The Love That Split the World(86)

I slow down and rumble to a stop beside the poster stapled to the telephone pole that reads PRAY FOR MATT KINCAID #4. Teddy bears and notes and flowers and jerseys sit in piles around the sign, and Rachel jumps out and runs to them before I’ve turned the car off. I step out and follow to where she’s kneeling in the gravelly shoulder, two fingers pressed to the sign.

“What are we doing here?” I ask softly as I approach.

She opens her eyes and sighs in annoyance. “What does it look like? I’m praying. What, are you too sophisticated to pay your respects?”

“Rachel, can we cut it out with your whole snobby Brown bit?” I say, sitting down beside her. “I’m really not in the mood.”

She glances at me sidelong. “Why did you stay? I mean, was it because of Matt?”

I run my fingernails over the sides of my scalp. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe partly. But mostly, I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing right now. It didn’t feel like a good time to leave.”

She drops onto her butt and pulls her thighs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. “You’re lucky.”

“Why?” I ask, suspicious.

“Because you’re one of those people who’s supposed to be doing something, while the rest of us just do what we do, you know?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t think there are people like that.”

She gives a brittle laugh. “Natalie, you’ve wanted to go to Brown since you were fifteen. That year, all I wanted was for Janelle to invite me to her parties and to go to homecoming with Derek. I thought I was just enjoying my life, you know, while you were trying to get away from yours. But everything I’ve ever wanted was wrapped up in high school, and now it’s like there’s just nothing. Nothing except Matt in a coma, and all my friends going off to UK. And you, getting the hell out of here like you’ve always wanted.”

“It’s not you guys I wanted to get away from,” I say quietly. “You know that, right?”

She gives me a disbelieving look then glances back at the poster. “At least you want something, even if it is just to leave. I have nothing to want, except for everyone to come back. Nothing, forever.”

“What about dance?”

“I never wanted to dance,” she answers. “I wanted to be on the dance team. That’s different.”

“I don’t know if I want to go to Brown.” It comes out like a balloon deflating, but there it is, hanging in the air for the first time ever. “I want to be smart. I want to know the truth, and to matter.

“That’s stupid,” she says.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s stupid,” she repeats bluntly. “You won’t matter because you went to Brown. You already matter.”

“Rachel,” I sigh. She doesn’t understand—and how could she?—but she opened up to me, and today, right now, I want to try. “Look. When I was fifteen, I lost someone who was really important to me. She knew me better than anyone, than even my family or Megan or Matt. Like, she totally got me and was more like me than anyone I’ve ever met, and once she was gone, I stopped feeling like I knew who I was, and I especially stopped feeling like I fit in. I went back to feeling like a five-year-old kid who had to prove she was just like everyone else. That’s why I quit dancing—I felt like it was feeding into that feeling, and I wanted to learn how to be myself, unapologetically. And I want to know about my heritage, because I’ve still never really looked. That’s why I chose Brown. Because it’s far away, but not too far away, and they have Native American and Indigenous Studies and dance, and yes, because it’s Ivy League. It’s a little easier to explain wanting the supreme college experience than all the other stuff.”

“You could’ve explained that, if you wanted to.” Rachel appraises me with the same look she used all those years ago when we first met. “Well,” she says finally, “Brown won’t make you become yourself either. You just are yourself, whether you want to be or not.”

“And just because you don’t know what you want yet, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to want.”

She rolls her eyes, but then a smile lifts up her mouth. “Whatever.” She pushes against her knees to stand and dusts off the back of her jeans. “We should get going.”

I nod. “Just give me a second?”

“Sure.” She walks back to the car to wait for me.

I turn to the poster, unsure of what I need from it exactly. I touch my hand to it like Rachel did and close my eyes. “Help me,” I whisper.

I open my eyes, and something flutters across my vision. My heart starts within my chest as I try to catch hold of the change. The poster is gone, a new stone sign appearing in its place. The paraphernalia littering the shoulder is gone too, replaced with a mound of purple and yellow wildflowers, but before I can read the new words on the sign, they change again. Not back to Matt’s name and number either, but to a wooden cross with words etched into it that vanish before I can process them, PRAY FOR MATT KINCAID #4 reappearing almost instantaneously.

Oh God.

Alice must be right.

There are more than two worlds.

Either that, or I just moved through time again. Maybe the poster will be replaced someday. Maybe it used to say something different. All I know is there are at least two other signs occupying this exact space.