by Paula Stokes
“Did you read it?” I ask.
She looks down at the floor, lets out a big breath of air. “I skimmed it. So this whole notebook—it’s full of things that have happened since Kieran, your father, and your brother died?”
“Mostly.”
My mom flips through the pages of my notebook. “And you . . . blame yourself for these things?”
“Kind of,” I whisper.
“You really spent years thinking you were cursed?” Tears fill her eyes, and then we’re both crying. “I knew you worried about bad things happening. I didn’t realize you felt responsible for them.” She pulls a tissue from the box on my bedside table and blots her eyes. “I recognized you needed help when you got so upset about the fire, but I had no idea it all went back to the accident. Or maybe I did and just didn’t want to connect it all. What kind of a mother does that make me?”
“You didn’t do anything wrong, Mom. It’s not your fault if I’m—”
“Maguire,” my mom says firmly. “You are not cursed. You are not bad luck. You are not to blame for any of these things.”
I pick at a ball of lint on my thin hospital blanket. “Then how do you explain it all?”
“Sometimes terrible things happen and it’s no one’s fault. Sometimes we do the best we can and still have bad outcomes.”
“I still want to be with him,” I whisper. “How selfish does that make me?”
“It doesn’t make you selfish. Luck isn’t a zero-sum game where you being lucky means someone else has to be unlucky. If you want to be with him, then be with him,” my mom says.
It seemed so easy when we were broken and bleeding. Choose to live. Choose to fight. But I can do both of those things without becoming Jordy’s girlfriend and potentially putting him at risk. Maybe we’re both better off if I love him from a distance.
“How can I do that, Mom, knowing that bad things might happen?”
My mom scoots her chair closer to the bed and squeezes my good hand. “There is always the chance someone might get hurt. You can try to control the situation with rituals or staying home or locking yourself away from the world, but in the end it’s not up to you.”
“But how can I live like that?” My voice rises in pitch.
“Because there’s no other choice,” my mom says. “And because you’re brave.”
My IV pump chimes sharply, and my mom and I both turn to look at it. A tiny red light flashes. The bag of saline the nurse gave me is almost empty. About ten chimes later Nurse Pili bustles back into the room. She shuts off the IV and takes a set of vitals.
“How’s your pain?” she asks.
“It’s fine,” I say. “Maybe two out of ten.”
“Are you feeling confused at all?”
“No, I feel okay.”
She rests a hand on my arm. “Your vitals are all within normal limits. I’m going to check with the doctor to see if we can get your discharge paperwork processed. I’ll be back to update you.”
“Thank you,” my mom says. When the nurse is gone, she bends over and wraps her arms around me, her lips pressing against my forehead. “I feel so bad that you’ve been struggling for so long.” Her eyes water. “Maybe Tom and the kids seemed like they needed more from me, so I left you floundering.” A tear streaks down her cheek, and she swipes at it.
“I should’ve told you how I felt. I guess it just seemed like there was nothing you could do to help. And you had your hands full with Erin, and then Jake too. They do need you more.” I swallow hard. “I didn’t want to take you away from them.”
“Well, I need all of my children exactly the same.” My mom sniffles. “Please don’t ever feel like you can’t ask me for anything, Maguire. I will never be too busy for you. I will never not make time.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Really.” Mom blots at her eyes again.
“In that case, there is one thing I would like to do.”
CHAPTER 38
My mom signs my discharge paperwork, and we head out to her car.
“If we’re doing this, I’m driving,” she says. “You’re all zonked out on pain meds.”
I slide into the passenger seat and buckle my seat belt. Mom buckles up and then looks both ways as she pulls out of the hospital parking lot. My phone rings. It’s Penn again. I slip it back into my purse unanswered. I can’t talk to her. Not yet, not until I’m finished. I can’t let anything distract me.
Two hours later, Mom and I reach the site outside of San Luis Obispo where Dad, Uncle Kieran, and Connor died. The place where I inexplicably lived. I recognize the road before she even says anything, as if its particular collection of curves imprinted itself on my memory all those years ago. There’s a tiny white cross peeping out of the steep hillside at the scene of the accident. A tiny white cross with fresh flowers.
“Who?” I ask.
Mom slows the car as we pass the site. “The firehouse, probably,” she says. “I think they come out every month. We can go there, if you’d like to speak to some of them.”
I shake my head. I already know what they’ll say. My dad and uncle were heroes. They died too young. Everyone loved them. Everyone misses them.
I turn around in my seat and watch the cross disappear through the back window. “I need to get out of the car for a moment. Is that okay?”
“Sure, but I’m coming with you.” Mom finds a place to park about a half mile down the road at the turnoff for a trailhead. We get out of the car, cross the street, and start walking back toward the scene of the accident.
As we draw close, it all rushes back to me. The warm day, the sunshine, the car radio cranking, my brother teasing me. Part of me wants to turn around, go back to Mom’s car, forget I ever had the idea to come here. But I can’t, because Jordy was right. I do need to see this.
I need to face this place.
