It's midnight, and I'm sneaking out of my apartment. My parents, who have been asleep for the past hour, are oblivious to the sounds of the front door clicking shut or my Chucks tapping lightly away across the veined marble floor of the hallway. I'd be surprised if they did hear- I've been giving them the slip for years now, and they've never been the wiser about it. They're wonderfully self-absorbed like that.
Tonight is a weeknight, so everybody's already asleep in their rooms, and the hallways are silent and empty. The only person I see on my way out is the concierge, an old, white-haired man named Fred. He waves at me as I pass by. A few years ago, I struck a deal with him: every week, I buy him a bag of Bugles, and in return, he keeps his lips sealed about my late-night exits. It also helps that he's totally out of it in the way that lots of old people are. I'm sure that if he knew what happened earlier today- what I did today- he wouldn't let me off so easily.
Technically, I'm not even supposed to be leaving the apartment; and not just because Sabrina, my mother, screamed at me not to. It's not a big deal, but I'm sort of under house arrest. (The lenient, breakable kind of house arrest, of course.) Like I said, it's really not a big deal. And what my parents don't know won't hurt them.
I give Fred a two-fingered salute as I spin through the revolving door. Then I step out onto the cracked sidewalks of Manhattan.
I take a deep breath. The air smells wonderful- like car exhaust and fried food and weed. I'm sure that a lot of people hate the way New York smells, but after hours of being cooped up in our apartment, it smells like designer perfume. It's not that I don't like our apartment- it's spacious and full of windows and probably cost millions- but being stuck indoors with my mother makes me feel like ants are crawling around underneath my skin. I needed to get out of the house. I need to be out on the streets one more time before my life potentially changes forever.
There's a scuffling sound to my left. A few feet away, a boy my age with messy brown hair leans against the limestone facade of the apartment building, hands stuffed into his pockets and his feet scraping nervously at the pavement. He's wearing a jean jacket that's more pins and patches than denim; I can see the NASA pin I gave him for his birthday last year, clasped near his right wrist. He wants to be an astronaut when he's older. Or a baseball star. That's Jesse Brooks for you- daydreamer extraordinaire. I've known him since seventh grade, and for the past four years, this has always been where we meet; this wall, under this lamppost, at this time. It's used to be such a rebellious, secret thing- we thought we were the baddest kids in town, sneaking out of the house at midnight. Now it's just routine. I call him, or he calls me, and then we end up here.
Usually, Jesse greets me when I spin through the revolving doors, but tonight he's lost in thought and gazing distractedly off at the cars and cabs. I'm not surprised by this. Jesse has his head stuck in the clouds more often than not. I call his name once, but he doesn't respond, so instead, I walk forward and tap him on the shoulder instead.
He leaps into the air like somebody just yanked a rug out from underneath him. "Jesus, Ronan!" He turns to me, wide-eyed and bewildered. "Where the hell did you even come from?"
"You know that apartment I've lived in for five years? Well, I sort of came from that direction."
Jesse rolls his eyes. Most of the shock has faded from his face, but his expression is still too tight- his eyebrows furrowed, his lips pursed. And even though he's looking right at me, his blue eyes seem pale and distant, like he's seeing through me and into the horizon; caught up in something a thousand miles away. "Smart-ass," he tells me. "The next time you scare me like that I'll judo flip you."
"Okay, Karate Kid."
Jesse hits me in the shoulder while I pantomime the wipe on/wipe off motion.
"It's a good movie," he protests. "Ralph Macchio is a star."
"You have an unhealthy obsession."
"What do you mean? I've only seen it eight times."
"Aaand this is why you've never had a girlfriend."
A slight smile curls across Jesse's face, but it vanishes even more quickly than it appeared. "Ronan," he says, suddenly somber, "We need to talk about what happened today."
The humor's all gone now. I nod slowly. "Yeah. I guess we do."
"That means no more jokes. Or Karate Kid."
"No Karate Kid?"
