Chapter 9
nine
SOPHIE
The fluorescent lights in the nursing building hallway have that special ability to make everything look a vague shade of ill.
Which is perfect, because nothing says “successful graduate student” and “she’s on top of life” quite like stumbling out of Advanced Physiology with the complexion of expired milk.
With a deep sigh at the thought, I shift my textbook to my other arm and check my phone.
There’s a text from my dad:
Mom’s appointment went fine. Talk later.
Fine.
The word lodges in my throat like a swallowed pill. In the Pearson family lexicon, “fine” could mean anything from “genuinely OK” to “currently on fire but managing the flames.” And my dad, more than any of us, deploys vagueness with military precision.
I dial before I’m even out the door, nearly taking out a freshman who’s apparently attempting to set the world record for slowest hallway navigation while texting. The phone rings once… my pulse kicks up. Twice… jaw clenching. Three times?—
“Hey, Fee.” His voice is calm, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. “What’s up?”
“I got your text,” I say. “What happened at the appointment? What did Dr. Breene say about the new medication? Are her levels?—”
“Sophie.”
Full name. Fantastic. That’s Dad-speak for “prepare for disappointment.”
“Everything’s fine. Your mom just doesn’t want to talk about it.”
The hallway suddenly feels too narrow. “But?—”
“She’s resting. She had a long day.”
I press my back against the wall, letting the cold brick anchor me before I say something I’ll regret. “That doesn’t tell me anything. Was there a change in her symptoms? Did they adjust her dosage? What about the MRI results from last month?”
“Everything is under control, Sophie.” He sighs. “You don’t need to worry about every little detail.”
“Every little detail?” The words come out sharp enough to draw a glance from a passing student. “Dad, this isn’t a stationery order. This is Mom’s health.”
“And she’s handling it. We’re handling it.”
The unspoken accusation hangs between us like static on the line. I taste copper and realize I’m biting the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. Because here’s the thing—nothing would have been “handled” right now, or for the past few months, without me.
Who reorganized Mom’s medication schedule when she started the new treatment? Who drives Hazel to her seventeen thousand activities when Mom’s too exhausted? Who spent three hours last week researching potential drug interactions with her vitamins?
Me.
But sure, let’s pretend I’m the problem here.
“I just want to know what’s going on,” I say, and hate how my voice cracks like I’m fifteen again. “I’ve been worried all day.”
“I know.” His tone softens fractionally, which is some progress, at least. “But sometimes… sometimes you need to let your mother and me handle things without dissecting every test result and appointment. It’s exhausting for your mom when you?—”
He catches himself, but the damage is done.
When I what?
Care too much?
Try too hard to keep everyone safe?
He recognizes the danger, because he bails on our call. “Look, I have to go. Team meeting in five. We’ll talk tomorrow, OK?”
“Dad—”
“Love you, Fee.”
Click.
I stare at my phone with the kind of betrayal usually reserved for boyfriends who ghost me or Wi-Fi that cuts out during season finales. This is what he does, drops these cryptic breadcrumbs that send my brain into overdrive, then acts like I’m being unreasonable for wanting actual information.
What if her symptoms are progressing? What if the new medication triggered something unexpected? What if they found anomalies on the MRI and they’re constructing some misguided protection bubble around me? The questions pile up, each one tightening the knot in my stomach until I can barely breathe.
The wall presses into my shoulder blades, a reminder that I’m still here, still standing, even if everything else feels like it’s spinning.
This is my life now, holding everyone and everything together, even when they apparently don’t want me to.
Because who knows what the hell would happen if I stop.
And then there’s?—
No. Absolutely not. I’m not thinking about him .
About that parking lot. About the way his face crumpled when I called him complicated, like I’d kicked his puppy instead of stating an objective fact.
But, if I’m being honest, it was about me as much as him, like I was describing him and my entire existence.
“Sophie Pearson, you look like someone just told you they’re discontinuing cafeteria coffee.”
Maya materializes in front of me, clutching a textbook thick enough to double as a doorstop. She’s impeccably dressed in a leather skirt and boots combo that makes my sweats-and-sneakers ensemble look like a cry for help.
“Worse,” I say, shoving my phone away with a sigh. “Parental communication breakdown.”
“Ah.” She shifts the book with a grunt. “I thought I recognized that particular furrow between your eyebrows.”
“I have furrow categories?”
