I squeaked open the front door inch by inch and, seeing no light under my mom's bedroom door, breathed a sigh of relief. The conspiracy that I was asleep in bed remained intact.

Keeping an eye on the space below my mom's door, I crept down the stairs, gripping the handrail like a lifeline. My mind was hazy, a swirl of exhaustion and dimming drink, and my eyes wanted desperately to close.

I plodded lethargically past my younger brother Colin's room, also dark, and Peter's empty room, which had been dark for months. Mom sometimes talked about downsizing into a smaller house now that we had no use for a fourth bedroom and she had no use for the other half of her bed.

My door, standing lonely at the end of the hall, was open. I unlaced my shoes, ready beyond words to fall asleep. I was still tipsy enough to need to steady myself against the door frame, but sober enough to notice the shape sitting at my desk.

"Holy-"

She looked at me, or at least turned her head toward me, sitting quiety in the darkness. I slapped the wall beside my head. It took four tries before my hand connected with the light switch.

"What are you doing?" I asked, clapping a hand to my pounding chest. I'd been caught. Quiet as a mouse, indeed.

My mom stood from my desk, wearing an unreadable look. Her eyes were conspicuously puffy.

"Oh, Alex." She rubbed her face. "You scared me."

"I scared you?"

I stood in the doorway, excuses flitting through my brain. The car broke down. We were talking about homework and lost track of time. I was tending to a lost, injured puppy. I definitely hadn't been drinking.

I had the sinking realization that – despite my having had only two beers – my breath unpleasantly evoked the inside of a keg.

Quietly, as if lurking in the darkness of my bedroom was the most casual thing, she said, "I never heard you come in. I got to worrying and came down to see if you were already asleep." And then, as if we were making small talk, "did you have fun at the party?"

I didn't know what to make of the fact that she wasn't looking directly at me. Her gaze hovered somewhere in the corner of the room, listless, dreamlike. Not sleepwalking, but not quite awake.

"It was fine," I said slowly, calculating. "I'm... sorry I'm home late."

As punishment failed to come, a seed of hope bloomed in my exhausted mind. I kicked off my shoes, putting exorbitant effort into appearing steady on my feet.

The earrings.

My hand shot to the side of my head. The beads were wound into my hair. My fingers worked subtly on the tangle. Everything about me was a mess.

Play it cool. Mice are quiet and also sober.

Mom sat down at the edge of the bed and patted the comforter beside her, gesturing for me to join her. Alarm bells fired in my head. I sucked in my beer breath and brushed as much matted hair as I could to mask the stolen earrings, then joined her on the bed, sitting as far away as I could without being suspicious.

"Er, I'm sorry I missed curfew," I repeated, directing my rank breath out the corner of my mouth. "But Melanie's going to be here in six hours for school, so..."

"I can't believe her parents let her have those parties." She looked vacant. "They do know, don't they?"

"Yes." I hoped I wasn't lying. I edged away ever so slightly. "Mom... I'm exhausted."

"I know, I should let you get to sleep," she said, though she made no move to get up. Her hand smoothed over a wrinkle in my comforter. Her voice was soft and meandering, with little of its usual bite. "I'm just going to miss having you kids here."

I deflated. The blank expression. The puffy eyes. The midnight visit. I should have predicted this nonsequitur.

The good news was that she didn't actually want to talk about the party. The bad news was that I didn't want to talk about this either.

There were only two conversations I had with my mom these days. There was the normal, disaffected chit-chat about school and homework. And then, always bubbling under the surface of our every interaction, there was the divorce. She always acted as if it was the first time we were talking about it, and she always pretended I brought it up.

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"Mom, we haven't seen him since he went on his speaker tour. It's been weeks."

Her entire body lifted and fell with an enormous sigh. "I'm just worried about this impacting your school, going back and forth between houses. Senior year is such an important year... I told him... I told him we should wait until you went off to college. And Colin's not at a good age for it, either... he's so upset."

"He's a teenager. He should get to be a little upset."

"Alex, you're a teenager."

There was an eternity of difference between thirteen and seventeen.

"Well-"

"You get to be a little upset, too."

My head swam. I didn't need the permission. I was upset. I just wasn't upset for the reasons she wanted me to be. I wasn't upset with Peter for disappearing. I wasn't upset with Dad for leaving. I was upset with everyone for expecting me to be upset on their behalf.

"I just want to go to bed," I huffed, then immediately caught myself and closed my mouth, heart pounding. I would take endless conversations about my dad over a conversation about underage drinking, any day.

