Page 39 of What You Left Me

Fly,

Honestly, I’m so done with this back and forth.

I’m going to prom with Chris now.

—Brooke

It actually makes me laugh a normal laugh because I know that’s not what happened. I saw their matching orange outfits on her phone.

Daniel and I wore black. His choice.

Brooke herself steps up behind me. There’s tension in her movement. She must be conscious of the note. “I think it’s upstairs. Maybe on the left?” she guesses. I look to the top of the stairs, but not before catching her snatch the paper up and shove it into her pocket.

Along the stairwell are portraits of Katie and Martin. Two ascending parallel lines, Katie’s photos track her life all the way up through college and end with a photo of her and Rick from her wedding. Martin’s stop on either eighth grade or freshman year, judging by his baby face and the tragic shaggy, surfer, bowl-cut hybrid hairstyle so many white boys have around that age. The blank spaces beneath Katie’s photos—undocumented years of Martin’s life—wait like sentences without punctuation. They lead to a door.

As I push in, Martin’s world greets me with a new rush of the same pine-scented detergent I smelled downstairs. My eye is first drawn to the enormous picture of all these Cubs players hugging and celebrating, then the framed poster forBack to the Futurethat hangs beside it. I never got to tell Martin I was lying. Playing coy. It’s Caroline’s favorite movie. Of course I’ve seen it.

Sitting atop the tall dresser on the other side of the bed are a few trophies, a signed baseball, a poster forRookie of the Year,and a picture of a shocked Katie in her wedding dress being lifted off the ground by Martin, his back to camera.

Brooke is beside me now. Both of us lean in the doorway with our heads against opposite sides of the frame. “I’ve never been in here before,” she says. She walks over to the desk across from us and picks up theSENIORShoodie draped over the chair.

Still as can be, like I’m holding a swatter tracking a fly, praying not to lose the chance to hit, I continue observing, as if what Brooke just admitted is no big deal. There’s an elaboration to be made, I’m sure of it, and knowing what I do of her so far, she won’t need prompting to give it.

A small lamp has been left on, casting light upward. It illuminates a wall calendar above Martin’s desk. Every day is x-ed out up to this past Friday—the wordFREEDOMscrawled beneath the final black mark.

“Turrey’s right,” Brooke says. “And so are you. It’s not okay.” Her finger circles Martin’s last name printed on the back of his hoodie. “I’ve been so wrong.”

A closet comprises the whole left wall. Its mirrored doors double the size of the space until I step into view and disrupt the illusion. “That’s not what I meant.” I almost reach for her but decide better of it, instead standing stiff-armed in the center of the room.

“I ruined everything.” She puts the hoodie down but doesn’t let it go. “I knew it too, but it seemed like something I could fix later. Like I’d have time. I know it’s too late, but I’m trying to fix it now.”

“I don’t think it’s too late,” I say, but she’s not listening.

“I never should’ve kissed him at Winter Formal. He was just being so nice to me. Why was he doing that? Boys don’t do that. He let me talk about all this stuff going on in my life for, like, hours.”

Hoping nonchalance keeps her spout pouring, I walk over to Martin’s closet and slide one door back, finding rows of sneakers sitting atop their respective boxes on the ground. There aren’t many clothes hanging up. The space is filled by a hamper and a bookcase crammed full of movies, old CDs, and tons and tons of books. Fiction, nonfiction, memoirs, sports photo books. A big enough selection to be Dewey-decimaled.

“We should’ve just stayed friends. He kept trying to go back to that, but I wouldn’t let it happen. I guess I, like, wanted to break him for some reason. Make him like everyone else.”

I freeze, locked in tight on her words, turning them over and over like a coin. The absolute truth of it all takes my breath away. We do this to each other. We form mismatched pairs when there’s nothing better around, then we poke and prod at every flaw, worming into hairline fractures until they become deeper. We dance on the destruction until the cracks cave in.

I force myself into movement, but it’s taxing. I want to hug my knees to my chest and squeeze into a ball so small no one can ever get in again. Make myself unbreakable.

“I couldn’t though,” Brooke says. She comes over to the closet. “Even when I hooked up with one of his best friends. It didn’t hurt him. It hurt me.” She squats to look inside the shoe boxes on the ground. “I just want to tell him that I’m sorry.”

I know I must speak now. Affirm that I’ve been here, hanging on every word, weaving together the final touches on my version of their relationship. “You’ll get to,” I say.

“I hope so.” She reaches for more boxes in the corner of the closet. “Was he really in your dream?”

My breath hitches. “He really was,” I say, as certain as Cameron. More certain than ever. In fact, this is just about the only thing in my life that I can tag with the wordcertaintyand mean it.

Brooke looks up at me. “I like that you’re here,” she says. A moment passes. “Now did he say what shoe box it was in?”

I transport myself back to the airplane to hear his words again, feeling the weight of his hands atop my shoulders. Looking into his eyes. “Top shelf. Foamposites box?”

Brooke stands up on her tiptoes, looking right. I look left. It’s so easy to spot it may as well be glowing. I step behind the door and grab it, pressing my back against the inside part of the closet, happy to be cloaked in darkness.

DO NOT OPEN. MARTIN’S EYES ONLY.