by Robin Benway
Joaquin nodded and ignored the tightness in his throat.
“Have you talked to your therapist about it?” Mark asked.
Joaquin nodded.
He had not. He knew that Ana would be 100 percent in favor of the adoption, and he didn’t want her to sway him. Joaquin had realized early on that he needed to figure out things in his head before he brought them up to Ana. Otherwise, she just muddled up his thoughts until he wasn’t sure how he felt anymore.
“I told her I needed to think about it on my own for a while,” Joaquin said instead, which he considered a half-truth and therefore not really a lie. “But I just wanted to know what would happen if I said no, that’s all.”
Mark was quiet for a few seconds before asking, “Are you afraid of what will happen if you say yes?”
One of the things about adapting, Joaquin had learned, was that you could get so comfortable in a family that their tells would become your tells, too, and then they would know the things that could scare you before you even knew about them.
“I mean, it’s a change either way, right?” Joaquin said, then started to stand up. “Can I be excused?”
“Joaquin,” Linda said, and he froze halfway up. “We’re not scared of adopting you, if that’s what you’re worried about. Mark and I love you. We know you. We trust you. Implicitly.”
Joaquin wondered if Linda was thinking about the Buchanans, the hospital reports, the X-ray of Joaquin’s broken arm.
“I’m not scared,” he said, then cleared his throat. Goddamnit.
“It’s okay if you are,” Mark started to say, just as Linda said, “We really do want you.”
“I know,” Joaquin said to both of them. “I know that.”
He did know that. That’s what was freaking him out so bad.
Joaquin saw Birdie the next day at school.
Truth be told, the potential to see her at school every day was there. (Joaquin had carefully floated the idea of maybe going to a different high school after he had broken up with her, but Mark and Linda had shot that idea down flat.) Instead, he had changed his routine, going down different hallways, taking the long way to English class instead of the shortcut through the quad, where he used to hold Birdie’s hand before kissing her good-bye. “Gutierrez,” the vice principal would say sometimes if he saw them kissing, glaring warningly at Joaquin.
“Why don’t you ever say my last name?” Birdie had shot back once.
The vice principal left them alone after that.
Joaquin thought he had gotten pretty good at avoiding her, but that morning during their snack break, he went past the back side of the gym, trying to get to calculus early so that he wouldn’t see Birdie while she was walking to her AP Civics class. (He almost wished he had a tracking device on her so that he could know where she was at any given time. He would have wished it, if he hadn’t realized immediately how creepy that sounded.)
But that morning, apparently, Birdie was early to class or late leaving wherever she had been before, because Joaquin rounded the gym just as she did. They didn’t bump into each other—that would have been too perfect, too cute—but they both stopped when they saw each other.
“Hi,” Birdie said.
“Hey,” Joaquin replied, jamming his hands into his hoodie pockets and looking down at his shoes. Looking at Birdie was too hard, too much. She still looked like she wanted to murder him, which made him nervous. He couldn’t blame her, though. Sometimes he wanted to murder himself for doing something so terrible to her.
Birdie didn’t move, and Joaquin started to go around. “Wait, Joaq, no,” she said, putting her hand on his arm. Her hands were always cold; he could feel it even through his hoodie sleeve.
Joaquin froze when she touched him, but Birdie didn’t let go. The very first time she had kissed him, he had panicked at how soft she was, how hot her mouth felt, and he didn’t understand how someone with such cold hands could have such a warm heart. “I have to . . .” he started to say, but he didn’t have anything he had to do.
“Wait,” she said again. “Just . . . I miss you so much, Joaq. I really . . .” Her voice started to drift away, and when Joaquin dared to look up, he saw that she was crying.
In almost ten months of dating, Joaquin had never seen Birdie cry, not even once.
“I miss you, too,” he said.
“Can you just tell me why, please?” she said, her face struggling to smooth itself back into control. “Please—we never lied to each other. I don’t want this to end because of a lie now.”
