Chapter 26
Grandee is fine. Mom is fine. Linden is fine. Carter is alive. I am fine.
I go through my daily checks to see how time has decided to punish me for swearing at Carter and not going to a planning meeting about Valentine’s Day.
The version of my mother in France is gone and replaced with one who apparently lives with Grandee and is excited to chat about anything and nothing. But every time things shift, I feel an odd sense of grief in my heart, like that version of my mom is gone and I should mourn her.
Bright and early, Benji comes to my dorm to check on me. “Just making sure you’re still alive after yesterday,” he says, passing an iced coffee to me.
I nod and hold the door open as he comes inside.
“So this is the room they give to the founders.” His nose scrunches up. “Looks exactly like my room.”
I let out a little laugh as he settles onto my unmade bed. Everything is always so easy with Benji.
“So, big plans today? Maybe study? Work on your art assignment? Murder Carter?”
Groaning, I flop back onto the bed next to him. “I think I have to apologize to him. Did he tell you what happened?”
Benji shakes his head. “Not really his style. Just said that he overstepped, and you yelled at him.”
“Did he … say anything to Max?”
Benji sits up and turns toward me. “Max? No. Why would he say something to Max?” He watches my face as if the answer will write itself on my skin. “What’s with you and Max anyway?”
“What do you mean?”
“Fine, don’t tell me.”
I wait for Benji to say something else, but he just stares at me silently.
With an eye roll, I say, “Max wanted to do a group project.”
“Yeah, you told me this yesterday. Before you told me I was brilliant and ran away.”
“That’s it.”
“Really?”
I sit up and take a sip of my drink. “I said no, and he had Doc check to see if I was uncomfortable with him.”
“Are you?”
“No. God.” I lean back.
“Then why did you say no?”
“I’m not going to the gala.”
He lets out a little laugh. “The gala showcase. The one that everybody has to go to, unless you have some kind of special legacy privilege—”
“I don’t,” I say cutting him off. That’s the last thing I need him thinking. “But it doesn’t matter, because Max has a hundred people he can ask to do a project with him.”
“Yeah, but not that are guaranteed to get him in.”
“What do you mean?”
He takes a long drink from my coffee before he tells me, “Max has been rejected from the showcase every year. He thought this year the school would have to let him in because it’s his third and everything … but they didn’t share that opinion.”
“That’s ridiculous. Max is incredibly talented. It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I agree. Doc saw the work you two were doing, and he thought for sure Max would be able to submit that, but…” He waves his hands around. “You know.”
I didn’t want to work with him. “Right.” But it doesn’t feel right. It feels unfair. I bite the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood.
“You should talk to him. Just have a conversation and clear the air. I think we all just need a break,” Benji says. And I know what his next words are going to be, because he’s said them before.
“We all need a break.” Benji sits across from me in the booth at the Cattle Club, sipping on a dark beer. “We need to get away.”
“That’s not what I need.” I pop a fry into my mouth.
“Yes, you do. You and Carter need to get away from all of this and have a … reset.” He moves his arms around like he’s swiping away cobwebs. “We can head down to his uncle’s place in the Keys.”
“You just want to go to the Keys.”
“Who cares why I want to go? This is about you. We can get you and Carter back to normal. It’s a good idea.”
My heart wants normal with Carter. But I can’t ever remember a time when we weren’t fighting. Maybe this is our normal.
“We all need a reset,” Benji tells me as he stands up.
I’d forgotten how badly Carter and I had been fighting.
“Spring break will be good for all of us,” he says.
His phone buzzes in his pocket, and he fishes it out. I watch his eyes move over the words on the screen, and then he lets out a deep sigh and I know he’s texting with Max.
“What’s he saying?” I ask.
Benji looks confused. “What?”
“Isn’t that Max?”
He shakes his head. “Oh, no. This is Alex. A friend. She’s going through some shit.”
“Alex … Carter’s friend?”
Benji’s eyes snap up to mine. “Do you know her?”
I think back to New Year’s, when I told her that Carter had already left. But I wasn’t at New Year’s. “No. I just know of her.”
Benji sets his phone down. “I don’t know what anyone said to you about her, but she’s a great girl. I thought…”
There’s a buzzing in my ears, and I can feel the question in my throat. Full of pointed edges cutting into me. “Was she Carter’s girlfriend?”
