It couldn’t wait?Luke texted back immediately, and despite myself, I felt vindicated.Hedidn’t think I didn’t belong there.
I wasn’t an idiot. I had brown skin and a thick, curly mane of hair, courtesy of my black father and white mother. Mel’s parents were from the Philippines, and maybe that was what drew us together—that we both stood out in our mostly white town. But still, it meant I looked nothing like her. I looked nothing like Luke and Ro either, Mel’s raven-haired boys who loomed over everyone. Nobody would look at the four of us and think we went together, but I’d always known—or IthoughtI knew—that inside, we were all the same. That we’d chosen one another, Luke and Ro and Mel and me, and that made us family.
Whatever Ro was going through didn’t change that.
A wave of anger mixed with regret washed over me.
I should have stood my ground tonight. I shouldn’t have left.
And honestly, I hadn’t needed Luke to tell me that. I’d known it in my bones that I belonged with the Cohens on the worst night of all our lives so far.
My mom was finishing up her phone call with Mel, so I didn’t respond to Luke’s text.
I shoved my phone back into my pocket and walked over to the side of the bed again.
“Take care of yourself, Melanie.” Mom’s voice had gone all somber now, and a lump formed in my throat.
When she hung up, she told me. She said it quickly, like she thought it was kinder to just rip the Band-Aid off, and if I was capable of thinking at that point, I would have appreciated it.
As I buried my face in my hands, blubbering like I was all water, my mother did something she’d never done before.
She slid over into the middle of the bed so I could slip in next to her.
Lying there in my parents’ room, I cried as if I’d never see Mel again. Mom said nothing, running her hand through my hair while I snotted all over her sheets.
As I was growing up, there would be days on end when I didn’t see my mother. She would be just a lump in a bed or a figure hunched in the dark of her room. She needed time, my father would say. She needed space.
Sometimes he’d make her bundle up and go for a walk in the fading sun. She’d look gaunt and pale and hollow-eyed.She needed fresh air.
There was never a time when she needed me, but every time he had the chance, my father told me that she loved me.
She just needed to get better, but she loved me.
I don’t know if I ever really believed it. But if I hadn’t, tonight would have shown me that he was right. My mother hugged me and listened to me cry about the woman I would have—and always had—picked over her, time and time again.
NOW
Summer in Winchester is a bitch.
This time last year, I was taking calculus at summer school and dealing with the kind of news that rocks the foundation of your life. But at least it was air-conditioned.
Sweat makes a lazy trail down the back of my neck as I feed tennis balls over the net and try to avoid getting whacked by a bunch of hyper nine-year-olds. Maybe the time would pass faster if I hadn’t emptied my water bottle within the first half-hour of lessons. Or maybe the time would pass faster if I got paid for what I was doing.
There are a lot of reasons why I’m probably not the ideal teacher, but when the tennis club was down an instructor last year, I volunteered to help out, and I don’t intend to break my promise.
“Looking good, Madison!” I call out to the newest girl in my group, a toothy kid dressed in all-pink everything.
“Nice! Make sure you bring your racket back all the way, Lewis,” I tell the next kid.
I reach into my cart and toss another ball over the net. It comes whooshing back with interest, and I don’t have enough time to jump out of the way before it pelts my right knee.
“Oof. You okay, Jessi?” Derek winces in sympathy from the ad side of the court, where he is also feeding balls to a lineup of kids.
“Yeah. I’m good.” I rub at my knee, trying to erase the pain.
Derek walks over and holds a tennis ball to his mouth to hide what he’s saying. “That kid’s got a forehand. If only he’d tone it down a little and occasionally try to get itinthe court.”
“No kidding,” I agree.
