“Oh, we would’ve mailed your letter.” She taps her pen against her notebook. “But we would’ve talked about it first. About what you’d written. We didn’t get that far. I’m sorry. If it makes you feel better, I think you did the right thing giving your letter to Evan. It sounds like he responded well. It’s a positive step for you. I’m glad you did it.”
She sounds pretty confident. Of course, she always sounds confident. But she sounds so confident about this particular thing that it does make me feel better.
We talk some more. She asks me all the regular things that she always asks: How am I sleeping? How am I eating? Have I needed any emergency pills? And then we talk about new things. Like Evan. And why I wanted to let him in. Every week she tries to chip away at something else. Like she’s an archaeologist and I’m the ancient skeleton she’s discovered buried underneath a bunch of dirt somewhere far away.
When our hour is up, she tells me I should keep writing letters. “But maybe I could read them. If you’re okay with that.”
I nod because I trust Brenda. I mean, I mostly trust Brenda. Because if I trusted her completely, I’d probably tell her everything.
“What do you say we work up to trying the stairs? Just a little farther. Maybe a little on Tuesday and more on Thursday?”
I look at the steps in front of me.
They lead down to the courtyard.
The pool.
The mailboxes.
The front gate.
The world.
The top step seems close enough, but the bottom one looks like it’s a mile away. I want to say no, but then I think of everything that’s outside that gate. There are bad things, but there are good things, too. I have to keep moving forward if I’m going to stand a chance at finding them again.
“Okay. I’ll try,” I say.
chapter sixteen
My mom’s cell phone rings after dinner, and she excuses herself to go outside and sit on the stairs to talk. That’s where she goes when she wants privacy since our apartment is about the size of a shoe box. I have an idea of who it might be.
Someone related to my dad.
Someone with the same olive skin and big dark eyes.
Someone who wants answers.
Someone who is sad.
Someone who is sick with worry, but also frustrated.
Someone who has talked to him.
Someone who knows where he is.
Ben is buzzing around. Literally buzzing. Like a bee.
“Buzz,” he goes. “Buzz, buzz, buzz.” He flies around the apartment, chasing me from the kitchen to the living room to the hallway to our room. “I’m gonna sting you! You better watch out!”
I run in front of him, swooping around him when it seems he’s finally gotten close enough to actually get me. “I’m too quick for you,” I say as I dash back down the hall, past the school portraits that hang there. The frames are shaped like school buses. Each window on the bus is for a different year, from kindergarten through twelfth grade. My eleventh and twelfth grade windows are empty. And a shinier, more optimistic version of me occupies all the other years.
Ben is laughing so hard that he can’t run straight. He goes thump thump into the walls of the hall.
“Be careful,” I call. “Don’t knock down the pictures.”
I finally let him catch me on the couch. He takes his finger and pokes me. “Ha! Got you! Zap!”
I pull my hand to my shoulder where he stung me. “Ow! That hurts!”
He laughs. “Buzz, buzz.”
“You’re too cute to sting people.” I pull him onto my lap and smother him with kisses. He tries to keep buzzing, but he’s practically choking on laughter. “Calm down, little bee,” I say.
Ben finally catches his breath, settles down, and glazes over at a cartoon on television. I realize my mom has been gone a long time. I untangle Ben from my lap and sit him down on the other side of the couch so I can get up to check on her.
I step out on the welcome mat. It’s amazing how easy it is to stand here now that I’ve done it a few times. And it feels good to do it, too. I see my mom sitting on the bottom step. She’s still wearing her hospital scrubs. Her phone call is done. But I hardly notice that because I can really only focus on the fact that Evan is towering in front of her. He’s got his wet suit slung over one shoulder and his surfboard under his arm. The look on his face is very serious. He’s listening to my mom. She is staring up at him and saying things. I want to see her face. She’s telling him something important. I know this because of the way Evan watches her.
And then I hear her say, “She’s working through some problems. It could take a while.”
And right then, Evan’s eyes shoot up and meet mine. We lock on to each other for a split second until my mom turns her head to look at me, too.
chapter seventeen
I run to my room.
I slam the door.
I fall onto my stomach on top of my bed.
I bury my face in my pillow.
I sob.
Ben calls my name.
I can hear his feet racing down the hall toward our room.
My mom intercepts him.
She tells him everything is okay and to please go practice his spelling words.
A few seconds later, there’s a knock outside my room. My mom doesn’t wait for me to say come in or don’t. She just opens the door and lets herself inside.
She sits on the edge of my bed.
She places her hand on my back.
She rubs tiny, soothing circles.