Thirty minutes later, I’m staring into an endless icy blue tundra. At least that’s what it looks like to me. My dad has taken several pictures of both my eyes and blown them up until all that’s visible on the screen are interwoven threads of blue and white. Like the snow-covered branches of the trees on the Columbia campus.
I click through the shots, leaning forward and back and tilting my head from side to side, trying to see the images from every angle. But the longer I gaze at the pixels, the more certain I am that there’s been some mistake.
“This isn’t it,” I determine.
My dad leans over my shoulder to get a clearer view. “What do you mean, this isn’t it?”
“There’s been a mix-up. These aren’t my eyes.”
He laughs. “Of course they’re your eyes. I don’t have any other eyes on this computer.”
I turn back to the screen and examine the pictures again. Is it the sleep deprivation? Is it all the stress? This can’t be my eye. It’s too different. Where are the spiderwebs? Where’s the good luck my Dad always put his faith in?
“But…” I start to argue, my voice lacking conviction. “They’ve changed.”
“Of course, they’ve changed. The last time I photographed your eyes you were only thirteen. Eyes change. Just like faces.”
No, I want to argue. You photographed my eye a month ago. For your gallery show. There were spiderwebs there. There was magic there. You said so yourself.
This eye has no magic. There is no life in these strands. No shimmering energy. This eye looks …
Dead.
Frozen over.
Broken.
I close the laptop screen, unable to look at it anymore. It reminds me too much of what I’ve lost. What I fear I’ll never be able to get back. I rise from the desk chair and walk back over to my little rollaway bed. I sit down and pull my legs up to my chin, wrapping my arms tightly around them.
“I’m sorry,” Dad offers. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You said—”
“I know,” I interrupt him. “It’s fine. I just…”
Didn’t expect to see what I saw.
Didn’t expect to feel what I feel.
Didn’t expect any of this …
“Do you ever think about quitting your job and going back to the Portals project?” I ask.
Dad chuckles, but it’s an empty, soulless sound that makes me shiver. He grabs the laptop from the desk and brings it back to his bed. “No.”
“Why not? Don’t you ever wonder where another path could have led you? What choices could have resulted in different outcomes?”
“The Portals project was a silly dream. It would never have led to anything.”
“Maybe it would!” I shoot back, feeling tears of frustration spring to my eyes. I have to make him see. I have to make him realize that he made the wrong choice. He never should have given up on his dream because of me. If I can’t fix my own mistakes, then at least I can try to fix his. “You don’t know. Maybe it would have been huge!”
“Kennedy,” he says, softly but urgently. “We make our choices and we have to live with them.”
He sits down, props his feet back up, and reopens the laptop. My own lifeless zombie eye instantly pins me with an accusing stare.
I avert my gaze so he can’t see my tears, but the crack in my voice gives me away. “I know you gave it up for me,” I whisper. “I know you only took the job so I could go to Windsor.”
He sucks in a breath as he looks over at me, his face pale. He struggles to say something—the right thing—but in the end he goes with “I always had a feeling that you knew.”
I’m crying now. But I don’t care. I turn to him. I confront him with my tears. “Why didn’t you just tell me?”
“Your mom and I decided not to. We didn’t want to burden you with the financial stuff. I always thought you deserved to know, though.”
“What if I gave it up?” I fire back before I can think of what I’m saying. But as soon as the question is out of my mouth, I know it’s what I want to do. What I have to do. Dad gave up everything for me. It’s time I return the favor. “I’ll quit the Windsor Academy. I’ll do it tomorrow. You won’t have to pay the tuition anymore. You won’t have to work this job. You can do whatever you want. You can—”
“You’re not quitting Windsor,” he says sternly. “Stop talking nonsense. You have a little more than a semester left. I don’t know what’s been going on at school. Obviously something or you wouldn’t be here. I realize you’re probably under a lot of stress, but you can’t quit now. Not when you’re this close to the finish line.”
The finish line.
It’s always about the finish line.
“I have to,” I whisper. “I’ve made too many mistakes. I can’t go back.”
Dad laughs softly. “Kennedy, mistakes are a dime a dozen. Everyone makes them. Not all of your choices can be winners. But you make the most of the outcome. You learn what you need to learn and you move on. Some mistakes need to be made. So we can teach ourselves how to get back up. You’re not a quitter. That’s one of your best qualities. You see things through. To the very end.”
A chill runs through me. He’s right. I do follow through. That’s always been one of my strengths. But maybe I don’t do it for the right reasons. Maybe I can’t let go because letting go would be the same as admitting I’m wrong. So I keep digging myself in deeper and deeper to avoid facing the fact that I made the wrong choice.
But Dad did make the wrong choice. I’m certain of it.
“Neither are you!” I reply, my voice rising much higher than I anticipated. “You were never a quitter. But you gave up on your dream, Dad. You could have been something amazing but you quit. For me. I can’t live with myself knowing you did that. I can’t. You have to take it back. You have to!”
My final words are strangled in sobs. The tears are falling so fast, I fear I might drown in them. Dad rushes over, sits down on my bed, and pulls me into his arms. I collapse against his chest and cry like I used to do when I was a little girl. When all I needed to stave off the nightmares was my dad’s strong, unrelenting arms.
But it’s going to take a lot more than a hug to stave off this nightmare. It’s going to take a miracle.
“I don’t regret anything,” Dad whispers into my ear. “I promise.”
I shake my head, most likely leaving unsightly smudges on his white undershirt. “But your job,” I mumble. “You hate your job. You must regret taking it.”
“Never,” he says, with such certainty it almost startles me. I lift my head and look at him through my blurry, tear-filled eyes.
He laughs and reaches out to wipe my face. “Look what it did for you! You are at one of the best schools in the country. You’ve practically been accepted to Columbia. How could I ever regret that? I’m so proud of you.”
I open my mouth to speak, but no words come out. How can I tell him? How can I possibly admit that I wasted it all? I can’t. I won’t. I refuse.
Dad offers me an encouraging smile. “Look. Jeffrey and Associates might be how I make money but it’s not my job. My job, first and foremost, is being your dad. I made that choice eighteen years ago when I left my ‘edgy phase’ behind and decided to be a husband and a father. It was the best choice I ever made. Every parent makes the decision to put someone else’s life first when they have children. My job is providing for you and Frankie and giving you guys everything you want. However I can. And you know what?” He reaches out and catches a stray tear that rolls down my cheek. “I did that. I’ve succeeded. So, no, I regret nothing.”
I sit there for a moment, letting his words sink in, letting my tears dry a little. And then I ask, “Remember when I used to write captions for you?”
He smiles. “Of course. You were always a great writer.” He nudges his chin toward his open laptop on the bed. “What would you caption this?”
I wipe my nose and glance at the screen. At the lifeless eye that stares back at me. I think about all the things those eyes have witnessed. All the late nights of homework and staring at computers and lying awake feeling the strain of too little sleep. I think about how those eyes have watched my father leave and my mother struggle to cope. They’ve watched one friend fall apart while the other fought so hard to keep it together. I think about Dylan and how he saw something in those eyes that I couldn’t see until right now.
But mostly, I think about the girl behind those eyes.
The girl who gambled with her future and lost.
The girl who thought she had everything she always wanted until she realized it was an illusion.
She’s not me. She’s some other me.
And yet somehow we are connected. Somehow we are the same. It was our same mind that got us here. It was our mutual decisions that led us down this path. It was both of our hands that dug this hole. And now we need our combined strengths to get us out.
I sniffle and look back at my dad. “I would call it ‘Resurrection.’”