The Way Back to You

by Michelle Andreani

  I shrug.

  “Think it over. Now, there’s a Terminator marathon on TV. You want to come down and watch with me?”

  What choice do I have? Only a therapist-needing person would say no to watching Terminator movies so he can spend more time alone in his room listening to “god-awful music.”

  “Sure,” I tell him.

  Dad gets up first, and as soon as he does, a furry black face peeks out of my closet. I sit frozen, hoping he’ll walk out without noticing her.

  Naturally, the next words out of his mouth are “Kyle, are you aware that there’s a cat in your room?”

  Cloudy

  The plastic lei is still in Ashlyn’s room.

  After months away, that’s the first thing I notice when I peer in from the doorway. I’ve decided that limiting where I go in the Montiels’ house is my best option. Not that even keeping still is safe. In this hallway, Ashlyn and I would use pillowcases instead of potato sacks and bounce around from one end to the other. Or there was the night we convinced ourselves a ghost lived in Ashlyn’s vanity mirror, so we slept right over in that corner.

  Best option or not, the memory booby traps are all over this place.

  I did visit twice after the funeral. It was mostly Mrs. Montiel and me sifting through Ashlyn’s stuff. We never threw any of it out, or even moved any of it, but both times she asked if I wanted to take something, a relic from Ashlyn’s life to keep for myself. So far I’ve only taken the cheer camp shirt from our first summer there together. But that was to please Mrs. Montiel. I’m not sure she’s ready to part with any of it yet.

  I’m not sure I’m ready to have any of it.

  The Montiels didn’t invite me over after that. They needed space to grieve, is what my parents told me, and I understood, even if their choice of words was completely misguided. Grief doesn’t seem to need much space at all; it’s more like it tightens and squeezes until there’s no more of you left. But whatever their reason, I never offered to stop by, either. If I wasn’t around, it was easier to avoid the picture of Ashlyn and me on her nightstand and the grape Kool-Aid stain I left by her closet. And now looking in on Ashlyn’s unlived-in room is like wearing my own old clothes. Not completely uncomfortable but still fundamentally . . . off.

  I guess Mrs. Montiel finally put away the stacks of laundry and threw out the trash, but the things that matter—the mail from various animal welfare groups, the Almond Blossom mug that doubles as a pen holder, the Cheer Insider magazines that I’m ignoring—they’re all still here. Everything is still here, pretty much the way she left it before going on that last bike ride with her family. Almost exactly the same as I remember it.

  Including the radioactively orange lei hanging from her bedside lamp. Ashlyn almost had a meltdown when I walked into her kitchen with it last May.

  “A luau kit,” she said, peering into the Party Town shopping bags. She was sitting at the island surrounded by pre-fruit-punch orange and apple slices, part of the prep for Kyle’s surprise. My job was decorations detail, and I’d clearly screwed up. Epically. “This is what you got for today?”

  “You don’t like it?” I reached inside the bag for a tiny pink drink umbrella and stuck it behind my ear. “It’s festive. See?”

  A warm breeze blew in through the patio doors, and she lifted her black hair off her shoulders. “But we’re not having a luau.”

  “It’s your party.” I grinned. “You can luau if you want to.”

  “It’s Kyle’s party.” Her voice was getting squeaky—proof she was about to reach panic-button mode. “We’re celebrating him getting MVP! Not . . . Hawaii.”

  I hopped onto one of the stools surrounding the island. Everything had been about Kyle then—and everything that fell into Kyle’s trajectory had to be flawless. “News flash: Kyle has no idea he’s even having a party. And”—I leaned across the countertop to take back a bag—“I’m pretty sure he doesn’t care if I wear this kick-ass grass skirt or not.”

  She gave me a stabby look.

  “What?” I said. “You think he’ll want to wear it?”

  “Cloudy,” she warned.

  “I’m not judging, Ashlyn. I just would’ve gotten another if I’d known.”

  With a groan, she started pulling stuff out of the bags: more paper umbrellas, some cardboard hula girls, a sign that read Get Low and Limbo! Her eyes flashed. “They didn’t have anything regular? Like with boy stuff or . . . primary colors?” Ashlyn moved a plate of apple wedges between us. As I bit into one, I could feel her watching me, although her stare had gone softer, more butter knife than machete. “This is because you hate Kyle, isn’t it?”

