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“I borrowed my roommate’s car. Traded him the motorcycle for a day, actually. He was pretty psyched.”
“You have roommates?” I say.
“Three,” Elijah says, avoiding my gaze. He turns around to where the foyer opens to the living room on the left and a small dining room to the right. “Where we going?”
“Straight ahead,” I say, pretending like this isn’t awkward as hell. “What’s in the bag?” I ask as I lead him to my room.
“Bagels.” When we enter, Elijah makes no effort to hide the fact that he’s checking out my room.
“Awesome.” I take the bag from him and peek inside.
Elijah sinks onto my bed, nodding approvingly when the foam mattress conforms around his hands. It was a gift from my grandparents, and it’s nicer than my own parents’ bed.
“Damn, nice bed. And I am particularly liking those Barbie dolls,” he says, inclining his head toward where the Barbie versions of Sasha and me sit in the same place on my bookshelf that they’ve been since I was ten.
“Shut up,” I say, grabbing my laptop. “We’ll watch the movies in the living room. Can you get that box of DVDs?”
His smirk makes my chest ache, but I ignore it. “The bathroom is down there if you need it.”
“You have a nice house,” Elijah says. He sits on one end of our couch while I sit on the other, propping my laptop on the coffee table in front of us.
“It’s nothing compared to Sasha’s.” Our furniture is dated and our kitchen needs remodeling. Everything we own is at least a decade old.
He sinks down, stretching out his legs and resting one hand on the armrest, the other across the back of the couch. “It’s a home, and that makes it nice.”
“You don’t live in a home?” Immediately, I wish I hadn’t said that.
“I live on a couch in an apartment.” Elijah takes the remote and studies it. “How do I turn this thing on?”
“You’ve never had a real home,” I say, turning to face him. “You went from a group home to a couch?” God, I can’t shut up. “No foster homes or anything?”
Elijah’s lip quirks like he’s either pissed or trying not to laugh, and I have a horrifying feeling that maybe it’s the first one.
“A few foster homes,” he says after a painfully slow moment. “Sharing a room with eight other orphans and elderly fill-in parents who spout Bible verses at you doesn’t really count as a home, I don’t think.”
I bite my lip and reach for a coffee, just to have something to do. “I’m sorry I asked.”
“It’s just a thing that happened to me, Raquel. My past doesn’t dictate my future. My present does, I guess. I mean, what I do next, now that I’m already two years older than most college freshmen.”
“You want to go to college?” I ask. Suddenly I remember Sasha mentioning this in her video at the cemetery. It sounded like she was trying to help him get into school or something.
He lifts one shoulder. “I mean, yeah. I do. I wasn’t sure at first but Sasha kind of talked me into it. I’ve spent all of my life just … surviving.” The back of his head is suddenly very itchy. “I want more than survival.”
“You deserve more than survival,” I say, wishing I had the courage to grab his hand. Sasha would have done it, and her touch would have soothed the pain behind his eyes. But that was her skill, not mine.
He shrugs again like it’s no big deal. I get the feeling he wants to change the subject, but I’m compelled to drive Sasha’s point home. “You do,” I say. “College is for everyone, not just rich, smart kids.”
He flattens his palms on his jeans. “You know, they act like scholarships are just handed out left and right, especially if you’re underprivileged, but I haven’t seen that. You walk onto the community college campus and they stare at you like you don’t belong. Tell you to look shit up online as if that’s easy for everyone.”
“Maybe you should try somewhere better than the community college. Go to the University of Texas or Sam Houston State or A&M. A real university.”
He chuckles. “You sound like my sister now. Always encouraging me to do something better for myself.”
“Good,” I say, feeling a swelling of pride in my chest. Something tells me she’d want me to have this talk with him. “She was always taking care of the people she loved. And she was very good at it.”
“She was helping me pick colleges,” he admits. “You know, before … just, before.”
That Sasha would spend her remaining weeks on earth helping someone else is just so like her. I smile without meaning to, and a silence stretches out between us. Now I want to help him, too. I’m just not sure how to do it.
