The How & the Why

by Cynthia Hand

  “Please,” she says, and her voice softens. “Please, honey. When I got you, that first night you were in my arms, I made promises. I promised that I was going to give you the happiest, most beautiful life. That’s why your birth mother gave you to me, because I was going to give you that life.”

  I sigh. “You can’t promise my life is going to be happy, Mom.”

  “I’m going to do my best, because that was the promise I made. So if I’m dying, Cass, then this is my dying wish. Don’t drop out of the play. Don’t quit school. Don’t stop hanging out with your friends. Live your beautiful life, every second that you can.”

  There’s a quick knock on the door and Dad pops in. “Hey, sorry to interrupt, but I’ve got to get Boo to school . . .” His voice trails off. He looks from me to Mom and back again. “What’s going on?”

  “Okay, sweetie?” Mom asks, still looking at me. “That’s what I want.”

  I’m crying, dangit, and I’m half furious, half devastated, but I’m not allowed to be mad at her right now and she’s got me backed into a corner. I wipe at my face and nod once.

  “Everybody okay here?” Dad asks.

  “We’re all peachy.” My voice breaks on the word peachy. I dash my tears away. “Everything’s totally normal, as usual. And apparently I have to do everything she wants.”

  “Yeah, welcome to the club,” Dad says.

  “Let’s go,” I tell him, grabbing my backpack. “I don’t want to be late for school. I love you,” I bark out to Mom. “I’m going. Bye.”

  “I love you, too,” she says, and I’m out the door.

  24

  I go to school. I go to class. I go to gym class. I go to a meeting for the theater club. I go to class again. And then I go to lunch, where I sit at the same table where I sit every day, with the same people. But it doesn’t feel like any kind of beautiful life.

  “How’s Mama Cat?” Nyla asks quietly.

  “Infuriating. She won’t let me quit the play.”

  “Wait, you want to quit the play?” Bastian asks.

  I shrug. Right then Alice shows up. She gives Bastian a notably chilly look, but then she scoots in next to him at our table. “I’m over it,” she announces.

  “By which you mean . . . ,” says Bender.

  “The drama competition.”

  Dear God, please don’t let us talk about the drama competition. Not now.

  “I really am sorry,” Bastian says earnestly.

  Alice holds a hand up. “Over it, like I said. But now naturally I want to hear all about it.”

  Silence. Ronnie is trying to do something under the table—kick Alice, I think. But it doesn’t work.

  “What?” Alice asks. “Come on, spill it. I’ve been dying to know how it went all weekend, and then I was out yesterday with a cold, so maybe it was a good thing I didn’t get to go. I could have gotten you all sick. Anyway, so . . . how was it?”

  “We won second in the comedy category,” Bender says quickly, and Ronnie nods and adds, “Hip hip, hooray!”

  “Awesome.” Alice swivels to Nyla and me. “And what about you two?”

  “We won first,” I report dutifully. “Hip hip, hooray.”

  Because I am an exceptionally talented actress. With a beautiful fricking life.

  “Great!” Alice gasps. “Of course, that’s not a surprise.” She glances around the table nervously. She’s finally catching on that something’s not right, and then she thinks she knows what that is. “Oh, and Cass, I am so sorry. I heard about your mom. Everybody I know is sending your family prayers and healing thoughts.”

  “Oh, awesome,” I say. “Thoughts and prayers.”

  Nyla looks at me like “Stop.” “But the good news is, Cass’s mom has been placed at the very top of the donor list now,” she says. “So there’s a lot to be hopeful about.”

  “That’s great news,” says Alice.

  “Yeah, isn’t it awesome?” I say brightly.

  Alice can see that she needs to change the subject. “Okay, right, so, back to the drama competition. What about the scholarship? I really wanted to try for it myself, but—”

  “I’m sorry,” mumbles Bastian.

  “I’m over it,” she says. “But tell me about that. Who won?”