  I choked on my apple. “No, but that is why I poisoned the cake.”

  “You could give him a chance.”

  My mouth fell open. “Like you gave Aidan a chance?”

  “Aidan was a snob.” The twist in her lips was almost a smile. She had hardly tolerated my first boyfriend, and she wasn’t shy about it.

  I shook my head, smirking. “You are such a hypocrite.”

  “And you are such a brat.” She propped her elbows on the countertop, sitting up straighter. “You and Kyle are the most important people to me in the whole world, and you can barely be in the same room.”

  It felt like my insides were getting bigger and bigger, like they were trying to be my outsides. Whenever she talked like that, it made my feelings for Kyle seem a thousand times worse. And any righteous resentment, those dangerous I-knew-him-first thoughts, crumbled into this dusty guilt that coated everything.

  I was never supposed to fall for him. But I screwed up.

  In freshman year, I had Aidan: a senior with great hair, whose only comment about what would happen with us after he graduated was “let’s play it by ear.” By the time he was set to start college in the fall, he had apparently played it and, by ear, decided to dump me. Somehow, I hadn’t seen it coming. So I did what anyone does when they’re lost: I Googled. Most of the articles about breakups offered the same slice of wisdom: it takes half the time your relationship lasted to get over your ex. Get involved with anyone before that and you were doomed. And so, the day Aidan drove to Oregon State, my five-month guy embargo began.

  Ashlyn said it was ridiculous. According to her, I should’ve been dating more to get him out of my system. But she’d never liked Aidan, and at the time, her advice seemed like a slight to my hairline-fractured heart, as if Aidan’s and my ten-month relationship wasn’t worth the time it would take to recover from it.

  My Boy Ban felt like an extended summer vacation. Like I had all this free time and nothing—no one—to answer to. I started running every morning and finally finished reading Jane Eyre. I did the bravest thing I could imagine: I went to the movies alone. And that’s when I discovered the mural, in an alley behind the Tin Pan Theater. It was taller than I am, and the words “All good things are wild and free”—a Thoreau quote—filled the entire canvas. The letters were painted as if they’d been formed out of wildflowers and tree bark and leaves—a few were coated in actual, velvety moss.

  I was stunned. It was nothing like the van Gogh painting Ashlyn was so smitten with. Almond Blossom is pretty and soothing and classic. But no matter how often I’d seen it in her room, it never sent jolts through my system like the “Wild and Free” mural. The words seemed crafted just for me in that instant, and the whole piece was energetic and alive and looked as if it might explode off the brick wall.

  On the way home, I noticed all kinds of flowers and plant life growing around town. I couldn’t believe it had taken seeing them on a canvas to appreciate the real things.

  I also kept up the Boy Ban. Even though Kyle and I were assigned as lab partners, and I discovered there was a family of bumblebees living in my chest that zipped around only when he smiled at me, I never said anything. Not to Ashlyn, because liking someone else so soon would be admitting she was right about Aidan—and certainly not to Kyle. I really did believe in waiting it out. And then, with on
e month left in the Ban, Ashlyn had pulled me aside in that alcove and told me about Kyle.

  Like I said, I screwed up.

  “Well,” I told Ashlyn, “I got the luau stuff because I thought it was fun. Not because I hate Kyle—I don’t hate Kyle.”

  She sighed, wistful. “My life would be a lot simpler if you’d get back with Matty. Can’t you do that for me?”

  I laughed. “For you, anything.”

  “Things were the best when you were together. We were neighbors-in-law!”

  Ashlyn was always gunning for Matty and me to couple up. It was this fantasy she had—that the four of us would fit in this perfect way, a puzzle made from only her favorite pieces. The most ludicrous thing about it was, for a while, she was getting her wish. The same day she asked Kyle to Winter Formal, Matty asked me. I didn’t have a reason not to, so I said yes. And then Matty and I just tumbled into each other. We weren’t Ashlyn and Kyle, who were taking steady and measured steps into a relationship. We were apart, and as swiftly as flipping a page, we were together.

  Until WinterFest happened and I screwed up again.

