“Eva.”
She shakes her head. “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.”
“Okay. No, I’m not, but I want you to understand what’s been going on in my head about Maggie. She’s not fine either. We’re both cursed with this . . . this death hanging over everything we do. You know sometimes I go hours without thinking about it? About my mom? Hours. It doesn’t seem like that should be allowed. And then I remember and I feel so guilty. Because when I forgot, I felt happy.”
“Your mom would want you to be happy.”
“No, I know. I just . . . it happened so fast. I woke up one morning, thinking my mom would be in the hospital for a day or two and then things would go back to normal. By that night she was in the critical care unit, machines beeping and breathing for her. I’ll never forget how they sounded. How everything smelled. And then she was gone, and suddenly I was that sad little swan. The other me? Gone, too, just like that.” She snaps her fingers once. “And it’s like, around Maggie, I can be that sad little swan, and it feels . . . almost normal.”
I inhale deeply through my nose and keep hold of her hand. Her words make sense—?at least, a sort of sense, but they also scare me. Because the way my mother has handled her grief is anything but healthy. Part of me wonders if Mom’s problems go beyond grief, beyond too much vodka and skeezy men, like Emmy said to Luca earlier. Maybe it’s some chemical thing in her brain, maybe not. I don’t know.
“I get that,” I say. “But . . . can you see why it bothered me? Why Luca’s worried? Why I’m worried?”
She nods, squeezing my hand tighter. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“Well, I am. I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I know.”
We sit there for a while, the open air and this new clean space between us lacing us even tighter together.
“So who are you when you’re with me?” I ask after a while. “When we’re together at night, are you the real you? The princess?”
She smiles, bringing my hand to her lips, her breath playing over my knuckles as she speaks. “At first, yeah. But now . . . I don’t know. It feels like I can be both with you. Everything. You’re stable for me, Grace. You calm down my thoughts more than any coloring book.”
I smile, relief that she thinks I’m good for her a palpable beat in my chest.
“I’ve never felt like I fit anywhere,” she goes on. “With Mom, yeah, but that was it. I never felt at home in my ballet classes, even when my mom was the teacher. I loved dancing, but when someone thinks ballerina, they don’t picture me. They sure as hell don’t picture gay. They think white girl, plain and simple. Blue eyes, blond hair, stick-straight legs, with her arm looped around some lean-muscled guy’s bicep. My mom always told me it would be hard to make it as a dancer. I mean, it’s hard for anyone, but for a black girl?” She shakes her head. “But she never said impossible. Because she did it. She wasn’t famous, but she was happy. She accomplished what she wanted. She made me believe I could do it too. I fit inside her belief, you know what I mean? And after she died, I felt like a ghost, drifting through the air, trying to land so I could dance. So I could do anything. But now . . . I don’t know. These past couple of weeks have felt different. I do fit somewhere. Maybe I fit right here.”
“Maybe you should move to the lighthouse.” I lean back and touch the whitewashed wall. “There’s room for at least one sleeping bag.”
“Not here, the lighthouse, you silly doof.” She smiles and presses a single kiss to my palm. “Here, you.”
“Oh.” I sound all breathy, like Eva’s words stole every sip of air from my lungs. “Wow, you know how to turn a girl’s head.”
She laughs, but then she turns serious again. “And maybe I fit with Emmy and Luca, too. I know she cares about me.”
“She really does, Eva.”
“Yeah. I just . . . I know she didn’t mean to, but she’s my guardian now, so it’s like she’s automatically supposed to be this replacement for my mom. And I didn’t want that. I’ll never want that. Emmy can’t save me and I don’t want her to.”
“Of course not.”
“But . . . I told her I’d think about dancing.”
I squeeze her hand. “Yeah?
She nods, her eyes round with what can only be called fear. “I have an audition. For a dance education program.”
I feel my own eyes widen. “What? Why didn’t you tell me? Where? When?”
“NYU. It’s not until October. It was scheduled before everything happened with my mom and I . . . I don’t know.”
“You’re thinking of not going?”