“Not really. They grew up together, and I always thought they would end up that way.”
My pulse is pounding.
“So did Carter.”
My heart is screaming.
“Until she got engaged.” He looks at his phone again. “I gotta go. Another crisis to solve.” It’s said with a shrug, as if he’s the Captain America of relationship problems.
I spend the rest of the morning staring at my phone. Not only do I scour all of Alex’s social media again—going back to when she was too young to even have any—I find her brother, and her parents, and any other friends that have tagged her in pictures.
Benji saying he thought that Alex and Carter would end up together sticks in my mind, and I’m unable to dislodge it. Did he think that when Carter and I were together? Did I miss it? Or have the choices I’ve made led us here?
Everything I do has a consequence. If time is just going to take what it wants, what’s the point of any of this? I keep running and running and trying to make sure my life doesn’t end up unrecognizable, and everyone I love is here … but …
I send an email before I can talk myself out of it. Just a simple two lines that feel anything but simple, and I head out of the dorm.
On my walk, I call my mom.
“Oh, hey, sweetie! How’s school?” Kerrie Monroe has never ever spoken to me with this much enthusiasm, but I have to admit … it’s kind of nice. Maybe I can keep this version of her somehow.
“Hi, Mom. Just checking in.”
“You’re such a good girl. Everything is fine here. Your grandmother is just reorganizing the dye bottles.” There’s muffled talking, and then my mother continues. “Grandee wants to know what color today is.”
I smile. Such a Grandee thing to ask. “Tell her it feels chartreuse.”
Grandee makes a noise of disgust, and all I can make out is awful color and too ugly to be that bright.
My mother tsks. “Oh, stop it, Mom. Don’t listen to her, sweetie. Big plans for today?”
“Just have to do something I don’t really want to.” I take a deep breath as I say it.
“Like most of life.” She says the words kindly. “Remember, whatever you do, small waves.”
Sometimes I wonder if this version of my mother knows that she’s not the right one. The one I remember growing up with. Maybe that’s why all her words feel like they matter, because this version of her could be gone at any moment.
“Okay, Mom. I gotta go.”
“All right, baby. Go do hard things.”
I hang up, feeling better, and look out to the rolling lawn that is separated from the street by a large iron fence.
Max is in the one place I knew he would be.
The graveyard.
When he told me about it on New Year’s, I didn’t even have to ask which one.
He’s sitting on a bench, hunched over his sketchbook, with a frown on his face from concentrating, and his body turned toward the spot where Carter was buried, almost like he remembers.
Each step I take toward him feels like a mistake. But I do it anyway.
Mixed in with all my feelings of confusion and panic, there is an intense sense of guilt. I didn’t just hook up with Max. I made a choice to sleep with my ex-boyfriend’s best friend. If I can even call Carter that. Every memory is replaced with one of Max.
Max, who never looked at me. Max, who hates me. Max, whose lips felt so good against my own.
Max.
Open your eyes.
None of this matters anyway. I’m still going to end up at some school function. Still end up at the water.
Still.
He doesn’t look up as I take a seat on the bench next to him. I can’t help but see the ghost of my former self crying next to Linden, throwing my shoes into Carter’s grave, smelling the honeysuckle from the flowers on his casket.
Max doesn’t speak when I sit down, even though his shoulders pull tight, and I watch a muscle work in his jaw.
After the silence has stretched too thin, I ask, “Why this place?”
A deep sigh leaves him, and he tells me, “I saw it in a dream.” Max’s hands move in tiny strokes over the paper before he stops. “What are you doing here?”
“I came here to talk to you.”
Max looks at me. “How did you know I would be here?”
Telling him that in an alternate timeline he told me about this place wouldn’t exactly work, so I just say, “I had a feeling.”
“How do you know I’m not avoiding you?”
I roll my eyes. “You probably are.”
He nods and starts drawing again.
“I talked to Doc.”
He doesn’t speak.
“Why didn’t you just tell me about the showcase?”
He groans, and his head falls back, exposing his neck. “Nieve—”
“You could have just said—”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“This isn’t about pity.” I shake my head. “I emailed Doc, and I told him I wanted to do it.”
“What?”
“He’s right. We make good art together.”
Max swallows. “You don’t have to do this.”
“I don’t know that anything I do matters anyway,” I say, and when he looks at me, his eyes are the brightest green.