But I’m too exhausted to respond, so I lean my head against the window and close my eyes.Breathe,I command myself.Breathe.
When I open them again, we’ve turned down a street on the edge of campus, one I recognize for all the nights we’d stumbled down it arm in arm after a night of partying. Set back from the road are the university’s eating clubs, stunning mansions that house the upper-class coed social clubs that much of Princeton life revolves around. I remember all the times I’d warned Naomi to stay away from them,especially the one that drew me in, Sterling Club. And she’d ignored me, of course, always intent on doing exactly the opposite of what I’d said.
As the clubs float past one by one, I’m struck by a strange sense of déjà vu. The conflicting evidence, the way her body was found—the guilt—reminds me of that day ten years ago when another young woman died and it was dismissed as an accident.
She had been a member of our eating club. A friend. She’d had a promising future ahead of her too.
Life before was a blur, like we were running through a dream. And everything after…well, it’s as if I’ve been dragging around the weight of what we did for the past decade. We made so many mistakes, and instead of telling Naomi the truth, instead of warning her about what she was getting into, I’d buried it down deep. I’d told her not to join Sterling, but I hadn’t told herwhy.I hadn’t told her about Lila.
Over the years, I’ve lain awake at night thinking about Lila’s death, running through my years at Princeton again and again, so many times that I’ve come to doubt my own memories.
But now the memories rush in, and as they fill my thoughts, so does the guilt.
“Need some air?” Nate asks, rolling down the window, and I jerk upright, startled by the sound of his voice.
I look at him, unable to speak, and begin to shiver. My nails dig deeper into the seat as my shame grows, crawling over my skin, coiling itself in my gut, the question ringing out in my mind:Did the same thing happen to my sister?
Chapter Five
Maya
October 2010, sophomore year
A mist swept down overthe fiery autumn landscape as the two-car Dinky train trundled toward the university. I sat pressed against the window, pinned by the large duffel bag the man next to me had stuffed in between us.
I was anxious about the upcoming school year: I wasn’t the most outgoing person in the world, and my thoughts didn’t easily flow into conversation. Most of my life, I’d been quiet and awkward, preferring reading in the library to trying to make friends.
But I’d spent the summer waiting tables, and I was excited to learn again, excited to have determined my major—economics. I liked the sound of it. It sounded important, sophisticated. Things I was not.
As my breath fogged up the window, I caught a glimpse of my reflection—my glasses, built for a more angular face, my dark, gently curved eyes and flat-ironed hair. Over the years, I’d begun to look more and more like my Chinese mother—though my full lips and high forehead reminded me of my African American father, who’d passed away when I was a kid.
I was nine and a half at the time, and what I remembered most about him was the way he’d listen to R&B on the radio while shaving in the morning. The way he’d braid my hair before bed with the same strongly scented blue Ultra Sheen he used on his own.
My parents were the only interracial couple in our town. My father, the only Black man. One time, after he came back from a jog, I heard him tell my mother about the car driving slowly next to him.Another time, about the neighbors who stopped talking on their front lawns. He was too stubborn to move, though, and they were so proud of that little blue house. They’d bought it after several of my parents’ “over-asking” offers were rejected. The previous owner had passed away and no one else wanted it, apparently. But my parents thought the little blue house with its uneven floors and drafty windows was perfect.
—
The accident wassudden and devastating. car crash. Immediate brain damage that left him in a coma for a week. He’d been driving home from work and the roads were slick. They said he shouldn’t have been going so fast. He’d veered off a turn and crashed into a tree.
My mother had been seven months pregnant with Naomi at the time, and for the first few weeks, she sat immobile, eyes swollen from crying, staring at nothing. She stopped cooking and only ate toasted sesame bread with yuk sung, dried pork that had the texture of coarse cotton, or on a good day, a steaming bowl of stale rice with yuk sung and peanut butter.
One day that spring, I came home to find all of my dad’s clothes packed into boxes. It was disorienting, because my mother never parted with anything and seemed to assign emotional meaning to each item she owned. But a few days later the boxes were gone. Only a trunk with his books, records, and albums of old photos remained.
At night, I’d sneak down with a flashlight and look through them, running my fingers over the pictures of the three of us, tracing the lines of his smile. It’s strange how after you lose someone, they start to fade piece by piece, until all that’s left are memories that could slip through your fingers like water.
My sister was born premature. A tiny pink thing that reminded me of a newborn cat I’d once seen. My mother taught me to support my sister’s head, showed me the soft spot on top where you could see her heartbeat and how to bathe her delicate skin. I taught Naomi to ride a bike with orange streamers, braided her hair, and read her Judy Blume in the room we shared. We didn’t have a lot, but we were getting by.
Then, on my eighteenth birthday, Mom passed away too.
Staring out the window, I exhaled a long sigh and shoved down the tears. I’d spent all of freshman year grieving. But sophomore year would be different. It had to be.
“Now arriving at Princeton Station” came the conductor’s voice over the intercom. My limbs tingled with excitement as the train bent around the final curve, and the university came into view.
—
As I walkedto my residential college, a group of girls wearing bright sundresses and heels were laughing, stumbling arm in arm on their way to a party. I watched them. A girl I knew, Taylor, was among them in a gingham dress, French braid trailing down her back.
I gave her a shy wave.
