Page 52 of What You Left Me

She blows on her left hand then shakes the polish bottle, preparing to paint the right. “Welcome to the club.”

I bite my tongue until she elaborates.

“My parents told me I had to be out of the house by graduation. Yes, like out, as in I don’t live there anymore,” she answers, always a pro at anticipating what question comes next. “I left last week. They aren’t the biggest fan of Aminah Prabhu, girl without plans for the future. Right before I left, they sat me down and reminded me my first name means trustworthy and my last name means God, basically. But no pressure, right? I think this is all part of a bigger lesson they think they’re teaching me about the”—she puts up air quotes—“real world.”

“But you and Cameron are going to U of I together.”

“I’m just living with her. She paid extra for a single room. It might not work, but we’re going to try.” She closes up the bottle and tosses it into the backpack she haphazardly threw together before I came barging upstairs.

“Wait, you didn’t get into U of I?” I can feel the axis tilting farther, spilling out debris from wreckage I’d failed to notice.

“I didn’t even apply.”

I’m so stunned I have to remind myself to take a breath.

“You look like Cameron when she found out. Her face was purple. She calmed down eventually. She came up with the plan.”

“It’s not a very good plan. Or very legal, if we’re being picky,” I note. “Why didn’t you apply?”

“Oh, I know it’s an awful plan, but I love her for trying, and I don’t have anything better currently.” She stops to look at me. “I don’t know, Petra. I’m just not ready to go to college yet. Or ever. And I think that’smychoice to make. Not my parents’ choice. But they won’t let me live at home if I don’t go, and I don’t have any money to support myself right now, so I’m hitching a ride on the Cameron Catherine Elizabeth Hannafin-Bower express. It’s as good as I’ve got right now.”

“How did I not know any of this?”

“We’ve all been off in our own little worlds.” She examines her unpainted hand. “Isn’t it funny? We all know each other so well, but every one of us has been keeping a secret or two.”

She’s right. Daniel with Turrey. Aminah and Cameron with U of I.

Me with graduation. Me with Ryan.

“I think it’s because sometimes you’ve known someone for so long you assume they know how to read your mind,” she continues.

She’s right. It’s always felt like they know everything there is to know, through my moods or the words that I don’t say. But sometimes, no matter how long you’ve known someone, you have to spell things out.

“Kind of funny considering there’s a comatose boy wandering through everybody’s dreams,” I try to joke.

• • •

When it comes down to it, I’m just a comatose boy wandering through everybody’s dreams. Spencer set the script of his dream in concrete, and it dried long before I showed up. No matter what I tell him or ask of him, he keeps going back to the moment everything changed.

There has to be a better way. Not shock. Not denial. Not anger or bargaining. Not trying to send messages that might not matter when the person wakes up. The harder I fight this invisible war, the harder it becomes. How backward is that? I might be letting a car slam into me over and over, and gaining nothing but a memory so powerful it becomes all I remember about myself. My ideas about who I am and the life I’ve lived for eighteen years—they’re all I have here. If I lose them, I lose me.

What is it that they say about quicksand? If you don’t resist, it’s easier to get out. Maybe I move by not moving.

So I’ll become the gray I live in.

Become nothing at all.

• • •

“Would ya look at us? Quite the band of misfits and rejects!” Daniel says.

“Excuse me,” Cameron huffs. She’s about to elaborate but decides better of it, instead reaching for her water bottle and taking a pronounced sip.

“You are not exempt, Mrs. Garfunkel.”

Cameron puts down her drink. She brings her finger to the window and starts drawing on the glass. It’s too bright for her—or me—to see what she’s doing, but she continues. “Remember the thing you said about the way back?” she asks me.

“I knew you wouldn’t let that go.”