“Earth to Kennedy? Did you hear anything I said?” Elle held up one of my sketchbooks. “Do you want these in the box with art stuff or in the one with books?”
I shrugged. “Whatever you think.”
I stood in front of the mirror, pulling out the faded photos tucked around the edge: a blurry close-up of Elvis swatting at the lens as a kitten. My mom in cutoffs at about my age, washing a black Camaro and waving a soapy hand at the camera, the silver ID bracelet she never took off still dangling from her wrist.
A nurse at the hospital had handed me a clear plastic bag with that bracelet inside the night my mom was pronounced dead. She found me in the waiting room, sitting in the same yellow chair where the doctor had spoken the two words that shattered my life: heart failure.
Now the bracelet was fastened around my wrist, and the plastic bag with my mom’s name printed at the top was tucked inside my oldest sketchbook.
Elle reached for a picture of the two of us with our tongues sticking out, mouths stained cotton candy blue. “I can’t believe you’re really leaving.”
“It’s not like I have a choice. Boarding school is better than living with my aunt.” My mom and her sister hardly spoke, and the few times I did see them in the same room, they had been at each other’s throats. My aunt was just another stranger, like my father. I didn’t want to live with a woman I barely knew and listen to her tell me how everything would be okay.
I wanted to let the pain fill me up and coat my insides with the armor I needed to make it through this. I imagined the dome from Lady Day lowering itself over me.
But instead of glass, mine was made of steel.
Unbreakable.
I didn’t explain any of that to my aunt when I refused to move to Boston with her, or when she spread out a stack of glossy boarding school brochures in front of me a few days later. I had flipped through the pictures of ivy-covered buildings that all looked frighteningly similar: Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut. In the end, I picked upstate New York, the coldest place—and the farthest from home.
My aunt had started making arrangements immediately, like she was as eager to go back to her life as I was to get her out of mine. Yesterday, she finally went home after I persuaded her to let me stay at Elle’s until I left for New York.
If I ever finished packing.
As I pulled the picture of Elvis off the mirror, another photo fluttered to the floor—my dad standing in front of a gray weather-beaten house with me grinning from his shoulders. I looked so happy, like nothing could wipe that smile off my face. It reminded me of a darker day, when I learned that a smile can break as easily as a heart.
I woke up early and tiptoed downstairs to watch cartoons with the volume muted, the way I usually did when my parents slept late on weekends. I was pouring chocolate milk into my cereal when I heard the hinges of the front door groan. I rushed to the window.
My dad had his back to me, a duffel bag in one hand and his car keys in the other.
Was he going on a trip?
He opened the driver’s-side door and bent down to climb in. That’s when he saw me and froze. I waved, and he raised his hand as if he was going to wave back. But he never did. Instead, he closed the car door and drove away.
I found the ripped sheet of paper on the table in the hall a few minutes later. Sloppy handwriting stretched across the page like a scar.
Elizabeth,
You’re the first woman I ever loved, and I know you’ll be the last. But I can’t stay. All I ever wanted for us—and for Kennedy was a normal life. I think we both know that’s impossible.
Alex
I couldn’t read the words back then, but my brain took a mental snapshot, preserving the curve of every letter. Years later, I realized what it said and the reason my father left. It was the note my mom cried over night after night, and the one she’d never discuss.
What could she say? Your dad left because he wanted a normal daughter? She would never have admitted something that cruel to me, even if it were true.
Swallowing hard, I forced the note out of my mind. I saw it often enough already.
I grabbed a roll of packing tape as Elvis darted into the room. He jumped up on the edge of the box in front of me. When I reached out to pet him, he sprang to the floor and disappeared down the hall again.
Elle rolled her eyes. “I’m glad I agreed to take your psychotic cat while you’re away at school.”
A knot formed at the base of my throat. Leaving Elvis behind felt like losing another part of my mom.
I pushed the pain down deeper. “You know he’s not usually like this. It’s hard for animals to adjust when someone they love”—I still couldn’t say it—“when they lose someone.”