Joaquin looked down again. He hated this feeling, the feeling that all the words that he wanted to say would just tangle themselves into a giant ball, wound so tight that nothing could manage to escape. The words would just sit on his chest, pressing down on his lungs, pulling the air out of him.
“I didn’t lie” was all he finally said. He wanted to touch her so bad, pull her into his arms, make her stop crying. He knew what it was like to cry by yourself, after all. He didn’t want that for Birdie.
“Then why? I keep going over and over it again in my head, and I can’t understand why!” Now she was getting mad. Joaquin had seen Birdie mad many times. It rarely ended well for the person she was mad at.
“Because I think you did lie to me!” she yelled. “I think you lied and said that you wanted to break up, but I think you just got scared, that you ran away because it was easier than being left again!”
Joaquin kept looking down at his shoes, letting her words bounce off his chest. Nothing could get to him, not even Birdie, who always seemed to be able to untangle the words that he struggled to find.
“Is that what it is?” she asked, stepping toward him. “I’m right, aren’t I? You bailed because you got scared.”
“It’s not—” he started to say, taking a step back from her.
“I don’t care if you’re scared!” she cried, and now she really was crying again. Joaquin hoped none of Birdie’s friends would find out about this. They would murder him in the hallway after school, no questions asked.
“You can be scared!” Birdie was still shouting. “Don’t you get it? That’s what happens when you love someone: they’re brave when you can’t be! I can be brave—for you, for both of us!”
“You can’t,” Joaquin said, laughing a little. It wasn’t funny, though. None of this was funny at all.
“Yes, I can!” Birdie closed the space between them, pulling his hands out of his pocket and holding them in hers. She was freezing. “You can trust me. Don’t you know that?”
Joaquin nodded. He tried to make himself let go of her hands. She clung on, though, and he took another step away.
Birdie looked hopeful for the first time in their conversation. “So what is it? What’s wrong, Joaquin?”
The words suddenly pushed themselves out of Joaquin’s lungs, making him feel lighter, freer. “I don’t trust myself,” he said. “And there’s no way you can fix that, Birdie. So leave me alone.”
She was still crying when he finally let go of her hands and walked away.
GRACE
For days after meeting up with Maya and Joaquin, Grace was a mess.
She felt on edge, sleep deprived, and overcaffeinated. She kept dreaming of Peach in her little sailor outfit, sailing away on a boat, crying as lustfully as she had the day she had been born, and Grace couldn’t get to her, couldn’t reach out, couldn’t hold her baby.
She woke up gasping, her arms outstretched, the sound of Peach still ringing in her ears.
Grace knew what it was, of course. She was convinced that she had chosen the wrong parents for Peach, that Daniel and Catalina wouldn’t stay together and that they would divorce, just like Maya’s parents had. She still felt bad about asking Maya whether or not the adoption would be invalid. That had been a supremely stupid thing to say, Grace knew that, but she couldn’t help herself at the time. The idea that she had picked the wrong parents, the wrong home, for Peach sent her into a panic that clawed at her back
whenever she was alone—whenever her mind was quiet. You did it wrong, a voice would say, and Grace would shiver. You had one job as Peach’s mom, and you completely, royally fucked it up.
Before Peach, Grace hadn’t really given her biological mom much thought, but now this strange woman kept dominating her mind. She wondered if her bio mom had ever worried about her, or Maya, or Joaquin. She must have, though, right? Even if Maya and Joaquin disagreed with her, Grace knew more than they did. She had lived it. They couldn’t possibly understand the pull that Grace felt.
She wished she could ask her mom about it, or even her dad. They had always had an agreement that if Grace wanted to know anything, all she had to do was ask, but that put all the pressure, all the responsibility, on Grace. There were questions she didn’t even know how to ask, and sometimes she felt that if her parents really wanted her to know things, they would just tell her. Why did she have to ask the questions, anyway? Weren’t they the parents? Wasn’t she the kid?
