“Maxie,” Grandma Carmen says, smiling as she answers, the screen showing the extent of the greenhouse garden behind her, the one that we planted together shortly before I left. There are sprouts there, marking the passage of time, and I hate that. I hate that the world is moving on like nothing at all has happened, spinning and twirling and ticking. “Where are you, baby?”
“In a coffee shop,” Maxie says brightly, a bead of sweat appearing on her temple. I glance over at X and find him leaning back in his seat, his red windbreaker unzipped, a t-shirt underneath with the words Wright Family Racing scrawled across the front of it. “In Seattle.”
There’s a bit of a pause as our grandmother’s face—a face so similarly shaped to my own—twists up in confusion. The University of Oregon is in Eugene, nearly five hours from Seattle proper. She'll be wondering why Maxie is here and …
“Guess who've I've got with me?” my sister adds cheerily, tilting her phone just enough that I appear in the window in the bottom corner beside Maxine.
“Grandma,” I breathe, and then tears prick at the edges of my eyes. A small gasp escapes her before she clamps a hand over her mouth, her own expression a strange mix between relief and agony. Does she even want to see me? Or am I only thinking of myself? It’s a bit too late now to second guess the decision, so I force yet another smile, one that I hope hides all of my pain and heartbreak and uncertainty.
“Dakota,” she whispers back, dropping her hand to her side, her dark eyes shining with unshed tears. “How are you doing, honey? We've missed you so much.”
“I hate it here.” The words fall from my lips before I can stop them, dredging up this surge of emotion that I thought I had under better control. But no. No, nothing in my life feels like it’s in my control right now because … it isn't. I'm sixteen therefore, according to the law, I am not a person. I’m just a possession to be shuffled from place to place, something to be won with court cases and DNA tests. “I want to come home.”
Those tears my grandmother was fighting so hard to push back start up again, draining down her face in two salty rivulets. This isn’t fair of me, not at all. If she could do anything to bring me home, she would. I know that. There’s nothing Carmen Banks can do to fix this and yet, here I am, telling her how much I hate it, how much I want to leave. I should lie. I should tell her that I like it here, that I’ve got a large room with a lake view, that …
“Tess wants me to ship your things,” Carmen says, her voice breaking a bit. “All your furniture, your clothes … everything.” Yes, that’s right. Because I asked her to. Because I was trying to soften her up, to make things easier on my end yet again. I didn’t think about how my grandparents would feel, emptying my room, watching as movers wrapped my furniture in pads and dragged the pieces down the old stairs. “Would that make you feel better, being surrounded by things from home?”
I open my mouth to tell her everything: how I despise Kimber, how awful Parrish is, how desperate and clingy and suffocating I find Tess’ attention. But then I look into her face, really look at it, and I know that I have to put my grandmother’s feelings before my own.
To buy myself an extra moment, I pick up my coffee and take a small sip, swallowing all of my pain and anger and resentment along with the mouthful of mocha. I plaster on another fake smile. I wonder how many of them I have in me? Is there a limitlessness to the amount of time we as humans can fake our own emotions? Or do they just all come tumbling out at some point, cascading like a rockslide around our hearts until it’s quiet and dark and buried?
“I think it would help immensely,” I admit, feeling a sharp sting of panic at the idea of my room back home being empty and barren, wiped clean, erased like I was never there. Even Maxine’s room still looks like hers, minus some clothing, a lamp, and a few spare pieces of décor. When she comes home on holidays, she stays in her own bed, puts her clothes in her own dresser, paints her nails at the same antique dressing table she’s had in her room since my earliest memories.
I try to tell myself that, if by some miracle, some supernatural intervention by the universe, Tess allows me to go home, she’s wealthy enough to pay for it all to be shipped back. It isn’t permanent. That’s what I take comfort in: that nothing in this world is permanent. Everything changes—even this. Worst case scenario, the day that I turn eighteen, I’m getting the fuck out of here.
