Page 92 of Gave Proof Through the Night

I go through the motions the rest of the day. Suri has her workstation spread out over two tables. She came back from the museum with renewed focus and has hardly rested since. We’ve been forcing pizza into her mouth while she mumbles, “Trust the process.”

Rue and Tanya are huddled over what I assume are plans for a replica display case, although I think Rue has a sense of personal professional pride and wants to try lifting the jewel the old-fashioned way.

The day slides into night, and I hardly sleep a wink.

I lie on my side on the fold-out with the window cracked, listening to a siren two blocks over rise and fade.

I think about Dale, how he’s not very much unlike Jeremiah in the fact that they’re both bound by a strict personal code of doing the right thing and being a good man, with boundless, wagging-tail enthusiasm. Admittedly, Dale has a bit more Ted Lasso puppy energy than Jeremiah, but it’s close.

Similar to Jeremiah, Dale was Mark-adjacent. Tanya went and fell in love with the guy anyway.

I think of how she said it was better to lose him with honesty than keep him with a lie.

My thoughts bang around my head loudly until I finally doze off just before dawn. When I wake up mid-morning, I’m resolved to give Jeremiah what I can. A shred of honesty for now. If he takes it well and doesn’t run for the hills, I’ll ease him into the whole me. Slowly. I can’t very well just blurt out that I’m basically the morally gray character in his Captain America story.

I decide to send him a text, because every single time I run the scene in my head I get to the part where his face changes, and I can’t watch that happen live. I don’t have it in me.

me: lets play 2 truths and a lie. go

me: 1. im secretly a time traveling alien sent from the year 2417 to study earth hockey culture

me: 2. im never giving the gill power hat back its mine now

me: 3. my dad is in prison

I read it back twice and stall, thumb hovering over the send arrow like it’s going to detonate. Then I hit send before I can think better of it, set the flip phone down and stare at the water stain on the ceiling.

Then I wait. And wait.

Nothing. No reply.

I wait until the morning turns into the afternoon.

Still nothing.

I suppose silence is the only answer I can expect.

20

JEREMIAH

Chapter playlist:

Confide in Me — Miss Sammy J

Golden — HUNTR/X, EJAE

Nine a.m. sharp, and Badaszek’s already laying down the law before half of us have our skates tied.

“Phones stay in the stalls today. All of them. No exceptions.”

He says it like he’s daring somebody to argue. Nobody does, of course. During Saturday’s water break, half the team had their phones out, and he didn't say a word. Today there’s too much riding on game five for anybody’s head to be somewhere else.

I lock mine in my stall like everybody else and don’t think about it again until the whistle blows two hours later.

Skate wraps at eleven. I go for my stall before I even think about the catered lunch waiting down the hall, and my phone’s sitting right where I left it, one message lit up on the lock screen.

America.