“That can’t be a permanent arrangement, Tess. You understand, right?”
The information didn’t entirely register with me. I didn’t want to hear it.
“But I’d like you to keep the blog going,” she said. “I think it will be a good part-time job when you go back to school.”
I slowed my step.
“I dropped out of school,” I said.
“You dropped out ofaschool,” said Grace. “One school. For reasons of bereavement and mental distress. I think we can find you another one.”
We were approaching the taco truck.
“Listen, Tess,” said Grace, “I think you have a hell of a lot to offer this industry if that’s what you want to do with your life. You are a smart, capable, deeply empathetic person, and those are the skills you need to actually do this. But I also think you’re a seventeen-year-old in the final stages of mourning, and you don’t need to do something forever because it helped you through a difficult time.”
I shielded my eyes against the sun.
“There are plenty of other ways to contribute. And you need time to figure that out. Finish high school. Go to college. Find out what you want. Find out what you don’t want. Screw up some more. Get your heart broken again. Try to be decent along the way. That’s how you make a life.”
Grace got in the line behind one other person.
“It’s easy to get stuck. To let one big thing hold you in place. And it’s such a waste. Don’t fall for it. It will keep you from everything.”
Grace paused for a breath. I looked over at her.
“That can’t be all your advice,” I said.
She smiled.
“No!” she said. “It’s not. Get the HPV vaccine. And order some tacos, for Christ’s sake! I’m starving.”
I ordered and when my tacos came out, I took a small bite of the first one. It tasted good. So salty it stunned my tongue. The two of us ate and watched the crowd build at the taco truck. A couple of pierced boys rode by on tall bikes, and I watched them pedal away with purpose. Eventually, we finished and got up to walk back to the office. When I got back to my desk, she brought me something.
“Here,” she said. “Your dad gave me this. It came to his house yesterday.”
She held out a single letter, and I grabbed it with my thumb and forefinger. I looked at it for a moment. His handwriting, in blue pen, was messy but legible. Eventually, I opened it up. It said:
Dear Tess,
I don’t know how to write letters. That will become very apparent soon. I don’t think I’ve written one since I went to 4-H camp the summer after fifth grade and got a tick on my eyelid. In fact, I’m so out of practice, I had to type this out first, and now I’m transferring it to my mom’s stationery with a pen, which explains the flowers onthe bottom of each page. I hope you like begonias.
Anyway, this isn’t going to be a long letter. I know much has already been said. And I don’t want to rehash our conversation from the airport. In fact, I’d like to forget that airport ever happened, maybe. Instead: I just want to do something small. I don’t know why, but I want to tell you about the first time I met you.
It was November, I think. And I had just come back from a night class to find my dorm room dim. There was a video game glowing on the TV, a little sword-wielding avatar running in place, frozen in his mission. I didn’t see Jonah at first. He was on his bed, taking deep breaths and rubbing his temples. I asked him if he was okay, and he said yeah. Just a headache. No big deal. A week earlier I might have believed him. But he’d been having a lot of these “headaches” lately, and I was starting to suspect that maybe there was something more going on.
But I sat down at his desk nearby and asked him if he needed anything. He said yes. I was thinking Advil maybe. A glass of water. But when I asked him what, he said he needed me to respond to you.
Now I had heard all about you at this point. Jonah had told me about Iowa and the way you guys continued talking online. He told me that you were beautiful. That you werefunny. That he wished he lived in Iowa so he could be with you all the time. And I believed him, of course. He didn’t lie about people.
So you guys had been g-chatting, I guess, and apparently he had just walked away to lie down. But he forgot to tell you. He forgot to sign off. And that’s what he wanted me to do.
“What should I say?” I asked him.
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Anything. Just say I have homework or something.”
“Asyou, though.”
“Right,” he said.