But now, in a way, she was the mom. And Grace hadn’t quite figured out how to make up the difference between the two spaces yet.
One thing she did know, though: staying home with her parents was slowly beginning to drive her insane.
Grace knew they were trying to keep her occupied, keep her from feeling completely left out from friends who never called anymore. (Grace suspected that they just didn’t know what to say, and honestly, she wouldn’t have known what to say in response.) But they were her parents, after all. They were boring, and plus, they had actual jobs. Grace found herself home in the mornings, watching talk television with her untouched history textbook in front of her. She especially liked all the courtroom judge shows. Those people’s problems always seemed much worse, yet much more easily solvable, than her own.
When her parents were home, they tried to keep her busy. “Come with me to yoga,” her mom had suggested one morning, and Grace had just rolled over in bed and pulled the covers back over her head. “Wanna learn how to golf?” her dad had asked one day, and Grace didn’t even reply to his question because it was so ridiculous. (Later, though, he made her help him wash the cars, and Grace sort of wished she had said yes to golf instead.)
One of the reasons Grace had given up Peach was because she hadn’t wanted her life to stop (“You’re so young,” her parents had implored over and over again), but nobody had told Grace that her life might stop anyway, that she’d be trapped in the amber of her pregnancy, of Peach, while the rest of the world continued to change around her.
One afternoon, when her mom was working from home, Grace leaned her head into the office. “Hey,” she said. “Can I borrow the car?”
“May I ask why?” her mom said without looking up from her laptop.
Grace thought fast. “Um, Janie called. She wants to know if I want to meet her at the mall.”
Her mom looked up from her laptop.
Fifteen minutes later, Grace was driving to the mall, all the windows down so she could feel fresh air again. Her mom hadn’t asked too many questions after that lie, and Grace hadn’t bothered to explain anything beyond the basics. Nobody needed to know that she hadn’t talked to Janie since that ill-fated day back at school, that Janie hadn’t so much as texted her since Grace had punched Max’s friend in the face. Grace couldn’t even be that mad at Janie about it, though. She hadn’t been a good friend to Janie. She had stopped calling and texting. She’d ignored Janie’s calls and texts because she didn’t know how to explain how she felt, how to explain the rawness of this new world. If the situation was reversed, maybe Janie wouldn’t have called or texted her, either. Grace had no idea. She only knew who she was now, and that was a girl who didn’t have friends anymore.
But she did have Rafe.
“Hey!” he said when he saw her wandering down the gadget aisle of Whisked Away. “Let me guess—your mom got insomnia again and bought that thing that cooks salmon in the microwave.”
“I hope not,” Grace said, wrinkling her nose.
“Okay, good, because it doesn’t work. I didn’t want to say anything,” he added as Grace smiled at him. “I work here. I shouldn’t trash our amazing gadgets and supplies, but it’s really bad. Your microwave will never recover.”
Grace laughed at that. “Well, we don’t have a microwave. My parents don’t believe in them.”
Rafe widened his eyes at her, then walked over and carefully put his hands on her shoulders. “Grace,” he said quietly. “Is this a cry for help? Just blink if you need me to make a call.”
She laughed again. “Are you hungry?”
“Yes,” he said, moving his hands from her shoulders and taking that warmth away. “Starving. I had to take a make-up quiz during lunch. Did you eat already? Please tell me your parents at least believe in eating lunch. Otherwise I might actually have to call Child Protective Services.”
Grace laughed a little less this time. It wasn’t as funny now that she knew Joaquin. “I’ll buy,” she said. “But I only have enough cash for me to eat.”
“You sweet talker,” Rafe replied, then started to take off his apron. “Give me two minutes.”
They ended up at a sandwich place just down from the store. (Grace tried to keep the distance short. The last thing she needed was to see anyone she knew from school.) “Can I ask you a question?” Grace said as they tucked into their sandwiches.
