Pictures of You

Chapter 37

37

Drew

This is the standout night of my life. The water is luminous. But so is she. All in. Confident. She doesn’t care how she looks. Just throws herself into everything without giving a second thought to what I’m going to think. It’s this gusto for life and this freedom that I covet because my own life feels so constrained.

“Promise me, no matter how old and boring you get, or where you go, or who you’re with, you’ll never stop looking for this,” she says.

She means bioluminescence and its ilk, not the way it feels to share it with her. I try to imagine myself with someone else in the future and already know it will never measure up. A pretty tragic thought, at seventeen.

I shove a wave of water at her. “Thanks for the vote of confidence in my future personality.”

She smiles. “It’s not you personally. Won’t we all get old and boring one day? You know, when we have to worry about mortgages and bills and why our kid is being excluded from the friend group at lunchtime?”

“You speak from experience?”

She looks at me tentatively. “I was completely on the outside when I moved to Saint Ag’s,” she admits. “I really didn’t have any friends until one of the teachers forced Bree to work on an assignment with me. Even now she’s my only close friend.”

“Well, thanks,” I say. “What am I then?”

As she looks at me, I realize I don’t want to know her answer. Whatever it is will never be enough, and while she doesn’t confirm it, I can always hold out hope.

“Anyway, why are you thinking about mortgages and kids?” I ask, hoping to divert her attention.

“Don’t you? I mean, not all the time, obviously, but don’t you sometimes fast-forward into your future and imagine a partner and babies and—”

“I’m not going to have kids,” I confess quietly. It’s something I’ve never told anyone else.

She pulls her knees up and hugs them, leaning toward me. “Why not?”

I think of everything I have to do for Mum, and the way illnesses run in families. And then I’m imagining some poor future kid lying awake at night scared of finding me, the way I’m scared of finding her …

“I don’t want to end up a burden,” I say. Inside that admission is a confession I’ve never voiced before. Guilt punctures my chest just saying it, and I wish I could take the words back. “Mum is not a burden,” I say hurriedly. “But she’s … hard work. Her illness is hard work.”

“But she’s sick,” Evie replies. “None of this is her fault. And you’re amazing with her.”

Who else has she got to take care of her? Certainly not my dad.

“It’s okay to admit you find things hard,” Evie says, her serious eyes on mine. I want to tell her exactly how hard I find it and outline all the ways Mum’s illness frightens me. But I’m scared of what might come out of my mouth if I start. Worried I’ll say things that even my conscious mind hasn’t been brave enough to voice.

We sit there in silence for a long time, in the gentle shallows, light all around, until the waves move farther out and the breeze stills and I become aware of my phone ringing just up the beach.

“Sorry,” I say, getting up. “Someone’s calling me.”

I stagger to our stuff on the sand, relieved that someone else on this earth knows even a tiny part about how I feel at long last. And I find my phone.

Four missed calls. One from Mum and three from a number I don’t recognize. They’ve also left a voicemail, which I listen to while watching Evie play with the fluorescent blue on the water’s edge, knowing the spell is about to be broken.

My heart falls.

“It’s Mum,” I call to Evie. “We have to go back.”