You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

by Rachel Lynn Solomon

  “I want to believe you,” I say. “I really, really want to believe you, Adina.”

  She stares at me, unblinking, and there’s a rawness and sincerity in her gaze that makes me realize: she wouldn’t lie to me about this. It’s too massive. “I swear to you. When I went to the doctor last week, I was terrified, really fucking terrified, that they were going to diagnose me with Huntington’s and what that would mean. That I’d have to start going through with this ‘plan.’ And I didn’t want that. I couldn’t envision it. I thought that was the one way I had to control this, but I can control so many other things. I’m still scared of what’s going to happen to me someday, but . . . I have some time. To do the things I want. And”—she chews her lip—“those things don’t have to involve destroying objects that are important to you.”

  “You have so much time.” I want to hug her, or touch her shoulder, but I don’t have the courage to do either yet. “If you ever feel that way again, tell me, okay? Or tell Ima, or tell your doctor, or . . .”

  “I’m starting some antidepressants. And the doctor mentioned a support group. I’m going to go. See what it’s like.”

  “That’s good. Really good. I could go with you, if you want.”

  She twirls the end of her ponytail around a fist, checking for split ends she doesn’t have. “I think I have to go on my own. But thanks.”

  In the silence that follows, I mimic her, running my hands through my own short hair. It may never look like hers, but I don’t think I want it to.

  “I need to confess to something. I was jealous of you. You were right. I spent most of elementary school and middle school being jealous of you. You had—still have—this confidence I wish I had most of the time. And you’ve always known what you were meant to do.”

  Adina’s eyebrows crease together. “But you couldn’t stand my music.”

  “I couldn’t stand that because you could play an instrument, you were the music expert, even though I love music too. But viola became who you were, and that was what I wanted. Something for myself.”

  “You accomplished that,” she says. She lies down on my bed, increasingly more comfortable in my space. “Pretty well, in fact. And you have to know now that I’m not confident all the time.”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know if what I picked out for myself is the right path, and I’m okay with that. I don’t think I need to have everything figured out yet. I don’t know why I was in such a hurry.” I tap my laptop. “Hence the course catalog.”

  She sighs. “Since we’re being honest, you have to know, Tovah, that when you wanted to leave for those programs—that killed me. I couldn’t have handled Ima all alone. And I understand that what I did was wrong and I could have done something else, but . . . that was the only thing I could think of to get you to stay.”

  I push my pillows out of the way so I can lie down next to her, prop my head on one arm, and turn to face her. “We’re past that now.”

  “I know. I just wanted to make sure you knew. That I’m sorry. Ani miztaeret.”

  “Me too.” She sighs. “Hard to believe high school’s almost over.” It’s such not a very Adina thing to say. She’s barely shown interest in high school. “I just think . . . no, never mind.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I wonder if I missed out on anything. I haven’t been the most . . . social person in high school.”

  “I don’t know, you have a pretty good shot at prom queen.”

  Adi holds a hand to her heart. “Like, oh my God, thanks for voting for me!” she says, and I wish this ease with which we joke felt more familiar. It feels good, though, like picking up a book you read years and years ago, remembering certain passages you loved while some twists feel brand-new.

  “I think,” she continues in a small voice, “that I might want to go to prom. Is that weird?”

  “Very weird,” I say, and then grin. “Do you want to go with me? Zack and I are going with Lindsay and Troy, and I could find you a date. Or you could go without one. Whichever you want.”

  “As much as I like the idea of making a statement by going solo, I want the full experience. Find me a date.”

  We talk plans for a while longer, until it’s after eleven and she starts yawning. I almost ask if she wants to have a sleepover in my room like we used to do, but it’s too soon. Things still feel—not fragile, but newly rebuilt.

  As she’s about to go across the hall, she turns to me. She holds my gaze, dark eyes hard, a hurricane inside them. “There’s one more thing I need to ask you. If it had been you, Tovah . . . what would you have done?”