  Three months later and Ashlyn still didn’t know about that. All she did know was that I ended it with Matty the week following WinterFest because “I wasn’t ready for a relationship”—which was sort of true; I had broken the Boy Ban early—and that things were weird between Kyle and me because he was staying loyal to his cousin, which was also sort of true. Keeping that many truths from her was agony, but it was the least I deserved.

  “I just want everyone to be happy,”Ashlyn said as she considered the Party Town loot.

  “In that case”—I dropped off the stool, my flip-flops slapping the tiled floor—“I’ll go return this stuff.”

  “You will?”

  “Yes,” I whined, joking, like it was the hardest thing in the world, like the bags each weighed fifty pounds and I would have to carry them back in my teeth. “For you, anything. Remember?”

  But I kept the orange lei for myself and wore it until, after a raging sugar high from too much punch, Ashlyn made Kyle wear it. Supposedly, he had it on for the rest of the night, but I only stuck around long enough to catch Ashlyn placing it around his neck as he smiled bashfully.

  I KNOW THE Montiels invited us both, but it feels like Zoë has attached herself to me barnacle style. She’s everywhere I am lately, impossible to shake off. It’s also hard to resist telling her she’s preparing the salad all wrong. Once Ashlyn became a vegetarian, she was especially invested in dinner salads. And she never cut the tomatoes like that.

  “So where’s Mr. Montiel?” Zoë asks, wiping tomato goo from the cutting board.

  Ashlyn’s mom dries her hands on a dish towel, then hands Zoë more vegetables to massacre. “Out at the market with Tyler, buying charcoal for the grill,” she says.

  I smile a little from my spot against the doorjamb. Tyler, who’s only eight, must be thrilled. He loves cold-night cookouts. Mr. Montiel is always doing stuff like this in the winter, grilling outside, even opening the pool. “You can’t stop doing things you love just because the outside world is telling you different,” he’d say.

  It’s nice that hasn’t changed when everything else has.

  “Thanks for having us over tonight,” I say, finally stepping into the kitchen.

  “It’s our pleasure,” Mrs. Montiel says. “And you’re more than welcome here any time, especially while your parents are away.”

  Ashlyn didn’t look much like her mom, except for the grassy green eyes. That’s how my mom’s been rating Mrs. Montiel’s progress over the past few months; her eyes. Dark circles? Bad day. Bloodshot? Worse day. But now they’re the tiniest bit rimmed in red, which I’m hoping means at least a slightly-better-than-bad day.

  I clutch the cuffs of my sweatshirt. “That’s really generous, but you wouldn’t believe how busy we are this week. We’ll hardly have time to eat at home.”

  Zoë glances at me, puzzled. It’s not completely false—there’s cheer practice and homework and probably something in our house that needs a thorough cleaning. Lots of things to stop me from coming back here next week.

  Mrs. Montiel slings the towel over the sink. “Have your mom and dad checked in with you yet?”

  “Right when they landed in LA,” I say. “The ship is leaving tomorrow, so we won’t hear from them until they reach Cabo on Sunday.”

  Although the connection is excruciatingly slow, not to mention expensive, my parents still considered calling us from the cruise ship. Then my dad read a horror story about some guy racking up a thousand-dollar phone bill because he’d called outside of the proper zones. The debate ended there. “Good to know what our safety’s worth to you,” I’d said to him. “Your safety is priceless until we’re in international waters,” he’d said back. So Mom and Dad will only be in contact once they make port in Mexico and find free wifi.

  Mrs. Montiel grabs a bowl of rinsed-off raw chicken. She stares into it, then smiles weakly at me. “I never thought I’d miss seeing all of Ashlyn’s tofu in the fridge.”

  I smile back. I think. I’m too numb and nauseated to know for sure.

  She places the bowl on the counter. “Would you mind sitting with me?” she says to us, walking over to their butcher-block table. Her back is straight but her shoulders seem loose, so her body language is one big mixed message. “I was going to wait until we were having dinner, but this feels like a good time.”

  My heart pounds hard, just once, like the last emphatic beat of a song. “What’s going on?”

  Without a word, Zoë obediently takes a seat opposite Mrs. Montiel. I follow, a little slower, so frozen I’m convinced my knees will splinter when I sit, but they don’t.

