by Emery Lord
He was unzipping the bag, rooting around for supplies. “For what?”
“Being a disaster,” I said. “Breaking things.”
Picture frames, my heart, yours, my future.
“I didn’t get into UCLA.” The words tumbled out of my mouth, unbidden. “Or USC. I haven’t told anyone else.”
“Oh.” He looked at me for a moment, registering my drunkenness in a new way, maybe. “Oh. I’m sorry. And surprised.”
“I’m not!” I said, laughing darkly. “Surprised or sorry. Well, I am. But you know what? Part of me feels relieved. I don’t want to be in California, thousands of miles from everyone I know. Even for prestigious schools. Isn’t that so cowardly?”
“No,” he said. “Hand, please.”
I offered it to him. Maybe I should have anticipated it, but the touch shocked me—the warmth, the familiarity of his hand on mine. He studied the damage; I stopped breathing, hesitant of his nearness and my current lack of inhibitions. He came here with another girl. A better girl, whom I liked so much.
“This’ll probably sting.”
“Oh, I can’t feel anything right now,” I said, chipper. “Oh, ow. Ow!”
“Sorry.” He blew on my skin, cooling the iodine faster. “Okay. Worst is over.”
Was it?
“Can I make the hole in the jeans a little bigger?” he asked, his fingers poised to do just that, and I nodded. He ripped the fabric just enough to fix a bandage on the cut. I wanted to push my fingers into his hair and tell him he’d be a good doctor someday. I wanted to ask him if he was any closer to a college decision, but instead I sat quietly, still as I could be.
After a moment, he stood, satisfied. “You’re fixed up.”
No, I’m not. I smiled weakly, afraid I’d start crying if I tried to speak again. These few moments of amnesty—when I was too vulnerable to be held accountable, too pitiful to be mad at—sliced sharper than glass.
“You came here with Aditi.” I said precisely as the thought entered my mind, where it absolutely should have stayed.
Max narrowed his eyes at me. “Yeah. We had QuizBowl in Anderson before this, and she asked to stop by on the way home.”
“Oh. You carpooled. Right.” I had no business asking any more questions. I was preposterously drunk—barely capable of walking straight, let alone lying, and so I wanted to tell him that there really, truly wasn’t anything going on with Hunter. There never had been.
“Thanks for this,” I said, but he had crouched down and was zipping the first aid kit shut. It sounded loud. Did it sound especially loud? Had he zipped it angrily?
“Max. Did I—? Whoa, hey.” I touched his arm. “Are you mad at me?”
He turned back. Something about his expression—his jaw?—made him look stony. “I don’t want to do this whole thing, Paige.”
“What whole thing?”
God, I was so confused. I looked up at Max with a kaleidoscope view, and tried to blink away my triple vision. What did I miss? He studied me, tugging his forearm from my touch. “Why did you have Tessa get me?”
“Because you have a first aid kit in your car?”
“You knew I’d come.” His voice was scornful, like he hated himself for it. And also me. “You knew I’d take care of you. I showed up to a party with another girl, and you wanted to make sure you still had me on the line. But you can’t have it both ways. You can’t reel me back in.”
“Reel you back in? I didn’t mean to—”
“I don’t care what you meant.”
“Okay!” I sat back, unable to keep pace. He’d pivoted too fast, the words exchanged too quickly for my sluggish, sloppy brain. “I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, me too,” he said, already on his way out. My friends were walking in the door, coming to collect me, and Max said something to Tessa—about water and throwing up. Or I imagined it, my head filled with disjointed images of my drowning nightmares, my lifelong bad stomach, all the sleepless nights. When my friends surrounded me, all I could manage was: please get me out of here.
I woke up feeling like hell. I showered in Tessa’s bathroom, feeling the sting of bandaged cuts and self-loathing. Tessa made pancakes and a pot of coffee, and she sat me down for a kitchen-stool confessional. I spilled it all—the rejections, the myriad ways I had messed up my personal and would-be professional life. She grabbed the paper towels as I started to cry. And when I had emptied everything out, she sent me home to tell the truth.