  And at this point, even after everything we’ve done to each other, I truly don’t have an answer.

  Thirty-seven

  Adina

  EVERY COUPLE MINUTES THE DATE Tovah found me sends an awkward smile in my direction. Henry Zukowski has slicked-back blond hair and light stubble on his chin, and his spicy cologne stings my nostrils.

  “I’m sorry about your girlfriend,” I say to Henry, straining to be heard over the music in the hotel ballroom. She broke up with him two weeks ago. I am his backup.

  “Nah, it’s fine. Thanks for agreeing to go with me. I hope I’m not completely pitiful.”

  “Only partly,” I say, and he grins.

  We’ve been around Tovah and Zack and Lindsay and Troy all night. They’re on the dance floor, leaving us alone for the first time. This whole thing feels so high school. For four years, I avoided all this, and it strikes me as funny that it’s all happening tonight. When the three of us got ready earlier, Lindsay watched me braid my hair in a crown around my head and asked if I’d do hers. Then, at the restaurant, I ordered fettuccine with sausage in a ricotta cream sauce, and Tovah stared at me. “Oh—I don’t keep kosher anymore,” I told her. Tovah wouldn’t quit looking at me like I was a stranger, but then Zack nudged her arm and told her a joke and no one said anything else about it.

  The music changes, and Henry’s face lights up. “This is my favorite song.” His eyes plead with mine. The song is quick with a pulsing bass line. Its patterns are obvious, but tonight I find the simplicity refreshing.

  I give him my hand. “Let’s go.”

  I don’t realize how fast the song is until we start moving along with it. I’m too aware of my arms and legs for a while, so I copy his movements. Gradually, I start to relax—and then the song ends and the crowd erupts into applause. As I turn back to our table, Henry’s fingers graze my arm. “One more?” he asks.

  This song has some strings in it, which I like, so I say yes. We dance a little closer this time, though we’re still not really touching. We dance the next one too, and by the one after that, my feet are throbbing and I’m out of breath, so we take a break.

  A slow song comes on, and the DJ invites all the couples onto the dance floor. Tovah and Zack are at the edge of the crowd, moving in time with each other. Together they look effortless. Her head is against his chest, and he pushes hair away from her ear, whispers something into it that makes her smile. His hands drift down, settling around her waist, and her fingers curl into the hair that grazes the back of his neck. No one has ever held me the way Zack is holding my sister.

  I want that.

  And it is stronger than any want I’ve experienced before. It’s a longing, an ache deep in my belly. It is not the same as the way I’ve wanted sex from guys, when that was the only thing I focused on.

  I make another vow. One day I will be loved for my music and my mind by someone who puts me above everyone else. Maybe someone who is discovering love for the first time too. I will not be a secret. I will be a declaration.

  I cannot believe I spent so much time making Tovah miserable. We could have been growing closer with the time we have left. I don’t wish our fates were reversed—how could I wish this on anyone?—but knowing what will happen to Ima and me and being unable to stop it must be its own kind of torture. She deserves this happiness.

  Henry catches wher
e I’m looking. “They’re cute together, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I say around the knot in my throat. “They really are.”

  I tear my gaze away. I’ve always been good at getting what I want . . . and one day, I will have that.

  A bridge and a chorus later, the music switches to something fast again, and Henry says, “I’ve clearly gotten you out of your comfort zone enough for one night, but would you believe this is my second favorite song?”

  I shake my head, laughing as we head back to the dance floor.

  After the dance winds down, the six of us hang out in a hotel room upstairs. Troy pulls out bottles of rum and Coke and pours them into the Styrofoam cups next to the coffeemaker.

  “Classy.” Lindsay accepts a cup and raises it to him.

  Troy loosens his tie. “Anyone have a deck of cards? We could play strip poker or something similarly debaucherous.”

  “I’m not playing strip poker,” Tovah says.

  “Fine, what about Ten Fingers?”

