26. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX #3
Benson’s walls come down first. He used to have a wall filled with his schedule. Things were pinned everywhere, and when I see the bare wall, I try not to be emotional about it.
There’s a chaos in my chest that’s happening all at once because Hawthorne isn’t ending.
Percy and Blue are juniors, so they’re not going anywhere.
Rowan’s room isn’t being packed. Two guys from the team are moving into the empty rooms in August — Theo and a sophomore whose name I keep forgetting, so there’s going to be a Hawthorne House in September with familiar hockey players in it.
But Benson won’t be here, and that’s a whole other thing, like a live wire in my chest.
Watching him leave for Camden after high school feels like it happened five minutes ago. I remember how badly I wanted to be here with him, how far away two years felt when I was still waiting for my turn.
And now somehow I’ve already had them.
Two years at Camden with my brother, gone faster than I knew they could. He’s graduating, and the next time I watch him play hockey, it’ll be in the NHL.
Stanley too.
It’s terrifying how quickly something can become the past while you’re still living in it.
And that’s so much worse than if the whole thing just stopped. If they boarded the place up and everybody left, I could grieve it properly, like a normal person. Instead, the house carries on and just swaps out the people. And I get to keep every single part of it except my brother.
The last ordinary night is a Thursday in the second week of May, and nobody knows it’s the last one.
That’s the only way it could have happened, honestly.
There’s nothing planned. Stanley orders food.
Somebody puts something on the TV, and I switch it to Love Island because I’m rewatching a season with Rowan and it’s the finale.
Blue and Melly are on the couch with Percy and Penelope.
Benson and Lucy are in the kitchen. Mara’s here because I invited her.
Mila’s here, too. Aspen’s at the table with a laptop, working. Stanley is right next to her.
And I’m on the ground with Rowan. My feet are resting across his lap with his hand on my ankle.
I’m barely watching the TV because Rowan is rubbing his thumb against the patch of hair that I missed while shaving.
He’s not teasing exactly, but it’s embarrassing, so I try to pull away.
He keeps my foot in place, and we secretly play tug-of-war for a few minutes.
I cave in and rest my legs, and he’s satisfied he’s won.
I lean back on the couch and look around to see who’s watching. Nobody is. We’re all in our own worlds.
Camden winning nationals felt good, but to be honest, I think this is the whole point.
I pull out my phone and set it up in the corner.
I put the ten-second timer on and run back to Rowan.
Nobody makes a thing out of it. I stand up and grab my phone.
Then I take a picture of the kitchen with the two who are leaving Hawthorne.
The first one is candid, and the second one, I get them all smiling.
Benson wraps his arms around Lucy and kisses her.
For the first time, I see her as a sister.
I picture her and Benson getting married and having kids together.
I start to tear up, and then I run back to Rowan before I can show it.
Graduation is mid-May, and it is nine hundred degrees outside.
I’m recording the entire day like I’m a lifestyle influencer.
My mom keeps crying, so I keep filming her.
She’s starting to get really annoyed with me, but I don’t care.
My dad has a real camera, but he’s terrible at capturing the moment.
Benson comes downstairs at Hawthorne in a gown, and I have to sit down.
“Oh my God. You look like an idiot,” I sob, wiping my tears.
“Then why are you crying?”
“Because it’s so hot outside, and I have to sit here and watch you graduate in that heat.”
“G.”
“Put the hat on,” I tell him. “Put the hat on and let me take a picture and I promise I will not say another word for the rest of the day.”
He puts the hat on. I take fifty pictures of my brother in a cap and gown in the living room of the Hawthorne House. It nearly kills me that this is it.
Rowan comes down, and my brother huffs, “Thank God you’re here. She needs tending to.”
I laugh when Rowan walks over to hug me. “I’ll be back next year, baby.”
I hug him and that makes me stop crying. “I know.”
The ceremony is two hours, and I hear about five names. Benson Reeve. Stanley Ermington. Rowan Laurens. Aspen Linwood. Andrew Prescott, who I don’t know but who Mara cheers for. Penelope, from the architecture school, which is a completely separate line of chairs.
When they read Rowan’s name, I scream so loudly that a woman four rows in front turns around and looks at me for a long time. My mom says, “Gianna,” in the voice she uses in churches.
Rowan shakes the hand, takes the thing, and walks off, and everyone applauds while I scream again. Rowan looks out to the crowd, and I stand on my chair. He laughs while I cheer him on.
