Graduation couldn’t come fast enough.
My grades slipped over the past few weeks, but it was so close to the end of the semester it didn’t matter. It wasn’t enough for any college to rescind their offer of admission. I accepted at a small local university, and almost immediately wrote a letter to the director of admissions explaining why I wanted to defer for a year.
Last September, Mom and Dad wouldn’t have loved the idea of me taking a gap year. After all this, they agreed that it might be for the best. I think part of the reason they did was because of Sully and Church’s impromptu intervention on my behalf. Right away Dad began intercepting all phone calls and mail meant for me, and Mom planned a list of activities we could do to get me out of the house more—most of which involved walking Davy around the neighborhood, thankfully—and she hung up a little sign on the fridge with a row of emotion faces so I can mark how I’m feeling every day. I would’ve called it stupid before, but it’s easier, some days, than having to talk.
“What do you mean, you won’t have to go to school next year?” Sully roars at the dinner table when Mom and Dad announce the plan. “We still have to go to school next year! That’s so not fair!”
Church quietly shovels peas into his mouth.
“Sully!” Mom hisses. Neither of my brothers is allowed to complain about anything that happens because of my “meltdowns,” as Sully calls them, even if they’re joking, but I like it that Sully gets so upset. He makes this all feel like some goofy problem in a movie. It’ll get resolved with a neat little bow after an hour and a half of family fun.
Sully sinks in his chair with a sour look.
Something buzzes. Church pulls his phone out of his pocket.
“Oh, hey, look.” He passes it across the table to me. On it is a message from Lucy Warland.
“Why do you have Lucy Warland’s number?” I ask.
“Because she’s cool,” Church says. “Also because Sully didn’t want to ask for her number himself.”
Sully’s face turns red.
“She told me she’d send pictures from the graduation ceremony,” Church goes on.
Ah, graduation. That thing I achieved, and then refused to celebrate. Just knowing I never have to set foot in that high school again has made it easier to breathe. I bring up the picture full screen and find a ceremony hall full of my classmates, seated in neat rows of silky graduation robes. A line has formed on one side of the stage, where the graduates are ascending to take their diplomas from the principal.
Lucy snapped the shot as Wallace went up. I can see it as if the picture’s a video: Wallace sets his own deliberate pace up the steps and across the stage. His face is stoic, as always, because there are far too many people in the room and the more overloaded he is, the less expression he makes. He’s bigger than the principal. His hand dwarfs the smaller man’s. He takes his diploma and lumbers off the stage, and most of the crowd thinks he’s stupid, or a dumb jock, or nobody at all.
I know who he is. I know what he can do.
“Can I have my phone back now?”
I hand the phone to Church. Sully glares at me.
“What’s wrong with you?” he asks. “You look like you swallowed a tire.”
“May I be excused?”
Mom blinks. “Sure. What for?”
“I need to go upstairs. To change. I was supposed to meet Wallace at his house after the ceremony.”
Mom and Dad look at each other. “We didn’t know about this,” Dad says.
“Sorry, I forgot to tell you.”
I hurry upstairs and look through my dresser for something nice to wear. Something actually nice, like one of the outfits Mom and Dad got me for Christmas. I fix my hair. Try to put on some makeup, fail, try again. “Warland” is so close to the end of the names they call—the ceremony must be over by now.
Mom and Dad let me leave without much fuss. I think they’re shocked to see me looking that nice and wearing makeup.
The Keeler house is empty when I arrive. I park along the curb and walk up to sit on the porch. The late-May night is warm, the sun halfway below the horizon in the distance. It’s been too long since I’ve been here. Wallace and I haven’t really spoken since the Olivia Kane letter, though we still eat lunch together at school. It’s too much trouble to break routine. I don’t know if the publisher’s offer to him still stands, and I don’t know if he expects me to show up on his doorstep one day—like I’m doing now—with those pages in hand.
I do know that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I have to make him understand this guilt festering inside me.
