Almost Like the Mafia

by TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I do not own Degrassi, its characters or any of the multiple references I make herein.

Chapter One

I let my phone battery die, so I had to leave it in our room that morning. It only takes a couple of hours to charge so I figured I could come back and get it on the way to lunch. The only thing is that my phone is very important to me. It's like my arm. I felt its absence the whole damn time. I even reached into my jacket pocket and had a moment of panic when it wasn't there. I did this even though I knew that it was on the dresser. Emma laughed.

So she went with me back to the dorm to get it and so that Em could drop her books off and stuff and I grabbed it.

Emma giggled at the way I cradled the thing as I picked it up.

"Shut up," I said. I turned it on and found a voicemail. Usually my parents are the only ones who bother with voicemail, so I listened to it right away, thinking it was important. They never called in the middle of the day.

It wasn't them. It was Toronto General Hospital. There's a call you want to get. For a second I thought of my parents again. I had just enough time to think I'm an orphan and I am going to throw up on this floor and not be able to afford to pay to clean the rug, before the voice on the recording said that I was on the contact list for Jason Hogart, who had just been admitted.

My first thought was, Okay, not the parents, Thank you, God. I promise I'll go to church more often and curse less. Then the fact that it was Jay kicked in and I felt sick all over again.

"What is it?" Emma asked. Her eyes were all big. Or bigger anyway.

"Jay," I said. I sat down on Liberty's bed and before I knew it, Emma was wrestling Liberty's pillow out of my arms. Something about the smell of her hair products was comforting, and she'd probably forgive me for getting mascara on it eventually.

"Is he dead?" Emma asked.

That's when the bawling started and I couldn't say anything that she could understand. Emma cried with me, but she still had it together enough to listen to the voicemail for herself and check the time of the first call, which she told me later had been four o'clock that morning.

Eight hours ago, I thought. I am the worst person in the world.

I ran into out of our room, into the bathroom, and hid in a stall. I could've been there with him by now. Then I realized that he could even be dead already. Could happen. I didn't even know what had happened to him, or how badly he was hurt. For all I knew they could've been waiting for my okay to pull the plug.

"Manny, they are not going to pull the plug!" Emma said. "Now open the door!"

"I said that out loud?" I asked.

"Very loud," Emma said.

"Who's pulling the plug?" some girl asked. "What plug?"

Emma must have given her a look because she said, "Okay bye," and left.

"Didn't even wash her hands," Emma said. "Ew? So come out of there. We'll get to the bottom of this."

I really didn't know how we would, but Emma was doing a really good Archie Simpson impression and I wanted to believe that she knew what to do, so I opened the door and we went back to our room.

We called the hospital and they told us pretty much nothing we could use, except that he was definitely still alive and "in stable condition," but "under observation." They couldn't tell me what he was under observation for. I really needed to watch more Grey's.

It took ten or fifteen minutes for Liberty to show up. Emma texted her. She might have snuck out of her World History class a few minutes early, something that meant that I really owed her one. Liberty's job was to stop me from packing because I wasn't really listening to Emma anymore. She thought that Liberty would be a more commanding presence, somehow.

"Put the suitcase down, Manny," she said.

"I was going to," I said. After all, you had to put the suitcase down to put your stuff into it, didn't you?

"I meant, back in the closet," Liberty said. "We gotta think about this."

"What's there to think about?" I asked. "I'm still on his call list. Do you know why? Because he has no one else. Which means he has no one, and he can't have no one. I can't even begin to guess where his Dad is. And the hospital won't tell me shit, so I gotta go to Toronto."

"Spinner," Liberty said.

"Oh my gosh, Spinner!" Emma said. She bounced like she'd just won the lottery. Okay, it actually made sense to call him. Spinner might just be Jay's only noncriminal friend, outside of his boss. I wondered why they didn't call his boss, actually. Or Spinner. Why me? Why didn't he change it? Emma went into her desk and pulled out her address book. Emma has an address book. Outside of her phone. She's the only person I know who has one.

"Spin!" she said when he picked up. "It's Emma...Nelson, you ass. Don't even pretend like you don't know me...I don't care if I woke you up. It's noon first of all, and this is an emergency!"

This is one of the many reasons that I love her. She can be scary when she really wants to be.

"Glad I got your attention," she said, sweetness and light again. "It's about Jay. Did you hear anything about—No. I. Manny just got a call. From the hospital. She's on his In Case of Emergency List. They won't tell us anything and you know how long it'll take us to get there...Okay, here she is." She handed me the phone.

"Stay there," Spinner said.

"I'm not gonna stay—"

"Yeah, you are," he said. "You don't need to go missing your classes. I got this."

"If you think I give a shit about any of my classes right now," I said. "I need to get over there and see for myself that he's okay and make sure that he didn't get drunk and wrap his Civic around a bus full of nuns or something."

There was the sound of Spinner choking and spitting.

"Manny," Spinner said. "A bus full of nuns?"

"Well—"

"If it was something really bad like that it would have been on the news," he said.

"Well I haven't seen the news yet, have you?" I asked.

"My mom would've nudged me for that, I'm pretty sure," he said. "So listen. I'm just gonna go over there. Toronto General, right?"

"Will they let you in?" I asked.

"He's Jay's brother," Emma said. He heard her.

"Yep," he said. "I'm Jay's brother. Listen to Emma."

