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The green made me think of you.

I know you can do this. whatever’s on that paper today, you’ve already done the hard part.

go get it doc.

Hours later she responds.

Bea

Thanks, Cal

Chapter Forty-Two

Bea

There’s something that people don’t tell you about finishing the most important thing you’ve ever done: You might feel nothing at all.

I took the MCAT this morning. Seven and a half hours in a windowless testing center that smelled of nervous sweat. I have been pointing my entire life at this room since I was twelve years old. I have organized every hour, every flashcard, every Sunday, around the door this exam opens.

I walked out at one in the afternoon, and waited to feel it. Waited for it to hit me, to sigh with relief. I don’t even know what. Joy? Euphoria?

I’m still waiting.

There’s a voicemail from Gran, from this morning. I listen to it smiling. She does not believe in luck. She believes in a hearty breakfast, and she expects confirmation that I had one. It’s the first thing all day that makes me feel like a person.

The Hive House is empty. It turns out the thing on the other side of the exam is just me.

Nothing. Not even disappointment, which would at least be something. Just a flat gray calm, the same calm I used to drive home with from Jake’s, the nothing I used to think was peace, but maybe it’s just a void. An emptiness, a sign that yes, I’m broken.

I thought finishing would fill something. I think I had it backwards. I think finishing just turned off the noise that was covering this hole.

I go upstairs and look for a sweater because my arms are cold and my eyes flick to the back of my closet.

The case is still sitting there. Where it’s been since September. The soft case. The one my dad kept it in, broken-in at the corners, the handle worn pale where his hand went and then, for a while, where mine did.

It’s broken, I’d told Sydney. Not playable.

It’s a lie I’ve told so many times—even to myself. I tell myself I’ll get back to it one day, the way you tell yourself you’ll get back to a really tough non-fiction book.

I take it out. Screw it.

What’s the worst that could happen now, anyways?

I sit on the floor with it across my lap, and I unzip the case. The smell—wood and strings—comes up and bathes me in nostalgia. My eyes well up.

Come sit, Bea. Daddy will play you something.

It needs tuning. The low string’s gone slightly dead, and there’s the same hairline scratch by the bridge that’s been there since before me, but it’s fine.

I put my left hand on the neck.

I’m shocked to find my hand still knows where to go. The fingers find the shapes of chords, clumsy and rusty, but they remember. People always call this kind of thing riding a bike, which has never been a useful comparison for me because I cannot ride a bike. Never learned.

But this, apparently, I remember.

I play a chord. It’s awful. It’s out of tune, my fingering’s soft, and it buzzes on the dead string. I play it again and laugh. It’s so out of tune.

I tune it by ear, another thing I didn’t know I could still do. Then I play it a third time, and it’s not so awful. I play the first thing my hands remember, which isn’t a song but a little four-chord turn my dad used to play on the porch of whatever house we were leaving—the one I hated because it meant we were leaving again.