  My teeth grind together. My brain feels like it’s full of cotton balls. It’s too much. Mom dying. Mom wanting me to find my birth mother because she’s dying. Mom not wanting me to be there when she’s dying. Mom missing my whole life, but maybe that’s okay, because my life is not going the way it was supposed to, even though it’s supposed to be beautiful and perfect and awesome. And the cherry on top is the f-ing scholarship.

  “It’s no big deal,” Nyla says finally. “I—”

  “Oh, but it is a big deal,” I argue. “Nyla won. Nyla gets to go to the school of her choice. Of course she was already going to do that.”

  “Hey,” Bastian says, reaching for my hand, but I pull away.

  “So let’s all congratulate Nyla. Hooray for Nyla.” I know I’m being a brat, but I can’t seem to stop—my rage over what’s happening with Mom and the green monster suddenly converge into one giant fire-breathing dragon. “And she’s such a freaking saint, too.”

  Nyla stands up slowly. “I’m sorry, Cass.”

  “Yeah, that makes it all better.”

  “Whoa,” says Ronnie. “Let’s all calm down, okay?”

  “Yeah, let’s breathe for a minute,” Bender says.

  “I don’t need to breathe,” I snap. “I am breathing.”

  “Hey, you won, too,” Nyla reminds me hotly. “You got a scholarship—”

  “To a place I don’t want to go! And why don’t I want to go there, Nyla? Oh, right, because you made me go look at College of Idaho. Because you knew I’d fall in love with it. And of course you didn’t even consider how much it would cost!”

  “I didn’t know it was so expensive,” Nyla shoots back.

  “Because money is not a problem for you!”

  “Wait. Cass got a scholarship, too?” asks Alice. “I’m confused.”

  “To Boise State,” Nyla explains. “They gave Cass a scholarship to BSU, practically a full ride.” She turns to me. “You get to go to college, right? Lots of people don’t. Lots of people don’t get to go to school at all.”

  “Oh boy, lucky me. Meanwhile, why don’t you go to Juilliard, then, just to rub in how lucky I am?”

  “Okay, you’re upset,” Nyla says slowly. “I know. But we’ll figure this out. Maybe we can—”

  I stand up. “We are not going to do anything. This isn’t your problem, Ny. Stop acting like you’re the one in charge of everything. Leave me alone.”

  And with that, I storm out of the cafeteria.

  Nyla finds me ten minutes later in the second-floor ladies’ room, fuming near the back window. Clearly she didn’t understand the words leave me alone.

  “Go away, Ny,” I sigh.

  She checks the stalls. There’s no one else in here. She takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry about your mom. I’m also sorry about being the one who pitched you C of I without checking the cost first. And about the scholarship. I really am sorry, Cass.”

  She’s trying to make nice. She’s about three seconds from saying, “I got you.” And I can’t let her. I still want to wallow in my anger and this seemingly never-ending disappointment that feels like it’s choking me. I’m so sick of being the good girl, of pretending that stuff doesn’t bother me, of always thinking about other people instead of myself. So I go ahead and say the worst thing I can think of.

  “I’m not, like, even surprised they gave it to you,” I say softly. “Of course they gave you the scholarship.”

  Nyla goes completely still. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It looks better for them to give the scholarship to you, even though playing Helen Keller is way harder than playing Annie Sullivan. They’ll always give you the award, because . . .” I shrug.

  She sucks in a bre
ath. “Tell me you did not just make this about my color.”

  I don’t answer. I know I’ve gone too far, but there’s really no calling it back.

  “So you think I won because I’m black.” She stares at me. “You said that to me. You.”

  “I didn’t say that.” It sounds so ugly when she puts it that way. “Look, I’m sorry,” I mumble.

  She folds her arms. “Oh, don’t do that. Don’t say you’re sorry if you’re not sorry.”

  “I’m sorry, okay?”

  She shakes her head. “You need to get over yourself. But I get it. You’re having a bad day.”

  I let out a bitter laugh. “You think? Try a bad year.”

  “The point is,” she says stiffly, “I get it.”

  But the green monster’s still inside me puffing smoke. “No. That’s just it,” I argue. “You don’t get it. You’re still going to end up with everything you want. You dream about something, and you get it, Nyles. I mean, how many times have I heard your mom tell you that you can do anything you set your mind to. Anything, right? And you can. That’s the absurd thing. You will.”

