I bite my cheek hard, and I can feel my shoulders stiffen.
She moves in front of me now, so I have to look at her. “Finding the guy who got Trent’s heart isn’t gonna bring him back. Neither is acting like you died too.”
Anger flares up in me, hot and stinging. “You think I don’t know that?”
She doesn’t answer, just presses her lips together like she doesn’t know what to say to me. Like I’m different now too.
“I know that,” I say softer, unsure of myself all of a sudden because I see Colton standing there on the front steps with the sunflower in his hand. I think of the way being with him felt so easy and familiar, and all of a sudden it makes me question my own feelings. Makes me wonder why I’m so drawn to him.
I look down at my hands twisting in my lap. “I’m not trying to bring him back. I was just trying to . . .” I stare at the magazines spread all over her bed and think about how to explain what I mean, what I was actually trying to do by reaching out to the people Trent helped, though I’m not sure I know anymore. I thought it was for closure. But this, with Colton, is different.
I push the thought away and pick up a picture of a white-sand beach.
“What is all this?” I motion at the mess spread over her bed by way of changing the subject. There are pages torn out of magazines: pictures of beaches, exotic-looking cities, a Japanese garden, an art museum, a lake like a mirror that reflects the mountains and sky all around it. There are words cut out too, in all different sizes and fonts: create, be bold, live free. . . .
“It’s for a vision board I’m making,” she says, maybe just as relieved as I am to change the subject.
“What’s a vision board?” I ask, wiping the wetness away from my eyes. “Does it have something to do with the manic pixie thing?”
Ryan laughs. “No, not really.” She thinks about it. “Well, sort of. It’s an inspirational tool. A way to visualize what you want so it’s easier to focus on.” She sifts through the stack she’s cut out already. “You choose pictures or words of things you want to do, or be, or have, or things that inspire you, and you put them all up where you can see them every day, to remind you and keep you moving toward them.”
She’s quiet a moment, and I’m sure it’s because she’s thinking of the photos I have up in my room, the pictures of Trent and me together that I look at every day. Pictures of things I can’t have anymore because they exist only in the past.
“Did you learn that in your Women’s Studies class too?” I say, not wanting to veer back into our previous conversation.
She grins. “No. From my New Agey roommate. She’s all into that stuff. Here,” she says, handing me a magazine with a sun-soaked cover. “You should make one. Start with this. Travel is easiest. Find a beautiful place you’d wanna go and cut it out.”
When she says it, the first thing I think of is the inside of the cave today, with the reflection of the water dancing all around. And Colton sitting across from me. I want to go back there. I doubt I can find a picture that comes close to being that beautiful, but I take the magazine anyway, and Ryan sits back with hers, and we skim our magazines without saying anything else.
She grabs a pint of cookie dough ice cream from her nightstand, takes a bite, and passes it to me. “Eat. You’re too skinny these days, and Mom’s gluten-free, sugar-free tart thing couldn’t pass for dessert anywhere.”
I laugh. “Oh my god, you have no idea the things we’ve eaten since you’ve been gone,” I say, digging into the middle, where all the cookie dough is.
“Well, eat up.” Ryan smiles. She reaches for another magazine. “Then pass it back.”
I can’t remember the last time the two of us sat together like this, but it feels just right being in her room, sharing a spoon and a carton of ice cream and flipping through magazines. It feels normal.
I sneak a glance at Ryan, who is busy cutting out pictures and words with abandon, sure of herself like always. Focused on seeing her future instead of her past. Right then I wish I could snap a picture of her and put it up as inspiration to do the same thing.
I page through the first magazine aimlessly, unsure of where to start. Truthfully, I haven’t thought about the future a whole lot in the last 402 days. And the things I used to want seem so trivial and faraway now anyway. Had I been sitting here in Ryan’s room before, I probably would’ve torn out pictures of what I wanted my senior prom dress to look like, of the college Trent and I would go to together, a ring I’d imagine him giving me somewhere down the road, or the house that we would have. I would’ve made a collage of the life we’d have together. That’s what you do when you think you’ve found your one true love.