I say top story because now that I was a senior at Ridgewood High School, morning announcements were an actual news program beamed from the school’s television studio to the flat-screen televisions in every single classroom. Everyone in my homeroom knew I was from Aberdeen, and they all discreetly glanced over to see if I was, I don’t know, going to cry or something? Well, I didn’t cry. I kept my face in my AP trig textbook and pretended to be too absorbed to have heard anything. There were a handful of other former Aberdeen residents who now went to Ridgewood. I bet they acted the same way. We were all friendly, but I wouldn’t say we were friends. They were better about starting new lives for themselves than I was. They made new friends, aligned themselves with new groups. If they missed their old lives at all, I couldn’t tell.
Mom had moved us to Ridgewood about a week before my senior year started. She’d signed a lease on a different apartment close to Baird, and she and I had been living there for almost a month, but when she heard from another nurse that half a duplex in Ridgewood was going to come up for rent because the occupant had died, she broke that lease and signed a new one. Actually, she didn’t have to break the lease. Dad took it over.
So she and I lived on the ugliest street in Ridgewood, where the houses were old and small and none of them had front lawns. The first rental had been nicer and less expensive, but Mom felt that the opportunity for me to have a senior year at one of the best public schools in the state was too good to pass up. Luckily, I didn’t have to repack anything because I’d never bothered unpacking in the first place.
Mom settled into our new place right away. And though it didn’t feel like home, not to me anyway, she had done a lot to make the place cozy. Little by little, she replaced the cast-off stuff she’d gathered from her departing patients with things of her own choosing. A chenille throw found on sale at Marshalls to replace someone’s hand-knit afghan. Other things she made, like a white canvas cover for our old couch, and pillows with goldenrod flowers and periwinkle stripes. I wondered if that was what my life would be as time passed, memories replaced with new experiences.
Mom could have completely refurnished the apartment all at once with the settlement money Dad had given her, but she was trying not to spend a dime of that. She and Dad agreed it should be college money for me, so I wouldn’t have to go to Baird if I didn’t want to.
I had actually decided to apply to a few other schools that I never would have considered if not for the college fair my new high school put on. I went to the fair because I had nothing else to do, but I ended up talking to a few admissions counselors. My life was now a weird blank slate, and I could insert myself anywhere pretty easily. I had no best friend to leave behind, no boyfriend suggesting I stay close, no cozy bedroom in my childhood home pulling at my heartstrings. It was all gone. But the upside of that was that, even though Ridgewood’s curriculum was infinitely harder than anything at Aberdeen High, I was killing it. I had nothing else to do but study and do homework.
When I came home from school that day, Mom was on the linoleum floor, her back up against the fridge, our kitchen phone pressed to her ear. “Okay, well, I should probably go. Keeley just walked in from school. Oh, wait, just hold on a second, Annie.” Mom cupped her hand over the receiver and whispered to me, “Do you want me to see if Morgan can come to the phone?”
She asked this every time.
Though I always wanted to say yes, I never did. If Morgan wanted to speak to me, she would. She knew my number. More than that, she knew I was trying to get in touch. I had to wait for her to forgive me, if she ever would.
I’d lost count of how many times I’d reached out to her since the day she left Aberdeen. At first, I would leave her these long rambling messages. I’d talk to her as if she were on the other end of the line, instead of sending my call straight to her voice mail. But now, months later, I’d keep it short and sweet, not much more than “Miss you, Morgan.”
Elise and I were still in touch. She texted me totally out of the blue, near the middle of September. She wanted to know how I was doing, if I had made any new friends, stuff like that. It was more than I deserved, and I immediately wondered if Elise was acting as an intermediary for Morgan. But then, I realized, no. Elise was just that terrific a person.
She was liking Florida, especially the boys, who were perpetually tan. She loved living in a place that was more diverse. “You should really think about going away for college. You need to be meeting different types of people, seeing that the world is a bigger place. And, I mean, the food alone, Keeley, oh my God. I’m obsessed with Cuban food. I don’t know that I could stomach one of Saint Ann’s bland old casseroles again.”
It was weird. I’d always thought Elise and I were friends, but it wasn’t until after she left that we actually got close. There was more room for us now that we didn’t have Morgan’s attention to compete for.
I hadn’t heard from Levi, either, but that was a different story. He was at college now, far away from Aberdeen. He wasn’t online at all and he’d changed his cell number.
But I thought of him, especially as the weather changed. I imagined what he might be doing, wondered if he liked college, if he would join a fraternity. He probably wouldn’t join a jock one, but maybe an academic one. He might have met someone. Someone kinder and nicer than me, who wouldn’t screw him over the way I had.
Mom stood up to hang up the phone and then spontaneously hugged me tight. I knew it hurt her that I was hurting, and she hated that there was nothing she could do to fix it.
“Did you hear about the dam being completed?” I asked.
“Yes. Your dad mentioned it today when he called.”
