“Ready to go?” she asked.
And Oscar wasn’t, because he needed to ask Grandma more about her time and how people built marriages thatlasted until one of them died. He needed her to continue making this sound far simpler than it felt.
But in the end, he nodded. And five minutes later, he and Lina were kissing Grandma goodbye, and it was back to the winding road with the pretty houses from his childhood.
“I really could have taken the bus back,” Oscar said for perhaps the seventeenth time as they passed the cathedral. His eyes snagged on the gargantuan structure, pictured the graveyard at its back, the buildings across the street, the attic apartment in which Aaron would be watching movies with Joe and Anna, playing his game, eating junk food, not kissing Oscar.
“I know youcould have,” Lina replied. “I wanted to drive you home. Is that so bad?”
“No.” Oscar glanced at his sister in the driver’s seat. He’d missed her. “Thanks.”
“You should have asked me for a ride over, too.” She tapped her fingers against the wheel, shaking her head. “But you always were a stubborn ass, weren’t you?”
“Blame your mother for her awful genes,” Oscar replied, sticking his tongue out.
She must have caught him through her peripheral vision because she smiled.
“So…what were you and Grandma talking about?” A blue iris slid to the corner of her eye, her smile twisting into a smirk. “You’ve met someone, haven’t you? Grandma was far too excited for it to be about anything else.”
“Yeah,” Oscar said. “Aaron.”
There it was again, that word. Oscar wondered if the man who’d coinedabracadabrawould feel foolish if he heard thewordAaronand realized how much closer to magic each letter felt.
“Oscar…” Lina said a couple of heartbeats later. Her teasing tone had lulled, smile dropping. “I…I broke up with Ryan.”
“Oh.” Oscar wanted to tell her he was sorry, and in a way he was. If Lina was upset, then Oscar would be upset, too. But he couldn’t be sorry that she was now opening new doors, making room for someone who would love her as he should, who didn’t care more about his boys’ nights with his friends than spending time with her when she was on her period, curled up on the couch crying and craving chicken wings and chocolate.
“I know you’re happy about it.” Lina’s wet chuckle was evidence of her heartbreak. It tore something new and awful into Oscar. “Come on…sayit.”
“He was a fucking asshole. And you deserve better.” Oscar lightly banged his head against the headrest. “If I believed in God, I would have prayed every single night for you to see sense and get rid of that pompous ass.”
“I’m aware.” Lina rolled her eyes, tapping to the beat of the old Kate Bush song playing on the radio.
Oscar remembered being fourteen and listening to“Wuthering Heights” in secret, afraid that if anybody heard him singing along, they’d think he was a girl. As though the issue in question wasn’t that he hadn’t actuallytoldpeople plainly that he wasn’t. At least not outside his home. But fourteen was a tough time, especially for a boy in a body that didn’t yet feel like his, with his fiercest supporter gone forever.
“I hope you didn’t break up with him because of what he said to me, though. If you were happy…”
Oscar hated the feeling of maggots in his chest, crawling around and eating at the muscle. He likened this to theevening Papa had found out about the close friendship between Oscar’s wrist and the blades hidden all around the bathroom. They’d never had the conversation Papa must have practiced, about how Oscar shouldn’t do that to himself, but that Papa would be there to help him clean it up. He’d always imagined that in another universe, one in which Papa had survived that Saturday morning, he would have sat with Oscar over pancakes and asked him if he wanted to talk about why of all things dresses made him want to hurt himself like that. Oscar had always imagined that Papa might have asked him whether he wanted to go shopping for more clothes, not just the suit, but hoodies and T-shirts for school. He’d pictured in his head a moment of bravery during which he would have told his father what he already knew, that he was a boy. And Papa would have said,I know, Spike. I love you, son.
“I did it for me,” Lina replied, leaning against the seat as she slowed to a stop in front of his apartment. She turned to look at him, lips curling. “Because what he said to you, he said about my brother. And I could never love a man like that.”
“I’m sorry I put you in positions like this,” Oscar said.
It wasn’t that he’d never thought that before. He’d just never said it out loud. But in the back of his mind, creeping like a specter, Oscar had always wondered whether his difference had made other people’s lives more difficult. Papa’s, maybe. Lina’s. Grandma’s. He would never change it about himself, would never choose to be anything other than what he was—anyone—but maybe they would. He wondered sometimes.
“Say it again and watch me run you over with my pickup truck and never look back,” Lina replied, cutting right through his stream of nagging thoughts. She tilted her head. “Don’t ever think that again.”
“I’ll inform my chronically anxious brain that it’sforbidden from making me feel burdensome by order of Lina Peters,” Oscar said, throwing her a dead-eyed look.
“Exactly. You tell that brain of yours I’ll turn it into mashed potatoes if it dares.” Lina smiled, but the look in her eyes was serious. “Oscar, don’t ever avoid me again. I missed you.”
“I missed you too.” Oscar crinkled his nose. “Sorry.”
“I’m sorry too. I should have annoyed you a little better.”
Lina yawned, and Oscar glanced at the clock. It was already well past eleven, and she had to drive back to her dorm to go to work in the morning.
“Are you good to drive?” he asked.