  “How do you play?” I ask.

  “Everyone holds up ten fingers, and we go around saying something we’ve never done. If you’ve done it, you have to put down a finger. First person to put down all ten fingers wins.”

  “Or loses, depending on how you look at it,” Lindsay puts in.

  We go several rounds of this game. I’ve never had sex in a public place. I’ve never cheated on a test. I’ve never read Harry Potter. It lasts an entire hour. Maybe these are the experiences I should have been collecting, hanging out with people my age, playing stupid games, laughing until my stomach hurts.

  “I can call an Uber whenever you’re ready to go home,” Henry says

  “I have a little bit left in me.” Our cups are empty, so I get to my feet and say, “I’m going to get more ice.”

  I grab the bucket and head into the hall. After I fill it, I check my phone out of habit. There’s nothing new on it, but I put my thumb on Arjun’s name anyway. He sent me one text last week, which simply said, I hope you’re okay, and I replied, Fine. I must have frightened him because he hasn’t said anything to my parents, and I’m certain he won’t. Whenever I think about it—and I try my best not to think about it—I realize Arjun was not this great love of my life. It was doomed from the beginning.

  I thought I could force him to love me. Relationships are not about control, though, and perhaps that is why I have never had a real one. I want to always feel strong when I am with guys. That isn’t going to change. I am always going to wear my dresses and red lipstick because I like them. I am always going to have people watch me when I am onstage, but my looks are not the only things that make me Adina.

  Arjun knew I was vulnerable and perhaps took advantage of that, but I shouldn’t have threatened him. My last words to him were cruel. That is not who I am anymore.

  I send him one last text: I won’t say anything. Then I delete the entire conversation and erase his name and number too. I won’t check to see if he replies, and I doubt he will. Gone from my phone, from my mind, from my life.

  I’m not settling for another relationship that revolves around my body.

  A click, and the door to our room opens. Tovah makes a strange face when she sees me sitting across the hall.

  “Hey,” she says. “I was wondering where you were. Had to make sure you didn’t have a tragic ice machine accident.”

  “Nope,” I say. “Needed a little break, I guess. I’m not used to . . .” I wave my hand in the direction of the room. All those people.

  She nods, getting it. I realize she’s wearing her evil-eye bracelet again. We both are. “Can I sit with you?” she asks.

  “Go ahead.”

  “It looked like you were having a good time with Henry.” She slides down onto the carpet next to me.

  I feel my face flush. I was having a good time. I’ve spent so much time trying to convince myself I’m not young, that I’m old enough for all those guys, but the truth is . . . I am young. And I’ve spent so much time isolating myself that I’ve missed out on countless things. There’s still so much to experience. I want love like Tovah has, like my parents have, but I want more than that. There’s more than that out there. More than viola, even. I feel greedier than I have ever felt, for friends I can confide in, and dancing with strangers, and sitting in a room playing a stupid, fun game. The miniature orchestra swells in my chest again, but this time it is playing something new, something I have never heard before.

  “He’s nice, but I’m taking a break from boys, I think.” I pluck a stray thread from the carpet. I’m not wearing tights tonight. “I can tell. With Lindsay. That it’s not . . . that things aren’t how they used to be with you.” At dinner, the two of them didn’t speak to each other, only to the rest of the group.

  Tovah sighs. “It’s been like that all year. She cares more about Troy, and that’s her choice. We might never talk after high school. Apparently you meet the best friends of your life in college, though, so maybe I’m not losing all that much.”

  But she still looks sad.

  “I’m sorry,” I tell her. Maybe this whole year, she was as alone as I was.

  A silence falls over us. We exist in silences these days, but I suppose it is better than yelling, than slamming doors, than destroying prized possessions.

  I unzip my bag and pull out an envelope. “Tovah. I know I can’t begin to apologize for what I did, and I know it’s not as special because it’s not Aba’s, but . . . I wanted to give you this.”

