Dear Edward(49)

“At least you know there won’t be any consequences for shoving her,” Shay says. “Because you’re you.”

“They wouldn’t do anything to a kid for shoving someone one time.”

“They most certainly would. I got suspended for punching a boy.”

Edward stares. “You were suspended? When?”

“Right before you got here. The kid’s family moved away, so he’s not at the school anymore.” Shay closes the book she’s holding. “He hummed under his breath during every class, which was profoundly irritating. I couldn’t take it.”

“So you punched him?”

“Well, I was bored before you got here, and I hate being bored. I had to entertain myself. I’ve almost run away every year since I was six. I always had a different plan, with different timing. I realized at some point that I was never going to actually run away, because it would kill my mother. But I still needed to make the plan, to distract myself.”

Edward has a memory of standing on the front stoop with Besa during one of his first weeks here. “Your mom told me that you used to hit girls sometimes, when you were little. She was thanking me for being your friend, and I assumed she was exaggerating to make me feel less bad about showing up here.”

“She wasn’t exaggerating.”

“What were you trying to distract yourself from?”

Shay makes an exasperated noise, then says, “I don’t know. My mother buying me dolls every Christmas, hoping I would play with them. Eating dinner at five-fifteen every single day. Do you know our chicken schedule? Because we have a chicken schedule. We eat fried chicken on Mondays, roasted chicken on Wednesdays, and barbecued chicken breasts on Fridays. It never varies.”

Edward feels like he’s walked into a different bedroom from the one he sleeps in every night. He remembers following Shay down the school hallway on the first day of seventh grade, watching her elbow a boy out of his way. He remembers her scowling at the people who used to watch him as if he were a parade. He can see this new version of Shay in the old one.

She shakes her hands out, the way athletes do between competitions. “Look,” she says. “I don’t want to shut up anymore. I don’t think you want me to.”

“No,” he says, even though he feels nervous. The air in the room is strange, like the still precursor to a hurricane.

“The plane crash, and you moving here, was obviously exciting,” she says. “But now …”

He nods. He knows that now is different, and dissatisfying. The air is loose, and there is room for boredom along with other types of chronic mild discomfort. Edward pants slightly, almost bends over and puts his hands on his knees because today has worn him out, but he has to focus, because him being irritable at the world and Shay being irritated at him are two very different things. The second is unacceptable, and yet Edward can now see small signs of her disengagement over the past few months. Sometimes Shay turns out the bedside light early, even when she’s not particularly tired. She chose to take a different elective from him at camp: Edward signed up for an additional session of arts and crafts, and she took wood shop. Once or twice she sat at a table full of other kids at lunch. He feels a trill of panic. He’s losing her.

“I’m sorry I’m boring you,” he says, and hates how whiny he sounds.

She shrugs. “This isn’t about you, Edward. For once.”

There’s danger in her expression. She looks out the window like she wants to jump and hit the pavement running. He knows that, somehow, his speaking angrily to her in the gym unleashed this. She’d been committed to taking care of him, and he’d told her to back off.

Oh God, he thinks. What have I done?

When she turns back toward him, her expression is fierce. “I have to tell you something.”

“You don’t have to right now,” Edward says. “Tell me tomorrow.” He has no idea what Shay’s about to say, only that he can’t bear anything more. He has a memory of watching his mom press her thumb against the birthmark on her collarbone. When Jane noticed her son watching, she’d smiled and said, I press here when I want to turn back time. Eight-year-old Edward had believed her and wished that he’d been born with a magical birthmark. He has the same wish now, again. Filled with dread, he wants to reverse away from this moment.

“I promised my mother I would say this, or else she said she would tell you, and that would be mortifying.”

A car on the street honks loudly, and Edward feels the sound inside his body.

“You can’t sleep in my room anymore. It’s fine, though; nothing else will change.”

His body temperature plummets; his skin is suddenly cold. “Why?”

“My mother made me promise when you showed up here, when you first started sleeping in my room, that it would stop when we stopped being kids. When I became a woman. Ugh.” Her hands are over her face. She speaks between the spread of fingers. “That’s what she calls it.”

Edward looks at the clock on her bedside table. It’s eight-seventeen. How is this day still happening? “What are you talking about?” he says. “You know I don’t understand anything.”

“I got my period.”

With the exception of the trip to D.C., Edward has walked in the darkness from his house to hers every night since he met her. “So what?” he says, but he knows this is something Besa would care about, a milestone where she would, and has, planted her flag.