If I Stay

I was about to explain that even if I did go to Juilliard, I’d be home for Christmas and New Year’s, but then I realized that wasn’t the point. So I promised him because I wanted it to be true as much as he did. And I kissed him back so hard, like I was trying to merge our bodies through our lips.

On New Year’s Day, I came home to find the rest of my family gathered in the kitchen with Henry, Willow, and the baby. Dad was making breakfast: smoked-salmon hash, his specialty.

Henry shook his head when he saw me. “Look at the kids today. Seems like just yesterday that stumbling home at eight o’clock felt early. Now I’d kill just to be able to sleep until eight.”

“We didn’t even make it till midnight,” Willow admitted, bouncing the baby on her lap. “Good thing, because this little lady decided to start her new year at five-thirty.”

“I stayed up till midnight!” Teddy yelled. “I saw the ball drop on TV at twelve. It’s in New York, you know? If you move there, will you take me to see it drop in real life?” he asked.

“Sure, Teddy,” I said feigning enthusiasm. The idea of me going to New York was seeming more and more real, and though this generally filled me with a nervous, if conflicted, excitement, the image of me and Teddy hanging out together on New Year’s Eve left me feeling unbearably lonely.

Mom looked at me, eyebrows arched. “It’s New Year’s Day, so I won’t give you shit for coming in at this hour. But if you’re hungover, you’re grounded.”

“I’m not. I had one beer. I’m just tired.”

“Just tired, is it? You sure?” Mom grabbed ahold of my wrist and turned me toward her. When she saw my stricken expression, she tilted her head to the side as if to say, You okay? I shrugged and bit my lip to keep from losing it. Mom nodded. She handed me a cup of coffee and led me to the table. She put down a plate of hash and a thick slice of sourdough bread, and even though I couldn’t imagine being hungry, my mouth watered and my stomach rumbled and I was suddenly ravenous. I ate silently, Mom watching me all the while. After everyone was done, Mom sent the rest of them into the living room to watch the Rose Parade on TV.

“Everyone out,” she ordered. “Mia and I will do the washing up.”

As soon as everyone was gone, Mom turned to me and I just fell against her, crying and releasing all of the tension and uncertainty of the last few weeks. She stood there silently, letting me blubber all over her sweater. When I stopped, she held out the sponge. “You wash. I’ll dry. We’ll talk. I always find it calming. The warm water, the soap.”

Mom picked up the dish towel and we went to work. And I told her about Adam and me. “It was like we had this perfect year and a half,” I said. “So perfect that I never even thought about the future. About it taking us in different directions.”

Mom’s smile was both sad and knowing. “I thought about it.”

I turned to her. She was staring straight out the window, watching a couple of sparrows bathe in a puddle. “I remember last year when Adam came over for Christmas Eve. I told your father that you’d fallen in love too soon.”

“I know, I know. What does a dumb kid know about love?”

Mom stopped drying a skillet. “That’s not what I meant. The opposite, really. You and Adam never struck me as a ‘high-school’ relationship,” Mom said making quote marks with her hands. “It was nothing like the drunken roll in the back of some guy’s Chevy that passed for a relationship when I was in high school. You guys seemed, still seem, in love, truly, deeply.” She sighed. “But seventeen is an inconvenient time to be in love.”

That made me smile and made the pit in my stomach soften a little. “Tell me about it,” I said. “Though if we weren’t both musicians, we could go to college together and be fine.”

“That’s a cop-out, Mia,” Mom countered. “All relationships are tough. Just like with music, sometimes you have harmony and other times you have cacophony. I don’t have to tell you that.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“And come on, music brought you two together. That’s what your father and I always thought. You were both in love with music and then you fell in love with each other. It was a little like that for your dad and me. I didn’t play but I listened. Luckily, I was a little older when we met.”

I’d never told Mom about what Adam had said that night after the Yo-Yo Ma concert, when I’d asked him Why me? How the music was totally a part of it. “Yeah, but now I feel like it’s music that’s going to pull us apart.”

Mom shook her head. “That’s bullshit. Music can’t do that. Life might take you down different roads. But each of you gets to decide which one to take.” She turned to face me. “Adam’s not trying to stop you going to Juilliard, is he?”

“No more than I’m trying to get him to move to New York. And it’s all ridiculous anyway. I might not even go.”

“No, you might not. But you’re going somewhere. I think we all get that. And the same is true for Adam.”

“At least he can go somewhere while still living here.”

Mom shrugged. “Maybe. For now anyhow.”

I put my face in my hands and shook my head. “What am I going to do?” I lamented. “I feel like I’m caught in a tug-of-war.”

Mom shot me a sympathetic grimace. “I don’t know. But I do know that if you want to stay and be with him, I’d support that, though maybe I’m only saying that because I don’t think you’d be able to turn down Juilliard. But I’d understand if you chose love, Adam love, over music love. Either way you win. And either way you lose. What can I tell you? Love’s a bitch.”

Adam and I talked about it once more after that. We were at House of Rock, sitting on his futon. He was riffing about on his acoustic guitar.

“I might not get in,” I told him. “I might wind up at school here, with you. In a way, I hope I don’t get accepted so I don’t have to choose.”

“If you get in, the choice is already made, isn’t it?” Adam asked.

It was. I would go. It didn’t mean I’d stop loving Adam or that we’d break up, but Mom and Adam were both right. I wouldn’t turn down Juilliard.

Adam was silent for a minute, plinking away at his guitar so loud that I almost missed it when he said, “I don’t want to be the guy who doesn’t want you to go. If the tables were turned, you’d let me go.”

“I kind of already have. In a way, you’re already gone. To your own Juilliard,” I said.

“I know,” Adam said quietly. “But I’m still here. And I’m still crazy in love with you.”

“Me, too,” I said. And then we stopped talking for a while as Adam strummed an unfamiliar melody. I asked him what he was playing.

“I’m calling it ‘The Girlfriend’s-Going-to-Juilliard-Leaving-My-Punk-Heart-in-Shreds Blues,’” he said, singing the title in an exaggeratedly twangy voice. Then he smiled that goofy shy smile that I felt like came from the truest part of him. “I’m kidding.”

“Good,” I said.

“Sort of,” he added.

5:42 A.M

Adam is gone. He suddenly rushed out, calling to Nurse Ramirez that he’d forgotten something important and would be back as soon as he could. He was already out the door when she told him that she was about to get off work. In fact, she just left, but not before making sure to inform the nurse who’d relieved Old Grumpy that “the young man with the skinny pants and messy hair” is allowed to see me when he returns.

Not that it matters. Willow rules the school now. She has been marching the troops through here all morning. After Gran and Gramps and Adam, Aunt Kate stopped by. Then it was Aunt Diane and Uncle Greg. Then my cousins shuffled in. Willow’s running to and fro, a gleam in her eye. She’s up to something, but whether it’s trotting out loved ones to lobby on behalf of my continuing my earthly existence or whether she’s simply bringing them in to say good-bye, I can’t say.

Now it’s Kim’s turn. Poor Kim. She looks like she slept in a Dumpster. Her hair has staged a full-scale