Desert Echoes by Abdi Nazemian

Author:Abdi Nazemian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2024-07-18T00:00:00+00:00

Junior Year

“My name is Jared, grateful member of Alateen.” I look around the dozen or so people seated on folding chairs, in the back of a Lutheran church. Everyone’s eyes are on Jared, who picks at a zit on his face as he speaks. His own eyes are swelling with buried tears.

“Hi, Jared,” we all say.

“I’m not doing great today. I’m really not doing great.” Jared looks at Byrne, one of two adult sponsors in the room. Byrne gives him a smile and a nod that tells him to keep going. “I miss my mom,” Jared croaks out. “I know how messed up that sounds. I mean, who would miss a mom who . . . well, you all know what she did. But tomorrow’s her birthday and she’ll be spending it in jail, and that makes me so sad.”

A newcomer pulls her hood over her head and sinks into her chair. It squeaks loudly. I can feel her unease, the way she wishes she were anywhere else but here.

Jared heaves a few wet breaths and lets the tears out. I don’t know what school Jared goes to, but I know he has the body of a football player and the mannerisms of the boys who bully me at school. He could easily be a part of Ken Barry’s goon squad. And yet he’s not like them. He’s sweet, and sensitive, and broken. It’s a reminder that I shouldn’t judge people too quickly. “On her last birthday, she got so mad at me for putting her blow-dryer in the wrong drawer. She begged me not to make her hit me on her birthday. And then she hit me with the blow-dryer.”

We all lean in, trying to show him our support through our body language. There’s a loud chirp from our timekeeper’s phone.

“One minute. I hear that, thank you.” Jared sighs. “The thing I keep thinking since she’s been gone is that a piece of me is gone. Like we were one person, you know. Or maybe it’s just that I didn’t know where she ends and I begin. That’s what it feels like.”

I feel that in my bones. I feel it about my dad. And about Ash too. I wonder if that’s a human thing, a love thing, or maybe only an addict thing, like we want to be their missing piece, the thing that completes them. I have a flash of my dad reading that book to me when I was young. He would put on a silly western accent when he sang, “Hi-dee-ho, here I go, I’m lookin’ for my missing piece.” He loves cowboys. He was probably drunk.

“Anyway, well, that’s what’s on my mind.” Jared pushes his sadness back in. “I don’t want to go over my time, but I do want to say to the newcomers . . .”

We all look at the two newcomers, sitting close to the door, just in case they want to escape.

“I’ve been coming here for almost a year now. And it’s the one place where I feel, I don’t know .

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