supposed to be the finished product right now, what he’s worked my whole life for me to be, and we both know I’m not. Maybe won’t ever be.
“I’m listening,” I try again lamely.
He sighs, takes out the folder labeled CAMRY, and starts talking about insurance premiums and mileage till I schedule my next oil tune-up. But it’s clear. He doesn’t really believe I can handle this, and I have this sudden uncontrollable desire for the hot, chewy fried naan that my mother will never again make for me. And I’m not going to basketball camp. If he wasn’t staring right at me while he talked, I’d be tempted to slump to the kitchen floor, put my head in my hands, and cry.
Friday comes.
And then Friday goes, sweeping my entire life along with it. My family. I didn’t realize, I mean I knew, I knew they were going and I was staying, but it isn’t until I wake up to
The worst is saying good-bye to Sarina.
Dad doesn’t want me to take them to the airport at all, but then they run out of trunk space in the taxi and need to stuff the Camry with the last-minute carry-on purchases Mom and Sarina made. But it’s understood: I’m not to come in. Mom can’t take it. As it is she’s sobbing, has been since we pulled out of the driveway, and doesn’t stop the whole way to Louisville. Her dramatics are going to rob us all of our good-byes. I know it, but I can’t do anything except feel sick and wait for the bloated seconds to wash through me.
I’m almost right. The moment we pull the last of the bags from the trunk, Dad lets Mom cling to me, pouring years of tears into my shirt for a few panicky seconds, then ushers her inside. Away from me. Like I’m damaging her. He doesn’t have the time to do more than grip me and tell me to work hard, and then in a moment of unanticipated generosity he turns to Sarina and says, “We’ll wait for you inside. Take your time.”
She’s wearing her glasses.
“What’s with the four eyes?”
She pushes the saucer-sized frames up with the back of her hand. “Shut up. I’m going to be on planes for the next nineteen hours.”
But her eyes are bloodshot. And when she hugs me it isn’t with that same clinging desperation that Mom had, but something weaker. She isn’t trying to pull a part of me with her. She’s given up.
“It’s not fair,” she mumbles and pulls back. “It’s not fair that you get to stay.”
Finally. It’s what I wanted her to feel all along, except now it feels so much worse than her denial. “I’m sorry,” I say.
“Yeah, but so what?”
“So I wish you weren’t going back.”
“But not as badly as you want to stay.”
I don’t fight with her. She’s right. Not that it has anything to do with anything, but I do want to stay more than anything else in the world, even more than I want her to stay. Maybe that makes me the most selfish bastard in the entire world, but it’s not like I could change anything anyway.
“Take good care of Duchess,” she says.
“Maybe. I really hate that cat.”
“Mo.”
“Of course I’ll take care of her.”
I should say something inspiring, but I’m drawing a blank. Seems like I should be able to reproduce one of Coach’s game-day pep talks—one of the really transformative ones he saves for when we’re about to get our asses handed to us—but I’ve got nothing. “Uh, good luck.”
For a second, half of her mouth pulls up into a smile that looks nothing like an actual smile. “Good luck? That’s the best you can do? You suck.”
“I know.”
She rushes at me for one more hug. I don’t think about the fact that this is the end of an era, and I hug her back. At first I’m exactly how Dad would want me to be: unfazed, patient, dignified. But then she shudders and I feel those stupid Coke-bottle glasses pressing into my chest, and the truth of what’s happening to us is suddenly so absolute I want to shove her back into the car and speed off.
These are the seconds that feel like swollen bubbles, caught in my throat, choking me.
In the end, I’m not the dignified one. She steps back and hoists her backpack onto her shoulder, but I’m already back in the car before she can even get her other arm through the strap. I’m driving away before she can see that I’m crying too.
I’m used to seeing Annie almost every day, but since we entered into our slightly-less-than-holy matrimony, we’ve barely even talked. So this is wedded bliss. It’s not a big deal—she understands that this week has been about moving my stuff into Wisper Pines and spending every last second with my increasingly hysterical mother.
But suddenly I need Annie’s calm, her unsinkable sweetness. I didn’t think it would feel like this, saying good-bye to them, because honestly, on a day-to-day basis, I don’t need them. They mostly just piss me off, actually. But driving home from the airport, I realize this is going to hurt and I did nothing to prepare for the injury. It’s worse than broken bones, deeper than an amputation. I’ve lost organs here. I’m the victim in that bogus story Bryce told me once about the guy who goes to Vegas and gets roofied and wakes up in an ice-packed bathtub missing a lung and a kidney. I’ve been gutted.
And I need Annie, but of course, she’s chosen this evening, of all evenings, to turn off her phone.
Chapter 17
Annie
You don’t have to turn off your phone,” Reed says. He’s standing next to the stove, a paring knife in one hand, pomegranate in the other. At least I think it’s a pomegranate. It’s slightly mottled pink, the size of a fat orange, and has a spiky, protruding navel.
“What makes you think I was turning it off ?” I ask, and slip my phone into my purse.
“Were you?”
“Maybe.”
He holds the fruit to the cutting board, flexing his fingers to anchor it in place. “Won’t your parents worry when they can’t get ahold of you?”
I shrug like I don’t care if they do, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t buy it. It’s better than telling him the truth, that I told my parents I was going to the movies with Mo, so they won’t be expecting me to be reachable anyway. At some point, Reed’s going to start wondering why I won’t tell them about him. At some point I’m going to have to answer that question for myself.
He pulls the blade across the skin and turns the fruit, then again, and again, scoring the flesh into perfect quarters. Bloodred juice seeps from where it’s been pierced, and I stare, mesmerized, as he puts down the knife and breaks open the fruit with muscular hands. Its insides glow. Rows of seeds glisten like rubies.
“You like pomegranate?” he asks.
“Um, I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve ever had it. I should probably be embarrassed by that, right?”
“No. I probably didn’t see the inside of one until we moved to California and I started hanging out at my aunt’s restaurant.”
“Is that how you got interested in cooking?”
“Sort of. The menu at
I approach him from his left side, and lean over the bowl to watch. His fingers are focused, nearly mechanical as he loosens the seeds and picks them one by one from the white web of skin that separates
