“Because. You can do anything,” Courtney said matter-of-factly. “Your family isn’t crazy, they have money, you’re smart, you’re clearly, like, a good person. You’ll be fine wherever. You’re lucky.”
Alexa had never felt lucky, or unlucky, really. She’d always just felt like her one-track self, until that summer, anyway, when new and unexpected possibilities had begun to glimmer on the horizon.
“Take advantage of that,” Courtney said, dumping out the remainder of her probably warm beer in the grass. “I know Kyle’s jealous of you.”
“Kyle is jealous of me?”
Courtney shrugged. “Maybe not jealous. But if he had everything you had going for you? He’d do a whole hell of a lot. Anyway . . .” she said, turning back toward the house. “I’m going to grab a fresh drink. You want something?”
Alexa shook her head, lost in thought about what Courtney had just said. “No, I’m . . . I’ll be in in a second.”
Courtney sauntered off and Alexa stood in the backyard, thinking about Kyle, about herself, about possibility. Courtney was right, of course. Between Alexa and Kyle, he was the one who would really seize on opportunity. Like the kind of opportunity that Alexa had, just because of what she was born into.
Maybe that was when Alexa had really decided. It had taken a year, and a great tragedy, to summon up the courage to actually act on it, to begin telling her parents, but maybe that was the turning point, standing there on that little patch of crabgrass, the warm and rocking hug of alcohol making Alexa’s mind loop and wander.
Remembering that night in Laurie Gomes’s backyard, that charged and revealing moment, Alexa felt a swell of something urgent, demanding rise up in her. She knew that if Kyle was watching her from somewhere, he would be mad if she didn’t make good on at least some of the promises they’d made together. Maybe she wouldn’t own five houses. But she’d go to all those places. For Kyle. For herself. Maybe that’s what Kyle would gradually become: some part of her, an inner voice pushing her, encouraging her along. Eventually she might not be able to tell the difference between his voice and hers, but maybe that was O.K. Maybe that was how you kept moving, day after day, year after year.
Alexa wished she could hug Kyle just one more time, muss his hair and coo “You’re so prettyyyy” in a fake gushy tone. (He’d pretend to blush, but then say “I know.”) She missed her friend. But she also felt herself, there in the hospital, waiting on news of her parents, saying goodbye to him, letting him go. She closed her eyes and pictured him, a year or two older, happy and excited, walking up the stairs from Penn Station. Taking in the city, and then, with one of his satisfied smiles, disappearing into the crowd.
Then Alexa heard her brother, calling her name.
“Alexa! Alexa!”
She opened her eyes and saw Jason by the doors. Two stretchers were being wheeled inside behind him. It was them. She knew, instantly, that it was them. She ran to her brother as the stretchers were swarmed with nurses and doctors.
“Finally got them out of their car thirty minutes ago!” an EMT was saying. “Male has a skull fracture, female has a collapsed lung. Both have internal hemorrhaging.”
“Oh my God,” Alexa said, as she tried to move toward the stretchers but was pushed away by a nurse. Theo and Linda were whisked past Jason and Alexa, a doctor yelling to get them into separate ORs. Alexa managed to catch a glimpse of her mother’s face, her eyelids fluttering, her head in a brace. She saw her father’s feet, only one shoe on, the other foot caked in blood and dust.
The sight was horrific, but they were alive. At least right then, they were alive. Jason gave Alexa a panicked look. She shook her head, said, “They’re going to be fine,” and grabbed his hand. They stood there, the Elsing kids, holding on to each other, as they watched their parents disappear down the hallway, trailed by nurses and doctors. “I’m here,” Alexa kept saying. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
And then Jason was saying it too, clutching his sister’s hand.
“I’m here. I’m here. Alexa, I’m here.”
Epilogue
Morgan
MORGAN DIDN’T WANT to say goodbye. To have the others tell her they were so sorry again, to have them give her the same look Dr. Koskinen had given her when her father first got his diagnosis. The one that said she was some sad orphan. So she told Skyler she was going to get a soda and left the waiting room, walking down the hallway and then slipping out the door, out into the night, into a new world where her father didn’t exist.
She walked aimlessly for a while, just wanting to put some distance between her and the hospital. She never wanted to go back there again. Never wanted to be reminded of her mother, working there in a happier life, of her father lying on that table.
She thought about going home, but couldn’t face that quite yet. So she walked south, through Beacon Hill, past the Public Garden, into the theater district. The rest of the city seemed to be carrying on like normal, though the streets were emptier than they might have been on a regular night.
There were some people sitting in bars, a group of foreigners, speaking in some Russian-sounding language, stumbling drunkenly down Tremont Street. As she turned down Kneeland Street, Morgan realized that she was near a diner her father used to take her to when things with her mom were bad at home, one of the few twenty-four-hour places in Boston. He and his cop buddies used to get coffee there at late hours, shooting the breeze after patrol, telling war stories. Her father had seemed to know all the waitresses, flirting with them a little, even though they were all mostly old and crabby. Maybe that’s why he did it.
Morgan figured she could go there, sit for a while. Maybe one of the waitresses would remember her. When she got there, a little corner place by South Station, it was mostly empty, a few loners sitting at the counter. Morgan settled into a booth and ordered a coffee, the waitress casting her a suspicious eye, wondering what this teenager was doing there by herself on a school night. But she didn’t ask any questions, so Morgan sat there quietly, sipping her coffee, trying to imagine what her next move might be. She’d been walking for a while, and it was almost midnight. The T would be shutting down soon, and she didn’t have the money for a cab home. Maybe she’d just wait it out at the diner.
