Picture Us In The Light(63)

My dad’s sitting on the couch/pullout bed, and his belt with the walkie-talkie is sprawled across the couch like taking it off was the first thing he did. He says, “What happened with school?”

He has dark smudges under his eyes and his hair is stringy, and there’s a new hollowness carving itself out under his cheekbones. I can feel how badly he wants not to have this conversation, wants not to have one more thing to worry or feel guilty about. “Did it go all right? You’re enrolled?”

“All enrolled.”

“Do we have to sign anything?”

“No.”

“Was there any trouble?”

My palms are sweating. I try to force my voice to come out casual. “No, it’s all taken care of. They just needed the forms.”

“Well, good. Did you get all the same classes?”

“Ah—yeah. Pretty much.”

“Did they give you a schedule?”

“I think I find out the first day I go.”

He frowns. “You didn’t go today?”

“Oh—no, they told me to come back tomorrow. They have to like process the paperwork and everything.”

“I see.” He leans back again. “Is there any left over from your sandwiches?”

“Oh—sorry, I didn’t know you wanted—”

“That’s okay.” He glances toward the kitchen like maybe he’ll go see if anything materialized, and then gives up, sinking deeper into the couch like he would meld into it if he could, shed his tired body.

A good person, the kind of person I’ve always wanted to be, would feel compassion for him. Would offer—having sat at home most of the day—to maybe put together something for him to eat or go out and get him another sandwich. Maybe that’s the kind of daughter my sister would’ve turned out to be.

And I know that’s my duty, since she never got the chance. And I also know that if there’s any kind of real karma in this world I’m not exactly in a safe position to nurse my anger.

But still. Looking at him there, exhausted, like his day and probably the past months won’t leave him alone and like probably he regrets all the off-ramps he could’ve taken away from this last stop, all I can think is: Good.





An hour-and-forty-five-minute bus ride starting at 5:09 every morning is, if possible, even more exhausting than it sounds. When my alarm goes off my whole chest cavity feels hollow and aching and I have to drag myself out of bed. I don’t know if I can do this every morning.

But then on the bus I text Harry to complain and he tells me he’ll get there early to hang out. At 6:54, when the bus stops, I see him stopped on the side of Stelling with his hazard lights on, his car spilling over the bike lane halfway into the street. He’s reading on his phone, oblivious to the stream of cars displaced around him when I get in.

“Pretty sure you aren’t supposed to be parked here,” I say, right as someone honks.

Harry waves it off. “It’s practically dark out still and there’s no one on the road. They can go around me.”

The relief I feel at seeing him in person balloons around me, filling the car so thickly between us it actually makes him seem farther away. I can’t stop smiling. I imagine my alternate-universe self making my way through the other school right now, how miserable I would be. This was the right choice. This was the only choice.

Harry has a long external monologue about whether we have time to go to Philz and back before first period starts, finally settling on no (you’re already breaking the rules, so let’s not tempt fate), and so instead we go hang out in the Journalism Lab. It’s mostly dark when we go in, the soft on-off dimming of the power lights glowing like forty tiny heartbeats across the computers. Harry runs his hand up the bank of light switches, and the room wakes up. I kind of miss the darkness. You feel closer to people inside it.

“You look tired,” I say. In the fluorescent lighting I can see the dark circles under his eyes.

“Yep.”

“You up studying or something?”

“Nah. I was just—I couldn’t sleep. My parents were on me about next year.”

We both settle into the chairs in front of computer stations. The school sprung for the nice kind of chairs, swiveling padded ones, except they’re constantly getting poached into other classrooms so we’re always half a dozen short, and we fight over them. I always lose. I don’t fight hard enough. I say, “They’re on you how? It’s too late to do anything now. Your applications are all in.”

“I know. They’re just worried I didn’t do enough. My mom keeps saying I should’ve done more SAT tutoring.”

“You did so much SAT tutoring, Harry.”

“Yeah, but I really think I could’ve gotten a perfect score. I just kept choking on test days.”

He missed the perfect score by ten points, in the end. “I really doubt that’s going to break you.”

He shrugs. “My mom thinks it will.”

I know what his parents can be like, but still, it defies the imagination that anyone could know Harry and wish he were somehow different or more. I want to tell him that, want him to know I mean it. I clear my throat. “Harry, you know—”

But at the exact same time he starts to talk. “They definitely—”