The Best Possible Answer(42)

“No more Uni?”

“Most likely, no. No more Bennett Village. No more Uni.”

And that’s what makes me cry. I think about my last year of high school without Sammie. I don’t know how I’ll survive.

I won’t.

“Your life really is falling apart,” she says. “And so is mine.”

Sammie texts Mr. Bautista about our shift change. If we can’t be together next year, we can at least, hopefully, be together the rest of the summer. And then we lie in her bed the rest of the morning, both of us crying, blubbering our wet tears into Kleenex, until it’s time for her to go take care of my shift.





Habits of an Effective Test Taker #6

On most exams, when you’re uncertain of the correct answer, informed guessing can give you an advantage overall.


My parents each text me at least a dozen times, until I finally text them back to let them know that, yes, I’m alive, and, no, I won’t be returning home for a while, that I need some space to think, and to please just leave me alone, that it’s the only thing I really want for my birthday, to be left alone.

Surprisingly, that makes them stop.

I lie in Sammie’s bed alone and think about my dad. I wonder what she looks like—this woman, Paige. She talked about “the kids.” Kids. Not just one, but two or maybe more? Like it wasn’t an accident. It was planned, thought out, wished for. I try to imagine their faces. I wonder if they have the same red hair that I do and if their eyes are light like mine.

I finally, somehow, drift off into a restless sleep.

I wake up gasping for breath.

I know what I need to do.

I need to see them.

I pick up my phone. It’s 4:30 P.M.

Maybe he hasn’t left yet. Maybe there’s still time.

I grab a shirt and pants out of Sammie’s drawer and throw them on. I run down the stairwell and through the lobby, heading toward the corner bus stop across the street from Bennett Tower.

I stand behind the faded glass, and I wait. This woman, Paige, thinks that he’s coming home at six, so I hope he hasn’t left from our place yet. With any luck, I can catch him.

At twenty past five, he emerges from the lobby of Bennett Tower dressed in a suit and tie, a small duffel bag in his hand. He puts on his sunglasses and starts walking north. I stay on my side of the street, and then I follow him.

My father’s always been a fast walker, and I’m trying not to be too obvious in my tracking of him. I do my best to keep a safe distance but also not to stay so far away that I’ll lose him. He heads up Clark Street and makes his way into Lincoln Park, where it’s harder to stay out of his sight. I slow my pace and almost lose him when he ducks under a bridge and back onto the street. I run after him and catch up enough to be able to follow at a steady pace for another ten minutes or so.

He turns a few corners and walks down some small tree-lined streets, and then finally he arrives at a large and beautiful brownstone on a fancy street named Geneva Terrace. It’s three stories high and newly renovated, with a bright red door and perfectly manicured bushes. This other family lives in a giant house on a side street in a much nicer neighborhood than where we live.

He pulls out his key, unlocks the door, and walks inside.

Oh, no.

I wasn’t thinking.

I had this vision of him opening the front door and his other wife and his other kids running to him, of him lifting them into his arms, embracing them on the front steps. As though this is something he’d want the world to see.

I sit on the edge of the curb and stare at the house: this house in this nice neighborhood, which might have very well cost him a million dollars or more, that belongs to my father but does not belong to us.

It’s my birthday. I’m seventeen today. There’s no cake, no candles, no streamers, or songs. Just me, alone, on a curb, following the lies of a man whose life I once thought I understood.

I make my birthday wish anyway.

I sit and I wait. And then I close my eyes.

And I make a wish.

I make a wish that one day I’ll understand.

I make a wish that one day I’ll be able to see the truth of it all.

*

An hour later, part of my wish comes true.

I have to scramble to hide behind a parked car when I see my father come out of the building. And behind him, a tall, stylish brunette with bangs and an elegant skirt. He holds the door open and then lifts a stroller down the steps. There’s a little boy in the stroller, and the woman, Paige, presumably, is holding the hand of a little girl who follows him down the steps. My father reaches his hand out to Paige and pulls her close.

The kids both have red hair, curly and wild, like my father’s.

Like mine.

This is it.

There they are.

They’re a beautiful family, model-perfect. It’s like they stepped out of a catalog. Paige is young and pretty, and the kids are well dressed, the boy in khakis and a Cubs hat, the girl in a purple paisley dress, her hair in pigtails. She’s clutching a stuffed lion. It’s just like the one he brought for Mila.

More than anything, I think.

You matter, I think.

And then I think, I could follow them to dinner or to the park or whatever place they’re going to.

But I’ve seen enough.

From this one sight alone, I have my answer.