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“I did. In about seventh grade. You just laughed at me.”

It’s hard to make the concept fit in my brain. I have to admit, it’s kind of flattering, even if Gillis is an idiot, but I also can’t help feeling sorry for him. After all, I know how it is to carry around a crush on someone year after year without them showing any interest back. That’s one thing I don’t plan on doing again.

Brianna drops me off in front of the bowling alley, and I tell her not to wait. The place isn’t doing much business. Padgett is sitting behind the front counter reading a big, fat book, but he looks up and smiles when he sees me walking toward him. “Hey, Ceejay, you ready to do some bowling?”

“Yeah, right. Sign me up for a league.”

It’s stupid but all of a sudden I’m nervous. I’ve never had The Talk with a guy before. I have no idea what I’ll say back to him.

He closes the book and goes, “I’m glad you got here early. I’ve really been wanting to talk to you.”

I’m like, “You have?” But inside I’m all like, What if I accidentally say yes when he pops the question?

“Yeah,” he says. “Although—I have to tell you—I was a
little nervous about how you’d react. Here, come back into the office with me.”

There’s a small office behind the front counter. Inside, he pulls a chair over so I can sit next to him at the desk. With the paperwork piled up, the bowling plaques on the walls, and the musty smell, it isn’t exactly the most romantic place in the world.

“So,” he says. “There’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite a while, but I wasn’t really sure about it till now.”

“Really? What’s that?”

“Well, remember when Bobby was talking about how things could take a long time to kill a person and how he planned to be the first one to take Angelica up even if she crashed?”

“Sure,” I say, thinking this is a pretty strange lead-in to asking me to be his girlfriend.

“Well,” he goes on. “I’ve been doing some research, and I’m ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that Bobby’s problem is something called post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“What?” That’s all that will come out of my mouth. I’m completely stunned.

“Post-traumatic stress disorder,” he repeats. “PTSD for short.” He goes on to explain how he read all about it in a couple of books and on about six different Web sites. It’s a mental problem, he tells me. People get it when they’ve gone through something so horrendous their minds have trouble dealing with it. Their chemical balance gets thrown out of whack. They get depressed and anxious, can’t sleep well, and have a hard time relating to others. Sometimes their brains will replay the terrible thing they went through over and over, and they can’t shut it off. “Here,” he says, “let me pull up one of the Web sites.” He starts clacking away at the keyboard on the desk.

But I’m like, “I don’t need to see any Web site. You think some online idiot knows more about my brother than I do?”

“No, really,” he says. “This is a valid Web site. PTSD, it’s the real deal.”

“What are you saying?” With just a few words, he’s completely obliterated all my stupid, wimpy, nervous feelings about him going romantic on me. “Do you think Bobby’s some kind of mental defective? You think he needs to go to a shrink? Because that’s a load of crap. I don’t care how bad it got in the war, my brother’s way too tough to let it drive him nuts. You’ve been hanging out with Captain Crazy too much.”

It’s weird. I have to fight back the tears. I don’t know if it’s the strangeness of life lately, or if it’s just the disappointment of having Padgett ambush me like this. All this time he’s lulled me into thinking he’s Mr. Supportive, and now instead of asking me to be his girlfriend, he lays this theory on me about my brother being a nut job. I’m not going to let him see me cry, though. I don’t let anyone see that.

“Look,” he says, “there’s nothing to get defensive about. No one said anything about your brother not being tough. You have to be tough to deal with something like this. You have to have character. It’s a battle.”

“What kind of battle?” I say. “A battle against crazy?”

“There’s all kinds of battles, you know. Everyone has something they have to fight their way through. What I’m saying about Bobby is he’s still at war, only it’s in his mind now. And we’re his army. We’re going to help him fight it. The first thing we need to do is talk to him about getting into therapy. I’ll even drive him into the city for it if that’s what he needs.”

“You’re not driving him anywhere,” I tell him. “Bobby doesn’t need to yammer about his feelings to some psychotherapy wimp with a ponytail. It’s just stupid. Yeah, maybe Bobby’s
partying too much, but a lot of people party too much. He’ll settle down.”