"I mean it, Ronan. This is serious. We need to figure things out before...."
Jesse's face crumples slightly, and I can tell that this isn't going to be an easy conversation for either of us. Luckily, Jesse does too, and he almost immediately voices my thoughts:
"Do you want to go to Dairy Queen?"
***
Thank God for Dairy Queen. I honestly don't know where'd I be without the fast-food restaurant- there's nothing more therapeutic than stuffing your face with way more dairy that the human body was built to handle. Jesse and I have wound up eating away our troubles under the blue-tinged fluorescent lighting more times than I can count- like when Jesse's grandfather passed away, or Sabrina was seriously considering sending me to some uppity boarding school in Massachusetts. It doesn't matter if it's the middle of winter or the middle of the night. The need for ice-cream knows no boundaries.
Also, it helps that Dairy Queen is open 24/7.
Eating ice-cream at midnight is peak friendship for us. Things just flow better between us this late at night, but that's just because everything is better at night. (I might be biased about that. I'm a bit of an insomniac.)
Jesse says I'm nocturnal. My doctor says I have a delayed sleep phase disorder. I just say that I don't like sleeping and that I need less of it than everybody else. I once read in my Biology textbook that we all dream at night, but we don't realize it because we forget most of our dreams in the morning. I can't remember the last time I ever dreamed about anything, ever. I bet I'm the one exception- the one person in the world who never dreams.
"So, what's up with Margot?" I ask Jesse as we wait in line for Blizzards. The guy in front of us is trying to pay with exact change and keeps digging through his pockets to find coins, so we're not in a rush to order. (Even though it's nearly one in the morning, there's still a line outside Dairy Queen. That's Manhattan for you.) "She couldn't make it tonight?"
Jesse shakes his head. "She doesn't know what happened yet."
"You haven't told her?"
He shakes his head again. Weird. Margot only lives a few houses away from Jesse, so he pretty much fills her in on everything. It's not like I'm not friends with Margot too- when she moved to the Upper East Side in ninth grade, we both agreed that we should let her join our group (if two people can be considered a group)- but since Jesse lives closer to her, they've always been tighter with each other. I don't know why he wouldn't have called her yet.
Exact-change-guy finally gives in and pays with a twenty, and the cashier waves us forward.
Jesse tries to pull out a crumpled five, but I push his hand away. "This one's on me," I tell him.
"I have enough money-"
"Just let me pay, okay?"
Jesse rolls his eye at me, visibly annoyed, but sticks the bill back into his pocket anyway. He never lets me pay for his ice-cream. (He hates the idea of being treated like a charity-case.) I think he's only letting me cover the cost because it's probably the last time I'll be able to.
The cashier hands us our ice-cream, and we go to find a table to sit at. For once, the New York weather has decided to be forgiving- not too hot or muggy, just a clear, cloudless night with a crisp breeze. I think if I was given the choice I would live in this moment forever. If only time would freeze and I wouldn't have to regret the past or dread the future; if only I could just be here forever, with my friend, and ice cream, under a dark blue sky.
But the moment passes by quicker than a blink, and soon we're sitting down in silence and starting to eat. I haven't had anything since the afternoon, so I'm starving, but Jesse is much less enthusiastic about his ice-cream and only digs listlessly at his cup. He spends a good two minutes dredging up chunks of ice cream, never actually eating.
Neither of us says anything for a long time. It's almost awkward. And the silence is reminding me of a night six months ago that I would very much like to forget.
Finally, it gets to be too much. "Dude, stop," I say, harsher than I meant to.
Jesse looks up at me with big eyes. His fingers twitch restlessly on the edge of his spoon. "Stop what?"
"Stop being depressing. It's... depressing."
He sighs and excavates more of his ice cream.
"Seriously, Jesse. Can't you just pretend like the world isn't ending?"
