“Are you sure we should be doing this?” I say skeptically. “You are technically an authority figure.”
“It’s all natural and non-addictive,” she states. Then she adds, “Besides, you look like you could use it, and nobody comes up here anyway.” On the second point, she might be right. In all the times I have come to visit her, I have never noticed a single other person around. And on the first point, she is definitely right. It’s almost a week after my fight with Max and I am in a “whatever gets you through the day” kind of place. Sometimes it’s frozen yogurt, other times it’s punk music, and sometimes it’s just lying hopelessly on the sofa spooning Jerry as I stare into the fireplace. And on this occasion it is smoking hookah with my college counselor. Anything to provide temporary relief from the unimaginable agony coursing through my heart.
He still isn’t speaking to me. No snide remarks in psych or looks in the hallway. He carries on for the most part like I’m not even there, except to pick up a pencil I dropped in class one time, and set my phone gently next to my tray in the dining hall two days ago, when I’d left it in the food line. But in each instance, he turned away without a word, all proud shoulders and head slightly upturned. To the majority of the school, nothing has changed. Nobody else knows about Maine. But they know he broke up with Celeste, and they know he isn’t talking to me.
It’s on me. He put himself out there, and I still can’t wrap my head around it. The idea of this new beginning, as he said. The uncertainty of what it means for us. It’s one thing to withstand this new, dreamless world alone, but it’s another thing entirely to try and do it with Max. It hurts too much.
Celeste, meanwhile, is fine. Better than fine. She’s already started dating some architecture major at one of the local colleges and is hardly around anymore. But when she is, we are starting to talk again. Still, I would be all alone were it not for Oliver, who is my eternal savior, eating with me in the dining hall, Segwaying next to me as I walk to class. And now that he’s fallen for Sophie, our friendship can proceed without any more complications.
I sigh and put the metal mouthpiece to my lips and inhale. At least one thing in my life isn’t complicated.
“I can’t help but feel you’re dodging my question,” Delilah observes as she watches my long, drawn-out exhalation. And she’s right again.
“I’m fine,” I say.
“You don’t seem fine,” she says. “Have you given any more thought to the questions I asked you at your last visit? How you are choosing to define yourself at this time in your life?”
“I guess I just don’t understand why everyone is so desperate for me to know everything. Who I am, what I want to do. I’m only sixteen. Why should I?” I say. “Since when is a sixteen-year-old supposed to hold the keys to the future?”
“Nobody is asking you to know that,” Delilah says. “All anyone is asking is for you to start trying to figure it out. And there’s nothing very scary about that, is there?” she asks.
“No.” I shake my head. “That actually doesn’t sound very scary at all.” I understand what she means now. We have to try to move forward. Otherwise, how do we expect to get anywhere?
When Max drove off that day, I just stood on the empty sidewalk, watching the lights flash from green to yellow to red and back again, wondering what had happened. How did it all go from wrong to right to worse than it had ever been? How could Max accuse me of not actually loving him, when he’s the only one I ever wanted?
What he doesn’t seem to understand is that it’s not about him. It’s about the dreams. The dreams were what I could count on. Where I could go when nothing else was going right. Back in New York I wasn’t allowed to paint my bedroom a color other than ugly eggshell white, so I hung up twinkle lights. That’s what the dreams did for my life. I covered it in patio lights so none of it seemed as bad. The dreams were where I could always count on being happy . . . where I could always count on him.
Max said I don’t know how to live in reality, and maybe he’s right. Maybe I need to take down the lights and stare the eggshell in the face.
When I walk into the house after school that day, the first thing I see are my father’s legs sticking out from beneath the sofa, as Jerry looks on with a concerned expression. Things keep getting weirder and weirder around this place. Last week when I came home he was rigging a giant basket to a rope that extended all the way to the top of the staircase, so he could hoist Jerry up and down.
“For his knees,” he explained, as though it was perfectly normal, as Jerry stood off to the side, eyeing the contraption warily. “He’s not getting any younger. This way he can go where we go with ease.”
The man needs friends.
“Dad?” I call out now. “Are you okay?”