Begin Again(63)

Ever since he tried to get in touch, I’ve been willing to forfeit those moments with my dad. I may have had no choice in his leaving, but I do have a choice in him coming back. And I can’t help resenting him for having to make it. I can’t help resenting him knowing that, if the roles had been reversed, my mom would have stayed, and I’d never have to make a choice like this at all.

It isn’t just Milo’s words that sink in then. It’s my dad’s, too. The voicemails he’s left. The giggle of a little girl I’ve never met. The sound of my own voice wondering when things would go back to the way they were, when I’d get my dad back again.

My fingers curl into my palms. He is back. He’s trying to be. But I don’t even know what that looks like anymore, so I have no idea how to let him back in.

Just then Milo opens the door to the fresh, post-storm air, to the too-white snow and the too-bright sky. We blink into it for a moment, both of us processing the arboretum like we’ve stepped into some alternate reality. No storms. No dead parents. No doubts about the future holding us back.

“For the record, Milo,” I say quietly into the new air, “I would miss you.”

It doesn’t change anything, but it feels important for him to know. Or maybe just important to say it out loud. Like maybe I can make the hurt of missing him a little less if I own up to it now instead of later.

Milo turns away from me, carefully shutting the door behind us. When he looks at me again, there’s something resolute in his eyes that I can’t get to the bottom of no matter how hard I try.

“For the record, Andie—same to you.”





Chapter Twenty


I have every intention of calling my dad that night, except the entire dorm descends on us when we get back. Apparently getting four small stitches at the crown of your head is all it takes to become a Blue Ridge celebrity. Shay makes us tea and knocks on Harriet’s door to commandeer enough cash to pull all the dusty Cheetos and Reese’s out of the vending machine, and Shay and Milo and I sit on the floor in a pile of pillows Shay fashioned by her bookshelf.

Milo sniffs at his own mug—the one covered in chickens that I now recognize as the chickens in his mom’s coop—and takes a tiny sip. “I will admit this isn’t the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

I snort. “It only took a tree almost killing you.”

Shay raises her eyebrows at us, not for the first time since we got back. “I’m never going outside again, huh.”

“We angered the weather gods,” says Milo grimly. “Should we call Valeria? She might get—” Milo squints at the label on the tea box—“herbal coconut macadamia FOMO.”

Shay sighs. “Well.”

And that is how she ends up telling Milo about the whole mess with the literary magazine and the crush and the very unfortunate tension between her and Val, in that frank, resigned manner of someone who has gotten over the initial shock of something and doesn’t know what to do next. Milo lets out several sympathetic hisses between his teeth and a “See, this is why love is a scam. Run, Shay. Run.”

Shay rolls her eyes, and then meets mine. “I need a plan B. I’m assuming you already have them through Z, though.”

“I could, in fact, offer the alphabet,” I say. “If you do want my help.”

Shay puts a hand on mine like she’s one of Connor’s soccer coaches and says, “I’m tapping you in.”

I take a sip of my tea and spend the rest of the night scheming.

Well, most of it, at least. I can’t help checking if the next yellow-ribbon event is still on for the next day, but even before I see that it is, I make a choice. A choice to commit to something that seems truly disrespectful to the institution of Saturday: math.

Only when I show up to the TA’s office hours, there is no TA waiting for me. Instead there is Professor Hutchison, sitting on the swivel chair in front of her desk, her steel eyes catching mine like a trap before I even walk through the door.

“Oh,” I say, unconsciously taking a step back. “I must have gotten the time wrong.”

“Christine’s home for the weekend. I’m running office hours.” She hardly moves a muscle, but speaks with enough authority to run a small country when she says, “Sit.”

I swallow so hard that I’m half expecting a gulp sound effect to echo through the hall. She’s already pulled up my midterm score on her giant monitor before I manage to get to the chair. Turns out the only thing worse than seeing a “D” is seeing it four times larger on someone else’s screen.

Without another word, Professor Hutchison leans down and pulls out a stack of papers, thumbing through them until she finds the exam pages where I made all my notes. She passes them to me from across the desk and then, to my horror, stands up and positions herself directly behind me.

“Try that first problem again. Talk me through what you’re doing.”

Somehow I manage to bleat out an explanation under her intimidating shadow. She doesn’t once interrupt me, not even when I’ve concluded by getting the same wrong answer as before. In fact, she asks me to do it with the second problem I got wrong, and then the third.

Abruptly, her shadow lifts from behind me, and she’s moving back to her seat.

“You’re too focused on the math,” she informs me.