Joaquin missed every single thing about Birdie. He missed the smell of her skin, the way her hair would fall across and down his arm whenever she would rest her head on his shoulder. He missed her laugh, her furious anger whenever someone said something she disagreed with.
“A little,” he said. “Sometimes.”
He missed her every single minute of the day.
“So what about your sisters, then?” Ana asked. “Are you just going to push them away when you get to know them better? Run away like you did from Birdie because you think you’re not good enough for them, for anyone?”
Joaquin ate a french fry and didn’t answer. French fries were really terrible when they were cold, but these were hot and crispy. He ate another one.
“Because I’ve got news for you,” Ana continued. “You can’t just push family away. You’re always going to be connected to them.”
Joaquin drew a pattern on the table from the condensation of his glass. “Really?” he said. “Tell that to my mom.”
“Joaquin,” Ana said, and now her voice was gentle. “You deserve to have these people in your life. Mark and Linda, too. You have to forgive yourself for what happened.”
“I can’t,” he said before he could stop himself. “I can’t forgive myself because I don’t even know who I was when I did it. I don’t know that kid at all. He’s a fucking idiot who fucked everything up.”
Ana’s eyes were a little sad as she looked at him. She knew the truth, of course. She had seen the hospitalization records, the police reports, the statement from Joaquin’s adoptive family, the Buchanans.
“I just want to pretend it didn’t happen,” he said after a minute.
“Oh, yeah?” Ana said. “And how’s that working out for you?”
“Really shitty,” he replied, then laughed before he could stop himself. “But at least I’m the only one getting hurt this time.”
“You sure about that?” Ana asked.
Joaquin looked out the window and didn’t answer.
The nightmare woke him up later that night, his sheets and T-shirt damp with sweat, his blood pulsing so hard through his skin that it felt like something was shaking him from the outside.
“Kid, kiddo. Hey, it’s okay.” Mark’s hand was warm on his back, his fingers pressing down and grounding Joaquin. “It’s okay, just wake up a little.”
“’M fine,” Joaquin managed to say. The colors behind his eyes had been too bright, too sharp, like they could pierce his skin.
Linda was standing next to Mark, and she handed Joaquin a glass of water. She always looked softer in the middle of the night, her hair down, her makeup gone.
“Sorry,” Joaquin said. “Sorry, I’m fine. Sorry I woke you up.”
Mark and Linda sat down on either side of him on the bed. Joaquin should have known that they wouldn’t leave him. He had spent seventeen years trying to get someone to stick around for him, and now that they did, he just wanted them to go.
“Want to talk about it?” Mark asked. In the beginning, Joaquin couldn’t even handle Mark being in the room with him after a nightmare. He guessed that this was what Ana would call progress.
“Just . . . I can’t remember,” Joaquin said, rubbing his hand over his face. He needed a clean, dry shirt. He needed a brand-new brain. “It just woke me up.”
That wasn’t true, of course. He had seen his sisters in the dream, Maya and Grace standing on the edge of the ocean, calling for him as the waves crashed harder onto the sand. He tried to get to them, but his feet were stuck in the ground, and he could only watch as they were washed out to sea.
“You were yelling for Grace and Maya,” Linda said gently. “Did you dream about them?”
Joaquin shrugged. “Dunno.”
He didn’t have to look up to know that Mark and Linda were exchanging a look over his head. If he had a dollar for every time they did that, he could move out and get his own place. And a car.
Two more people shoved away.
“Think you can get back to sleep?” Mark asked after a minute of silence. His hand was still steady on Joaquin’s back. Joaquin liked both of them, but he liked Mark’s ability to be quiet, to not always need an answer right away. Mark sometimes realized that Joaquin could say a lot more without using words.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Joaquin said, sipping at the water again. “Sorry I woke you up.”