Dad had taken a job at one of those big-box hardware stores. They made him a greeter, in the front of the store, and let him sit on a stool. He knew a little about everything, so they thought that’d be the place where he could help the most people. With his first paycheck, he came and asked Mom out on a date. She said yes. Now they did a weekly dinner and a movie, early enough so he could drive her back to our duplex so she could do some paperwork. It was another thing that gave me hope. My mom really loved my dad, and vice versa. They were working on their relationship. I just wanted the same chance.
“We’re going for dinner tonight, if you’d like to join us.”
I shook my head. “Bring me back something.”
• • •
When Mom and Dad left on their date, I decided to finally unpack my boxes. If Aberdeen was going to be no more, what was I hiding from?
As soon as I opened the first box, I realized what had kept me from doing it. The thing is, it’s hard to know for sure what’s worth saving and what to throw away when you only have thirty minutes to sort through everything you own, and you weren’t given nearly enough cardboard boxes, and you’re sobbing your eyes out. I knew I’d made mistakes. I’d thrown away stuff I wished I had kept. I’d held on to plenty of things I should have thrown away. And I didn’t want to confront them. It was easier to hide than to deal, because I knew there was no going back and fixing things.
And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to throw that sticker away. Not when it was the only piece of Morgan I had left.
I was tossing a stack of old spiral notebooks when a worksheet fluttered to the ground. It was from my junior high health class. A diagram of the pituitary gland nestled just below the ear in a human head.
Obviously, in and of itself, the diagram didn’t mean crap. I promise I have no particular affinity for the pituitary gland. The doodles I’d added with my colored pencils were what took my breath away. The long hair and brown eyes and pink lips on the head to make it look like me. Jesse Ford’s initials inside a droplet of hormone being secreted into my bloodstream. I’d even turned the droplet into a heart shape.
It was proof that I truly had loved Jesse Ford forever, or at least since the sixth grade, which I believe is the first time you can really love a boy in a way that feels possible, not like playing pretend. And, fo
r a brief moment, he realized that he loved me, too. But by then, I was a different person. I couldn’t say a better person, but someone who couldn’t ignore their shortcomings.
Still, I hesitated to throw the paper away, because how many girls can say they got what they always wished for?
I took a picture and texted it to Jesse. Julia and his mother had settled about an hour away, near his grandmother. And now that Julia was taken care of, Jesse had decided to move to California. Los Angeles, actually. He was taking improv acting classes. He’d even booked a commercial for a car. It was all about a bunch of college kids turning off the highway and cruising through the desert to find the perfect place to watch a meteor shower. He didn’t have a speaking part, but he was the driver. It was great casting. Or, maybe because I knew him, I could actually believe he’d do something as crazy as that.
This is the best thing I’ve ever seen, he wrote back. And then, Miss you.
I missed Jesse, too. Just not in the way he was hoping. As someone I had chosen to let go of, rather than someone who’d let me go. That made all the difference.
• • •
When Dad and Mom came home, I was in the living room watching television. I’d made it through three boxes. There were two more, but I was exhausted.
Mom had brought me back a slice of cake. When she went into the kitchen to get me a fork, I asked Dad, “Did you hear about the dam being finished?”
“Yeah. Guys at the store were talking about it. Wondering if I was going to go and make a scene.” I felt my mom pause in the doorway. But Dad leaned back, easy. “I told them they were crazy. I have a lot of fight left in me, but now I’m fighting for the right things.”
“I’m thinking of going,” I said. “See who I might run into.”
My mom frowned. She sat down on the couch and rubbed my head. “Oh, Keeley. I don’t want you to get your hopes up. I know Morgan won’t be there,” she said. “Annie’s working and she said Morgan’s really involved with her new church group and they’re going apple picking somewhere.” She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t, and I was glad of it. We were both hoping that one day Morgan and I would patch things up and I’d be able to hear all the details about her new life straight from her.
But it sucked to know that, because it was exactly what I’d been hoping. That I might see Morgan. That maybe this was my test, to see if I had the courage to come and face what I had lost head-on.
The possibility of our reconciling was feeling more and more remote. My throat closed up and I started to cry. “Mom, did you ever have a fight like this with Mrs. Dorsey? This bad?”
Mom had tears in her eyes too. She wiped mine away with her thumbs and then her own. “No. We never have. But that’s not to say we haven’t had our fights. Believe me, we have. We’ve had to reinvent our friendship a hundred different times.”
“I don’t know how to fix this.”
“You need to start caring for yourself, Keeley. What’s done is done. I know you want to take back whatever happened, but you can’t. But you still need to put one foot in front of the other and find a way to keep going.”
Dad reached down to the coffee table and pressed the power button on the remote. The TV flashed and then went dark. Then he turned to face me on the couch. “I want to tell you something, Keeley.”
Mom took this as a cue and went back to the kitchen. I heard her fiddling with stuff. Dad and I had never had a conversation about what had happened the night we left Aberdeen. “Your mother and I are both so proud of you. You’ve come to this new place, you’re doing terrific in school, but I know you’re missing your friends.” He took a deep breath. “I made so many mistakes. But more than anything, I regret that I involved you in them.”
