“Please, Stella. I’ve been your sister for twenty-six years—I think I know a lie when I hear one.”
Something dings above us as the flight attendants begin their safety demonstration, and I nearly jump. Think, Stella…
“What happened? We were all having such a good time, at least, I thought we were, and then you lock yourself in your cabin and sneak out in the middle of the night? I texted you like a thousand times before I remembered you don’t even have a working phone! If you hadn’t left that stupid note I’d have thought you ran off with a gang of rum smugglers!”
Right about now, I’d take a lifetime of piracy over ten more seconds of this conversation. But unless I can somehow commandeer a parachute in the next sixty seconds, there’s no way I’m getting out of it.
“Ok,” I breathe, closing my eyes and preparing myself for the oncoming crucifixion. “I guess I should start from the beginning.”
Tellingmy sister about my fellowship is easier than I anticipated. Or, at least, it’s quicker. After everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, it just sort of slips out. For some reason I expected it to take longer than three minutes to detail the systematic unravelling of my entire life. But it’s not just the suspension I explain to her. Not just the written atrocity that is my dissertation.
“I could fix it, I think. They’re going to lift my suspension, and I can get things back on track. But the thing is, Jules” I say, looking down into my sad airplane orange juice, “I don’t know if Iwantto.”
My sister’s eyes widen, the solemn face she’s maintained through my gruesome retelling cracking into an all-outgrimace. She must be so disappointed. She must want to shake me for being so colossally irresponsible.
I flinch as she opens her mouth, preparing for a ten-hour lecture on how I could possibly have made such a mess of my life. But when she opens her mouth, she practically announces her reaction for the whole airplane.
“Thank GOD!”
I balk at her, not entirely unaware at the heads that turn around us at her ridiculously loud exclamation.
“I’m confused…” I stammer. “Did you hear the part where I said I wrecked my entire career and I’m not sure I want to fix it?”
“Sorry, that came out wrong,” Jules covers, still beaming her signature megawatt smile. “I’m just sohappyfor you!”
If I hadn’t been too cheap to add vodka to my drink, I’d slam it. In all the ways I’ve practiced this conversation playing out with Jules, this is definitelynotwhere I thought it was going.
“You’re notmad?” I ask incredulously.
“Mad?” she half laughs. “God, no! Were you afraid to tell me because you thought I’d bemadat you?”
“Mad, frustrated, wildly disappointed…” I say, beginning my list of all the adjectives I assumed Jules would feel.
She grabs my hand, tightly, and pulls it into her lap.
“Stella, I know getting your PhD meant a lot to you. And I know how hard this must be to hear, but… to be honest, I’ve been waiting for this day foryears.I haven’t seen you anything but miserable since you started that program.”
Seriously? EvenJulesknew I was miserable? With a twist of pain, my mind flashes back to my conversation with Caleb in the rainstorm. To countless unanswered check-ins from Marianne. How is it that I was the only one who was unaware of how depressed I really was in Chicago?
“Why do you think I brought you that sketchbook, Stell?Because you’re anartist!You don’t need a PhD to prove that. Honestly, between you and me, I always thought art history was a strange choice for you. You’re too creative to spend your life in a library. Not to mention you’re aggressively terrible with dates.”
I almost want to laugh, but all that comes out is a pitiful breath as she squeezes my open hand.
“Why didn’t you ever say anything?” I ask without looking up at her.
“I did! I tried to encourage you to keep going with studio art. I tried to tell you you didn’t need that degree! But you’re so stubborn. It’s one of the things I love about you—you’re so much like Dad. No way anyone can stop you once you set your mind to something. It’s a miracle I even got you to come on this trip.”
My heart squeezes as I think about my last day aboard. About the way Caleb looked at me when he said that being together had been a mistake. About the career I helped vaporize in the span of two weeks.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have,” I say softly, trying to hold back the tears.
“You’re the love of my life, babe. It wouldn’t be a family trip without you.”
I take a deep breath as my sister, mybabysister, wraps me in a jasmine-scented hug. I can feel a release of the impending sense of doom that’s been sitting like an anchor on my chest for weeks. All the lies. All the guilt. All the fear—it had nothing to do with Jules at all. It was allme.
“I just thought it was something I had to do,” I say into her tangled hair. “Art isn’t stable. I thought if I could have a sure thing, something people wouldrespect, I’d be safe, somehow. But all I did was dig myself into a hole of resentment and caffeine-fueled dissertation research. I’ve been grinding for so long I forgot why I started in the first place.”
“I just don’t get why you didn’t tell me sooner,” Jules says as she pulls away. “Why did you think I wouldn’t be supportive?”
