I'll Be Here

surface.  Mom is vibrating in and out of her seat answering questions, jotting things down on a notepad, placing stamped envelopes in the “ready” pile.  Her hair is wrapped in a fringy scarf that’s tied in a loose loop at the nape of her neck.  She catches me looking and smiles.
                I turn to Lance.  “What do you mean?
                “I mean that she’s pretty fucking cool.” 
    I must look skeptical because he chuckles. 
    “Willow, my mom sits around the house eating those frosted animal cookies out of a giant bowl and complaining about her shows not coming on.”  He says this last part dramatically and with a tiny bit of contempt as he peels the sticky paper off an envelope and hands it to me. 
    I place an address sticker on it and slide it across the length of the table to my mom’s friend Deb.  Deb stamps the envelope and places it in a box. 
    Brooke is on Lance’s other side stuffing the envelopes with a pre-folded Xeroxed letter.  She smiles at me when she catches me looking at her.  Alex only came up once—when Deb ignorantly asked Brooke how he was doing.  My ears burned with the heat of a thousand suns as I dumbly tried not to listen as Brooke said that he was doing fine and glad that the semester was almost over. 
    I wanted Deb to ask if he was coming home for the summer.  Or if he’d mentioned that he was madly in love with some girl and couldn’t believe that a silly misunderstanding had led to so much emotional decimation.  But of course, Deb asked none of those things.  She smiled a satisfied smile and asked if anyone knew a reliable plumber she could call to look at a drain in her second bathroom. 
                Oh well.
    One of our neighbors, Siena Groff is making phone calls from the couch and checking names off a white print-out. 
                Lance’s cheeks are a blushy peach as he continues to tell me about his mother.  “Then, she bitches at my Dad and me for not taking the garbage out, or about the dog, or for not laughing at her lame jokes, or if that isn’t enough—for breathing too loudly.” 
    He sees the doubt on my face.  “I’m completely serious Willow.  She would never in a million years get off her fat ass to organize a letter-writing party or give two shits about a species of clam.”
                “Mollusk.”
                “Whatever.  She couldn’t care less about clams, mollusks, squirrels, slugs, ameobas, people…”  Lance pauses to take a big breath.  His head shakes.  “Well… you get the idea.”
                I look at Lance carefully.  I do get the idea.
                My elbow on the wooden table, I lean in and whisper loudly.  “If you think my mom is intense about the mollusks, don’t even get her started about funding for the bird sanctuary on Lewis Key or the new power plant that they’re trying to build just outside of town.”
                “Ahem… What are you two talking about so intently?”  Mom is hovering in the space behind our chairs.  One hand is on her hip, the other cradles a blue spiral notebook. 
                “Oh, Mrs. Beagle,” Lance starts though my mother has asked him to call her Julie three times already.  “I was wondering if you knew anything about that bird sanctuary on Lewis Key.” 
    And I swear that Lance flashes me the wickedest grin imaginable. 
                Mom’s expression is priceless.  It breaks her face apart into pieces—her wide eyes, her scrunched nose, her oval mouth. 
    “Why yes, Lance I do know quite a bit about the sanctuary.”
                I roll my eyes but I’m laughing inside.
    ***
    “You really need to do something Willow.”
    “What do you mean?”  Today it’s raining so we’re pushing through the crowded cafeteria to where Asher is waving from a corner table.  In one hand I’ve got a bagel with cream cheese and chives, and a soda in the other.
    Laney stalls.  She added an extra layer of kohl eyeliner today so she looks even more otherworldly than normal.  Knee-high purple boots climb her calves.
    “Here’s what I’m thinking.  It all comes down to making a decision,” she says, flicking her wrist as she shakes out a pen.  I told her that I’d help her with an English worksheet during lunch.
    “And what might that decision be?”  I ask feebly.
    “You have to decide who you want to