My mom sat at the kitchen table, pulling out pages from home décor catalogs for inspiration. Our mornings, even weekends, used to feel frenzied. She’d narrate a to-do list, which seemingly had no end. These days, she looked content in the morning time—coffee and her robe, hair pulled back. She read the news, perused design websites. Maybe an effect of Cameron and me getting older. But maybe an effect of my dad, who slowed us down in a good way.
“Hey, sweetie,” she said. “Have fun?”
She asked it so genuinely, like I was returning from an innocent middle school sleepover, sugar rushes and all-night movies. When really, her crappy daughter had lied, gone out, and gotten stupidly drunk.
I shrugged, sliding into my seat at the kitchen table. I’d borrowed an oversize sweatshirt from Tessa, the sleeves long enough to cover the Band-Aid across my palm. “Where is everyone?”
“Cameron got it into her head that she wants to make donuts from scratch, so Dad took her to the store.”
Good. I could only handle one reaction at a time. “I didn’t get into UCLA. Or USC.”
There had to be a softer way to introduce my failure, but I was too tired, too ill.
“Oh.” Her face fell. “Honey. You got both e-mails?”
“Yesterday. USC on Wednesday.”
“Sweetie. Oh no. You shouldn’t have been alone with that.”
“I needed a minute to sort through how I felt.” I peered at her, curious. “Are you glad?”
“What? Of course not!” She tilted her head, upset. “I didn’t love the idea of you being that far away, but I would have supported your choice! How do you feel?”
“Like a failure. And also relieved,” I said. “I think I wanted to want it. If that makes sense.”
She removed her glasses, trying to get a better look at me. “It does.”
“Could you tell Dad and Cam?”
“Sure.” She reached across the table and gripped my forearm. “I’m proud of you, you know.”
“You don’t have to say that.”
“I know I don’t.” Leaning back in her chair, she considered me, slouched across from her. “You pushed yourself. I’m very glad to know you, honey.”
“Thanks.” She’d feel less glad, I imagined, if she knew the choices I’d made not twelve hours before. And then I said, because I was already on a roll, “I haven’t been feeling great. Like, emotionally.”
“Okay.” My mom stayed in her leaned-back position, afraid to make any movement and shut me down.
“Not because of the rejections. Before. Way before.”
“When?” she asked, trying to say it easily. But I could tell—she wanted to know what, exactly, she’d missed as a parent. “In New York?”
“No, not really. After. But it’s hard to pinpoint. I know it escalated by, um, November, I guess?”
She startled—the facade of calm, receptive mother falling. “When Dad moved back in?”
“No. I mean, yes, that was also happening, but—”
“Your car accident.”
“Yeah. But not just those things. It’s everything. It’s like my brain can turn anything, even good things, into panic.” I imagined a bizarre conveyor belt where thoughts entered my mind—a good grade, Max’s smiling face, a tiny comment from a friend—and came out as an electrical storm on the other side.
My mom nodded, accepting this. Accepting that the problem wasn’t the outside factors. Or at least, it wasn’t only them.
“I’d like to see Dr. Hernandez again,” I said.
; After Aaron died, my mom read online that a full year of therapy would be good for a grieving teenager, and that’s what I did with Dr. Hernandez. I liked her, after I got used to the oddly one-way conversation. I made progress, and I wanted that so much now, that room and her attentiveness and the way she never startled, no matter what dark thing I said.
“I’ll call first thing Monday,” my mom said simply. “That sound okay?”
“Yeah. Sounds good.”
“Thank you for telling me. But, Paige?”
“Yeah?”
“None of this is an excuse for bad decision making,” she said, dangerously calm. Maybe she sensed the foolhardiness on me; maybe vodka came off my skin like cheap perfume. Maybe she was, as I’d long suspected, capable of low-level mind reading. “I’m going to assume that whatever happened won’t happen again.”
Well, crap. “And I’m going to assume I’m grounded for at least a week?”
“Smart girl.” She smiled thinly as I trudged upstairs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Monday morning, I hated walking through the school hallways. I remembered everything from Saturday night, but I wondered which classmates had seen me talking too loudly, breaking a frame. Loss of control: not for me.