Just beyond the cross, a curved metal guardrail skirts the edge of the narrow shoulder. I study the road and then look down the hill, at the clusters of rocks peppering the side of the grassy incline. I remember seeing the truck veer into our lane and then the sickening feel of dropping off the pavement, the impact of each jolt as the car bounced end over end. But my memory doesn’t give up anything else. No clue as to why the driver lost control of his truck. No long-kept secret about how I survived.
“You all right?” my mom asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “I guess I was just hoping I’d find answers. How it happened. Why it happened. How I . . .”
“How you lived?”
“Yeah.”
“The fire chief said it happens more than you’d think. One movement this way or that way, one second sooner or later, and someone lives or dies. He said maybe the car twisted in such a way that one of the guys broke your fall. Or perhaps that you ended up on the floorboards and fit just right so the front and back seats cushioned you from the impacts.” She puts an arm around me. “But I’m afraid we’ll never know for sure, honey.” She stares out, past the guardrail and the steep embankment. A single tear streaks down her pale cheek. “I just know I’m awfully glad that you did.”
“Me too.” I lean into my mom’s body, and she wraps me in a hug. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
She pulls back a little to look me in the eye. “Thank you for bringing me here.”
I turn in a slow half circle, taking in the road, the trees, the incline, the wooden cross. I know my dad, uncle, and brother aren’t with us, that they’re long gone to wherever people go when they die, but somehow I feel connected to them. “I just need another minute.”
“Take all the time you want,” Mom says. “I could use another minute myself.”
We stand there, together but separate, both of us thinking about the past in our own ways. “I miss you guys,” I say. “I’m sorry you’re gone. Connor, I’m sorry I was mean to you.” I pause, take in a deep breath. “You were the best brother a girl could ask for.”
Mom rests a hand on my lower back but doesn’t speak. I g
lance around for any kind of sign that my family has heard me. But there’s no sudden rush of wind, no strange beams of light in the darkening sky. There are no signs, just like there are no answers. And I can either accept that or not accept it, but neither choice will change what is. I’ll never know for sure what caused the crash or why I survived. I’ll never know for sure whether I’m lucky, unlucky, being tested, or merely a victim of probability. I’ll never know which of the bad things led to good things, or which were actually good things in disguise. Any control I thought I gained by doing my checks and rituals and shutting out the world was an illusion.
The time for illusions is over.
Reaching up, I remove the mystic knot necklace from around my neck and drape it over the top of the cross. “Now we’ll always be together,” I say.
My mom smiles and then removes her own necklace, a tiny gold heart. “Now we’ll always be together,” she echoes, looping her chain over mine.
The sun falls below the horizon as we turn away from the site.
By the time we get back to the car, there are three more messages from Penn. They all say basically the same thing. “Jordy is doing okay. He’s awake and wants to see you. His phone was destroyed in the accident, so please call me on my phone.” The third one is slightly more frantic, as if she thinks I’m not going to call her back.
“Are you ready to head home?” my mom asks.
I nod. “Thanks for doing this. Did you have to trust Tom with Erin and Jake?”
“It was about time I gave him a shot.” She smiles. “How’s Jordy?”
“Doing okay, according to his sister.”
“Do you need me to drop you at the hospital?”
“It’s going to be past visiting hours by the time we get back to San Diego,” I say. “I’ll go by after school tomorrow.”
My mom pats my hand. “You were in a serious car accident and broke your arm. You can take a day or two off school.”
“Thanks, Mom.”
I call Penn and let her know I’ll be coming by in the morning.
“Thank God,” she says. “Jordy keeps rambling about how he thinks you’re going to break up with him because of the accident. We all figured it was the pain medicine talking, but he seems to think he might never see you again. Hang on. I’ll wake him up so he can talk to you.”
“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, don’t disturb him. I’m all achy and dirty. I’m just going to take a bath and go to bed. My mom is letting me skip school, so I’ll see him early tomorrow morning. I promise.”
“Okay,” she says, but there’s a note of fear in her voice. “You’re not going to hurt him again, are you?”
“Believe me,” I say. “That’s the last thing I want to do.”
CHAPTER 39
To say I’m nervous about going to see Jordy is an understatement, especially since Penn is at school and it’ll be just his parents and me.
I still do all my rituals in the morning, but there’s a different feel to them today. It’s less like “I need these to survive” and more like “These remind me of everything good in my life, the things I love and want to protect.” I go to twist my hair into a bun, but I change my mind at the last minute and leave it down. It’ll cover some of the scratches and bruises on my face.
I pull into the hospital parking lot about fifteen minutes later. When I find Jordy’s room, the door is propped halfway open. He’s in bed, covered in white hospital blankets and picking at a tray of breakfast food. The rest of the room is empty, but it still takes me a few seconds to work up my nerve to knock gently on the doorframe.
His face goes through a whole range of emotions when he sees me—relief, happiness, anxiety, fear. I know what it’s like to feel so many different things at once.
“Can I come in?” I ask softly.
“Of course.” He makes an attempt to finger-comb his hair, which I find kind of adorable given the circumstances. There’s a bandage above his left eye with a purpling bruise peeking out the side.