Scoop, scoop goes his spoon, as if it's on some sort of archaeological dig to find the shattered remains of my future. "I don't understand how you're being so calm about this," Jesse says. "Don't you feel-"
"What? Guilty? Upset? Afraid?" I shake my head sharply. All of these emotions I felt at some point today, before carefully folding them up and depositing them in the designated disposal bin. "What's done is done, Jesse. I did what I had to do."
"No, you didn't," Jesse says. He takes a stab at his ice cream, but this time he leaves behind the spoon and folds his arms over his chest, even though it's not cold outside at all. "You did what you had to do for Sabrina."
"She's my mother. What was I supposed to do- let her get arrested? Because of Simon?"
Jesse says something under his breath too quietly for me to hear.
For some reason, this annoys me. "What was that?"
"I said, you didn't have to crash his car."
I set my spoon down on the table.
"They'll send you away, you know," Jesse continues, his voice as flat as a can of soda left out in the sun. "Sabrina might be loaded, but all of her money and connections won't stop them from sending you away. You'll be lucky if they don't expel you from school and you get to come back at all."
"Aren't you a ray of sunshine," I mutter.
"It's true, Ronan. So yeah, maybe I'm being a little depressing. But that's only because my best friend is about to get himself sent to fucking jail because he crashed his neighbor's car just to protect his oh-so-fancy mother's reputation."
"Sometimes you have to make sacrifices for your family."
"Family is about love, Ronan. Not loyalty. Not-" Jesse waves his hands around in aimless frustration- "total self-destruction."
"Maybe loyalty is love," I respond. A pang of something- guilt? shame?- rips through me as I realize this is exactly something Sabrina would say. She's big on family, or at least the artifice of it. But that's all it is- artifice. I've been around long enough to know that there's no such thing as a perfect nuclear family. Only the unattainable fantasy of one.
When I was a kid, my father would lecture me about how his parents (that is, assuming he didn't spawn into existence like some kind of video game villain) were all about keeping the family together. They'd emigrated from Hong Kong to New York in the sixties so he could earn his business degree in the city. His parents always sounded so strict in the stories. I wouldn't know-- they died before I was born.
Sabrina has a totally opposite origin story. She's American- like, really American. (I'm pretty sure her ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.) In terms of appearance, I take after my father, but the few strands of English DNA I managed to inherit from Sabrina still make people do a double-take. I can sometimes see the cogs turning in their heads, like, can I make a racist remark or not? (The answer usually is, let's find out.)
Family and artifice. The more I think about those two words, the less I understand them.
Jesse's staring at me now, hard, like he's trying to read the thoughts in my head. "You know it's not," he says, finally. "Not when it comes to Sabrina. Haven't you realized by now that she's stone-cold? You should have let Simon say what he wanted about her. You should have let her burn."
I hate arguing with him, but it feels like I don't have a choice anymore. (I hate that. I hate feeling like I don't have a choice- there's always a choice.) "Don't say shit like that when you don't know what it was like. I'm not going to try to keep explaining myself to you. You'll never understand."
"I was at the party," Jesse reminds me. Then he reads my expression and scowls. "Yeah, okay, I know I wasn't in the car with you, but-"
"You're damn right you weren't in the car with me. And you weren't there when I heard what Simon was planning, either. If you had heard what Simon said about her- Sabrina- you would understand. He knew everything. The shit he had on her would have gotten her sent to jail!"
"And instead you get to go in her place," Jesse replies.
I pick up my spoon again and jab it at the ice-cream, sending a chunk of chocolate flying. "I'm not going to jail."
"How do you know that?"
"Oh, having a little faith Jesse, it won't hurt you." I shove a bite of ice cream into my mouth, but it tastes like chalk. I stand up and throw the half-full cup into the trash can. "I can't eat this shit anymore. Let's go somewhere else."
Jesse throws his ice cream- uneaten- away too, and follows me out. "What's that they say about prisoners getting a last meal?" he asks.
"You're hilarious," I say dryly. "And I'm not going to jail."