“Oh honey, you have a whole furrow taxonomy. Peer-reviewed and everything.” She demonstrates, scrunching her face into an expression that would be insulting if it wasn’t so devastatingly accurate.
“See? This one is different from your ‘I haven’t eaten since yesterday’ or your ‘Professor Klein is a sadist’ furrow. ”
She links her arm through mine, steering me toward the exit with the determination of someone who’s staged interventions before. And I’m glad for the company, because Maya always seems to know when I need to talk and when I just need someone there.
“Hey,” she says when we’re outside. “You’re coming to karaoke tonight.”
My stomach drops. “Maya, I can’t. I should drive to see my parents, in case?—”
“In case what? Your dad continues his vow of silence? Your mom rests like a normal person after a medical appointment?” Her look could peel paint. “Sophie, you’re about two weeks away from a burnout that’ll make you useless to everyone.”
I open my mouth to argue, then close it.
She’s not wrong.
Maya squeezes my arm, her voice gentling. “Two hours. We’ll drink cocktails with embarrassing names and pretend we’re normal twenty-somethings rather than one normal twenty-something in killer boots and a frumpy fifty-year-old cat lady…”
“I don’t act like?—”
“Yesterday you told me you were excited about a new pill organizer.”
“It has AM/PM compartments with moisture barriers!”
She stares at me.
“OK, point taken.”
I chew my lip. Dad did say everything was fine, in his infuriating and mostly useless way. And the thought of going to my parents’ house, where I’ll be the elephant in the room, or home to stare at my phone while my brain manufactures disasters, makes my chest tight.
Maybe distance will give me some perspective. Maybe prescribed frivolity will reset my brain. Maybe I’ll stop wondering if I was too harsh with Mike, if fear made my decisions, if I threw away something good because I’m terrified of needing anyone the way I needed?—
I shake my head, banishing the thought. “Two hours,” I say. “But no Disney.”
Maya’s grin lights up the hallway. “Yes! But we need to change first…”
“Why?” I frown. “You look like a million bucks.”
“I know, but you?” Maya grins. “Well, let’s just say it needs work…”
With a resigned shrug, we head for the exit, and I try to embrace therapeutic karaoke. It’ll be a few hours when my biggest concern is remembering lyrics instead of medication interactions, and where “complicated” just means picking a song, not navigating the minefield of my entire life.
Everything else can wait.
The inside of the karaoke bar throbs with organized chaos—cheap beer mixing with someone’s vanilla body spray, the stage lights turning everyone’s skin sickly purple and radioactive green, and voices cracking over Beyoncé before someone else murders death metal.
But despite all the apparent carnage, I’m reveling in the fact that, for the first time in weeks, my brain isn’t running its usual diagnostic checklist. No spying on Mom’s number of steps in our synced health apps. No cataloging symptoms I might have missed. No reminding her about medications.
Just me, screaming through “Since U Been Gone” until my voice splinters.
Now at the end of the song, I weave through the crowd toward the bar, my throat raw in that good way, from actually using my voice instead of swallowing down all the things I can’t say. The bartender shouts something about another vodka soda, and I nod, settling against the sticky bar top.
As the chaos swirls around me, movement near the stage catches my eye. Someone tall grabbing the microphone with the confidence of someone who either knows exactly how bad they are or has consumed enough alcohol to achieve the same effect.
The stage lights shift, and—oh God—it’s Maine, Mike’s teammate. The one who’d introduced himself by flexing and asking if I was single while the other players groaned with the exhaustion of people who’d witnessed this particular tragedy before.
My first instinct is to disappear into the crowd before any other hockey players materialize.
Because in my experience, they crowd together, and the last thing I need is to run into Mike or any of my dad’s other players, who’d no doubt have a great time getting to know their coach’s oldest daughter.
But when the opening piano notes of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” fill the bar, and Maine strikes a pose straight from a telenovela’s death scene—one hand pressed to his chest, the other reaching skyward—I’m frozen in place by curiosity.
“TURN AROUND,” he begins.
Sweet Jesus. This isn’t just bad. This is catastrophically, weapons-grade awful. His voice cracks on every third note, and he’s reading the lyrics a full beat behind the music, creating this weird echo effect that makes my ears want to file for divorce.
“EVERY NOW AND THEN I GET A LITTLE BIT LONELY AND YOU’RE NEVER COMING ROUND…”