He nodded like that was what he meant to say. “Yeah.”
But going back to my own blissful ignorance was impossible, and I had to outrun the shame of needing him so desperately that I had to sneak in like a thief in the night, knowing I’d do it again and again and again...
“I’m so sorry, Hiroku,” Seth said again.
I cleared my throat, thankful he couldn’t see my face in the dark.
“Yeah. Me too.”
NOW
Some of these games they have us play in rehab are just ridiculous. Case in point, the Wheel of Self-Care, like Wheel of Fortune only instead of guessing the puzzle, you have to list out all the ways in which you’ll take care of yourself once you’re no longer locked up like a zoo animal in New Vistas.
Elizabeth says she’ll learn to cook. Gabe says he’ll tell his mother he loves her. Ryan is going to start lifting weights. My category is spiritual, so I tell them I’m going to watch more sunsets. I say it like it’s a joke, and it’s only after that I realize that’s an entirely legitimate goal.
Watch more sunsets. Why the fuck not?
THEN
I could no longer confide in Sabrina now that her loyalties were split, and besides, my sister had really stepped up in the best friend department.
“He’s too powerful,” I admitted to Mai after telling her about sneaking out to go have sex with Seth. It happened twice more after the first time. “I can’t resist him.”
Mai looked at me for a long time with her wise old turtle eyes—centuries passed as she considered me and my predicament—until at last she said, “School’s out soon. I’m going to help you get over him. We’re going on a road trip.”
I sighed, wishing I could get more excited by the idea. Or about anything. All I wanted was to be with Seth. I was a fucking doormat.
“Sounds like fun.”
“Well, don’t sound so fucking excited about it,” she snarked.
My mouth dropped open.
“What?” she asked with a little smile.
“I can’t believe you just said the f-word?”
“You’re rubbing off on me, apparently.”
We spent the afternoon looking at maps, an exercise that I pointed out was futile to begin with because our dad would never let us go, but Mai only grinned mischievously and insisted on hearing my opinion about a destination. After surprisingly little debate, we decided on the Grand Canyon. I told her I wanted to see if it was worth all the fuss. I also wanted to see what the biggest, deepest gash in the country looked like.
Mai then attempted to convince our parents, specifically our father, that a sibling road trip was in order. Mai pulled all the cards on this one—how trustworthy she was, how much she deserved this vacation, how well we’d navigated Japan last summer on our own, how this might be our last opportunity to bond as siblings before she left for Columbia. That last one really got to me. Something I tried not to think about at all, her leaving.
Dad listed all the reasons why it was a bad idea, the most outrageous being that someone might kidnap us and hold us for ransom. “No one wants us,” I said, then glanced over at Mai. “Well, not me at least.” My mom frowned at that but didn’t say anything. She usually let my dad handle the negotiations. Dad and Mai went back to their debate. It had been a while since I saw the master at work, and Mai had been sharpening her sword. After about two hours of discussion, my mother finally weighed in. She placed a gentle hand on my father’s arm and said, “I think it’s a wonderful idea.”
Mai tried and failed to contain her smile. We both knew what that meant. My mom didn’t say much, but when she did, my dad listened. We got a list of demands from my father: our phones and our car had to be linked to my dad’s phone so he could track us; we had to stay in respectable hotels when we weren’t camping; we had to be aware of our surroundings at all times (I suggested we carry katanas just to be safe, which my dad didn’t find funnyat all); we had to check in daily and give him phone numbers to wherever we were staying; we could not talk to strangers…
I stopped listening, knowing Mai would use her monster brain to capture all of our dad’s stipulations. The point was, we were going on a road trip, just the two of us, and I began to feel something again other than loneliness and pain. A stirring of excitement.
Hope.
Mai gave the valedictorian speech from atop a constructed stage on the Hilliard football field. It was thoughtful and inspiring and flawless. I had a vision then of my sister ten years down the road, giving an academic lecture on curing cancer or some other breakthrough she’d made or helped to make. Sometimes the light shines a little brighter around certain people. That was Mai. Maybe it was my current state of mind where my emotions were always running just beneath the surface, but I cried along with my mother when Mai received her diploma. She found us in the crowd and waved. My dad nodded, a closed-mouth smile on his face.
I hoped one day he’d look at me that way.
Sabrina was in attendance at Mai’s graduation and performing as part of the marching band. We’d made up, more or less. She admitted Seth had threatened to kick her out of the band if she said anything to me, and she agreed that it was a really shitty way for me to find out, though she maintained that I needed to see it for myself. I told her I appreciated her cluing me in to what was going on. Part of me wanted to ask her how long she’d known about it, but a bigger part didn’t want to know just how long Seth had been cheating on me. I told her we were cool, and I wanted us to be, but forgiving people had never been a strength of mine.
We celebrated Mai’s big day by taking her and her boyfriend out to a nice dinner at her favorite steakhouse. Terrance had been waitlisted for Columbia, and we were all holding out hope that he’d get in. Well, I wasn’t really, because I thought Mai could do better—no one was good enough for my sister—but I was at least pretty confident that Terrance wasn’t cheating on her, so bonus points to him for that.
