why you didn’t—I see why you were afraid to come out, sort of. I always thought how people talked about you was annoying because it made me into nothing. But you—did you feel like it made you into nothing too? Like you had to be how people thought you were and not who you are?”
I lean forward, watching her closed eyes. Wondering what I would see if they opened.
“You hurt Claire,” I say. “You hurt her a lot, and maybe you were scared, but you—it was cruel. And now, after I find out about you and her, I stil don’t—how could you do it, Tess? How could you break her heart and then ruin her life? Was it—Claire says it was because you never expected her to find someone else, even if it was for a little while. Is that true?”
There. I see it again, a tiny flutter behind her closed eyes. Maybe what the doctor said is true. But maybe what I thought is true too. Maybe, somewhere, somehow, Tess can hear me.
“I want you to be sorry,” I say. “I want you—I want you to know that when someone offers you their heart, you shouldn’t push it away. I mean, how often are you going to get that? I haven’t had to deal with it, but if it ever does happen I know I wouldn’t …”
I trail off, because I have. Because instead of tel ing Eli I’ve wanted to kiss him too, I backed into fear, into saying something easy. Into saying “I don’t know what to do,” when I did know what I wanted to do.
When I did—and do—know that I want him.
So I tel her about Eli. I tel her what I did. What I want. And then I just sit with her for a while longer, describing how the sunshine spreads across the room, and then how the ferry sounds when it’s crossing the river, how the waves break when the boat passes through them.
“They come back though, you know,” I tel her before I leave. “The ferry goes through them, but if you look back, you can see them again.”
Before, I would have said that Tess should do that. Be like those waves. Come back. Wake up. But now I just say, “Bye, Tess,” and go.
I can’t make things happen for Tess. I can’t make her change the things she did. I can’t make her come back.
But I can do something for me. For my life.
I’l run into Claire, or Clement, or … someone. Anyone. I real y would like to talk to both Claire and Clement— Claire, to see how she is, although if last night made me see anything, it’s that Claire is even stronger than I thought she was, and Clement—I’d just like to say hi. See how he is.
Maybe I should wait for my parents. Make sure they’re okay. They have to see Tess and do more than just talk to her. They have to arrange for her to be moved out of the hospital. They have to plan the rest of her life for her now. I don’t think they ever thought they’d have to do that.
I stand next to my bike, and glance back at the hospital. I don’t see Clement outside. I bet I could find him if I went back in, though. I could find Claire too.
I could keep myself so busy I’d have no time to do anything.
I can make sure I don’t see Eli again. It would be easy. It would be so easy.
I get on my bike, though, because the thought of not seeing him again gets to me. Real y gets to me. And I think that’s okay. I think it might be al right for me to … for me to like him.
For me to let him like me.
When I get to Saint Andrew’s, the parking lot is fil ed with boys getting into their expensive cars, and there’s an ease about how they move, as if they know the world is okay, ful of promise, and always wil be.
I only ever saw one person in Ferrisvil e move that way. Tess. She had such careless grace, made everything look so simple, and it turns out she was more uncertain about herself, about everything, than I thought.
She was capable of carelessness, though. She wrecked her own heart. She wrecked Claire’s.
For ages, I’ve told myself I don’t want to be like Tess, but part of me did. Even after Jack, after I swore to myself that wanting another person in my heart and life was over, part of me stil wanted to be the girl who everyone knew, who everyone loved.
I don’t want to be like Tess now, though. I don’t care if I’m a shadow girl in the eyes of everyone in Ferrisvil e forever.
I just want the people who see me, who real y see me, in my life.
I just want to be me.
I feel so brave, thinking that. So proud. Then I see Eli, walking toward the parking lot alone, looking off into the distance like he can’t see anything or anyone, and I don’t feel quite so brave anymore.
Why would he ever want me? And how can I compete with the shiny-haired, shiny-eyed, soft-voiced girls who live in Milford, who are born knowing what to do in every situation or can at least fake it better than I’l ever be able to?
Because I understand him. I see the way he’s walking, how he’s real y and truly looking off into the distance. Putting himself somewhere that isn’t here. He knows what it’s like to have people look at you and only see certain things. For me, it’s Tess. For him, it’s his OCD or his looks.
He is more than how he looks or how his fingers are moving restlessly, counting out a rhythm he has to.
And I am more than Tess.
I walk over to him. I practical y have to walk into him before he sees me.
“Oh,” he says, looking startled and, I think—I hope—happy, and then he looks off to the side, looks away from me. “I didn’t think—what are you doing here?”
“Tess,” I say, and hate myself for how easy it is for me to say that. How easy it is for me to not say what I want to. How easy it would be to make this an ending.
