window. “Okay, no more moping. We can do anything you want, you name it.”
“I want my cello to not be covered in dust, and I want to play it.”
“No actual playing for at least two more weeks, doctor’s orders.” Jayla leans against the windowsill. “But we can definitely help with the first part. I wasn’t going to say it, but this room is disgusting.”
And so that’s how we end up spending a perfectly good Saturday playing “keep or toss” while cleaning my room. We toss all the old painkillers and antibiotics and keep the get-well-soon cards. We toss the now deflated balloons and keep my hospital wristband. We take it item by item until it looks less like a recovery room and more like my own space.
Jayla is just sorting out my desk, and Nikki and I have been spending an inordinate amount of time cleaning my case and polishing my cello, when it happens.
“Keep or toss?” Jayla asks, her voice hesitant.
I stare at the Batman mask in her hand. They’re both looking at me, waiting for me to answer, but I don’t know what to say. I should say toss, right? The scar on the side of my wrist should be a permanent enough reminder of our doomed relationship . . . but it doesn’t feel like it is.
“Keep,” I finally say.
Jayla nods, setting it on my desk, and I go back to wiping down my cello and waiting for her to find the next emotional land mine. I know it’s waiting over there amid the piles of clutter and empty glasses.
I can tell the moment she does. She freezes and holds up the wrinkled envelope, the word Peak scrawled on the front. I try not to react.
Grayson gave it to me the other day when she was in town. We met for coffee, and she convinced me to go to a CoDA—Co-Dependents Anonymous—meeting with her. She said she was too nervous to go alone, which, ironic, but I think she mainly just wanted to get me there. There were other teens there too, which was kind of surprising. It was interesting enough, and I saw a lot of me and Ridley in the stuff people were saying. I might keep going, I don’t know.
Grayson gave me that envelope right before she left. There wasn’t a letter in it, just a flash drive. Apparently, Ridley’s therapists thought it would be a good move for him to delete all the videos he took of me playing cello off his phone. I don’t know how I feel about that, and I really wonder how he felt about it. At any rate, Grayson told me he did remove them but couldn’t bear to delete them. Instead he downloaded them all onto a flash drive and asked her to give it to me.
It’s been sitting untouched on my desk ever since. Until now.
“Keep?” I say. I’m not sure.
“Is this from him? I can take it home and hide it, if you want it gone but not gone gone,” Jayla says.
“It’s videos he took of me playing. I have no idea what to do with them.”
“Can I see one?” Nikki asks, helping me get my cello back into its case and setting it in the corner. It’s rare that Nikki and Jayla get to hear me play. I always practice alone—well, before Ridley came along, anyway—and their soccer stuff often conflicts with my concerts and recitals.
“Knock yourself out. I play like shit in half of them anyway.”
“Doubtful,” Jayla says, firing up my laptop.
I flop down onto my bed, dropping my hands over my eyes as the music floods my room.
“Look at you,” Nikki says after the second one.
“Jubi, these are incredible, seriously incredible,” Jayla says after the third piece.
“I missed a note on that last one. Delete it.”
“Are you kidding me? These are awesome.”
I start to protest, but movement in my doorway catches my eye. My mom is there, a wistful look in her eyes, listening to the music. “I miss that sound,” she says when she notices me watching her.