“Why the interview?” he asks. “Did that reporter come to the hospital? Call you? Pressure you into it somehow?”
“No. I . . .” I almost want to tell them that Matt asked me to, but I know that wasn’t the only reason. I had my own reasons. “I called her,” I say.
“Without asking us? Why would you do that?” my mom asks.
I look at my dad. “Because I knew you would’ve said no.”
He nods. “Yeah. We would’ve. You don’t need to be doing that right now. What you should be focusing on is healing and moving forward.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do.” I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from crying. “But how am I supposed to do that if I don’t even know everything that happened to me?”
“This isn’t like you, Liv,” my mom says. “Sneaking around, not telling us where you’re going, not answering your phone calls. This isn’t you.”
It’s that last part that puts me over the edge, especially after what I just overheard in Paige’s driveway.
“Maybe that’s because there IS no me anymore!” I surprise all of us with the force of my response. “Can’t you see that? There’s nothing there, it’s just blank, and I was . . . I’m just trying to find out who I even am.” I pause, look down at my hands. Rein myself in a little. “I thought it might help somehow, but it didn’t. It just . . . made things worse. Matt hasn’t called me since then, and Paige thinks I’m different, and I don’t know what to do anymore.”
I sit there wishing I could somehow stop the tears that have started streaming down my face without my permission.
It’s silent for a long moment.
“Oh, honey,” my mom says, crossing the space to the couch. She sits on the other side of me. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were struggling so much with this. You’ve seemed like you’re doing okay . . .”
“That’s because everyone wants me to be. Everyone wants me to just go back to normal, and I’m trying, I really am, but I don’t even know what that is.” I sniff. “And people keep trying to tell me what to do, and I know they’re trying to help, but what if they don’t even know who I was?”
I think of Paige saying she knows I’ll go back to the way I was before because she knows me, but what if there’s a part of me she doesn’t know? What if I was one person with her, and someone else with Matt, and maybe even someone else with another person I don’t remember? I still don’t know what other secrets I’d been keeping, or why.
I look at my parents, who have both gone quiet. “What if I was the only one who really knew who I was before? Where does that leave me now that it’s all gone?”
My dad takes a deep breath and gives my mom a look like he hopes she takes this one.
She does. “Liv, honey, figuring out who you are—whether you’ve had an accident or not—is what being a teenager is. It’s what being a person is.” She pauses, thinking, and then goes on. “Of course you were different when you were with Matt or Paige, as opposed to us. That’s normal. We’re all a little different around different people. I’m different at work than I am at home. Different with your aunt than I am with your dad. Even different with you than I am with Sam. But they’re all small differences.” She pauses again. “The point is, I’m the same person at my core. And so are you.” She takes my hands in both of hers and lowers her chin until she catches my eyes. “You’re not empty. The things that make up who you are? They’re still there. They didn’t go away just because you can’t remember them. They’re in you. So you just need to trust your gut. Really listen for what you think and feel. That’s you.”
My dad is nodding. “Yep. Like with the tacos that first night you were home.”
My mom and I look at each other, and then at him for an explanation.
“What? When you reached for the meat and your mom reminded you that you were a vegetarian.”
I laugh. “What?”
“Bruce. Tacos?” Now she laughs too.
My dad shrugs. “Yes, tacos. It’s a perfect example of what you just told her.” He looks at me now. “You gotta go with what seems right to you, not what you think you should be doing because it’s what you’ve been told. You’re allowed to change. We all are.”
“Wow,” my mom says. She smiles and reaches out for my dad. “Eloquently put.”
My dad grins. “Sometimes the words just come to me.”
Sitting there between my parents in that moment, I feel a little bit better. Like they just somehow gave me permission to be more okay with who I am right now. I wipe my tears away, trying to see myself from their perspective. One in which it’s okay to be different from what people expect me to be. I don’t feel like I’m there yet, but it doesn’t seem like an unreasonable idea when I think about it that way.
“So here’s the deal,” my dad says. “From now on, maybe don’t focus so much on trying to remember how you were. Stop thinking about that all the time. Just go with the now. Does that make sense?”
I nod.
“And talk to us,” my mom adds. “Ask questions. Let us know what you’re feeling. This is a tough situation, and one that you need to have support in. But we can’t give that to you unless you let us know what you need, okay?”
I nod again. “Okay.”
“Yep,” my dad says, “we’re always here if you want to taco ’bout it.”
“Oh my God, Dad.” I roll my eyes, but this gets me and my mom both laughing.
“Please don’t ever say that again,” my mom says.
Upstairs in my room, I sit down on the bed and check my phone—three more missed calls, two from Paige and one from Matt. I still feel a little unsettled about seeing them together earlier, but I tell myself that they both care about me, and they’re both trying to figure things out the same way I am.
Still, I don’t call or text them back. Not yet. I get up and take the three pictures from my bulletin board and examine the one of myself again, like maybe I’ll see something different this time. I try to trust my gut like my mom said, and what I feel is that this picture of me is important. Because it was taken using my camera, and because I look so incredibly happy in it, and because whoever took it captured that moment. Captured me. More than any of the other pictures I’ve seen of myself. It makes me think if I find the person behind the camera, then maybe I can find myself—and Matt and Paige are my two best options.
I’m sitting there, staring at the photo, when my phone buzzes with a text from Paige.
Everything okay? Worried about you. Call me please???
I stare at it a moment, then hit the button to call her back.
She answers right away. “Hey—is everything okay? You’ve been MIA for the last couple of days, and Matt said you’re not answering his calls or texts either, and I was just worried about you. What’s going on?”
“I’m fine,” I say, picturing them driving away together, and thinking I should probably ask her the same thing. But something in me decides to let it go. “Sorry,” I say. “We did family movie night last night, and then I had to work today. I just haven’t really had a chance to call.”