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H ave you ever been sitting around, minding your business, maybe finishing lunch or tying your shoe, when something happens—a knock on a door, a ringing telephone—that changes your life forever?

That’s what’s about to happen to Eddie this very second. Do you see him? Eddie? He’s right there, crouched down on the kitchen floor trying to unknot his sneaker, the left one, the one with the fraying lace that he’s tied too tightly. He’s muttering something under his breath. Something about how much he hates these old shoes. Or maybe something about how much he hates his useless job, how much he hates this useless town. Or how much he hates his best friend for the way she’s betrayed him…

… and there it is. The telephone.

It’s a sharp, piercing noise and Donna shrieks. She stares blankly at Eddie and he stares back, like two stunned deer on the roadside, because this kitchen phone never rings. The only reason they even still have it is so Donna can make extra money on the weekends selling newspaper subscriptions for the Mesa Springs Gazette , and the Gazette says she has to use a landline for some unspecified reason. At least they pay for it.

This bears explaining: Donna is Eddie’s mother. But he doesn’t call her mom or mother or ma. He calls her Donna. He just started doing it one day and it stuck. And it works. Now that he’s graduated high school they live more like roommates than mother and son anyway. Like peers. She goes to work in the morning, he goes to work in the morning, and then they come home and eat supper together. Unless she has a date or something.

Another ring. “Should I answer that?” Donna asks.

Eddie tugs at the neck of his gray sweatshirt, a size too small with a grease-splatter stain on the cuff. “I wouldn’t,” he says. “It’s probably just someone selling newspaper subscriptions.”

“A comedian,” Donna says, reaching for the handset.

Eddie looks back at the knot in his shoelace, which he’s somehow made tighter. If only he was limber enough to use his teeth.

Donna presses Speaker. “Hello?”

“Oh! You’re alive,” a voice says. “Where the hell have you been?”

The voice—curt, acerbic, and hassled—belongs to someone named Albert in New York City. He has news about Eddie’s great-great-aunt Cookie. Apparently, she’s been in the hospital with some sort of infection.

“I’ve been trying to reach you for two days,” Albert says. “Don’t you have answering machines out there?”

Donna ignores his question. “Is Cookie all right?”

“Two whole days,” Albert says. “Anything could have happened in that time. And you, her only relative, two thousand miles away and unreachable. Do you even care about her?”

“Is she all right?” Donna asks again, and Eddie can hear honest worry in her voice.

Albert sputters and sighs. “Yes. It’s minor. But they’re sending her home on Saturday and she asked for Andy to come and stay with her while she recuperates.”

“Andy? Who’s Andy?”

“Your son? Andy?” Albert scoffs. “Surely you’ve heard of him.”

Eddie looks up from his shoe, brow furrowed in confusion, but Donna doesn’t look back. Her eyes are fixed on a spot of chipped beige paint on the ceiling.

“I don’t have a son named Andy,” she says. “His name is Eddie.”

“Fine,” Albert says. “Eddie, then. He needs to come to New York.”

“I don’t understand,” Donna says.

“What don’t you understand? Your aunt is ninety-nine years old and she needs help.”

“Great-aunt,” Donna is saying, correcting Albert. Her sharp tone pierces Eddie’s daydream. He shakes his eyes open to find he’s still in the kitchen, still in the world of frayed laces and treacherous ex–best friends. “She’s my great-aunt.”

“Look, Donna,” Albert says. “That’s your name, right? Donna?”

Donna doesn’t respond. She’s still staring at the chipped paint.

Albert continues. “I don’t care if she’s your great-grand-aunt thrice removed. Someone needs to stay with her and it can’t be me. No way. I already come up to her apartment every day to keep the place clean and set her hair. I can’t do any more than that. I happen to have my own life, you know. Not to mention sciatica, and high blood pressure, and—”

“I can’t stay with her, either, Albert. I have work.”

“She didn’t ask for you. She asked for Andy.”

“Eddie.”

“Whatever!”

“Not whatever. His name is Eddie. And he’s eighteen. You know that, right?” Donna almost sounds like she’s enjoying this. She always lights up in an argument. “What exactly does Cookie expect him to do?”

“ Eddie , then,” Albert says, his voice resigned. “And how the hell should I know? Cookie wants Eddie . She said to send Eddie to New York. What else can I tell you?”

Albert’s words vault into his ears. Send Eddie to New York. They tumble and cartwheel through his brain. Send Eddie to New York. They spin into colors, shapes, swirls. Send Eddie to New York. Eddie closes his eyes and, in a split of a split of a second, he can see it all: He’s standing in Times Square, the center of everything, arms extended, head back, a sprawling smile, basking in the light of the flashing marquees shouting about Broadway shows, absorbing every note of the thousand taxi horns blaring at once, drawing the vibrations of the only place Eddie’s ever wanted to be deep into his lungs. The exhilaration! It draws him up, up, off his feet and into the air. Crowds cheer as he rises over the skyscrapers like Superman, his body a spiral of music and motion and bravery and belonging. He alights on the balcony of his downtown apartment, scratches his waggle-tailed puppy on the head, and falls into the arms of his movie-star handsome boyfriend. It’s a powerful, fantastical, physical vision, and he feels it all the way down his spine. Send Eddie to New York. The most exciting words he’s ever heard.

He opens his eyes just as Donna exhales, the kind of exasperated exhale that she usually reserves for opening another overdue electricity bill. She reaches toward the chipped paint on the ceiling as if to peel it off, but she can’t quite reach it. “Thank you. Alan. ”

“Albert.”

“My mistake. Albert. I appreciate your call. I’ll take it from here. Goodbye.”

Donna hangs up the phone. She steps up onto a chair and grips the chip of paint between her fingers. As she tugs at it, more paint is released, until she’s peeling a swath of beige from the surface like rind from an orange, like skin from a body. In the space left behind Eddie can see that the ceiling underneath is blue, like the sky.