She sat there, looking out the window, watching cars rattle by, on their way to South Station to drop someone off for a late bus or a late train, or to pick someone up. It was nice to imagine that there were still people coming and going, the city forever expanding and contracting, even as it was rocked by yet another terrible thing.
When the Marathon bombing happened, Morgan had watched Boston become something she’d never seen, not even when the Red Sox won the World Series: It was communal, bonded, forged together. She thought that whole “Boston Strong” thing was corny, but there was something true about it too. She felt a deep, aching affection for the city just then, even though there was maybe nothing left in it for her. Not her dad’s friends even, not Mike and Pat and the rest of them. They all had their own lives, their own kids and grandkids. Morgan hated the idea of being a burden, so she would probably not ask for their help.
She sat at the diner for hours, doing nothing but drinking coffee and looking out the window. She dozed off a few times before being woken by the waitress, asking, in an annoyed voice, if she needed anything else. Morgan shook her head no each time. “Just some more coffee, please.”
At four A.M., the city still and quiet, Morgan decided to leave, saying thank you to the waitress, and walking, both buzzing and tired, out into the night. She retraced her steps, back past the Majestic, past the Common, through the narrow, pretty streets of Beacon Hill. When she got to the other side of the hill, instead of turning toward the hospital, Morgan walked toward the river, finding the Longfellow Bridge and crossing it, over the Charles, into Cambridge, which was even quieter than Boston. She walked quickly, to stay warm and to evade anyone
who might be lurking. She crossed the MIT campus, and then down Mass Ave, all the way to Harvard Square.
The square was empty, the traffic signals blinking and changing for no one but her. There was something hushed and dreamlike about it, being the only person walking around this normally bustling place. She walked past Harvard Yard, past the newsstand, and then into the pit by the Red Line entrance. She sat on a step and crouched into a little ball to keep out the cold. It was almost six then, and some light was starting to bleed into the sky. The T would be running again soon, and Morgan finally felt tired enough to go home. She’d get on the Red Line and ride it all the way to Ashmont, and then she’d be there, back where this surreal and terrible day had started.
She looked up and saw a light flickering on in the newsstand across the way. A man was outside stacking up the day’s newspapers. Morgan got up and walked over, wanting to see the front pages of the Globe and the Herald. Of course it was all coverage of the bridge, huge photos of the gaping yawn where the Tobin used to be, headlines saying 46 dead, 125 injured. She wondered where Alexa and Jason’s parents fit in those numbers.
Some part of her hoped to see something about her father, but of course he would never merit the front page, even on a completely uneventful day. The bridge would have to stand in for him. The bigger tragedy representing Morgan’s own relatively small one, somehow. Morgan scanned all the headlines and then walked back to the T, which was open now, early commuters riding the escalator down.
Standing on the platform, Morgan suddenly remembered something she’d forgotten in all the chaos of the hospital. How had she forgotten the envelope, the one with her father’s note inside? She dug around in her bag and found it, a little crumpled, her name scrawled in her father’s familiar handwriting. She looked at it, but did not open it. She was not ready just yet. She felt the tunnel wind of the train approaching and stepped back from the edge, the T coming whining into the station.
Once on board, still holding the unopened envelope, Morgan put her head against the glass of the window and watched as stops went by, people entering and leaving the car. There were so many people in Boston. She wasn’t sure she’d ever really noticed them all before—how many tired moms, how many college kids looking like they were waiting for something, how many solitary men staring into space as they thought about who knows what. Maybe no one was alone, she thought, as long as there were all these people.
The train rattled out of Kendall and then out onto the bridge, and there was the skyline, the Hancock and the Prudential, the slow drone of Storrow Drive. It was such a pretty place, ugly as it was for Morgan just then.
She closed her eyes and imagined what it would be like to go home, to put her key in the lock and open the door and find no one there. Of course she would be put somewhere, maybe with Aunt Jill in Nashua, maybe somewhere else. But that morning, for those minutes or hours, Morgan would be alone in the only house she’d ever known.
Morgan sat on the train and tried to imagine that bit of time, and then tried to imagine life past it. As much as she felt sad, as much as the world felt dark and closed around her, she couldn’t help but also feel infinitely curious. About what might be coming, about where her life could possibly take her. She was so devastated; how heavy that felt as the train rumbled out into the thin early morning light. But she was also relieved, in some deep part of herself, lying under the ruins, that she was still alive.
Everything would be different now. Everything would be strange. But she was still herself, still Morgan, still the girl with bitten nails and purple hair, still in her body, in her skin, still young. Life can end, suddenly. But it can also stretch on and on and on. And there, on the bridge, Morgan felt her future reaching out very far. She would someday beat this sadness, she’d find the end of it and then pass on into something else.
The train arced over the river, and Morgan wished the best for all of them. For Jason and Alexa. For their parents. For Scott. For Skyler and her sister. Morgan doubted that they’d ever see each other again. She had the feeling that morning that she might not be in Boston for much longer, that there was somewhere else she was supposed to be. The adventure would be in finding out just where that was, and what roads and sturdy bridges could take her there. Morgan opened her eyes and there was the sun, beginning to dance on the Charles, the train wheels whistling as they carried her toward whatever was next. Whatever might happen after all of this.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to the eminently capable and supportive team at Razorbill, particularly Marissa Grossman for her level-headed faith, encouragement, and insight; to Brianne Johnson at Writers House for facilitating with compassionate expertise; to family and friends who have been generous readers, sounding boards, and hand-holders over the past two years; and to Crystal Gomes, whose guiding spirit was felt throughout, as it will be always.
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All We Can Do Is Wait Page 23
