Page 49 of What You Left Me

“Did you at least have a good little rest? Catch any sight of Martin?” I joke as he readjusts the driver’s seat.

“Ha,” he says, like it’s just a word, not a reaction people experience. It’s so weird I start backing away from the car. I think hediddream of Martin, which is as cool as it is surprising.

I wonder what Martin thinks.

“Good luck,” Cameron says as I continue my puzzled tiptoe toward my house.

My dad opens the front door before I even have a chance to search for my keys.

“Hi, Mr. McGowan!” Aminah says cheerfully.

“Aminah,” he responds with an awkward head bob. He closes the door behind us. “Petra’s mom and I need to have a talk with her in private.” So much for my plan to have a friend diffuse the situation.

“I’ll be in your room,” Aminah tells me. She disappears up the stairs.

I follow my dad into our kitchen and find my mom sitting at the head of the table. She doesn’t even get up. I’ve been gone for a whole day, my friend is dying, and she doesn’t even hug me. Dad sits down on the other end. They flank the table like Turrey and I did at Martin’s just hours before. Now I’m relegated to the role of obedient child along the side.

“So,” my dad starts.

“There’s not much to say right now, honey,” my mom finishes, even though I know there’s quite a lot she’d like to say. Her voice quivers. “If you’re acting out because you’re scared—”

“Please stop,” I say. Unexpected anger pipes into my voice. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible. “I know what this is. You think I’ve been off rebelling. Showing you I’m not like Caroline and Jessica, who by the way, was the one to give me a ride yesterday and conveniently didn’t tell you where she’d taken me. I’m not acting out. Everything is so different than it was on Friday. You don’t even know.”

Mom rings her hands. She’s wearing her speech-giving face. She’s been known to talk for so long that you forget what you wanted to say in the first place, so I keep going before she makes me lose my train of thought. “Mom, Dad, thank you for wanting the best for me. For trying to keep things on track when everything got weird at the end of last year, and for working with the school to figure out a way to fix it. I am truly sorry I continue to screw things up and make you guys look bad.”

We McGowans don’t like to stare truth in the face, especially when it’s ugly. We pretend to care about what we deem important, but we don’t actually look. We accept the surface, acknowledge the flaws, then put all of our energy into never going an inch deeper. It used to be an easy way to live. But the axis of my universe has tilted, and the things I tucked away long ago fall out of hiding without warning.

“There’s so much that matters more than the studying I know you’re about to tell me I should be doing,” I say. “But for your sake, I’m very sorry.” It feels neither good nor bad to speak the truth. It exists in the gray area I’ve been thrust into by Martin’s accident.

My parents look at my face as if it’s uncharted territory they aren’t sure they want to discover.

“You never even asked me what happened last year,” I start, the words falling out. I’m on fast-forward all right. My feelings fly out without a chance to filter. “You saw a problem and went and made a solution without ever checking to see if I was okay.” I sound the way I feel. Sharp and unsteady. “Well, I wasn’t. And I’m not. Now you’re the ones who want to talk. And I don’t. It is what it is. I’ll take the test tomorrow, and we’ll forget all of this ever happened.”

“Petra,” my dad says with the stern edge I know means I’ve gone too far. “If you’re going to act like this, I don’t want you in my house.”

“Honey, you can’t be serious,” my mom says to him.

“She doesn’t get it. I know there’s a lot going on, but I can’t listen to her act like a scholarship isn’t a big deal. We pulled a lot of strings to get them to accommodate you.”

My chair makes a loud dragging sound against the wood floors.

I stand up and walk out.

25

Spencer cannot believe how pathetic Fly can be. He’s already got a Brooke Delgado problem bigger than the White Whale, and here he is going for another hometown girl. When will Fly stop being such a sucker? Spencer grinds his foot into the gas pedal. The Caravan wheezes before it takes off. Spencer looks over to see if the speed is making Fly freak out.

Much to his surprise, Fly looks as serious as he’s ever seen him. “Spencer,” he says.He never uses Spencer’s real name.“Stop it.”

Time jumps backward.

The two boys are now walking through the quiet parking lot, headed toward the White Whale.

“See!” Fly exclaims. “I knew you could do it.” He turns around. “Don’t get in the van. We already know what happens when we do that. Let’s walk a while.”

“What do you mean?” Spencer asks. What could be better than cruising down empty streets, feeling the wind blow in through open windows, knowing high school is over? He fishes his keys from his pockets and unlocks the door. Inside the car, it smells like White Castle and weed. Like bad decisions and good memories. There is nowhere else he would rather be.

Fly stands outside the vehicle, arms crossed over his chest, his ridiculous yellow graduation robe bunching up into his armpits.