“You call what he’s doing partying?” He stares into my eyes. “I thought partying was supposed to be about fun. He doesn’t look like he’s having fun to me. He looks like he’s trying to drown something out. That’s exactly what happens with a lot of people who have post-traumatic stress disorder.”

“You make it sound like he’s running away from something. I can tell you right now Bobby never ran from anything in his life.”

“What are you so angry about? I’m not the enemy here.”

“I’m not angry. I’m just sticking up for my brother.”

“Of course you’re angry. Ever since I’ve known you, you’ve had a chip on your shoulder about half the time, and it’s getting old. I know your brother got a screwed-up deal, getting shipped off to war the way he did, but you can’t be mad at everything. That isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

“Really? Maybe I should just lie down and die, huh? Let people walk over me like a worm in the dirt. Is that what you’d do?”

He shakes his head. “This is exactly why I held off talking to you about this. I knew you’d overreact.”

“You think I’m overreacting?” I pop out of the chair and look down on him. “How about this? How about I just walk out of here and leave you to your stupid Web site and your stupid books. And if that seems like an overreaction, then you don’t have to bother talking to me again.”

“Come on,” he says. “Sit down. Just read what this Web site has to say.”

But I’m not about to do that. Without another word, I stomp out of the office and through the front door of the bowling
alley. In the parking lot, I drop my phone twice before I finally get a call through to Brianna.

“How’s it going?” she asks. “Did he pop the question?”

“It’s not going,” I say. “Everything’s shot to pieces. One hundred percent.”

Okay, no more of this
Padgett
business. That’s what I tell myself. He’s back to being Mr. White again—from here on out. I was so stupid, walking into that bowling alley thinking he was going to ask me to be his girlfriend. But that’s not really the point. The point is no one’s going to brand my brother as crazy. I’ve seen how people treat the captain around here, and I won’t stand for anyone treating Bobby like that.

That’s my thought process as I walk into my house that night. I’m so wrapped up in it I just vaguely hear Dad call my name. The second time, he makes sure I hear him.

“Ceejay, come in here. I want to talk to you.”

I walk into the living room, where he’s standing in front of his favorite chair. He tells me to sit down on the couch. Of course, at first I’m thinking I’m in trouble as usual, but as soon
as we both sit down and I get a good look at his face, I know it’s something else.

“Is it Bobby?” I ask. “Did something happen to him?”

Dad shakes his head. “It’s your grandmother.”

I know it’s creepy, but when I hear that I’m relieved. Not that I actually want something bad to happen to Grandma, but she hasn’t really been first on my list of worries.

Dad goes on, “She’s taken a turn for the worse. Your sister came home and found her collapsed in the backyard.”

“Is she—”

“She’s still alive but I’ll be honest—it doesn’t look good. Lacy couldn’t get her to wake up and had to call an ambulance. It was a stroke. She’s in intensive care. I imagine all the treatments she’s been going through took their toll on her. We just found out about it a half hour ago. Your mother’s heading up tonight and we’ll go tomorrow.”

I hate to sound like a self-centered idiot, but I can’t help thinking this isn’t a good time to leave town. Me and Uncle Jimmy and Jerry are just starting a job for the school board, a big one. They need me. But more important than that, I don’t want to leave Bobby alone with the captain right now. I’m afraid they’ll just bum each other out. And I sure don’t want Mr. White showing up and spouting off his PTSD nonsense.

But there’s no use in arguing. Even with all the reasons I have to stay, nothing trumps dying.

After Dad finishes explaining our plans for tomorrow, I head upstairs to tell Mom I’m sorry about Grandma and all that kind of thing. A couple of her bags sit open on the bed, mostly packed, and she’s standing across the room digging something out of her dresser. At least that’s what I think she’s doing at first. But she’s not moving. Her shoulders are slumped, and her hands grip either side of the top drawer as if she needs
to keep herself from falling. In the mirror on the wall, I see her face—eyes clamped shut, her bottom lip bowing tightly against the top one. Deep lines crease her forehead. Tears on her face.

This is the mother I thought could smile through anything. The whole time Grandma’s been sick, Mom’s acted like better times are bound to come back around, like Christmas or your birthday. But not now. There’s no fooling anyone, least of all herself.

