Jonah held the phone to his ear and listened to the dial tone. He had never really listened to a dial tone before. It was always just there, but if he listened to it, it sounded like the hum was fading. Fading, the whole time, but while it faded another sound was building. Somewhere in the middle they came together and the hum never went away.
He was back at school. His boss let him off early, but Lucy wouldn't answer the phone and he didn't know what to do. He had one more class, but... She’d told him to go to school. "Your mother will see you this evening." Lucy wouldn't have sent him off when something was wrong, would she? But it was red on white, white sheets.
The loud phone-off-the-hook alarm bleeped in his ear. Jonah started. He hung up and sat, sliding down the wall. Twenty minutes till class. He stared at his shoes and minutes passed.
"Hi."
Jonah looked up and everything slowed down. The word seemed to echo in his head, a diminishing reverberation. It was Mary. She was wearing a red shirt and looking at him. She was early.
"Hi," he said. The word sounded different coming from him, it seemed to ooze
from his mouth in slow motion, then fall away. Silence. He stared up at her. She was waiting for him to say something. "I think my mom died this morning," he said. Everything clicked up to speed.
That wasn't what he intended his first words to her to be, but that's what he said. She must have thought he was joking. She tried to pass it off. He tried to explain. He told her that Lucy wouldn't let him see her this morning and there was red on the white sheets and he'd been at school and work all day and he wanted to go home but he never missed class, maybe he was overreacting, Lucy wouldn't answer the phone, mom wouldn't want him to miss class over nothing…
People were looking at him as they went by. They probably thought he was crazy. Mary stood in front of him, above him. She probably thought he was crazy. He didn't want to talk to her like this, but the words were just spilling out of his mouth. He probably sounded crazy. He didn't know what would happen if he didn't stop, so he stopped.