A Million Miles Away(59)

“I love you, Peter,” she said, and he appeared to have finally heard her.

“I love you, too—” he said, and leaned closer to the screen, but at that point, the call dropped.

She jumped out of her desk chair, and then on top of it, yelling until her lungs got tired. “YES! Yes, yes, yes, yes!”

She opened the screen door to her porch and fought the urge to shimmy up the drainpipe to the roof of her house.

Her future was still uncertain, and so was his, but they would be together. First, in Kansas, then, who knows? She closed her eyes, feeling the wind.

The sun had risen over a path, she could see Peter there, ready to take it with her. She was free.





CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR


Kelsey, Gillian, and Ingrid surveyed the party from above, their graduation gowns in wrinkled heaps on Kelsey’s floor. Kelsey was wearing the dress the three of them had picked out from the Topshop in the Kansas City plaza, a simple, short skater dress in bright crimson, to match the crimson and blue balloons her mother had tied on every available surface, making their house appear like a giant playground ball pit.

“But in a good way,” she had assured her mom.

Besides the grief group, they hadn’t had guests over since Michelle’s funeral, and until yesterday, it had showed. Her mother had rescheduled her students’ final so she and Kelsey could spend the morning clearing out the pizza boxes from the recycling, sweeping the floors, putting ailing house plants out of their misery.

They had spoken little, handing each other the dustpan, catching each other’s eyes with small, warm smiles.

When they were through, Kelsey reminded her to hide the jade statues.

The pomp and circumstance came next: shaking hands with the principal she barely knew, holding up her diploma for photos from every angle, and her favorite part, tossing her cap in the air among so many others, like a flock of one-flight birds.

“Oh, look,” Gillian said, pointing to the yard from the porch. “There’s that guy from Chemistry. You invited that guy?”

“Sure,” Kelsey said, careful not to muss her lipstick on her straw. “I invited everybody. Why not?”

“Even Davis?”

“What? Where?” Kelsey scanned the crowd, then found him immediately, chatting up her father next to Anna and George, as well as some of his fraternity brothers.

“I didn’t invite him, actually.” Her mother must have contacted her ex-boyfriend, for the sake of good graces.

He caught her looking at him, and waved. She waved back.

Davis made a long, brushing motion with his hand, from his head, all the way down, and pointed at her. Beautiful, he mouthed, and gave a thumbs-up.

Thank you, Kelsey mouthed, and smiled.

Everything was beautiful. This afternoon, just as the green of the backyard trees had realized its full potential, Kelsey’s mother had strung the leaves with Lions’ red streamers, like Christmas. Even the halfhearted peonies that her father had planted long ago looked fertile and content, thick white petals drooping in droves.

Bees swarmed the sugar-soaked rims of margarita glasses.

Someone had brought their French bulldog to the party, who made his rounds licking sauce off of fingertips.

“The frat boys are going to eat all the tacos,” Ingrid complained, examining her manicure.

“Let them eat tacos,” Kelsey said with a flourish of her hand like a queen over her subjects. She didn’t know most of the people crowding the speakers, which were blasting Beyoncé, or at least she didn’t know them anymore. But she had barely known herself until now. Today, she was weightless.

She was a graduate. She was a future Rock Chalk Dancer. She was in love with Peter, who would be home in a matter of months.

Which reminded her.

“Be right back,” she told Gillian and Ingrid, and went inside to get her phone.

Meg had texted her earlier, asking her what her plans were today.

Can’t come help you practice, Kelsey typed, because she couldn’t see any other reason why Meg would be asking. My parents are throwing me a graduation party!

Before she hit SEND, she paused, remembering. Meg still didn’t know about Michelle.

She debated, then edited the text to read My parents are throwing us a graduation party! and sent the message. Eventually Meg would understand, once Peter got home to explain it to her.

She returned to her side of the porch, which would always be her side. Even Gillian and Ingrid hadn’t spread out to Michelle’s section, out of habit, or perhaps out of quiet respect.

“To Mitch,” Kelsey said, lifting up her glass.

“To Mitch,” they repeated, and Gillian put a hand on her shoulder.

Kelsey was transported to last year at this time, when the four of them were attending Davis’s graduation party.

Kelsey and Michelle were just about to turn seventeen. They were standing around an enormous sheet cake. As they gathered, Kelsey’s mother, Davis’s parents, and his grandparents began to take their photo. Flashes sprayed their vision for a few minutes, the lot of them united, barely touching each other’s backs as they stood, imagining it was just another five minutes they had together. Together as they were, seventeen and nothing else.

Michelle had chosen that moment to whisper to Kelsey, “This time next year, I’ll be long gone.”