I don’t know what to do. I mean, obviously, in a situation like this, you’re supposed to go over and hug your mom and come up with some kind of words of comfort, something all concerned and Hallmark-cardy, but I’m not the hugging type. More than anything, I just want to hurry down to my room, maybe come back later when the crying spell is over, but she catches a glimpse of me in the mirror.

Immediately, her hands flit to her face to wipe off the tears, and she turns around. The smile is back, a sad, sheepish one, as if she wants me to know she’s just being silly.

“Ceejay,” she says. “I didn’t know you were back.”

“Yeah, um, I just got home a minute ago.”

She goes over to the bed, picks up a blouse to pack into one of the open bags. Her hands are shaking. “I guess your dad talked to you about what’s going on.” She’s trying to look busy, avoiding eye contact.

“You mean about Grandma?” I say. Like it could be anything else.

“I want to get up there as soon as I can,” she says. “Lacy has been doing what she can, but …” Her voice trails off. The blouse she’s been trying to fold isn’t cooperating, and finally she lets it drop to the bed. “I don’t know what’s the matter with me,” she says. “These old hands just won’t do right.” She tries
a little laugh, but it doesn’t work either, and she sits on the bed and begins crying again.

“Here, let me help you get that stuff packed,” I tell her. I guess I could sit on the bed beside her, but it’s more natural for me to go to work on something instead.

As I finish packing the bags, she stares down, nervously twisting her wedding ring. “It’s funny,” she says. “You don’t know how you’ll feel about something like this till it’s staring you in the face. Mama and I haven’t always seen eye to eye over the years, but it wasn’t always that way. Things were so different when I was a little girl, and now I feel about like I’ve turned right back into that little girl, and I don’t want her to leave me.”

“It’s okay,” I tell her, and immediately I feel stupid for saying it. But that’s what people always say—
it’s okay
—when nothing could be further from the truth.

“I used to think she could do no wrong. I thought the worst criminal in the world could show up at our front door, and it wouldn’t matter. My mother would keep me safe. Then Dad died. I was just the same age you are now, Ceejay. He died and everything changed.”

Somehow I never thought of it like that—my mom being my same age when her dad got killed in that car wreck. Jesus. What that must have been like to go through. The strength it must’ve taken. Since I was twelve or thirteen, I thought of Mom as nothing but sugary sweet and cheery to a fault, but now I can’t help wondering if maybe I underestimated her.

“Maybe it’s selfish of me to wish we had more time,” she says. “After all, these last couple of months have been so miserable for her. I don’t know how she had the courage to get through it like she did. One afternoon when I was driving her
home after one of those awful treatments, she told me she knew the end would have to come, but she was going to do everything she could to make her life count, what there was left of it. A lot of other people might have given up, but not her.”

“And I’m sure she’s not ready to give up now either,” I say.

She looks up at me. “That’s right,” she says. She stands, walks over, and wraps me up in a hug. “The women in this family don’t give up easy, do we, Ceejay?”

“We sure don’t.” I hug her back, and it’s weird—for once I actually feel like I am a part of a long line of women in this family. Like I’m tied to them somehow instead of whirling around off to the side on my own.

The next day Dad has to go to work for a couple hours in the morning, so it’s after ten o’clock before we’re ready to load up and get on the road to Grandma’s. Drew’s holed up in his room with the Xbox, so I have to holler several times for him to get his butt downstairs. Finally, I barge into his room to haul him out by force if I have to.

“Five more minutes,” he says without even looking at me.

“Five minutes nothing.” I rip the controls out of his hands. “You’re coming right now.”

“Why do I have to go?” he whines. “It’s not like I can’t take care of myself around here.”

“You’re coming because you have to support Mom. Don’t you get it? Her mother’s dying. So Dad’s going and I’m going
and you’re going and we’re going to support Mom one hundred percent.”

“Oh, all right,” he says. “But I won’t like it.”

“That’s okay. You don’t always have to like everything.”

On the drive to Davenport, it’s Dad and my big sister Colleen in the front seat and me and Drew in the back. Colleen starts going on about how her husband Jason’s grandpa had a stroke, and he’s doing just fine now.