“Nico, it’s okay to crack, it’s okay to cry, you don’t have to be perfect. We’ve talked about this before. No one expects you to be the perfect daughter, the perfect student. You can have feelings.”
I nodded, hearing the familiar words. We had been talking about this, working on it, for ages. But if Dr. Weir or my parents knew just how far from perfect I really was . . .
“Tell me what’s bothering you,” Dr. Weir went on. “Talk to me.”
“It’s just that Sarah is really different now. I mean really different, like a different person, and sometimes I catch myself thinking stuff like . . .” The tears started again. I was too scared to say the words out loud.
“It’s okay, you can tell me,” Dr. Weir encouraged. “You start thinking what?” Her face stayed calm. “Let me ask you something. Did you think you would ever see Sarah again?”
“No.” I heard my voice crack. “I thought she was dead.”
“We all thought that, sadly,” Dr. Weir said. “So, having Sarah back is like having someone come back from the dead. When you are pretty sure you’re never, ever going to see someone again, and they return, that’s a lot for your mind and your heart to handle, isn’t it?”
I nodded.
“When you have to deal with someone being dead, gone forever, that’s a grieving process that can’t be undone overnight. And you almost don’t want to believe they’re alive, because you don’t want to be hurt again.”
I thought about all the dead blond girls my parents had seen. All the bodies, all the false leads.
“Getting used to having Sarah around is going to take time, that’s all. You also can’t expect that she’ll be the same girl you used to know. It could take some time for her to readjust to being with her family. It’s understandable that there will be some bumps along the way.”
When I left Dr. Weir’s office, I went straight into the girls’ bathroom and threw cold water on my face. I covered my warm cheeks with the paper towels and never looked into the mirror, too afraid that I would see Sarah’s old face there, looking back at me.
At lunch, friends we hadn’t seen Saturday night crowded around our table and peppered me with questions. I was able to dismiss any speculation by explaining that Sarah had amnesia and by telling them I wasn’t allowed to talk about it, since it was an ongoing case. Without any horror stories to pass around, talk eventually dried up and returned to what I had missed the week before. Until Gabe came up and tapped my shoulder.
“Nico, can I talk to you a sec?” Max’s younger brother looked anxious.
I grabbed my tray from the table and followed him outside, dumping my trash along the way. Gabe looked like Max, but the junior version—he was smaller and wore his hair longer, as shaggy as our private school would allow, with a braided leather choker around his neck like a surfer. For about a minute, our freshman year, I think he wanted us to be the mini of Sarah and Max, and he started hanging out with my group whenever he could. At a school dance, he lingered in my peripheral vision, trying to sidle up to me and make conversation. It took Tessa discreetly telling him it was never going to happen for him to back off.
“Something’s up with Max and Paula,” Gabe said quickly. “Like, I think they’re breaking up.”
“Why?”
Gabe leaned against the wall outside the cafeteria. “I heard them fighting all weekend. Talking about Sarah. Mucho drama.”
I thought back to how Paula had been at our house with Max—so possessive. Clinging to him. But Max hadn’t been that way with her. When Sarah had disappeared, he was in love with her. And now it looked like he still was. Part of me was elated, knowing that Sarah would be thrilled with the news that her boyfriend might be hers again. But a little part of me, deep down, was bummed. Of course, Sarah got her way. Again. Without even trying. Paula had to be devastated.
I noticed that Gabe was the only one who didn’t have questions about Sarah—Max must have told him everything.
When I got home after school, anxious to tell Sarah the gossip, she was upstairs. She had been at doctors’ appointments all day and was taking a nap after the MRI they had done. I could hear Mom pacing in her office, getting records sent where they needed to go, from the shelter in Florida and over to the police. She needed X-rays from our pediatrician, but it sounded like they didn’t have them.
When she came out and saw that I was home from school, she pushed her reading glasses up on her head. She hadn’t checked with me to be sure Tessa’s mom was driving us home and didn’t even ask how my first day back was. “Oh, Nico, I’m so glad you’re here. Tell me I’m not going crazy: Sarah never had a fracture in her arm when she was little, did she?”