At home, I curled up in my bed and hugged Sad Elephant to my chest.
Moments of the summer flashed through my mind. Standing in the garden at Golden Doors for the first time, looking at butterflies, the sad look on Noah’s face when he’d said,Thus, the monarchs.Walking through the driftwood maze; handing him a lucky stone.Quien no sabe de mar, no sabe de mal.Meandering through the Arboretum in Boston; leaning against the bridge’s railing over theCharles. The whisper of velvet curtains. The glowing ocean.
Usually, I wasn’t moved to tears by real-life events. I remained stoic and suppressed (thanks, New England reserve!). Then, when I was deep in the safety of a book and came across an emotional scene, I would cry deep, wrenching tears, out of proportion with the text. The tears would dissolve the calcified lump of emotion I’d been carrying around, leaving me hollow and shaky. Then I’d continue reading, and the book would fill me back up, restoring my levels like an aquifer pouring into low rivers. They were aquifers of emotions, books. They were miracles.
Now I tried to pick up my novel, but I couldn’t make the words move. I couldn’t replace my mind with the words on the page. Instead, my e-reader fell to my side, and tears leaked onto the pillow in a great, damp spread. No words could regulate my emotions, could tell me when to cry and when to hope. Instead, nothing stopped the tears, and they came jagged and constant all through the long night, and even my books couldn’t comfort me.
I didn’t want to tell my parents what had happened.
Telling them would be embarrassing—Noah and I had barely been together, and now we were over. Worse, it would make the breakup feel real. And worst, they’d be sympathetic, and sympathy might make me crack open.
But better to tell them than risk a question about how Noah was doing. I did it at the end of our next Zoom call, attempting to keep my voice light and detached. “One other thing—Noah and I broke up.”
Mom straightened on the couch, shock on her face. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry. What happened?”
I shrugged. No way I could keep from crying if I got into it. “It doesn’t matter. He’s going to college in the fall, anyway. It wouldn’t have made sense.”
“Oh, sweetie, I wish I could hug you.” Mom’s face and voice were a canvas of tragedy. Beside her, Dad rubbed her shoulder, looking distressed.
“It’s okay,” I said quickly. “My friends are being great. And we really only dated for a few weeks.”
“But you really liked him.”
I shrugged again, wrapping my arms around my chest. “Yeah. But I’m fine.”
“You don’t have to be fine, Abigail.” Mom looked worried.
“I guess. I will be, though.”
“I know you will. You’re so strong, honey.”
“Yeah. Okay. I just figured I should tell you. I’m going to go to bed now.”
“Are you sure?”
I couldn’t take any more of her sympathy or I’d start bawling. “Yeah. I’ll see you soon.”
“We love you, honey,” Dad said, his quiet, measured voice the straw that made the camel weep.
“Love you, too,” I managed to get out, and hung up right before the tears came once more.
I wasn’t actually sure I’d be fine.
I hadn’t wondered if I’d been in love with Noah until now, because falling in love was terrifying and immense and best left to adults, notseventeen-year-olds with overactive imaginations. But when I broke down while walking on the beach, when snot ran down my face as I howled like a wounded wolf, I didn’t have to wonder. When I waited for Jane’s breath to fall into the rhythmic cadence of sleep so I could sob with Sad Elephant in my arms, I didn’t wonder. “I loved him,” I whispered, ragged and broken. “Ilovehim.”
And because I wasn’t unaware of my melodramatic nature, I told myself other things, too: “You’re being stupid and pathetic. Get a grip. You’re seventeen, this is so normal as to be unnoteworthy.”
“But Ilovedhim.”
“’Tis better to have loved and lost. This is a good life experience. A growth opportunity.”
“But he was supposed to love meback. He wasn’t supposed to let me walk away.”
“You literally told him to. You were mean. Why would he stay with you?”
Honestly, I felt a bit like Gollum.
Stella took me out for ice cream. “You have to be as nice to yourself as you’d be to a friend,” she told me, serious as I’d ever seen her. “That’s what my therapist says.”
