,” he says, as I turn back to the door.
“Why? You’re just going to leave. Why should I waste my time?”
“You think it’s a waste of time to be with me?”
I don’t know how to answer him without sounding pathetic.
“You can leave too. Anytime you want. I know someone in the city who will give you a job.”
“And where will I live? How will I know where to go and what to do?”
“You learn those things,” he says cautiously. “You don’t have to be trapped here.”
I don’t want to learn those things without him. He’s stolen my dream, and I feel stupid for ever having it. Of course someone like Judah would never run away with someone like me. Of course he wouldn’t want to share a life with an ugly, unaccomplished girl from the Bone. It was all talk to lift our spirits, and now he is going to move away and leave me with a brain high on ideas that will never be fulfilled.
“When are you leaving?” I ask.
Judah looks away. “Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I repeat. “That’s why you’ve been so weird lately.”
I break our connection. It happens in the blink of an eye. I snap it in two and forget it was there. He calls after me when I leave his house, but I keep walking. I survived eighteen years without Judah Grant. I didn’t need him. I want to be fireproof. Nothing should have the power to break my heart.
The eating house is quiet when I let myself in. I sit at the kitchen table with a glass of milk, staring at the gas stove and entertaining the idea of leaving the Bone. If he can, I can. My milk grows warm, the condensation on the glass long gone. My fingers stay wrapped around the glass, my brain rifling through my options. Every possibility seems bleak without Judah: staying, leaving, living. But, no. I won’t be the type of woman who lacks in courage. I didn’t survive just to fold to the familiarity the Bone offers. I push my untouched milk aside and stand up, my chair scraping loudly against the wood. The house stirs around me. The floorboards above my head creak with the weight of invisible feet, the refrigerator begins to hum, the light bulb on the porch starts flickering in the early dusk. It’s awake, I think. Just like that.