Finding Mr. Brightside Read Online Free Page B

in this position.

 
    6
    ABRAM
    J UST HEARD MY MOM SCREAMING “Oh my God!” from another room. I throw off a blanket I can’t accurately remember putting over myself and run to her bedroom. She’s inside the closet, surrounded by a gang of stuffed garbage bags.
    “Mom? You okay?”
    She doesn’t seem to be in any pain, although she’s wearing a tight red mummy dress that looks like a challenge to move around in. Dad always liked her in red.
    Mom turns to me, confusion in her eyes. “Did you do this, Abram?”
    I look down again at the bags, then up at the empty hangers that once held my father’s clothes. “Maybe?”
    “Maybe, what?”
    “Tonight’s been kind of a blur.”
    “Have you been drinking?”
    “Strictly Sunkist.”
    My mind flashes back to Juliette. Here. In my house. Sipping from my can of soda. Staying awake through my boring stories. Watching me succumb to sleep. Bagging up my father’s old clothes?
    “Well, you’ve been meaning to go through this stuff anyway,” I say.
    Mom usually appreciates when I look on the bright side for her, but she’s determined to crack the Case of the Walk-In Closet Organizer first.
    “You didn’t invite anyone over tonight, Abram?”
    I hate lying to my mom, especially after what she experienced with Dad. Still, I’m not quite ready to tell the truth about this one.
    “I may have had a visitor, yes … but it was nothing.”
    “Was it a girl?”
    “It was a … Juliette Flynn,” I answer, finally.
    She gasps.
    “I’m sorry, Mom. I saw her at CVS, and the hanging out just sort of happened on its own. Did you see I replaced your Big Red?”
    She points to the gum in her open mouth, then says, “Of all the people you could have over past midnight, Abram, when I’m not home … you choose Juliette Flynn ? Are you trying to traumatize the poor girl?”
    “I thought you wanted me to check on her every once in a while.”
    “At school. Not in my bedroom closet!”
    Technically, I wasn’t awake when she was in here, but I don’t think knowing that detail will help my mom come to terms. Eventually, I convince her this discussion would be better had in the kitchen while having ourselves a snack. She can’t eat in the red mummy dress, though, and I step out so she can change.
    I’m staring into the freezer when she walks in wearing her pajamas and fuzzy white slippers. She immediately locates the bag of pizza rolls I’ve been looking for and takes over the preparations.
    “How is she doing?” Mom says quietly, staring at the microwave.
    “She’s … okay.”
    “Did she eat anything while she was here?” Mom nods back toward her bedroom. “She must’ve worked up quite an appetite.”
    “We had Taco Bell,” I say, although I don’t remember Juliette having any.
    “Well, that’s something, I guess.” Mom places the plate of pizza rolls down at the bar and starts talking about stressful topics like eating better, cooking more often, and maybe doing some sort of cleanse together. Dad was always detoxifying something from his system, testing out the latest superfood, concocting the perfect tennis-recovery smoothie, making extra trips to the bathroom. Which meant Mom and I were joining him as guinea pigs in those efforts. Neither of us really minded.
    “Hey, did you end up hitting any more jackpots?” I ask, changing the subject. I hold out my hand for an early inheritance.
    Mom covers my palm with a napkin. “Aunt Jane convinced me to play the five-dollar slots and … it didn’t end well. But we had fun.”
    “The most important thing,” I say, because she needs to hear it’s okay to have fun again, and because maybe I do, too.
    “Exactly,” she says. “And I did get you a sweatshirt from the gift shop with my comp points.”
    I smile and act like the hoodie is a thousand-dollar bill when she brings it over and asks me to try it on. The sleeves are a little short for my overgrown arms, but otherwise it’ll serve my purposelessness