  Nyla scoffs. “We all have our problems, Cass. Don’t act like you have the market cornered on hardships.”

  “What hardships do you have, exactly?”

  Nyla flinches. “You not getting to go to the college you want is not the most tragic thing that could happen.”

  I throw my hands up in the air. “I know it’s not!” I practically scream. “My mom’s going to die, and then I won’t go to the college I want. And then I don’t even know. I’ll probably end up as a drama teacher in a dumpy little apartment with a bunch of cats and no life, and meanwhile you’ll go to USC or Juilliard or wherever else you’d like to hang out and be a movie star and live in a mansion on the beach and forget all about me.” I turn away from her. “Go back to your charmed life and leave me alone.”

  “My life has not always been charmed. You know that.”

  “Oh, don’t bring up Africa,” I say. “That’s not happening to you right now. You’re fine.”

  She gets the face—the one I know means she’s about to put the smack down. “I am not fine!” she says so loudly her voice reverberates off the bathroom tiles. “I lost my whole family! My language! My culture! That was my life! You. Don’t. Know. Anything.”

  “Come on,” I screech back. “You don’t remember that stuff. You were a baby.”

  “That makes it worse!” she yells. “You selfish little—” Her fists clench like she’s going to punch me but instead she presses one to her mouth, probably to hold in a swear. She makes a disgusted noise in the back her throat. “This is my fricking nightmare right here. I’m going to go.”

  I turn away, the word selfish still ringing in my ears. “You do that.”

  She stops at the door of the bathroom. “I’ll be waiting for an apology from you when you start being yourself again. Unless this is yourself. In which case, don’t bother.”

  Then she’s gone.

  I wilt down against the sink, exhausted, ashamed at my own reflection. Then I run and throw up in one of the toilets until I feel entirely empty. I wipe my mouth with a paper towel, feeling all-over sour. We’ve had fights before, Nyla and me. We’ve said things we didn’t mean. We’re both pretty emotional.

  But not like this.

  I’m losing everything, it seems. My dreams. My mom.

  And I think I might have just lost my best friend.

  25

  The nice thing about having a total meltdown at school is that everyone leaves you alone for the rest of the day. Happily I make it through my remaining classes without puking or crying. I go to Mama Jo and ask to be in the play again, and she (of course, whatever you need) agrees. I rehearse diligently all evening, hitting every note, delivering every line perfectly, trying to ignore the whispering that’s going on between my castmates and the deafening silence that’s rolling off Nyla. And then I go home, slam my bedroom door because it feels like the only thing I can do at this point, put on my pajamas at like eight p.m., and sit on my bed, scrolling through past texts on my phone.

  Don’t let the bedbugs bite.

  See, this is why I love you.

  I’m sorry, I text Nyla at last. I really am.

  It’s okay. Don’t worry about it, she types back almost immediately, which is not the reply I was hoping for. Because it doesn’t mean she forgives me. But really, how could she forgive me? After what I said?

  She doesn’t text again.

  There’s a knock on my bedroom door. Dad. Who I assumed was still at the hospital.

  “I come bearing soup.” He’s got a big bowl of minestrone on a tray with crackers, a glass of milk—which hasn’t been my drink of choice for years, but okay—and a sliced apple. I move my legs so he can set the tray on my bed.

  “I heard you had a rough day,” he says. “And you know I’m a firm believer in the power of soup to make things better. So eat up.”

  “Who told you? Nyla?”

  He scrunches up his eyebrows and looks mildly guilty. “No, uh, Ronnie’s little sister is one of my students, and I saw her mother at pickup . . .”

  I sigh. There are sixty thousand residents of the city of Idaho Falls. It’s not a small town. But our part of it all at once feels very small and gossipy. “Oh, good. So everyone knows.”

  “Yep. I think so.”

  At least nobody else was there to hear the last part of my conversation with Nyla. The worst part. The part she’s never going to forgive me for.

  “Eat,” orders Dad.