I saw Max briefly between a class change, but he didn’t see me. Or pretended he didn’t, anyway. Just as well—Tessa had advised me to give him the space he’d asked for. She’d said it so reluctantly, hating to make herself the go-between, but I heard her.
Instead of going to my lunch period, I stopped by Ms. Pepper’s room, hoping to find her free. She was finishing up with someone from her previous class but waved me in.
I waited until the other student was fully out the door and still hung back. It spoke to how severely I’d gone awry, that I’d lose face in front of Pepper on the off chance she could help even a little.
“Hey there,” she said pleasantly.
“Hey,” I said. “Um, if I have a total breakdown to you about colleges, you can’t, like, rescind the recommendation you wrote, right?”
She smiled, acknowledging my little joke, and pointed to the seat nearest her desk. “Tell me.”
“I wanted to update you, as my senior adviser.” This was a guise, actually. I mean, I did want to update her. But really, I wanted her to magically surmise my problems without me articulating them, and then offer succinct and sage advice. “I didn’t get into USC or UCLA. Not shocking, but …”
Ms. Pepper winced a little, bobbing her head. “Which is not to say anything about you as a student—but the numbers alone. Those programs accept so few people compared to large applicant populations. Still waiting for IU and NYU?”
“Yeah,” I said, hoping that my single syllable would portray my desperate desire for affirmation from Pepper that I would, in fact, get into one of those schools.
“If you get into NYU,” she said, “is that your first choice?”
“Not necessarily? I went back to IU with Morgan last fall, and when I think about campus, it’s like … I don’t know. A perfect cake. A classic. Yellow with chocolate frosting, maybe.” I looked up, hot with embarrassment. I wandered into her classroom and was now rambling about cake? “Sorry. My sister got really into baking this year.”
“No, I follow you,” Pepper says. “I love yellow cake.”
Pepper wasn’t one to share personal information. She shared anecdotes about her dog, Grendel, but that, over time, seemed calculated to me—her way of sharing something about her life, just not something about her. This once, though, I hoped she’d waver under direct questioning from an emotional student. “Um, I was wondering. Did you stay in-state for school?”
She smiled, like the answer might disappoint me. “For undergrad. Did my master’s out of state. But you know, for what it’s worth … you spent a month in New York. So you have evidence that you connect with students at NYU, and you felt challenged and excited to be there. But I bet the same would be true at IU—at a lot of schools.”
I huffed, a half laugh at myself. In a strange way, was NYU the safer choice? I already had proof that I could fit in, that I liked it. “You’re right.”
“Also, I hate to break it to you,” Pepper said, “but which university is just one choice. A huge choice, yes. But once you get to campus …”
“… I have to make even more choices,” I guessed.
“Bingo. Your experience will be made of a thousand little choices as much as the one big one.” She straightened, pressing her hands together. “Now! Tell me about Mythos! I’ve been hoping you’d stop by with an update.”
A gray cloud trailed over me all week, heavy with water. I wanted it to open up already, douse me completely. I was still waiting on Friday, when Morgan ran up to me. Her fingers gripped my arm like a claw machine. “Have you checked your e-mail?”
I got into IU, with a really solid academic scholarship. So did Morgan and Kayleigh, though she’d already decided on UC. A great and affordable in-state school that I liked. I got into college. I covered my face with one hand, overcome. The hallway suddenly felt like the first day of fall; I could finally breathe more easily.
“So, you think you’ll send a deposit?” I asked Morgan.
“Yep.” She made a checkmark in the air, the decision as simple as a pen slash.
On the map in my mind, I pushed another red pin into Bloomington. Ryan and Morgan at IU; Tessa and Kayleigh in Chicago. At least I could visualize those for sure. My pin was still stuck in Oakhurst, waiting. Two months maximum. Like a gymnasium scoreboard, bright red hours counting down.
“Did Max tell you?” Morgan asked.
Depends. He certainly told me off, that’s for sure. “Nope.”
“He got into IU, too. And Purdue.”
“That’s great.” And it was—really. But I should have heard that from him.
