A World Without You(93)

Time is giving me a choice between which reality I want to live.

I look down at my hands.

In my left hand is the red thread connecting me to Sofía. If I choose that life, I have powers. I have adventure. And I have Sofía.

In my right hand is the black thread connecting me to the sound of my heartbeat. To the Doctor. To Berkshire. To Phoebe and my family. To Ryan and a world where I’m sick, where I don’t know who to trust, where my life is hollow and bitter.

But it’s still my life.

? ? ?

And it’s still my choice.





EPILOGUE


Phoebe

One year later



My gown is made of cheap polyester, and the zipper is already broken.

I love it anyway.

“One more!” Mom says, adjusting her camera.

“Come on,” I whine.

“Just one more,” she promises. When she doesn’t lower the camera, I stand up straighter, turning to the lens and smiling, making sure the tassel over my graduation cap is on the left side. Mom darts forward and adjusts the medal hanging from my neck—the award for highest AP scores in math—and then dashes back to snap the picture.

“Okay, done,” I say. Jenny and Rosemarie are nearby, both of them humoring their parents with more pictures too. Rosemarie’s little brother, Peter, keeps trying to steal her graduation cap.

“Want me to take one with your whole family?” Jenny’s mother asks me.

“Yes! Please!” Mom says, grabbing Dad and dragging him to the fountain, where I’m standing.

“You said this was the last picture,” I say under my breath.

“This one is.” Mom kisses my cheek.

Dad stands up straight and tall beside me. He looks uncomfortable in his suit, even though he wears one every Sunday. He’s very aware of the camera Jenny’s mom is pointing at us, as if whether or not the picture turns out good rests entirely on his shoulders.

“Wait a minute!” I say before Jenny’s mom can click a picture with Mom’s fancy camera. “Where’s Bo?”

Mom frowns. “He was just here a minute ago . . .”

“Here I am.” My brother runs forward. “Trying to cut me out of the family picture?”

I drag him beside me. Without thinking, I’d grabbed his bad hand, the one injured in the fire. It doesn’t hurt him, but his skin feels unnaturally slick beneath my touch, and the scarring on his palm feels weird. I drop his hand as soon as I realize, but I bump his shoulder with mine, looking up at him and grinning.

“Okay, everyone, this way!” Jenny’s mom calls. “Ready? One, two, three!” She snaps the picture, then holds the camera out to Mom for approval.

“Glad you could make it,” I tell Bo as Mom gets Dad to take a picture of Jenny’s family for her.

“Glad to be here,” he says, but there’s still a little distance in his voice, as if he’s not really here, not all the way. His eyes are on Dad, drinking in the dark suit and carefully knotted tie. Bo’s not dressed up. He’s wearing a plain shirt with no holes in it, though, so I guess that counts for something. But the difference between Bo and my dad is far greater than the way they dress.

I want so badly to ask Bo if he’s happy now. He came back from the fire at his old school different, but I’ve never been able to decide if that difference was good. He’s steadier now, but is that really better? Sometimes there’s a hollowness in his gaze, a melancholy twist to his smile. I think about the blank pages in his notebook. I’m sure they’re still blank.

I shake my head. That’s Dad’s way of thinking. Bo isn’t a before-and-after picture, he’s just the same Bo. And even though he’s different now, and even though I cannot read the difference, he’s still my brother. Asking him if he’s happy now is moot. Happy is too definite a word to describe Bo. He’s alive. He survived. And when we talk about the future, like we did that morning over cereal, the conversation now includes what he wants to do and be.

“These are new,” Bo says, tweaking my navy blue cat-eye glasses.

“I’m tired of contacts,” I say. “And they’re not that new.”

“New to me.” This is the first time I’ve seen Bo in over three months. The new school he attends is in upstate New York, and even though it’s just a few hours’ drive, the program there is more “rigorous,” as Dad describes it. Mom and Dad get monthly reports from the school, detailed analyses and charts all mailed in a giant manila envelope. They talk about Bo’s medication and how it’s more stabilized now, and they include schedules of therapy and courses, as well as charts that track grades and progress, both academic and psychological. Every envelope includes a note saying that the purpose of Bo’s therapy is not to “heal” him, but to help him cope with his illness and navigate a somewhat normal life. One day. In the future.

He does look better, though. But there’s still a part of him that isn’t quite here. His body’s present, but maybe there will always be a part of his mind that’s not. Ever since Sofía died and the academy burned, there’s been something about Bo that’s more absent than before. He’s like a man who lived through a battle but isn’t quite sure whether or not he left the war.