"I feel like I'm losing you. I always felt like we were a little team, you and me." She gave me a conspiratorial look, at which I cocked an eyebrow. "I can't help but wonder if you blame me."

"I don't blame you that dad left."

She heaved a sigh that emptied her.

"I wonder," she restated, "if you blame me because I let him."

Because she let him.

As usual, it was vague. So coy, just... hints. Whispers. Secrets. Still, I couldn't believe the words had come out of her mouth. I worked my jaw soundlessly.

"No," I finally managed. "No, that isn't... do you think that's what I want?"

Of course the thought had come up from time to time, the way you might be standing on a tall, tall balcony and suddenly think, what would happen if I jumped? I planned to carry those thoughts to the grave, to let them lie in every pause, every weighty look my mom and I shared.

She let her head droop to one side. "We've both been thinking it."

"This whole time, you thought that was what I was worked up about? You not making him stay? You don't need to apologize for that."

"I'm not apologizing." She laced her fingers on her lap. "But I do sometimes wonder, does Alex begrudge me not snapping my fingers and making it all work? Nudging things toward easy, toward good. Remind Dad what it felt like to be in love with his family. Something small to bandage things over so we have time to think, is this is really what's right for us? What's right for the kids?"

I did wonder how often she felt the temptation to just snap her fingers and fix everything. I knew she could. She knew I knew she could. It would've been easy. Like snuffing out a candle. My Dad wouldn't know the difference. A push, a prod. A happy family. And every time the thought crossed my mind, I felt disgusting. It was the worst thing I could think of.

I wasn't aware my mom was capable of having such thoughts, even hypothetically.

My mom had given me two valuable, unusual gifts. The first was uncommon: the effortless unbuttoning of the human mind. Sowing thoughts, corroding convictions, smoothing the capricious course of human emotion. All as accessible as recounting a song from the radio or adding numbers in my head.

The second gift was a set of morals governing the first gift's usage.

In short: don't.

Take the keys. Put them in the freezer. Pretend they're not there.

"I thought you'd wonder why I didn't do all I could to make it work." Her eyes fixed on some distant point in space. I had been reduced to an eavesdropper. "I just had to find out how you felt about... letting things fall apart."

Her head slanted backwards, thinning hair draping down her back. She stared into the ceiling like she was watching her whole relationship play out on a screen painted eggshell. After a silent moment, she turned to look at me. My hand shot back to cover the stolen earring in her eyeline.

"You know I would never," she said again, as if I needed the reminder. No, of course she wouldn't. That was why she hadn't. "But it just makes you think. If I've done the right thing."

She pressed her hands into the comforter and made a move as if to stand.

"I... don't know if you did the right thing," I said. "But you didn't do the wrong thing."

She nodded. Paused. Nodded again. She didn't look like she felt better. I wasn't sure if I'd intended to make her feel better.

"I know," she said curtly. "I just wanted to be sure that you knew, too."

She pulled me in for a hug and I panicked. With a tug of guilt, I did everything we'd just agreed not to do. I summoned a panicked flurry of well-rehearsed sensations. Fresh air after a morning rain. The screen at the front of my brain was a bona-fide Febreeze commercial as I folded layer upon layer of thoughts into space. I folded the thoughts like paper mache, clumsy and clumpy and crooked, over the stench of alcohol, papering over the space between us.

Working fast, I pictured the spot where the earrings would have brushed against her shoulder in the hug. I summoned images of gnarled black hair, of vast empty rooms, of shadows under a park bench, inconspicuous, vacant. I willed them away. The earrings wisped away, material and intangible and present and not. No, it was more like I smothered them in a big pile of nothingness.

It was a little specialty of mine, vanishing things. Vanishing smells, vanishing sights. Even so, I'm sure it was a hack job. Like a bad Photoshop.

Whatever. I didn't have time to make art.

"It's going to be okay, Mom."

She leaned into me and I held my breath, heart pounding. After a moment, she released the hug and looked at me, and my heart pounded, waiting to be discovered. What I'd done was way worse, in my mother's mind, than drinking with friends.

But it was late, and dark, and emotional, so she just patted me on the shoulders and stood to leave. I relaxed. I'd done a good enough job.

"I'll see you in the morning." she said, turning toward the door. "I'm sorry for keeping you up. I just needed to make sure you were okay."

For a moment, as far as I could let her see, we were a team.

"I'm okay, Mom. I am."

Sometimes a liar isn't the worst thing a person can be. Sometimes it's the most pleasant option for everyone.