I slip the old copy ofWatership Downfrom the shelf and open it to the first page, already knowing what’s there.
To my special Cady-Cat—
Don’t ever stop running to where you want to be.
Your grandma
The sob starts in my stomach, works up my chest, battles my throat, and then I’m sitting at the foot of my childhood bed, surrounded by outdated flyers and faded Instax photographs, crying from thealmostscollected like dust on the old calendars and forgotten VHS tapes. Here was my almost life. Grandma almost living. Almost never lying to Dad and the girls.
And then there’s Faust, my worstalmost. Not here. Statistically impossible.
Thinking of him and what happened breaks me down. When Ifinally notice that I’m not alone, I have my knees pulled up to my chest, arms wrapped tight around my legs.
It’s Maisie, with a plate and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I come bearing dinner.”
“You don’t think Samantha can cook?”
She frowns. “You have been gone a long time.”
It’s been a long trip back to Illinois. We had a layover in Lisbon on the way in from Nice, and that went as well as one could expect. Dissociating in a bathroom, silently eating airport pizza with my angry father while Maisie shopped for noise-canceling headphones. I’d emailed Mei that I had to leave Stark-Benzin while we were there—due to a “family emergency.” Certainly, she’s seen the news. My social media’s still offline, but I took a peek at the internet, and yeah. There are pictures of the failed proposal everywhere, along with the starter rumblings of Hilton Heartbreaker gossip, back from the dead.
I left her a voicemail, too. “Hi, it’s me… um, I just wanted to say, I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t know that was going to happen, and you deserve better than having someone who embarrasses the team like that. And that’s why I emailed you about—me quitting. But I really want you to know, Mei, that this was so much fun. And I really wish I could keep working with you.”
She hadn’t replied that night. And I deserve it. She’s smart, and funny, and I deserve her anger.
“So, I’m thinking, maybe not the time to marathon movies filmed in Monte Carlo?” Maisie asks, putting the sandwich plate down on my lap and crawling into bed beside me.
“Maybe too soon,” I sniff, laughing.
“Dang. I just gotThe Red Shoeson DVD. Criterion Collection.”
“?‘Time rushes by. Love rushes by. Life rushes by.’?”
“?‘But the red shoes… dance on,’?” Maisie finishes. “Yeah, maybe too soon.”
Picking at the sandwich crust, I roll my thoughts around, unsure of where to start. I don’t know how to bring up the implications of what Faust said to me, out there on that balcony. Restaurant. Money. How long Maisie and my family have known him personally. It makes me nauseous to think about. Partly because he’s broken my trust, and I hate that someone I don’t trust could’ve gotten close to them—but mostly because I haven’t had a face-to-face conversation with Maisie in months. Maybe it’s harder to snap back intothe Alden girlsthan I thought.
She watches me wiggle the crust from the sandwich. “They’re both fine, by the way. I looked up the race scores. No crashes.”
“Oh, good.” I don’t ask if that means that Faust even raced, let alone converted the pole position into a win.
She tells me anyway. “Faust won.”
And I’m decimated, really. His lucky charm. “Oh. Good.”
“And Dad, he’s going to come around.”
“Maybe.”
“He will. He’s downstairs packing up his Stark-Benzin jerseys right now, but he isn’t throwing them out.” She chews on her lip. “I’ve seen him angrier.”
“He—what?”
“I… uh. Okay.” She sets her hands in her lap. “I dropped out of Parsons.”
My eyes slip shut. “No, you didn’t.”
“Cat.”
