I take a risk and try being honest. “I actually think I need, like, a weeklong break from thinking about college. I’m pretty overwhelmed with school and Jason and stuff.”
“I understand,” Mom says, and I can tell she’s trying very hard to be sympathetic. To not tell me what she thinks I should do, the way she might order a staffer to do something. “It is October, though, Zadie.”
“I know,” I say in a small voice.
“I don’t need to tell you how important early decision is,” she says. “Not to mention that this is one of the biggest choices you’ll ever make in your life.”
I shrink in my skin. “That’s why I’m taking my time.”
“Take all the time you need, sweetheart,” she says, squeezing my shoulder. “But don’t waste it.”
Before they divorced, Mom used to call Dad out for wastingtime. He was forever late, for one thing. Then, when he wasn’t trying to write that elusive second book, he always had big ideas, new products that he was working on or investing in at any given time. For years, I heard my parents fighting about bad investments, bad deals, but nothing seemed to piss Mom off as much as the time that Dad wasn’t using to get a real job or go back to school or “show Zadie what responsibility looks like.” And then, one morning when I was thirteen, Dad’s things were laid out in small stacks all over the living room. I cried as he stuffed his old Mazda full of his belongings. Pages and pages of abandoned manuscripts, copies ofMoon Over Hanover, books Dad loved, books to cure writer’s block. The Turbo-JuiSIR, a toothbrush that doubled as speakers, a failed prototype for an e-reader. A lamp with a broken shade. TheWorld’s Greatest Dadmug with no handle. So much of the clutter we lived with belonged to him, and now he was gone. Everything that remained in his stead had to be faultless.
I take a breath. “I just…how do you decide the rest of your life? I want to make the best choice.”
She runs her hand over my head. “And you will. You know the right thing to do.”
Except that I don’t.
I groan in frustration after Mom leaves, because this feels like a calculus problem I can’t solve. And suddenly there are no formulas that work, no helpful equations or examples, just this one huge dilemma that feels impossible to figure out.
“What’s the right thing to do, Dad?” I whisper. I know he’d say something about love—do something you love, probably—but I don’t know what I love. And besides, Dad spent his life trying to write a second book, trying to replicate this dream he achieved inhis twenties, trying to do what he loved, and he ended up dying alone. After the breakup, he moved to Portland, had to make a whole new set of friends, worked temp jobs to never make ends meet, and became the one-time writer who couldn’t write.
There’s nothing worse than loving the wrong thing.
Ten
On Friday night, Amber and I huddle in front of a crackling orangish bonfire by the lake, its warmth swallowing most of the October chill.
An electric buzz is in the air as our senior class gathers under the stars. More of us are slightly farther down the beach, kids playing volleyball and Frisbee, and a few people have even ventured into the inky black water. There’s music playing on someone’s portable speakers and a cooler full of beer that is bound to taste like soap.
Amber jiggles her keys, uncharacteristically impatient as we people-watch while we wait for Mo. “Have you noticed she is never on time these days?”
“She eats and sleeps Zebra,” I say, feeling the need to defend Mo.
“It just feels kind of rude,” Amber insists. “Like, I have things I’m excited about too.”
“Like?” I prod.
Amber grins. “Well, for starters, I’m pretty sure I’m in love.”And here it is, I think, heart sinking. The soulmates confession Mo warned me about. “With Pablo Navarro.”
“The exchange student?”
“What? No, the poet! I’m reading his book.”
I giggle. “Do you mean PabloNeruda?” You don’t ace Mr.Tan’s English class without knowing a bunch of famous dead poets.
“Yes, him! My bad. Either way, Pablo fully gets love,” Ambsgushes, like they’re on a first-name basis. She tells me about the way he writes about passion, like it’s a visceral thing. A living, breathing thing. “And that’s how it should feel.”
Right then, Talon, who has been playing Frisbee, looks over and waves. Amber and I wave back.
“Are you sure you’ve felt it?” I ask, but Ambs never gets the chance to answer because Mo suddenly appears. The first words out of Monique’s mouth are “I hope you’re not drinking, Zadie. Not with…all the headaches you’ve been getting.” She’s panting slightly, like maybe she just jogged the whole way here.
“Wow, hello to you too,” I say, positively bewildered.
I notice then that she’s wearing a visitor sticker on her hoodie, the kind they give me at Sterlingwood General every time I visit Jay. Mo yanks it off and crumples it in her hand.
“Why were you at the hospital? Is everything okay?” I ask.
