“No,” I say, sinking onto the bed and turning away from her. I can hear her breathing, sense that she’s there, but I don’t turn back to look at her. Eventually, she moves away, closing the door behind her.
I spend three days in my bed. Mia brings me food, asks me how I am, tries to get me up—but I just don’t have the strength. She brings Leo into my room to cheer me up; he grabs my finger and smiles and makes me feel a tiny bit better. Grandma is surprisingly understanding. She hasn’t mentioned Tate once.
Carlos comes by every day after school, and just sits with me, not making me talk. He doesn’t try to cheer me up like he might normally do. Just sits there.
Slowly, I find my way back to who I used to be. I pull my favorite novels off my bookshelf, reading passages, comforting myself with the words. I open my laptop, paging through photos from old Banner assignments, trying to imagine who I was when I took them, figure out if I’m different now. I open my e-mail, go through the assignments my teachers have sent, get a little work done here or there. I’m still behind, but my counselor says that Stanford will understand, that they won’t fault me for any grades that slip after a hospital stay. I tell myself that it’s good I didn’t fill out any deferral paperwork yet—that everything can just get back to normal now. Stanford next year, med school after, the future I so purposefully planned.
I tell myself I should be glad, that it could have been much worse.
That at least I didn’t ruin my life.
On Thursday night, Mia comes again to my door, knocking softly to see if I’m awake. She sits on the end of my bed and touches my hair, pulling it away from my shoulders. I can feel the tears welling up in my eyes; I squeeze them shut, trying to hold it back.
“Does your head still hurt?”
“No. It’s not that,” I say.
“I know,” she says gently. “He broke your heart, didn’t he?”
I nod and cover my eyes with my hands, a whimper shuddering from my lips.
“They’re not all bad,” she says, touching my shoulder. But I laugh: a short, painful laugh.
“I’m sorry, Mia,” I say, looking up at her, this girl I used to idolize when we were kids.
“For what?”
“I haven’t been a good sister. Not since Leo. I think... I didn’t understand...” I remember all the ways I judged her. I didn’t want to help her, even when I could have.
“We’ve each made our own mistakes,” she says. And the forgiveness in her eyes almost makes me break down all over again.
I look down at my hand, at our mother’s ring. It used to remind me not to be like her, but I fell in love just as hard as she always did.
“I don’t think I need this anymore,” I say, sliding it from my ring finger.
Without looking at me, she slides it onto her own. It fits perfectly—maybe even better than it fit me. Her skin is darker, closer to the shade of our mother’s, and it looks just how I remember.
Flashes of our mom dance through my mind, the ring always on her finger. She was so beautiful. But she was so lost. Destined to love men who couldn’t, or wouldn’t, love her in return.
I am more like her than I ever realized.
*
After Mia leaves, I stand and walk down the hall, finding Grandma in her bedroom sitting at the edge of her bed. In her lap is an old photo album, one I’ve only ever seen a few times.
“Can I talk to you?” I say, moving slowly through the doorway.
“Of course.”
I sit next to her, watching her fingers trail over a photo of her and my mom when Mom was just a baby. Grandma was so young then, just a teenager. She looks a lot like me.
“I should have listened to you.” Somehow, impossibly, I’m crying again, the tears never ending.
“No.” She shakes her head and reaches over to hold my hand. “I should have listened. I thought I was protecting you, but I was pushing you away.”
“I don’t understand,” I say.
She smiles and raises one eyebrow. “You deserve love as much as anyone, Charlotte. You deserve the best kind of love—the kind that will last forever. Maybe this wasn’t it...with Tate, but I know you’ll find it someday. I just want you to be happy, that’s all I’ve ever wanted.”
My mind surges back to Tate, the memory of his face hovering over me, his eyes like the darkest part of the sea, just before he lifted me up from the pavement. I thought he loved me—even if he didn’t know how to say it—but like Grandma, that love was bound up in his own fears, in his need to protect me, to control everything.
“There’s something I have to tell you,” I say, looking into her blue-green eyes. “Something I’ve decided to do...”
She squints to focus on me.
“I want to defer college for a year. I thought I was doing it so I could be with Tate, but I’m doing it for myself. I need to take a year off; I need to figure out what I want to do with my life. I know it seems scary to wait a year, but I promise it’s not. I’m not giving up my scholarships, I swear. It’ll all be there waiting for me. I just want to be sure I’m ready.”