“No, you may not have any of my Doritos,” Rafe replied. “Get your own if you want them.”
Grace just wrinkled her nose. She’d never be able to eat Doritos again, not after what she’d read about preservatives and food dyes when she was pregnant with Peach. “I don’t want your Doritos,” she said. “Keep that fake cheese to yourself.”
“It’s not really cheese until it’s spelled with a z,” Rafe told her. “But I digress.”
“Are your parents divorced?”
“Yep,” he said before popping a chip into his mouth. He crunched. “Am I mutating yet?”
Grace threw a piece of lettuce at him, which he caught before it hit the table. “Masterful reflexes,” he said. “Just FYI.”
“Your parents?” Grace said.
“Yes, ma’am. Split up when I was five. I’m pretty sure the world is only turning because they got divorced. Otherwise their fights would have probably made the planet implode.”
The idea of parents fighting was so foreign to Grace. Her parents had always argued behind closed doors, whatever battle they had smoothed over by the time the sun rose next morning. She had never even heard them yell at each other.
“What about you?” Rafe asked.
“No, they’re still married.”
“Throw the rice.”
“But Maya, she—”
“Is that your sister?”
Grace paused.
“The sort-of sister?” Rafe amended.
“No, she’s my actual sister,” Grace said, and was surprised by the bristle in her own voice. “Maya’s not ‘sort of’ anything.”
“I’m sorry,” Rafe said, and he both sounded and looked sorry. “That was an asshole thing to say. Carry on with your tale of woe.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Never mind.”
“No, wait. Shit,” he said, then set down his chips. “Okay, I’m really sorry. You were telling me something serious and I blew it. Let’s have a do-over, okay?” He pretended to hit a rewind button. “Aaaaand back.”
Grace had to give him points for effort. “Okay,” she said. “So Maya’s parents—”
“The parents of your real, true, actual, one hundred percent sister, yes, go on.”
“—are getting divorced.”
“Well, that sucks. Is she upset?”
“It’s hard to tell with her,” Grace replied, reaching for one of her apple slices. “She sort of plays it cool a lot of the time.”
“That sounds healthy,” Rafe said. “She’s probably super upset on the inside. You should talk to her.”
“I’m still trying to figure out how to ta
lk to her. And Joaquin, too. They’re both just . . . They’re different.”
“Well, yeah, welcome to having siblings,” Rafe said. “My dad actually had two kids way before he met my mom, so my brother and sister are both in their twenties. It’s like having four parents. I don’t recommend the experience, by the way.”
“But do you think . . .” Grace tried to choose her words as carefully as she could. “Do you think that . . . like, okay, when your parents divorced, did it . . . Are you . . .”
“Did it completely fuck me up?” Rafe asked. “Is that what you want to know?”
“Yes,” Grace said with a sigh of relief. “Exactly that.”
“Well, you better hope not, since you’re the one who asked me to lunch.” Rafe reached over and swiped one of her apple slices. “Relax, I’m just trying to counteract the Doritos.”
“I don’t think that’s how science works,” Grace said.
“Whatever, Bill Nye.” Rafe stuck the slice into his mouth, then chewed. “And to answer your question, no, it did not fuck me up. It made things more difficult, of course, and I still get two Christmases, two birthdays, all of that good stuff, but I’m not fucked up.”
“But do you think that you could have had a better experience?”
Rafe was eyeing her carefully. “Why do I feel like you want me to say what you want to hear?”
“Because maybe I do,” she admitted, and then she realized that she had chewed the top of her straw into two separate pieces.
“Wait, no, let me see if I can follow your train of thought,” Rafe said, sitting back in his chair. “I’m taking AP Psych at school, so don’t worry, you’re in good hands.”
“Great,” Grace said. “My brain feels super safe right now.”
Rafe just waved away her concerns, staring at her for almost thirty seconds. Grace hadn’t realized how long thirty seconds actually was.