Marigold’s not very good at hiding her facial expressions. I watch her mind do the same dance as everyone else’s, calculating whether to say she’s sorry for something she had no hand in, whether it’s appropriate to come and sit by me and give me a hug,whether she should play this off light or let it become a whole Thing.
“I’m sorry” is what she settles on at last; standard-issue. “That must have been very hard.”
“Yeah. Yeah, it wasn’t great.”
I hate how rough my voice sounds all of a sudden, like I’ve been raking my vocal cords over the coals.
“I know it’s not the same, but when my mom died, I felt like I couldn’t function anymore. Like I was living in some kind of false reality, and the dimensions I was supposed to be living in were just on the other side of some invisible film between my world and that one, where my mom was still alive. People don’t get it.” She has her hands braced against the edge of the piano bench, her knuckles blanched. “And you see everyone else acting so happy and normal and it’s like…don’t they know the world has ended? That the world just lost one of its best…”
“I’m sorry, too,” I say, once it’s clear she isn’t going to be able to finish her sentence. Marigold has her gaze fixed high up on the opposite wall, like she’s fascinated by the join of the wallpaper to the crown molding. “When did she…?”
“Three years ago.”
“Fuck. Wow.” I feel like the worst asshole on the planet. “I had no idea.”
She shrugs and pulls her gaze down from the wall to fixate on me once more. “I didn’t tell many people about it, so there was nothing to know. She had lupus. She had a kidney transplant, but it didn’t really work, so….”
This whole time. This whole semester, I’ve been relishing my hatred for Marigold based off jealousy and her family’s money and her dad’s connections. Meanwhile, she’s been grieving the death of her mother. She didn’t let it show. Not even for an instant. Shedidn’t give anyone a chance to help her—she justkept going,like an automaton with a switch flipped to the “on” position.
Just like me. Just like I had.
“My brother killed himself,” I find myself saying. “We’d known he was depressed for a long time, and we’d tried to get him help, but it wasn’t enough. And he killed himself.”
“Oh, Jamie.”
Marigold abandons the piano bench, and when she joins me on the sofa, close enough her knees bump against mine, I don’t stop her. I always hated pity. It’s part of why I never told anyone at Parker about my brother, aside from Shrishti.
But this isn’t pity. Marigold gets it.
She lost someone, too.
Her hand finds my knee, squeezing lightly. My next exhale comes out on a shudder, and I close my eyes, blindly glaring into the dark.
We sit there like that for a long time, the only sounds those of the clock on the wall and Marigold’s soft, steady breathing.
Nine Days
Until Stockholm
11
Marigold
I’m coming over,Cessy texts me five days after Jamie moves in. My dad is still off on tour; Jamie and I are in another dead battle for the limited number of piano-use hours in a day; the cat is standing on the kitchen counter, screeching for dinner even though it’s only twop.m.; and Cessy is—apparently—coming over.
Me:Right now?
Cessy:Right now. I just fucked up an audition and if I have to go back to Brooklyn rn I’m going to spend the rest of the weekend in bed eating honey-nut cheerios so yes I’m coming over
Cessy:If that’s ok
Cessy:ok I’ll see you in 5
I barely have time to warn Jamie before the buzzer goes and I have to ring Cessy in. I know exactly how long it takes for theelevator to bring somebody up from the ground floor, and it’s precisely enough time to shove the packaging from me and Jamie’s lunch into the recycling, put on deodorant, force Jamie to do something with the socks he’d discarded next to the piano (I want to feel the pedal,he’d insisted when I complained), and finally be there to open the door when she knocks.
“Hey,” I say. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll live,” she says, which is Cessy code forNot really but stop asking.She grabs onto my shoulder for balance while she toes off her sneakers and kicks them into a corner next to her discarded ballet duffel. Then she rises onto her toes in relevé once, then again, stretching out the kinks. “What about you? It’s crunch time now, isn’t it? Are you still mostly with-it?”