"You look nothing alike," I said.

"Have you seen Kendra?" he said.

"Not for years," I said. His little sister Kendra was in boarding school someplace. Full scholarship. He sees her maybe twice a year.

"Well, I don't look like her either," he said. He had a point. She was adopted, and Korean.

Then he had a brainstorm. "And if they don't believe me, I can come clean and tell them that I'm his boyfriend. Maybe squeeze out some tears."

"Spin—" I said. He was just being an asshole now.

"I'll get in," he said. "Now go to class. I'll call you in an hour or two."

"Okay," I said. He could call me. From the road. Well, okay. I didn't have a car. But you can get a pretty good cell signal from the train.

"Manny, you can't leave yet," Liberty said. At least it had progressed from "You can't leave" to "You can't leave yet."

"Why not?"

"You have to talk to your professors," she said. "Make some kind of arrangements so you don't miss stuff."

"How many of your professors take attendance, Lib?" I asked. The one in the class we had together sure as hell didn't.

"What about Acting?" Emma asked.

"Don't have it till Monday," I said. This was Wednesday. "I'll be back by then."

"What if you're not?"

"I will be."

I ran into Kelly in the hall. Apparently Emma tried to get hold of him, too, though I don't know what she thought he'd do.

"Thank God," Emma said from behind me.

"I don't have any money," Kelly said.

"I know you don't," Emma said. "I just need you to block that door."

He did what he was told. "Why am I blocking the door? Where are you going, Manny?"

"I gotta go home for a couple days," I said. "It's an emergency."

"To Toronto?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said. "Can I get a ride to the train, actually?"

He handed me his car keys.

"Do not let her drive your car," Emma said. "You'll never see it in one piece again."

"Thanks Emma," I said. You take out a couple newspaper dispensers one time and suddenly you're Evel Knievel. I swore to myself that I'd remember that next time she wanted anything.

He stared at me for a second. "Okay," he said. "I'll drive."

"Really?" I asked. I didn't think he knew what he was getting into. It was a few hours' worth of driving both ways.

"In that case, I'm coming with," Emma said.

Liberty danced from one foot to the other. Then she shut her eyes tight. "Okay, me too."

"Road trip!" Kelly said.

I couldn't do it to Liberty. She'd break out into hives if she missed more than one class. And, I told myself, Jay wasn't worth it. Even though I'd probably be missing several classes for him. "We need someone to take notes in Comp."

"Are you sure?" she asked, relieved. That she was willing to ditch for us was enough for me to squeeze her till her eyes popped. Which I did.

Once we got into the car, Kelly wanted details. I tried to explain Jay to him. Emma...helped, and by helped I mean she brought up all kinds of stuff that I'm sure Kelly could have lived a long fulfilling life without knowing.

"Wait," Kelly said, eyes on the road. "So he caused a mini clap outbreak, and you were about to marry him."

"Oh I'm sure he was cured by the time he proposed," Emma said.

"Emma!"

"I'm kidding," Emma said. "The clap thing was years ago." She conveniently left out that she would know exactly how long it took to cure the clap and that Jay was the one who'd provided her with that experience.

"He also helped save your ex-boyfriend's ass and got him a job, in case you don't remember," I told her.

"The one in the army?" Kelly asked.

"Sean," Emma said. "Yeah."

"Yep," I said. "So Jay had his good points. Or has his good points."

"Uh-huh," Kelly said.

"And I'm the one who made him fill out that card in his wallet with the emergency contact info," I said. "So I feel a little responsible. And anyway, I need to make sure that he wasn't shot by a liquor store clerk in the middle of a robbery or something."

"Who is this guy?" Kelly asked.

"It's a long story, kay?" I said. And I turned on the radio to give him the hint that it was a story for another day, like February. The 30th.

I tried to put my head back and listen to the music so that I didn't have to think about anything until we started to get close, but Kelly was a fan of the classic rock station. It was hard not to think about Jay Hogart when Guns N Roses was playing. Metallica was even worse. After Pearl Jam, I made him change the station. I have to look it up, but I might be the only person to burst into tears in the middle of "Even Flow." I guess I should be happy that it wasn't "Better Man." Or "Last Kiss."

But Guns N Roses was the worst. I could practically hear Jay singing along. He had the wrong voice for it, too clean, too much like a choirboy. It wasn't a voice that you expected to come out of him and he completely hated it. It was so much fun to tease him about it. Also he did the Axl Rose dance, the one where you swivel the entire upper half of your body like a snake. That he was good at, and wasn't afraid to show off.

But I was really trying not to think about stuff like that because I just didn't know what to expect when I actually got to the hospital. He could be dying. Or he could be about to be arrested for driving drunk. I didn't even know whether it was a car accident or what. And the thing about Jay was that he could just as easily have been swerving to avoid a stray cat. One minute he was sweet and the next he was being a total shithead.

Emma was right about one thing; it really was a good thing that I wasn't driving. Imagine me weaving all over the road as I bawled, snot hanging from my nose while I tried to find something unJaylike on the radio. Kelly took one hand off the wheel to open his glove compartment and get me napkins to wipe my nose, then he took the nearest exit and pulled into a Tim Horton's where he and Emma got us coffee and replenished the napkin supply. I was feeling a little better by the time they got back to the car.

We were about half an hour from home when Spin finally called me.