“Nice dress.” I gesture at his hospital gown.
He perks up slightly. “You should see the back.”
I smile as I drag one of the chairs to the side of the bed and sit in it.
“So you’re okay?” he asks.
“Just this.” I hold up my broken arm.
Jordy rubs at the stubble on his chin. “Doesn’t really count as unscathed.” He gestures at his blanket-covered body. “I didn’t even break anything. I win.”
“You’re so competitive.”
“It’s true.” He takes my casted arm in his hands and studies the blue and gray fiberglass wrap. “Looks like we’re going to have to work on your one-handed backhand.”
“You’re right.” I haven’t even thought about tennis since the accident. But there’s probably no reason I can’t play with my cast.
We both fall silent. The red hand on the wall clock ticks off about fifteen seconds. Then Jordy says, “You’re going to break up with me, aren’t you? For my own good?”
“I thought about it,” I admit.
He sinks back against the pillows. “Just because you failed a stupid therapy challenge?”
“Actually, I finished it with my mom yesterday.”
“Really?” Hope flickers in his eyes.
“Yep. We went to the crash site.”
“How was it?”
I pull my legs up onto the chair and wrap my arms around my shins. “It’s hard to explain. I guess I was hoping for something more, maybe a memory of why it happened or the answer to why I lived. For some sort of closure, you know?”
“And?”
“None of that was there, but I still felt . . . better about things.”
“So where does that leave us?” Jordy asks.
I rest my chin on my knees. “I wish I knew why bad things happen. I wish someone could tell me definitively if our accident was my fault.”
“Our accident was because I’m a crappy driver,” Jordy says. “Or maybe the Universe just really needed that deer.”
I laugh softly. “I swear I saw it watching us after the crash, like it felt guilty.”
“Poor Mitzi! I was going to give that car to my sister for Christmas. That deer should feel guilty. Maybe it’s the one who called 911.”
“Nope, that was me.”
“Oh,” Jordy says. “So basically I wreck the car, you save my life, and now you’re here trying to tell me you think the accident was your fault.”
“I’m trying to tell you I don’t know. I’ll never know for sure if someone or something is pulling the strings or if it’s all like you said—totally random, and I’ve just had a few epically bad rolls of the dice. It’s hard to imagine being with someone when I’m feeling like that.”
“What about the roll of the dice where you met me?” Jordy asks. “Your life is more than just a bunch of unfortunate events jotted down in a notebook, Maguire.” His words are coming out faster now, amplified by pain and frustration.
“You’re right,” I say.
He keeps going like he didn’t hear me. “I mean what makes you think you can decide what’s best—” He stops. “Did you just say I was right?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not sure a girl has ever said that to me before.”
“Well, I wouldn’t get used to it or anything.” My lips curl into a grin. “But no, after the accident I kept flipping back and forth—trying to choose between the presence of happiness and the absence of guilt. Between going back to the Maguire I used to be and taking a risk. And here’s what I figured out: the only thing scarier than blaming myself for bad outcomes is accepting the fact that sometimes no one is to blame—that horrible stuff might happen to the people I care about, and no amount of five-second checks or knocking on wood will prevent it.”
Jordy nods. “It’s easier to blame someone than to accept that sometimes we’re all powerless. Of course, most of us blame other people.”
“I can’t control other people,” I say. �
��I can only control me. But I can’t control the Universe that way. The whole time I was just fooling myself.”
“So what now?”
I look over at him, at his bruised and bandaged face. All I want to do is touch my lips to every tiny wound. “Now I choose happiness, even if the whole idea scares the crap out of me.”
“Good choice.” Jordy’s smile lights up my insides. Any lingering reservations I had about my decision flicker out. He reaches for my hand. When we touch, I swear I can feel the tension ebbing out of his body. He pats the bed with his other hand. “Sit with me.”
I blush. “Why?”
“Because I want to kiss my girlfriend, that’s why.”
I move from the chair to the edge of the bed. Jordy pulls me down so that I’m half on top of him.
“I don’t think your nurse—”
“Is going to stop by in the next two minutes.” He presses his lips to mine.
I pluck the TV remote out from under my hip and adjust myself so that Jordy and I are lying side by side. I cradle his face with my good hand, mindful of his injuries and bandages as our mouths connect, gentle, and then harder.
There’s a cough from behind me. I pull away from Jordy so fast I nearly tumble off the side of the bed. A gray-haired man in a white coat is standing in the doorway. He’s holding a tablet in his hand. “You might want to be careful of the chest tube.” He goes to the other side of Jordy’s bed and lifts up a clear canister that’s partially full of blood. Flexible plastic tubes travel from the container to beneath the thin hospital blanket.
“Hey, dude. What’s up?” Jordy asks.
“I’m Dr. Cantor. I’m a vascular surgeon,” he says. “Are your parents around?”
“My mom’s here. She went to get breakfast but should be right back.” Jordy frowns. “Vascular surgeon. What’s wrong with me?”
Dr. Cantor smiles. “Nothing we can’t fix.”