My parents understood, and tried to respect my wishes, so I only got one present that year, from Thiago’s mother. It was in January, in her son’s hospital room. She handed me a small velvet box.
“Merry late Christmas, dear. I know Thiago would have wanted you to have this.”
I opened it, and inside I saw the colored bracelet he always wore. The bracelet his little sister had made for him and that he never took off. It was silly, just some plastic beads, the kind of thing I used to make when I was a little girl and try to sell on the sidewalk.
“They had to take it off during the operation,” she said.
I smiled as best I could through my tears and said, “Thank you, Ms. Di Bianco.” She slipped it on my wrist and helped me knot it. “I won’t take it off,” I told her.
She kissed my forehead and left.
* * *
Winter transitioned to spring, and spring brought final exams.
Studying at home served as a distraction, a way to keep thoughts about Thiago at bay. For a few hours, at least, it usually gave me some relief, and since my only other activity was going to the hospital, my grades were excellent, and a little part of me was happy and felt proud of myself. But of course, I thought of Ellie—of all the times we’d talked about going to college. How we’d dreamed of living in the dorms, going out to parties, meeting guys. The thought of Ellie brought back the thought of everyone else—all of them—friends and acquaintances, people who would never go to college or graduate or grow up, who would never fall in love, who would never do anything. They were dead, dead because three worthless sickos had gotten hold of guns and hunted them down like dogs.
My parents were overjoyed with my grades, and I would start getting answers from colleges any day now. Of course, Mom and Dad couldn’t stop talking about Yale. All my life, I had wanted to go there, but now, these hopes were indelibly connected with the worst memories of my life. My parents convinced me to send in an addendum to my applications, an essay describing how I had overcome the difficult experience of the school shooting. It was terrible.
Reliving what had happened, trying to put it down on paper—it was an impossible task. There were no words for what I had seen that day at school, for what I had to face every morning when I opened my eyes. There was no way of describing how hard it was to see the person you’re in love with slowly wasting away, day by day. The dictionary just doesn’t have words to describe so much pain.
The essays must have worked, though, because I got into three different Ivy League universities.
I remember the envelopes all came the same day. They were lying on the kitchen table when I came home from the hospital one warm afternoon. My parents, who were basically inseparable by that point, were waiting for me to open them, but they had already peeked and were too impatient not to tell me.
“You got into all of them, Kami. Princeton, Harvard, and…”
“Yale,” I said, slowly walking over to the table and picking up the heavy envelope with its blue and gold lettering.
“Honey, you did it!” my father said, squeezing me tight. “Annie, go get a bottle of champagne!”
I hugged my father, but I wasn’t excited. All I could hear in my head, over and over, was:
Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut.
Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut.
Yale is in New Haven, Connecticut.
I couldn’t go so far from home.
“I can’t,” I said, and my parents fell quiet. My mother stopped in front of the refrigerator door and looked over.
“What do you mean?” my father asked, looking shocked.
I couldn’t handle a confrontation—not then, when the reality of knowing I couldn’t leave was painful for me, too, upturning everything I had worked for.
My father must have read my mind: “You’re not insinuating that…”
“I’ll do exactly what I said. Once he wakes up, then—”
“You will do no such thing!” he shouted in a fury. “I’ve been waiting for weeks, for months, for you to get over this, and I’m not going to let you keep wallowing in self-pity, Kamila. Enough’s enough!”
Unable to believe what he was saying, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“You’re not going back to that hospital.”
I laughed bitterly. “You can’t tell me where I can and can’t go.”
