When people talk about New York City, they usually talk about the size of it: the height of the buildings and the endless rivers of people flowing in narrow channels between them, the way I used to have to squeeze through the Piles before the Piles were vanquished. But what really strikes me is the sound—a constant hum of traffic and footsteps and phones ringing and kids squealing and someone, always, cursing at someone else. Even here, standing in the middle of Washington Square Park, there’s the rattle of skateboards on pavement and a college boy playing guitar with his friends and protesters chanting about inequality.
Since I arrived in New York yesterday, it’s like my voice is in a rush to join all the other voices, all the other sounds: I haven’t talked so freely or so much in my whole life. Somehow, it feels so much easier to speak when everyone else is fighting to be heard, too.
I love it.
“So?” Dad looks like he stepped out of an ad for Urban Tourism. He has a camera looped around his neck and a fanny pack—an actual fanny pack—around his waist. Every time we’ve gone on the subway he keeps a hand around his wallet. Never know in these big cities, he keeps saying, as if he’s hoping he can subtly persuade me to go to college in southern Vermont. “What do you think?”
“I like it,” I say carefully. And then: “You know what, actually? I love it.”
To his credit, Dad manages to avoid looking totally freaked out. He pats my shoulder awkwardly. “I’m glad, honey.” Then: “And I’m sure if I just sell my house, car, and business—”
“Ha-ha. Very funny.”
“And you take a job at the Seaport slinging tuna—”
“Dad. You’re thinking of Seattle.”
“We might have enough money for the first semester of tuition.” But he’s smiling, and a second later he draws me into a hug. “I’m proud of you, honey,” he says, into the top of my head, which for him is a major, huge confession of love.
“I know, Dad.” As I pull away, my heart stops: he’s here. Even though we’ve been texting or talking or messaging almost every day, seeing him is different: Owen, coming toward us, beaming, his hair longer and wilder than ever and his cowlick straight in the air like an exclamation point. The strangest and most beautiful boy in the city. Maybe in the world.
“Mr. Ferguson,” he says, out of breath, as if he’s been running. He barely looks at my dad when they shake hands. He’s just staring at me, grinning. “Mia.”
“Owen.” Since August, when I last saw him, he’s grown another inch. He’s wearing a navy-blue scarf and a jacket with leather patches at the elbows and he looks older, somehow, like he’s filling space differently, like he belongs.
This is something I understand now. This is the miracle—of other people, of the whole world, of the mystery of it. That things change. That people grow. That stories can be rewritten over and over, demons recast as heroes, and tragedies as grace. That Owen can never be mine, not really, and that is a good thing, because it means I can truly love him. That love often looks a lot like letting go.
The real crime is always in the endings. Georgia Wells knew that.
If Summer had lived, she might have learned that too.
“Nine o’clock,” Dad says, giving Owen a stern mind-your-manners look he must have been holding on to for the past seventeen years. Then he turns to me. “You can find your way back to the hotel?”
“Yes, Dad,” I say.
“I’ll get her back safely,” Owen says, still with that smile that could power half a city block. Funny that as a kid he wore so much black. He’s all color now, all sparkle, like a rainbow in boy form.
“Nine o’clock,” my father repeats, adding in a finger waggle. “Love you, Mia.”
“Love you too, Dad,” I say. Thanks to our sessions with Dr. Leblanc, it’s all love all the time. It was as if for five years we were locked in the same holding pattern, circling around the things we wanted to say. But when Ms. Gray committed suicide, we had permission to land.
“So?” Owen doesn’t hold my hand, but we walk so close he might as well be touching me. And I think of a lift: held by him, weightless, soaring. “Where do you want to go?”
“I promised I’d get Abby a souvenir,” I say. “Ugliest one I could find. I should get something for Brynn, too.”
Owen and I walk together down to Canal Street, and he tells me about his courses and his professors and the boy who lives on Owen’s floor who runs an illegal gambling den from his room. He tells me about New York and how it opens like an origami figure, showing more dimensions every day, more hidden restaurants and art galleries, more tucked-away stores and more people, always more people, all of them with stories.
In Chinatown I find a horrible T-shirt for Abby with actual working lightbulbs sewn across the chest. For Brynn I pick out a black sweatshirt with a headbanging skunk on the front. I give Owen the updates because he asks: Brynn is enrolled in a special school and gets extra help from Ms. Pinner, who still homeschools Abby; she’s picked up volleyball and has proven unsurprisingly skilled at spiking the ball at other players’ heads. Wade and I went together to a game one time he was home from BU on break, and we both agreed: Brynn was born to hit things.
I’ve gone back to St. Mary’s, just for the year, because I was told it would help my chances of getting into NYU. The first few weeks were bad. Not bad like the first time—now, since the news of Ms. Gray got out, and the police found proof on her computer, pictures, emails—we’ve gotten famous again. But this time as the victims—victims of small-town prejudice, cruel injustice, police incompetence, you name it. Before, everyone acted as if I had a contagious disease. Now people want to be my friend just to prove something.
But after a few weeks, when it turned out I didn’t have much to say about what happened this summer or five years ago, when it turned out I was kind of quiet and nerdy and not very interesting, most people just started ignoring me.
For dinner, Owen takes me to an amazing underground pizza restaurant with some of his friends. It’s so loud everyone has to yell to be heard, and I amaze myself by yelling, too. Occasionally, Owen leans in to tell me about the people at the table.
“That’s Ragner—the one I was telling you about—he grew up on a legit commune in upstate New York because his parents were protesting the modern emphasis on consumerism—but they got tired of it and now his dad owns a hedge fund—
“That’s Kayla. Crazy story. She was actually homeless for two years and studied by flashlight in the back of a car she was living in—
“Mark’s the one on my floor who runs a poker den—”
And I sit there, smiling, loving the feel of him so close. He was right: all these people, these hundreds of thousands of people, have stories. Fascinating, ever-unwinding stories. I am just one of them.
And I am still midsentence.
After dinner, Owen walks me to Union Square, where my dad and I are staying. The day was warm, especially for November. But with the sun gone, the wind is cold and smells bitingly of winter. Still, the whole city is lit up, humming, alive with energy and motion.
“So? What do you think?” Owen unconsciously parrots the question my dad asked me earlier.
Even though I know exactly what he’s asking, I pretend to misunderstand. “About the pizza?” I say. “Very good. You were right. Much better than in Vermont.”
He waves impatiently. “About NYU. About the city.”
I hesitate. I love it. Of course I love it. And being here means maybe being with Owen, truly being with him.
But it also means that I might find myself lonely and with a broken heart in a big city.
“It’s high on the list,” I say cautiously, avoiding his eyes. We’ve arrived at the hotel far too soon. I barely remember the walk. We may as well have flown. “But I’m looking at Bard too. They have a good program in dance education . . . and it’s a little closer to home. And then there’s Bryn Mawr—”
“Mia?” Owen cuts me off.
When I look at him, he’s smiling again. And it’s amazing that the whole city, all its eight million people and countless cars and bars, just falls away in that moment, vaporizes into air.
“What?” I say.
“You’re full of shit.” He says it like it’s the nicest thing he could ever say. And then his smile fades. He looks away, biting his lip. “Listen. I really want to kiss you. Like, really really. But I know—I mean, you’re in Vermont, and you don’t even know what you’re going to do next year, and I’m here, and I don’t want to do anything to—”
This time, I cut him off. I take his face in my hands and turn it toward me and stretch up on tiptoes to kiss him.
Picture a dance so perfect, it looks like flying.
And here’s the thing: I don’t know what it means, or where it will lead, or whether it will lead anywhere.
But I kiss him anyway. Because if not, then