  I take a bite of the soup. It’s delicious. Mom always gets the credit for being the culinary genius in the family, but I forget sometimes that Dad also has mad skills in this area. The soup warms its way down into my stomach, and I do, weirdly, feel slightly better.

  Dad sits down on the other end of my bed. “You want to talk about it?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “I mean, I do know some of the story. Because you were apparently yelling in the middle of the cafeteria.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “The way I hear it, I’m not the one you should apologize to.”

  “I apologized,” I snap. “But okay, Dad. Take her side.”

  “There’s no side. Cass. Honey. There isn’t a competition, in life, for who gets to endure the most pain.”

  I take another bite. “I know. But if there was, I would totally win.”

  He leans back and looks at me, hard, like he’s deciding what to say. “A while back, maybe three or four years ago, I had a conversation with Nyla’s dad at a barbecue one night, and he told me about when Nyla first came to their family. There was a period there when things were pretty bad. Nyla didn’t speak English. She cried all the time. She had terrible nightmares. She used to bite her parents, like hard enough to break the skin. And she’d hide sometimes, and it would take hours to find her. It wasn’t easy.”

  Guilt tears at me. I didn’t know any of that. She never told me.

  Dad still has more to say. “The point is not that Nyla had it tough, although she did. It’s that we all have it tough sometimes. Even those of us who seem on the outside like we’re fine.”

  “What, like you?”

  “I’m not fine.” He stares down at the floor like there’s some kind of message scrawled across my carpet. “I haven’t been what you’d call fine in more than a year.”

  “Me, neither.”

  He scratches at his beard. “Before this, like way before this, there was a rough patch where your mom and I were trying to get pregnant, and we had two miscarriages. We blew our entire savings on fertility treatments that made your mom cranky and crazy, and then we lost the babies. So we decided to adopt, and we went with an open adoption at first, and we were matched with a birth mother, and we fixed up this room as a nursery, and we waited, so excited, and then that woman decided not to give us her baby, after all. And we were just . . . crushed.”

  “God, I’m sorry, Da
d.”

  “It was a rough patch,” he says. “This, right here, right now, this is a rough patch. And it could get rougher. It probably . . . it probably will.”

  A shiver goes down my spine at the thought of Mom actually being gone. Her casket. Her funeral. Her grave.

  “So you’re angry,” he says. “That’s fair.”

  “I’m sorry.” Tears flood my eyes.

  “Don’t be sorry for how you feel. Feel what you need to feel. Own your feelings.” He puts his arm around me. Sighs. “I’m mad, too. God, I’m mad. I had this perfect life, and now . . .” His lips twist unhappily. “But when you’re going through a rough patch, you have to lean on the people who love you. Like Nyla. Like me. You can have your bad moments. You can even freak out on people. That’s human. But you have to try to make it right, after. And you have to find your way through together. Got it?”

  “Got it.”

  “Good.”

  I wipe at my eyes. “How’d you get so fricking wise?”

  “Oh, I’m making stuff up,” he admits. “I don’t know anything except how to teach fifth graders about the scientific method.”

  I try to laugh a little. “Okay, Dad.”

  He stays there until I eat the rest of my dinner. And then he says, “With regard to the scholarship.”

  I sigh. “Do we have to talk about this?”

  “Yes. We have to. As you know, I would be thrilled if you went to BSU.”

  “Dad—”

  “But nobody’s going to force you to go to Boise State, honey. We can still try with College of Idaho. I’ll do my best. You do your best. And, who knows, maybe something will . . . change, with our financial situation.” He hugs me. “What I mean to say is, go, Yotes.”

  I am the most spoiled, ungrateful person ever to walk the planet.

  He gets up and goes to the door, then stops and stares at it for a second. “You’ve never slammed your door before,” he says in this bewildered tone. “That was such teenage behavior I almost didn’t know what to do. Would you like me to leave for the night so you can throw a secret kegger and wreck our house? Am I going to get a call from school telling me that you’ve been cutting school so you can ride around town with a boy on a motorcycle? I don’t know if I can handle you being a regular teenager.”