“Paige,” Morgan said, pained. “What are you guys doing?”
“Can we not?” I put my smile back on and nodded. “C’mon. Let’s go tell Tess about IU.”
I told my dad when he picked me up from Mythos, and he did the Dan Hancock specialty of joyous and tearful. Instead of driving right home for dinner, he stopped at Kemper’s to buy me a sundae with sprinkles, like he used to after final report cards. My mom jumped up and down, clasping me tight. They were the picture of proud parents, and I glowed in it.
Which is exactly why I didn’t see the fight coming. I’d gotten up to brush my teeth, awake later than I was supposed to be, when I heard the hushed voices downstairs.
I sat on the top step, toothbrush still jutting from my mouth, trying to make out the low tones of my dad’s voice, the higher pitch of my mom’s. Leaving for school. NYU. Doctor. Anxiety. My dad was worried I’d decide against out-of-state schools solely due to anxiety, that I’d internalize my mom’s worries about New York. My mom countered that IU was a great school, with so many options that I wouldn’t feel locked into one. I crept down a few more steps, in time to hear them accuse each other of pressuring me.
Neither one was wrong, exactly. My dad’s no-holds-barred enthusiasm for NYU made me feel like IU would disappoint him. My mom’s trepidation about NYU gave me secondhand doubts. In a way, their perspectives balanced out, and I considered barging downstairs to tell them so.
Cameron padded out of her room and sat by my side. She wrapped her arms around her knees.
“What’s it about?” she whispered.
I pulled the toothbrush from my mouth, swallowing the minty foam. “Me.”
We strained to listen, and God—the flashbacks. To being five and eight, me sending Cam back to her bedroom, reassuring her.
“They don’t have any space to calm down and regroup,” I said, quiet. “Now that they live together. This is exactly what I was worried about.”
And when they couldn’t escape each other—when they imploded again—it would be partially my fault.
“I’m going to bed,” Cameron said, annoyed with me.
In the morning, I linger
ed at the kitchen doorframe, taking the temperature of the room before entering. I expected a chill on par with Narnia. I always knew when they’d disagreed the night before—the skillfully averted eye contact, no words exchanged unnecessarily. Sure enough, my mom sat at the table with her laptop and a legal pad.
“Little more?” my dad asked her, coffeepot in hand.
“Sure.” She said it pleasantly enough. “Thank you.”
“How’s the interview list?”
“Robust,” my mom said, tapping her notes. “The more perspectives I jot down, the more people I think of. It’ll take me months.”
“Feature potential?”
“I hope so,” my mom admitted. “A series, maybe.”
I stepped into the kitchen, confused. They seemed … calm. Happy, even.
“Hey, kid,” my dad said. “I made you some decaf. How’d you sleep?”
“Okay,” I hedged.
“So,” he said, hand cupping the back of my head to get me to look at him. “Mom and I talked last night. Wherever you decide to go to school, we’re gonna find a doc there—okay? Not just here at home.”
Huh. A therapist, I assumed, in case my anxiety kicked into an unmanageable gear.
“It costs a lot,” I said, my voice breaking. “Probably in New York especially. And wouldn’t it be out-of-network? Or something?”
“There will probably be some hurdles to clear,” my mom agreed. “But there are new options—online, even. We’ll look into it.”
My dad ruffled my hair. “And I’m all for IU, too. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, I know.”
“I’ve just always wanted to live in New York myself,” he said. “And what, really, is parenthood if not living your unfulfilled dreams through your children?”
I smiled begrudgingly. “I haven’t even gotten in. And I’m trending toward rejection here.”
He threw his hands up in playful exasperation. “You two and your negativity!”
“Actually,” my mom said, smiling from behind her coffee cup, “I have a good feeling about it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kayleigh claimed she was using her birthday as an excuse to check off karaoke from the Senior Year List. It became clear during the second verse of “Always Be My Baby” that she was using her birthday as an excuse to belt Mariah Carey jams to an audience. And sing she did, in the private karaoke room her dad rented for us. The screen cycled through stock images that had nothing to do with the lyrics; the lights flashed magenta and unicorn purple.
