“Should I be jealous that she met your mom before me?” I head up the stairs to my apartment.
“No, you should be more concerned that Ember totally knows I’m seeing someone.”
“Shut up!” I gasp. “How do you know?”
“She’s been asking me these nonchalant questions or saying things that hint at it,” he continues.
“Well, you have become quite a sap since becoming a boyfriend."
"I have, haven’t I?”
I don’t have time to laugh before I’m being rammed into, “What the fuck!” I yell after the guy, but he continues down the stairs. But once he gets to the bottom, he looks back at me. And then he’s gone.
“Avalon?” Zeke’s voice echoes from the phone. “Baby, you, okay?”
“Sorry, some asshole just ran me down,” I groan, rubbing my shoulder.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, but he looked—”
Wait a second.
When I reach my apartment, I see the door cracked open.
“Avalon?”
“I think it was my mom’s boyfriend,” I mumble, staring at the door. I don’t know if I’m ready to see what’s on the other side. I don’t know if I want to see what he was fleeing from.
“Do you think she broke up with him?”
I push the door open and feel my heart drop into my stomach.
“Oh my god.” I drop my stuff. “Mami.”
“Avalon?!” Zeke’s voice feels so far away… I feel like a little girl, finding her mom on the floor after school again.
“Despierta por favor, mami por favor.” The tears sting my eyes as I roll her onto her side. “I think she’s overdosing, Zeke. I think she’s overdosing.”
I don’t even know if he can hear me; all I know is that I don’t know what to do.
I’ve been mentally preparing for this for months. But no amount of preparation could prepare me for this.
thirty-seven
Zeke
When I arrive, the front door is wide open; Avalon’s things are in the doorway. She didn’t ask me to come here, I honestly don’t even know if she’d want me to witness something like this, but the second I heard her voice, how broken it was, I was out of the house and on my way here.
“Avalon!” I yell, walking into her house, and that’s when I hear it—the running water. I head toward the bathroom in her mom’s room, and that’s when I see her sitting in the tub with her mom while the shower head sprays down on them.
“Zeke?” You’d think by how she’s shaking as she runs her hand through her mom’s hair that the water pounding on them is ice cold, but the steam proves otherwise. “I-I didn’t know what to do. I turned her on her side in the living room, but it didn’t help. I haven’t been in this situation since I was a kid, and I didn’t even really know what to do then; I just remember standing and staring, so I grabbed my phone, and it said to keep her warm, but I didn’t know how else to keep her warm and—oh my god, I didn’t call an ambulance, I was so panicked and—”
“Hey,” I squat down next to the tub, “I called them on my way here. They should be here shortly, okay?”
“How did you get here so fast anyway?” Her voice trembles. “You told me you were waiting for Jeremy to get home to borrow his car.”
“I, um, ran.”