“It wasn’t all you, Dad. I was screwing up plenty on my own.” I let my head fall on his shoulder. “But thank you for saying that.”
“It was addictive. To be seen by you and your mother, not to mention people in town, as someone who could lead them. Someone they wanted to listen to. I felt so much shame for the way I acted after my accident, so sorry for myself. And I was really desperate to right those wrongs. I wanted to believe that if you and your mother saw me that way, maybe that was really who I was. I hid from the truth, which was that I had a family who needed me long before all this mess began. Not to be a hero, but to be there every day, for them. So that’s what I’m trying to do now. Just show up as who I really am and hope that’s enough.”
I understood, of course. It was exactly why my big sticker move hadn’t worked. Morgan didn’t need a big gesture. She needed me to be a better friend. Instead of fixing the problems, I deflected and distracted.
Wiping my eyes, I decided I would still go to the dam celebration, even knowing that Morgan wouldn’t be there. If she never wanted to forgive me, I had to be okay with that. But I’d never forgive myself if I didn’t take my last chance to see the place where we became friends, before that disappeared forever too.
41
* * *
Saturday, October 15
Sunny, afternoon high reaching 60°F
* * *
The day Governor Ward dedicated the dam to the former residents of Aberdeen couldn’t have been more gorgeous. Bright sun, blue sky, chirping birds, turning leaves reflecting their fire in the water. As promised, there were food trucks and carnival rides parked along the shore of the new lakefront park. What had been there before? It was hard to tell and I don’t think many people cared. They were more concerned with staking out a place for their lawn chairs to see the fireworks that would be set off from atop the dam come sundown. Though it felt wrong, I bought myself a caramel apple. The whole vibe was celebratory, but for me it was like throwing a party at a funeral.
After today, there would be no reason for anyone to come back. Even if we didn’t patch things up, at least I could get essential news about Morgan from my mom. But Levi? I knew he’d be gone from my life forever.
I stuffed my hands deep into the pockets of my cardigan and walked around, hoping to see a familiar face. There were a few. A teacher here, a former classmate there. But I can’t say I felt much seeing them, even the ones who stopped to hug me, who asked how I was doing. One girl told me that Secret Prom would always be her very best memory of life in Aberdeen. I told them I was fine, everything was great. And when they asked me about Morgan, how she was doing, I straight-up lied. I couldn’t tell them the truth. How badly I’d screwed everything up in those final days.
Had anything changed?
Maybe what Morgan had said was true. Was I so emotionally closed off that I couldn’t feel anything?
No. That wasn’t the case. Because I had all the feelings when I spotted Sheriff Hamrick, standing near a coffee cart, talking to other officers. Some of them wore uniforms from other towns.
I froze and watched for a few minutes, hoping I might see Levi. But of course he wasn’t there. His college was something like ten hours away.
I approached the sheriff carefully. I had nothing to lose.
“Hello, Sheriff Hamrick.”
He glanced at me and looked away. “Hello, Keeley.”
One of the other officers snickered. “Your dad here?”
I ignored him. “I wanted to ask you how Levi is doing.”
“He’s terrific.” Sheriff Hamrick tipped his coffee cup to his lips and took a sip. “He’s really taken to school. I don’t even think he’s planning to come home for Thanksgiving.” And then, as if it struck him that he should be polite, he added, “Thanks for asking.”
I waited for more. I wanted so much more. But that was all Sheriff Hamrick was going to give me. He had already turned so his back was to me.
“Well, please tell him I said hello, okay?”
Sheriff Hamrick nodded. I knew he wouldn’t say it. He had no reason to. He didn’t want any part of Aberdeen holding his son back. Not his dead mother and especially not me. That was his M.O. from the very beginning. And maybe Levi was better
off.
All I could do was hope Levi understood why I’d stolen that map from his father’s office. That even though I’d had my dad’s back in that moment, I was thinking of him, too.
I made my way over to the new operations building, where I found Governor Ward mid-speech, gesturing toward the long plank of concrete floating atop the river in the far distance. He was boasting about the special “mini-museum” he’d commissioned, a room dedicated to the history of Aberdeen curated by an actual professor of history at the city university and generously funded by the developers of his now-revived waterfront development deal.
Gag me, please.
I hung toward the back of his crowd and looked out at the water. There was nothing familiar to see from this angle. We were upstream, across the river from what had been the north end of Aberdeen, about a half mile away from where the old mill used to be. And you couldn’t see much besides the water.
After Governor Ward snipped a silk ribbon to polite applause from the crowd, the Ridgewood High School band kicked into a muted version of our national anthem. People turned and dispersed.
I stood there for a second as the realization hit me.
This was it.
The end.
Really, truly, the end.
The dam held back the water, but everything inside me was breaching the wall. I turned away and hustled, beating everyone back to the riverbank.
I’d picked the wrong guy.
I’d lost my best friend.
And now I wouldn’t even have my hometown to go to again.
I had so many regrets. So many. I should have been a better friend. I should have been honest with Levi, let him in.
But maybe I’d done one thing right.
The Last Boy and Girl in the World Page 34
