Then the muscles in my shoulders tensed. Kissing Gracehadn’t been a mistake, but we wouldn’t be able to sweep it under the rug. At least I wouldn’t. Me playing with her curls when she dozed during an episode ofThe Office? Yes.
This?
Not a chance.
Although,I thought as I started walking in the opposite direction of where she’d run.Maybe she will.
I didn’t go looking for another exhibit; in fact, I wanted to free myself from the museum, whose walls seemed to be closing in on me. My T-shirt clung to my skin, now sticky with sweat, and in the highly unlikely scenario that someone introduced themselves to me and offered me their hand to shake, they’d regret it. My palms were slick.
The Asian wing wasn’t getting much traffic, so I slumped down against a wall and closed my eyes. Above me, the air-conditioning rumbled through the vent. “Excuse me,” someone said when my heart rate had almost returned to normal. It spiked again. “For safety reasons, we discourage visitors from sitting on the floor.”
I opened my eyes to see a museum docent with severe eyeliner and a choppy haircut. It reminded me of the times Grace and Isa had played “hair salon” with their American Girl dolls back in the day. They hadn’t touched Molly or Samantha, but poor Julie.
“Sorry,” I blurted. “I’m sorry.”
The docent gave me a nod, then gestured toward the benches in the center of the gallery. “If you would like torest…”
No, I did not want to rest; I wanted to have ameltdown.
Because, upon seeing how empty this exhibit was, I realized I had no one to talk to about this. The extraordinary but exasperating ache that was Grace Barbour, the ache that I believed was worth it above all else…but one that aggravated me enough that a guy needed some support every now and again. A guy needed his best friend.
It was too bad I didn’t have one anymore.
What I did next was a little risky, but I didn’t care. I felt the docent’s raccoon eyes follow me all the way to the outdoor courtyard, and when the glass-paned door shut behind me, I FaceID’d into my phone and went to my favorite contacts.
She knew I wasn’t in school, after all. Grace said Mrs. Flamporis had called her for parental permission before calling me to the front office.
“Everett!” Mom answered after two rings. Her voice was bright, but I sensed exhaustion. “Honey, how are you?”
“Hey, Mom,” I said. “I’m fine.”
She laughed. “Fine? You win an MLB contest and all I get isfine?”
I sighed. “Mom, it’s not like I’m at Citi Field with Francisco Lindor and the guys. I’m in the land of red-and-white pinstripes.”
“Have they given you a jersey?” she asked.
“Not yet,” I answered, because if I lied, it would lock us into buying one later today.
That may be a nice touch,I mused. A Phillies jerseywouldreally sell it.
“But if they do give me one,” I continued, “we can hold a ceremonial burning later. After dinner, I’ll build a fire out back, okay?”
Mom was quiet, so quiet that I thought the call had dropped for a moment. “We’re not going to burn a gift, Everett,” she said softly. “The Phillies were your dad’s team.”
The tips of my ears warmed. I knew where she was going with this.
My mother believed in signs, signs that Dad was still with us. There was a cardinal who consistently dined at our kitchen window’s birdfeeder. “Cardinals appear when angels are near,” she recited after the first red bird sighting, a little light returning to her eyes. Ever since then, whenever the cardinal visited, Abigail would shout, “Look! There’s Daddy!”
Mom also teared up and laughed whenever a niche art magazine randomly came in the mail, too. Our family never subscribed, yet the addressee wasJesse Adler.The first issue arrived a year after he died.
Mr.Barbour even had a sign: spotting a Ferrari on the road. “I always said the only acceptable Ferraris were red, yellow, or silver,” he told me. “So whenever I see one in some other color, I know it’s him fucking with me.”
Margot didn’t embrace these signs, but she continued to make friendship bracelets at a rate where you’d think she was running a cottage industry out of her bedroom. “It’s a Taylor Swift thing,” she explained. “Remember ‘You’re on Your Own, Kid’ fromMidnights?”
I’d nodded. Man, did I ever. It was my anthem. With noneof Isa and without all of Grace, I felt so alone. And kind of hopeless.
Per the lyric about friendship bracelets, Margot claimed she made hers to trade with other Swifties, but I knew the truth. They were her way of mourning Dad; she’d made him bracelets summer after summer after summer. The rest of the year, our father was never without a few on his wrist.