Everybody comes back to Hawthorne afterward. Families are going to dinner at six, so there’s a three-hour window, and the entire group ends up in that house with gowns thrown over the backs of chairs and caps on every horizontal surface.
Stanley opens the champagne he’s been hiding since April and pours it into eleven different vessels, one of which is a measuring cup.
“To us.”
“That’s it?” I say. “That’s the toast?”
“What else is there?”
“You had four years.”
“To us,” Stanley says again, with feeling, and everybody drinks out of a measuring cup.
I get all five of them together four minutes later. “Nobody move.”
Immediate, universal groans.
“I mean it. Nobody move. All five of you, right there, in front of the—”
“G––”
“Benson. Stand next to Percy.”
“Why does it matter where I stand?”
“Because Percy is short,” I joke, and Percy says something in French that makes Penelope laugh.
I get them lined up in front of the living room. Benson. Stanley. Percy. Blue. Rowan.
Stanley does something with his face on the first one, and I make them do it again. Blue refuses to smile on the second one, and I make them do it again. On the third one, Percy puts two fingers up behind Blue’s head, and Blue doesn’t notice, and it’s perfect. It’s the one.
“Alright now, everybody,” I say.
“You just did––”
“Everybody,” I say. “All of you. Lucy. Aspen. Penelope. Melly. Mara. Mila. Everybody in this house right now, get in the picture.”
Mara says, “Finally,” and is in the frame before anybody else has moved.
I hand my phone to my mom, and I start directing an hour-long photoshoot.
We do the classic prom pictures together, laughing our heads off.
Then Stanley jumps into the girls’ arms. We do a few of those.
The guys end up taking turns holding each other.
They jump on each other’s backs. I lift Lucy onto mine.
Melly jumps on Lucy, and Aspen takes Penelope.
Stanley is being insufferable with the guys.
The parents are all here, so I have to tilt my head to get Rowan to make up an excuse and meet me upstairs.
I walk up before him and catch a glimpse of Benson’s bedroom.
His door is open, so I step inside. There are a couple of boxes and a stripped bed.
The walls are bare, the desk is empty, the curtains are down, and there’s something so fucking sad about it.
I walk out and peek in Stanley’s bedroom.
The same. I’ve never been in here, but now it looks like nobody lives here.
I swallow the lump in my throat and head to Rowan’s bedroom, glad that nothing about his has changed even though he just graduated.
His bed’s made badly. A hoodie sits at the foot of the bed, a water bottle lies on the floor, and a stack of course packets sits beside it. The snow globe’s sitting on his nightstand.
“This is weird,” he says, walking in.
I turn quickly. “What?”
“You’re staring at the gift you bought all of us.”
I chuckle. “It’s weird that your room’s normal, and everybody’s rooms are disappearing,” I tell him. “I walked past two dead rooms to get in here, and yours has a sock on the floor.”
Rowan looks at the sock. “Yeah,” he says.
I sit down on his bed.
He stays standing with his hands in his pockets, in his shirt with the buttons, with a graduation gown over his arm that he’s already taken off.
“I’m really happy you’re staying,” I mutter.
“Yeah.”
“That’s not an answer, that’s a noise.”
“Me too,” Rowan says.
I hold my hand out, and he takes it. I pull him down onto the bed next to me, and for about a minute, neither of us says anything and the house is loud underneath us.
“I’m going to be here constantly next year,” I tell him.
“You already are.”
“No, I mean it. Constantly. I’m going to be here so much that Theo is going to think I live here.”
“Marsh already thinks you live here.”
“I have a key situation I want to discuss with you––”
“G.”
“In August,” I say. “We’ll table it.”
He kisses me on the bed with the door open and everyone downstairs. I’ve kissed him in better circumstances and worse ones, and I don’t think any of them compare to this because this is the end of Hawthorne as I’ve known it.
Downstairs, people are starting to leave. Dinner’s at six, and there are three sets of parents in this house, and everybody has somewhere to be.
Rowan kisses me one more time and pulls me downstairs. Benson does something with a key. I don’t hear what’s said because the moms are talking and laughing. I’m in the doorway with my coat, and I see him take his key off his ring and hold it out, and it isn’t to Percy.
Rowan looks at it in his hand.
“This is it,” Benson says, looking around. “Stan, we’re done.”