You Should See Me in a Crown(68)

I don’t say anything, even though I want to. G’s parents, the former high school sweethearts, have been struggling for years. And Gabi, who works so hard to be on all the time, to make things picture-perfect, has always been stuck in the middle. But this seems like the thing that may have broken her.

“But I keep putting my own drama above yours. I did it when we were younger with the whole Jordan thing, and I’ve been doing it during this race. I tried to control your world because I couldn’t control mine, and I’m so sorry. I never should have made you feel like you had to hide parts of yourself. No friend should do that.”

“G, you could have told me about your parents,” I say. “I would have been there for you. You have to know that.”

She nods with a sniffle.

“And you owe Amanda an apology.”

“I know,” she answers. “She’s up next on the Gabi Marino Says Sorry Tour. Stone hasn’t let me go a day without reminding me how badly my negative aura is affecting her lately.”

I snort, and G smiles.

“I’m really sorry, Lizzie. About everything.” And that’s all there is to say, really.

Gabi’s tiny hand reaches across the space in the car to grab mine. It’s like we’re kids again, her sleeping on my floor in the weeks after my mom’s funeral. We’re clinging to each other like lifelines, because in so many ways, we are. And we always have been. We’re going to make mistakes. But we’re also going to find our way back to each other.





By Sunday evening, it looks like Robbie is in the clear. Dr. Fredrickson says he should be fine to go home by tomorrow, and honestly, it sounds like music to my ears. My granny’s too. She breathes out slowly and allows herself her first smile in days as the doctor talks to us about the updated treatment plan out in the hallway.

When she’s done, Granny tells me to come with her for a walk. She doesn’t really ask me for anything, never has. Sentences that should have question marks at the end are delivered with periods. I’ve always loved that about her. She knows exactly what she wants from the people around her, and she’s never afraid to let you know. It’s a trait I wish I’d been gifted in the genetic lottery.

I glance back in the room before heading down the hall with her. Grandad is snoozing in his usual chair by the window as Robbie absently clicks through the channels on the hospital TV. His eyes are heavy in that way that tells me he’s about five minutes from being completely knocked out.

We round a corner, away from the waiting room, and she sits down unceremoniously.

“I owe you an apology, young lady.” She smiles up at me from her seat, and it breaks my heart. I forget sometimes how much my mom favored her. “Sit down.”

“Granny, no. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry that I haven’t been home much lately.” I sit down and tuck my ankle under the opposite thigh and shift to face her. “I know how important it is to you for us to be together.”

And I mean it. I mean it with everything in me. My granny has never asked anything of me other than to get good grades and be on time for dinner every evening. And my grades are still fine. But I’ve dropped the ball on the thing that matters most to her: family.

“It’s not just important to me, Lizzie. It’s important to you too. And it was important to your mama.” She shakes her head and looks over at the hallway leading to Ro’s room, where he’s probably asleep by now. “Her only demand when she got real sick—when we had to start thinking about what might happen when she passed—was that you two would stick together. ‘They only got each other, Mama,’ she said.”

I didn’t know that. Granny never mentioned it to me before, but it suddenly makes more sense why she was so strict about me missing dinner. It was part of her only daughter’s last wish.

And suddenly I’m crying. I’m crying like I haven’t allowed myself to cry since my mom’s funeral, because I miss her and because I don’t have any answers and because the only thing she wanted me to do was to look after my brother and I’m not always going to be able to do that. I was so concerned with my own drama that I didn’t watch for the signs that something was wrong. Granny lets me just cry into her soft cotton shirt for a moment without speaking.

“You remind me so much of her sometimes it breaks my heart,” she says, her voice hushed. I wrap my arms around her waist, just holding her there, as she rubs big, soothing circles into my back. “The way you take care of your brother, the way you run yourself into the ground to take some of the pressure off me and your Grandaddy paying for your college … Looking at you is like looking at LuLu when she was seventeen. You’re every bit as feisty as your mama.”

Granny rarely uses my mom’s childhood nickname, and just the sound of it makes me want to cry more.

“Really?”

She looks down at me and smiles. She wipes at my eyes, and that gesture, like everything she does, is a form of instruction. We cry, but we don’t cry long. We feel, but we always fight. It’s the Lighty Way.

“Yes ma’am.” She nods. “She wanted to be prom queen too, you know.”

“What?” I sit up quickly and look her directly in her eyes.

“I know you didn’t tell me about running for prom queen because you didn’t want me to worry,” she says simply. I don’t know how she knows or just how much, but I shake my head. “Your brother is the most careless teenage boy I’ve ever seen. You think he’d at least lock his phone when he forgets it in the bathroom if he’s going to keep using that Campbell Confidential mess against my wishes.”