A few minutes later, Virgo and Sammie return with pizza in hand.
Evan doesn’t say anything to them about Dean or what just happened. We spend the rest of the night in their room, eating pizza and listening to music. The three of them talk about everything from school to Kanye West to Game of Thrones to the Mars One project and whether or not they would apply. I mostly just listen.
Evan doesn’t ask me how I am anymore, but it’s okay.
I feel really good, sitting here with him next to me.
He doesn’t have to ask.
Mistakes to Avoid Your Senior Year of High School #1
You should challenge yourself in new ways, but don’t overextend yourself, either. It’s not worth taking all AP classes if it lands you a C or you can’t pass the exam.
Every Monday morning, I sneak back into my apartment when I know that no one will be home. I usually text my dad to tell him to make sure the apartment is empty so I can go in by myself, and he always texts back a simple Okay. I woke up on Saturday morning back in Sammie’s bed and found a multisentence text from him saying that he was leaving for Singapore for a week, and that the apartment would be clear for me today. He also wrote that I should come back home now that he’s gone, that my mother and Mila need me and miss me.
But I’m not ready to move back in. I’m afraid that I might end up telling them everything I know. I don’t want to be the one to ruin their lives.
I unlock the front door.
The apartment smells like onion and garlic. I miss my mom’s cooking so much. I miss her.
But I just can’t face her yet.
I head to my room. She’s made my bed and straightened up my desk and left a basket of clean, folded clothes on my bed. There’s a drawing there, too, from Mila, with my paycheck from Bennett Tower, Inc., and a note from my mom: Come back when you’re ready. I love you, Viviana. I love you unconditionally.
I fold the papers and stuff them in my backpack.
I walk down the hallway to Mila’s room, which is a mess, as usual. The floor is covered with stuffed animals, Legos, uncapped markers, and crumpled clothes. My parents never let me live like this when I was her age. My dad would yell at me if I even left my bed unmade. I don’t feel jealous so much as relieved that Mila is experiencing a freedom they never gave me. It actually makes me hopeful in some way.
I go into my parents’ room. The bed is made, and everything is clean, as my mom likes it. The photos on the walls are perfectly lined up. She had my dad put them up the week after she was diagnosed with the cancer. She knew she was going to have to rest in bed for months, and she said she didn’t want to stare at blank walls, that she wanted to stare at the people she loved more than anything else. There are photos of me as a child with my mom’s family in Israel on various trips that I hardly remember taking before Mila was born, and then there are photos of all of us together at the hospital when Mila was born, at her first day of kindergarten, of my eighth-grade graduation.
My mom’s put a few more photos on her dresser, ones that I haven’t seen before. They’re from my old Instagram account, photos of Sammie and me, our silly faces filling up the frames. She must have printed them out before I canceled my account. I never knew she’d done this.
I pick up one of the pictures. We took it freshman year, long before Sammie’s dad died, before my mom got sick. It’s been over two years since then. We look younger, of course—Sammie still has braces, and I’m sporting my sorry attempt at bangs—but even more, we look different because we look happy. We were happy. We were different people completely. Maybe Professor Cox was right. We didn’t really know anything about the world. Maybe we still don’t. Maybe it will only get worse, like he said.
I place the picture back on the dresser. My dad has left some of his stuff here in his wooden tray—a broken watch, a pair of sunglasses, a pile of receipts. I leaf through the receipts. There’s nothing too exciting—some from airport cafés and taxis in Singapore, all with the word work written on top, and then more from home: Starbucks, Macy’s, Target.
I start going through his drawers, looking for something. I don’t know what exactly. Pictures of them, maybe. Letters. Something, anything, to explain who they are, why they’re in his life, why he’s decided to create one in theirs.
I pull out his shirts, his pants, his socks, everything. There’s nothing here, but I empty the drawers anyway. I clean them out. I throw it all on the floor.
The last drawer is nearly empty when I hear something heavy fall out. I drop to the ground. I scramble through the fabric and find it: a set of keys with a label attached. The bastard was dumb enough to leave them here, and even dumber to label them: Geneva Terrace.
My legs start to shake, and then my heart quickly follows.