  She turns the new Nirvana ticket over. “How did you get this?”

  “I found it online, and it arrived in the mail earlier today. I swear I’ll get it framed for you, but I wanted you to have it tonight. That was such a shitty thing for me to do. I’ll continue making it up to you however I can—”

  Tovah holds up her hand. “No. I don’t want there to be any more debts between us. I don’t want one of us to owe the other.”

  “Okay.”

  “Thank you.” She regards the ticket with a sad smile, and then her head jerks up as though she’s just remembered something. “What time is it? I left my phone in the room.”

  “Quarter to ten. Why?”

  “Get up. We’re going somewhere.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “Where? And what about Zack and everyone?”

  She holds her hand out to me, pulling me to my feet, and grins. “It’s a secret. And they’ll be fine. This is just for us.”

  Thirty-eight

  Tovah

  THE CROWN OF THE SPACE Needle vanishes and then reappears as I steer us up a steep hill and into a neighborhood I’ve been to only once before. I’ve lived in Seattle all my life and it’s still full of mystery. Cities are a little like people that way. I didn’t know Adi no longer kept kosher, but that’s her choice, and I can’t force her devotion to our religion. Maybe one day she’ll find her own way back to it.

  “Are you going to tell me where we are?” Adi asks as I wiggle into a parallel parking spot. She pulls down the mirror to check her makeup. Dabs at an imaginary lipstick stain on the side of her mouth.

  “You’ll see.” I unbuckle my seat belt. “And your makeup looks fine.”

  “Only fine?”

  “You look beyond stunning, as always. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  She smirks. “When you say it sarcastically like that, it doesn’t sound genuine.”

  Our heels clack along the sidewalk, the fabric of our dresses rustling. I lead us down a stairway and across an old bricked street and into an alleyway, and when I knock on a door at the end of it, a honeyed voice asks me for a password.

  “Blotto,” I say.

  “Are you serious?” Adi says, laughing. “What is this, a speakeasy?”

  That’s exactly what it is. Bernadette’s is sepia-toned, tea lights strung across the ceiling, old movie posters on the walls. A cluster of round tables faces a stage, where a pianist plays a tune I vaguely recognize. Maybe it was in one of the films Ima loves so mu
ch.

  Zack got the password from someone in his art class. We did some reconnaissance here last week and learned they’re very lenient about the under-twenty-one policy as long as you don’t order alcohol and you tip generously.

  “I love this.” The awe in Adi’s voice is clear. “I didn’t know this was your scene.”

  “It’s not. But this is about you. Not me. They do an open mic night once a month, and tonight is that once a month.”

  “I’m . . . playing?” she asks, finally connecting all the pieces. “I can’t do it without my viola.”

  “I planned ahead.” I dig a scrap of paper from my purse and hand it to the coat check, who returns with Adi’s viola case. She stares at it, her mouth ajar.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asks. “How did you know I’d go along with it?”

  “I know how much you like being the center of attention.”

  “Ha-ha.” Her lips wobble like she’s struggling not to smile. At last one corner bends upward. Soon I’m copying her.

  “I wanted you to have your chance to be a soloist,” I say. “To be the only person onstage. To have everyone watching only you, listening to your music.”

  While I’m not sure what my future holds, I know I have so many opportunities for a spotlight of my own.

  Adi bites down on her red-lipsticked lip, as though trying to keep whatever emotion she’s feeling from spilling out. “I don’t even know what to say,” she says. “I guess I don’t owe you, but it feels like I do. Todah. Todah rabah.”

  A host approaches us. “Your table is ready, Miss Siegel,” he says, and Adina raises her eyebrows at me, trying not to laugh at the forced formality.

  He shows us to a table to the left of the stage, and we order virgin mojitos.

  “Now your lipstick is smudged,” I tell her as we sip our drinks.

  She shrugs. “Eh, whatever.”

  When the pianist finishes with a flourish, the emcee calls Adina to the stage for her viola solo.