Dad: You can go to him and see for yourself.
I can, but I won’t.
Because I know that no matter how hard it is right now, we were toxic while we were together.
Instead, I turn around and walk back home. Clutching my coat tight, I wrap it more firmly around my chest so the wind won’t slip in.
After all, I have a hole in my shirt the size of Penn’s heart.
The day after, I sit on my cold patio and read Penn’s journal. The pages are wrinkled and yellow, and the spine is almost completely ruined. I need duplicates before I destroy this one. But I’m not ready to replace the real thing with a copy. I flip through the pages, noting the change in his attitude and feelings from his first entry, right after the fight with Vaughn at the snake pit, to the last entries when we were both ripped apart by our feelings. I reread my favorite poem from him.
You’re tearing confessions from my mouth
Reactions from my flesh
Fights from my fists
Blood from my heart
With your eyes alone
Sometimes I want to break the wall I built between us
Let you in
And watch you destroy me
I smile at his bravery. Penn never much cared about getting hurt. Even when he was the tin man, even when his heart was just a faint beat, merely surviving and not doing much else, he always gave me a run for my money. It is stupid, if not completely awful, that I’m too scared to love him.
Too terrified to get hurt.
More than anything—I’m too unsure of myself to know I wouldn’t screw it up.
I hear low growls from the balcony and tip my head forward, peeking down. I live on the main street right in front of quaint, super-pastoral shops. I watch as Penn and Dad come out of a Starbucks. They look like they’re fighting.
Only this time, I can hear them. Unlike the old Daria, I stop and think if I should. If they’d want me to. I stand and—I don’t know with what strength—begin to make my way back into my living room when I hear that the conversation is about me.
“You’re going to throw away everything, Penn? Really? We had a deal. You said if I gave her the journal, you’d pretend to still be in the game for this. Still make an effort in this thing called life. Well, she got the journal, all right? Move the hell on. Apply yourself and fulfill your part of the deal.”
“I’m not enrolling. I want to go find her,” Penn says dryly. “And we can do it the hard, roundabout, not-gonna-talk-to-each-other-again way, or my way, in which you leave me the fuck alone. I said thank you. A thousand times. I’m not going to take a fucking scholarship and let this thing go away. It’s not going away. Trust me.”
My heart is in my throat. Penn is about to give up his scholarship to try to find me? That’s crazy talk. I pace on my balcony, just a few feet away from them, though they can’t see me from this sharp angle, and rub my face with my hands.
What to do? What to say?
“You will ruin your life for a girl who doesn’t want you anymore,” Dad says, and it’s like a shot in the back for me. Because I want him. I want Penn more than I want my next breath. I just don’t know if I’m good enough for him, and I can’t risk hurting him one more time. But it seems as if he’s already hurting just as much as I am.
Penn chuckles darkly. “Well, then. The only difference between you and me is that Melody said yes, and Daria is saying no. But you, Jaime, you did the same.”
I ask Melody to visit me that same weekend. She does in a heartbeat, not even waiting for Friday. By Thursday, when I get back from school, I find her in my kitchen, making my favorite chicken pot pie, designer bags spilling with clothes on the dining table. She put music on her phone, and it’s the favorite song “Maniac” from Flashdance. We used to dance to it like two loons when I was a kid.
When she sees me entering the room, she stops everything, straightens her spine, and wipes the last of the tomato sauce from her fingers onto her apron. I stand on the kitchen threshold, and for the first time in years, I see her for who she is.
A mother trying desperately to reconnect with her daughter but doesn’t know how to because they’ve both made so many mistakes.
I plaster my forehead to the doorframe, taking a deep breath.
“What’s wrong, Lovebug? Is everything okay?”
No. It’s not. I’ve hurt her so much over the years, not communicating the frustration, fear, and jealousy I’d felt, and now we are like two strangers playing house. I walk into the kitchen and stand in front of her, dropping my backpack to the floor, just like I did that day in the studio when Via walked in and stole my thunder.
This time, Melody is not looking for anyone else.
She sees me.
“Our parents mold us into shapes,” I start, trailing the granite counter with my fingers. “You, Melody, lost interest in me halfway through and moved on to another project. To a piece of art with the potential to be flawless. Her name was Via, and even though I’ve always been jealous of people for various things, my jealousy toward Sylvia Scully consumed me. Want to know why, Mel? You looked at her like I wished you’d look at me. Like she was already a fully formed, perfect piece of work while I was barely even a canvas stretched on a wooden frame. I didn’t see the whole picture. I didn’t know where her fancy clothes came from. I didn’t know why you let her get away with it on the days she didn’t have proper clothing on while you berated all of us for less. I didn’t know why you bought her favorite energy bars for her, or why you took her for a week in London, or why it was so important to you that she be there for every class.”