  Once I hit the padded cushion, Mrs. Montiel flattens her palms against the wooden tabletop. “You know that some of Ashlyn’s organs were donated when she passed. And that we—Mr. Montiel, Tyler, and I—wrote a letter so that we could contact her recipients.”

  Beside me, Zoë nods.

  Matty read the letter at Ashlyn’s funeral. Afterward, everyone talked about how lovely it was, and how brave the Montiels were, reaching out to the recipients like that. I’d mostly tried not to think of it.

  “Well, we haven’t told this to many people”—suddenly, Mrs. Montiel’s smile is a glow, like its own light source—“but out of the seven, three of them wrote back.”

  “Three!” My sister leans forward, entranced. “Who are they? Are they all young? Are they all girls?”

  “Zoë,” I hiss. “Don’t be nosy.”

  “Oh, no, it’s fine.” Mrs. Montiel tilts her head at Zoë. “Sonia was the first to write back. And then there was Ethan, who’s only ten years old. And Freddie, who’s . . . considerably older than that.”

  She starts listing facts about each of them: Ethan likes animals and has part of Ashlyn’s liver. Freddie is planning a vacation to Australia and New Zealand. I shove my fingers under my thighs so I won’t plug my ears shut.

  “How often do you write to each other?” Zoë asks.

  “Whenever we can.” Mrs. Montiel’s face is bright, as if she just got back from getting a facial or something. “After our initial letters, we had to communicate through the transplant center. But now that some time has passed, we’re not required to do that anymore. So we decided that we’d like to contact each other separately.”

  “That’s amazing,” I say, because it’s what you say when you’re ready for a conversation to be over.

  “I don’t get it.” Zoë furrows her brow. “What’s the difference?”

  “Basically,” Mrs. Montiel starts, “we’re able to share more with each other now. Our notes had to be filtered through the donor organization. They’re very strict about people disclosing private information, so we couldn’t say where we live or anything too personal. But we all felt ready to take the next step. So recently we started emailing. Maybe we’ll even talk on the phone one day.”

  Zoë hops in her chair. “Seriousl
y? That’s very cool! Right, Cloudy?”

  “Yeah, very cool,” I add, then clear my achy throat.

  “What do you guys talk about?” Zoë pokes at her glasses. “Anything juicy?”

  “No deep-down secrets yet,” Mrs. Montiel laughs. “But Ethan’s mom told me he’s acting in a play. It’s the first time he’s felt healthy enough to participate in an extracurricular activity.”

  My skin goes rigid, like it’s made of tiny pieces of metal that have all suddenly snapped together.

  “And I did get one extremely exciting piece of news about Sonia today.”

  Instantly, without wanting to, I recall the Sonia trivia she dispensed a minute ago: twenty-eight-year-old receptionist, with a dog, and Ashlyn’s heart.

  There’s glee in Mrs. Montiel’s voice. “She sent us a wedding invitation.”

  Zoë gasps. “She’s getting married?”

  “Her fiancé proposed after the transplant. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “It’s so romantic! Will you go?”

  “Unfortunately, no. It was too short notice,” she says, her tone gentle. “But it was kind of her to invite us. Don’t you think so, Cloudy?”

  My fingers curl around the edge of the stool. Somewhere in my mind, I’m aware it is really kind. But I can’t breathe enough air to say what I’m thinking out loud, so I just smile and nod.

  Bing-bing-bing!

  “Shoot,” Mrs. Montiel says, bending back to look at the oven. “I forgot I was preheating that and I haven’t even gotten the biscuit recipe from the printer.”

  “I’ll grab it,” I say, darting up.

  As I rush from the room, Zoë’s and Mrs. Montiel’s spirited chatter bites at my feet.

  I knew about the recipients. I figured that they were out there, somewhere in the world, walking around. They weren’t supposed to have names and interests and futures.

  Flicking the light on in the Montiels’ office, I cross the room to the family computer, the printer right next to it. They both sit on the desk that faces a picture window overlooking the backyard. If I press my face to the glass, I’ll be able to see Matty’s basketball hoop in the Ocies’ driveway next door on the right. But it’s so dark outside, all that’s visible in the glass is my reflection.