over them and over them so that I don’t lose a single detail, but I can already feel the edges starting to blur as we get closer to leaving.
I tell myself that Saz’s parents only thought they saw my dad. That the person they actually saw was a man with curly hair and a scruffy beard who just looked like Neil Henry.
I say, “I’ll be right back,” and then I get up and go into the room with the displays, where I dig through my bag until I find the blue notebook, which is beginning to fill up. I go outside into the afternoon and sit on the step. I flip to the middle of the book and find the blank pages. I smooth them open, running my hand across the paper as if I can feel the blankness and the words to come.
* * *
—
After dinner, back at Addy’s house, back in the office, I leave the window open, the same way Saz and I have always left ours open for each other. For a long time I sit there, night air warming my face, gazing out into the buzzing, humming dark. The window is open and I’m here waiting. Please come. Even though we haven’t planned it, I’m hoping Miah will show up.
I slap at a mosquito on my leg. At another by my ear. I close the window, except for a crack, and curl up on the sofa, restless under the sheet. I finish the thumbprint cookies and write until my eyes grow heavy and I can’t keep them open. I lay my head on the pillow and at some point nod off. Around midnight, I feel the pull-out couch sink a little, and Miah is there. I open my eyes and he has turned off all the lights but one.
“Took you long enough,” I say. “I was being devoured by bugs.”
“I think we both know I’m worth the wait.” He gives me this exaggerated wink and I roll my eyes.
He takes the pen out of my hand, and as he reaches for the lamp, I say, “Wait.” Instead of telling him about my conversation with Saz yesterday or my time with Addy, I show him the notebook. “You asked me if I was writing. I am. At least, I’m writing things down but I don’t know what they are yet. Maybe they’re nothing, or maybe they’ll be something more one day.”
His eyes are on me and he is listening, really listening. He says, in this soft, soft voice, “I hope I get to read them.”
DAYS 23–24
Early the next morning, Mom, Addy, and I walk to the beach. We stop to pick up shells and watch the shrimp boats anchored off the shore, and I can hear the lilt in my mom’s voice, like music. When she laughs, the lines around her eyes crinkle, and I remember something I read once about the difference between a fake smile and a real one, and how you can always tell a real one by the lines around the eyes.
Addy and my mom tell old family stories, the ones I like to hear, about when they were growing up in Georgia. I join in now and then, but these stories belong to them, and gradually I fall behind to give them some room, even though it’s just the three of us on this beach, under this broad blue sky. I watch my mom’s blond head and Addy’s gray one. They link arms and for a minute they look like sisters, gliding over the sand like swans. Addy says something and my mom starts to laugh again. She laughs so hard she bends at the waist and holds on to her knees, and when she straightens up, she wipes at her eyes and she is still laughing. For some reason the sight of this makes my own eyes go wet, and I concentrate on picking up shells.
And then they’re waiting for me to catch up, and Addy asks me about college and am I excited and do I know who my roommate is going to be. I answer her questions, but I want to tell her to live in the moment. Let’s not think about college. I don’t want to think about college, even though it’s the thing I’ve thought about for so long. Most of all I don’t want to think about what happens to Miah and me when we leave.