“Do you want me to wait here?” Teddy asks, but I shake my head.
“No,” I say. “Come with me.”
When we reach the house, I steel myself, not sure what to expect. But it looks more or less the same: a tall, narrow Victorian with a gabled roof and a white porch. When we lived there, it was pale blue, but it’s now painted a bright, cheerful yellow. Our apartment was on the top floor, and I can see my bedroom window from where I’m standing. Someone has hung a small piece of stained glass there, and it glints in the sun.
For a few seconds, I stare up at it, feeling numb all over. I’ve spent so much time thinking about it and not thinking about it over the years, trying desperately to remember it and even more desperately to forget it.
And now I’m here, and Teddy was right. It’s just a museum. An exhibit from my past. A piece of my history.
All these years, I thought maybe this was where I belonged. I thought it was still my home. But it turns out it’s just a house.
A feeling of emptiness crashes over me, followed by a sadness so big it fills every inch of my body, every corner of my heart. Because they’re gone, really and truly gone, and because I miss them, and because if they’re not here in this place where we all lived together—where we sat onthese front steps on summer nights and ate dinner behind that window and planted flowers right there by the porch—then where are they?
I don’t even realize I’m crying until Teddy wraps his arms around me. For once, he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask if I’m okay or try to cheer me up. He just holds me as I bury my face in his shirt, and for a long, long time after that, he doesn’t let go.
The envelope from the Art Institute arrives on the same day I have to let Stanford know whether I’ll be accepting its offer.
It’s there in the mailbox when we get home from school, and Leo doesn’t even make it into the house before ripping it open. I stand below him on the front steps, watching nervously as he scans the letter. Then his face breaks into a grin and he lifts his hands in the air and goes tearing back down the steps and around our small patch of lawn, running in gleeful circles and whooping noisily, the letter held aloft.
I can’t help laughing. “I take it the news is good?”
As an answer he stretches out a hand for a high five as he goes wheeling past me.
Inside he drops his messenger bag on the floor, peels off his jacket, and pulls out his phone to call Aunt Sofia at work. I walk over to the refrigerator and grab an apple, then sit down at the table, a front-row seat to watch him share the good news.
Once he’s told her, he hops up onto the counter. “I know,” he says into the phone, giving me a wink. “I know. I’m a genius. I really am.”
I roll my eyes at him.
“Yup, I can’t wait,” he says, and his smile dips just slightly, probably thinking about Max. There are a few beats of silence, then he looks over at me. “No, she hasn’t let them know yet. I think she’s holding out till the last minute for dramatic effect.”
I take a bite of my apple, considering this. I actually have until midnight on the West Coast, which is two a.m. here. So there’s still plenty of time. And it should be a no-brainer, the easiest decision in the world. But for some reason I haven’t been able to do it yet: accept my place at Stanford.
Leo is still on the phone, and I know when he’s done he’ll want to call Uncle Jake too, so I give him a wave, then a thumbs-up, and head upstairs to my room.
My laptop is on my bed and I open it up to the Stanford website, staring at the sun-drenched pictures of those reddish buildings, thinking about the way Teddy and I sat on the edge of that fountain.
It’s only been a couple of weeks since that afternoon, but it feels like much longer. We didn’t talk about it again, what happened there on the street: the way I fell apart so completely, the way we stood pressed together for so long. Something about the sight of my old house had split me clean apart, and there on the uneven sidewalk, on a peaceful hill in the middle of San Francisco, Teddy tried to put me back together again.
Once it was over, though, he didn’t stop trying.
For the rest of the trip, he stuck close by my side. At another time, and in another city, this might have turned my eager heart to mush. But there was a watchfulness to him that made me uneasy, like he was scared I might go to pieces again at any minute.
When I tripped on a walk through the Presidio, he came jogging over with a look of grave concern. At the beach he worried my feet would get cold when I waded into the freezing bay. And at a bookstore he plucked a copy ofThe Bell Jarout of my hands. “I heard that one’s really sad,” he said, handing meLittle Womeninstead.
I raised an eyebrow. “And you think this one’s happy?”
“Why?” he asked, alarmed. “It’s not?”
“You do know that Beth—”
“No spoilers,” he said, taking the book back and shovingOliver Twistat me.
“Dickens,” I said. “Sure. He’s always upbeat.”
I knew he was just trying to cheer me up. He’d seen me crumble, had stood there and let me weep in his arms, and wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. But there was something almost feverish about his efforts, a desperation that solidified the worry that had lodged itself in the pit of my stomach.
That maybe it had been too much for him.