I wait fifteen minutes before a car pulls down the street and into the driveway.
The Keelers get out. Tim, Bren, and Lucy first. Then Vee. Wallace gets out of the back seat last, which means he must’ve been sandwiched between Bren and Lucy. How the three of them managed to fit, I’ll never know.
“Oh, Eliza! We didn’t expect to see you here, hon!” Vee flies over and sweeps me up in a hug.
Lucy comes next, like friendliness is programmed into her DNA. Her million little braids have been replaced with smooth, straight locks. “Did you see the pictures I sent Church? I didn’t get very many, but he said he wanted some, so . . .”
“Yeah, I got them.”
Then Bren and Tim appear, but neither of them are huggers, and that’s fine with me. Bren puts a hand on my shoulder. Her hair is held back today with a thick orange headband. “How are you feeling?”
“Not too bad.”
She smiles.
“We were sad to miss you at graduation tonight,” Tim says, also smiling. I wasn’t sure about his opinion of me before, but now that he knows I made Monstrous Sea, it must be higher. Surely. “Are you going to be staying for a while?”
“Oh—I don’t know. I wanted to talk to Wallace for a few minutes.”
Tim looks over his shoulder to where Wallace still stands by the car. “Okay then, we’ll leave you kids to it.” He herds the rest of the family into the house, and then it’s only me and Wallace and the quiet of the street.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says. His quiet voice barely crosses the distance between us. His cap and gown are tucked under one arm; he wore a suit beneath them, without the jacket.
“You look good in a tie,” I say.
“I feel like I’m being strangled,” he says. “Are you wearing makeup?”
“A little. Does it look stupid?”
“No.”
I tuck hair behind my ear. I force my breathing to even out, and my thoughts slow down from there. My body is not a disgusting thing I have to carry around with me. I am not being squeezed through a narrow tube. I am here. I can do this.
I repeat these things to myself over and over again, but I don’t know that I believe them. Not yet.
“Lucy sent us a picture of you. It made me—it made me really happy.”
“Okay.”
I take a step closer to him. “I haven’t finished the pages. I would have told you if I had. I . . . I did try.” He doesn’t move. “I want to finish so badly. I hate that I can’t. I hate that I’m the one holding you back. And you were right. That I have everything I could ever need. I don’t think my life is perfect, but it’s pretty great compared to others, and I shouldn’t complain about it as much as I do.”
He stays silent.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “For lying to you about everything, and for not being able to finish.”
Still nothing.
Finally I blurt out, “I miss you.”
“You miss me,” he says. I can’t read his face.
“I know things are weird now for a lot of reasons. And I don’t blame you if you—if you hate me.” My legs start to shake, so I press my knees together. “But I wanted you to know that I miss you, and I don’t want things to be like this. If you just want to be friends—or if you don’t even want to be that—that’s fine, but after this summer we won’t be in the same place anymore.”
After an unbearable stretch of silence, he says, “I don’t know if you understand how angry I am.”
My stomach plummets. “What?”
“You lied for so long, even after my email, and then . . . the writing stuff.” He shrugs his massive shoulders. “I’m not sure how I’m going to pay for school. Get a lot of jobs, I guess. I’m going to be working most of the summer, so I don’t think I can hang out.”
“Oh.”
“Just. You know.”
“Yeah.” I focus on the car’s front bumper.
He walks past me to go inside. No good-bye. No see you later. He disappears into the house, and I’m left standing alone.It feels as if the ground is swallowing my feet. Walking down the driveway is like walking through mud, and when I reach the end, I can’t move any farther. I kneel, hands cupped around the back of my neck, shoulders between my knees, and my breath comes out in harsh ratcheting gasps.
Wallace won’t forgive me. It doesn’t matter what I say to myself. It doesn’t matter how many times I apologize or explain. In my worst nightmares, I never imagined him not even wanting to be friends with me. But in my worst nightmares, the most terrible thing that happened was he found out who I am.
Wallace won’t forgive me.
How can anyone else?