It’s the kind of statement that made my therapist back in Iowa sigh and insist that I’m young, I’m grieving, I need to practice self-compassion, etc. But this predates Adam’s death.
I’ve always been selfish. I never shared my markers in school. I would go downstairs in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve to hunt through my and Adam’s stockings and make sure that if we were each getting a ChapStick, I got the cherry-flavored one. I pretended I had piano lessons so that I didn’t have to go to a classmate’s funeral—the idea of being around so many black-draped mourners made me feel like a rat trapped in a glass box, frantically biting and scratching at itself in its desperation to escape.
So yeah, I’m a jerk to Marigold, probably because—as Shrishti says—I’m jealous.
I was a jerk to Adam while he was alive, too, and now he’s not alive anymore, and I’m left alone clinging to the same ambition that made me hold him at arm’s length, always too focused, too busy, and too driven to pick up the phone when he called or fly back for his birthday. Always sitting at the fucking piano with my fingers on the keys and my nose in the score, fiercely denying that anybody or anything outside my own obsession mattered or existed at all.
While I was in New York winning prizes and lighting up the room with my talent, my little brother was sinking deeper and deeper into a pit so dark, he’d never emerge from it alive.
If I’d known—if some time traveler had come back and told me the truth before it happened—would I have stopped? Would I have even cared?
I know myself. I know the truth. My brother’s life had been one more obstacle, one more uncomfortable experience I had to shove aside as I chased my own euphoria.
Now he’s gone.
Now he’s gone, forever and for good, and all I have left is this fucking instrument that I thought was more important than my own family.
I got what I deserved.
So I guess I better make sure it was fucking worth it.
3
Marigold
“Sooooo, don’t get mad,” Cessy says, which is the first sign that I need to start gearing up for some righteous anger.
It’s a Sunday morning, the last dregs of a too-short weekend, the two of us huddled up in her bedroom in our suite sharing grainy coffee from Cessy’s cheap French press. It’s finally getting cold outside, New York weather skipping autumn and speeding straight toward the marrow of winter. The sky outside the window is a steely gray, threatening an early snow.
“What did you do?” I say.
“Excuse you, why do you have to say it like that?” Cessy rolls her eyes. “Sometimes I really am the innocent party, you know.”
I snort. “ ’Kay. Sure. So, what totally innocent thing did you do, that I shouldn’t get mad about?”
She makes a face, but she’s still grinning as she flops down onto her dorm bed next to me. “I asked Shrishti out again.”
“Cessy!”
“Shh! I knew you would react like this! But listen, we were both in a bad place last year. She was about to drop out, and I had that whole drama with my parents, and it just wasn’t a good time for either of us to be in a relationship. But that doesn’t mean we weren’tstill good for each other. And now we have a real chance to figure out if there’s somethingthere,now that things have kind of chilled out for both of us.”
“Chilled out,” I echo flatly.
She shrugs. “I mean, you know, as much as anything ever chills out at Parker.”
It’s none of my business, really, what Cessy does in her romantic life. I like Shrishti. She might have terrible taste in best friends (aka James Larson) but that doesn’t make her a bad person. She and Cessy seem great for each other…if you ignore the mutual professional jealousy and piss-poor communication ability.
“Well, Shrishti isn’tatParker anymore. Do you really think that’s going to make such a big difference?” I ask.
“Uh, yeah. Parker was like ninety-nine percent of our problems last year.”
You’d think that being in totally different fields—Cessy in dance, Shrishti in viola performance—would have eliminated any whiff of unhealthy competition. But instead, I’d had to listen to Cessy’s long resentful monologues every time Shrishti won an award when things weren’t going nearly so well in Cessy’s own career. Or complaints about Shrishti rubbing it in her face by (apparently) existing as a person whose family encouraged her music career while Cessy’s parents still hadn’t come to a single one of her Parker performances.
“Ri-ight,” I say slowly. “I mean…yes. Sort of. But it was also only a problem because both of you made it one. You’re still the same people.”
Cessy huffs out a heavy breath. “Can’t you just be supportive for five minutes? I really want to give this another go. I miss her. Okay?”
Shit.“I’m sorry. Yes. Of course. I thought you were cool with me making fun of you a little…I’m sorry. I misread things.”
