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coaching because Mom wants him to take swing dancing

classes with her.

“Have you thought any more about college?” Dad asks

as we pass the post offi ce.

I glance at him. “Not really,” I say.

I can’t. Not yet. There are things I have to do fi rst.

“I know how hard it’s been for you, honey,” he says.

“But this is an important time. We need to start thinking

about it.”

“Okay,” I say. Anything to get him to stop.

Dr. Shute’s offi ce is in a brick building across from the

railroad tracks, and Dad pauses a second before getting out

of the car, like he’s sure I’ll snap at him like I did when

he took me to therapy with David. So I stand outside the

car, wait until he gets out, and we’re both quiet as we walk

inside.

He stays in the lobby when the nurse leads me back,

and I have to bite my tongue to keep from asking him to

come with me. I tell myself I don’t need him to hold my

hand, that I’d learned how to handle getting the shots solo

at Seaside. I’ve learned to depend on myself. I sit down on

the exam table and wait.

The door opens, and Dr. Shute pops her head in the

T E S S S H A R P E

201

exam room and smiles at me, her red glasses hanging on a

beaded chain around her neck. “It’s been a while, Sophie.”

After a minute of small talk and a rundown of my pain

level, she leaves so I can get undressed. I take my shirt off,

lying facedown on the exam table in my bra. The table is

cool against my belly through the crackly paper, and I dig

into my jeans pocket and come up with my phone as Dr.

Shute knocks and comes back inside. I page through my

music and put in my earbuds, letting the sound warp my

senses. I press my forehead into the cradle of my arms, con-

centrating on my breathing.

“Let me know when you’re ready,” Dr. Shute says. She

knows the deal, knows I can’t stand to see the long epi-

dural needle, knows how freaked out it makes me—that

even after all this time, after all the surgeries, I can’t handle

a stupid needle sinking into me.

I’ll never be ready. I hate this. I’d almost prefer another

surgery.

“Okay, do it,” I say.

The fi rst one goes into the left side of my spine, in the

middle of my back, where the pain is the worst. I breathe

in and out, my clenched fi sts crumpling the paper liner set

over the exam table. She moves down, three more on my

left side, ending deep in my lower back. The long needles

pierce through me, the cortisone pushes into my infl amed

muscles, buying me some time. Then four on the right side.

By the time she’s moved to my neck, I’m breathing hard,

the music fuzzy in my ears, and I want it to stop, please,

stop.

202

F A R F R O M Y O U

I want Mina holding my hand, brushing my hair off my

face, telling me it’ll be okay.

On the way home, Dad pulls into Big Ed’s drive-through

and orders a chocolate peanut butter milk shake. It’s exactly

what I need at that moment, and tears well up in my eyes

when he does it without being asked. It’s like I’m fourteen

again. I never thought I’d want to go back there, to the days

of physical therapy and canes, fl oating on a cloud of Oxy,

but I do. Because then, at least, she’d been alive.

When Dad hands over the shake, he meets my eyes, not

letting go of the cup. “Are you okay, honey?” he asks, and I

want to hide inside the concern in his voice.

“I’ll be fi ne,” I say. “Just stings a little.”

We both know I’m lying.

44

ONE YEAR AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

“I hate you!”

I duck just as a shoe comes fl ying out of Mina’s room, closely fol-

lowed by Trev.

“Jerk!” Another shoe sails down the hall, and Trev barely looks at

me as he stalks past, his face stormy. He yanks the back door open and

charges outside, leaving the door swinging on the hinges.

I can hear Mina muttering angrily underneath her breath, and I

peek around the corner, knocking lightly on her open door. She whirls

around, and my chest tightens when I see she’s been crying.

“What’s wrong?” I ask her.

“Oh.” She brushes the tears away. “Nothing. It’s fi ne.”

“Um, bullshit.”

She fl ops on the bed, on top of a pile of papers scattered across her

comforter. “Trev’s a jerk.”

I sit down next to her. “What’d he do?”

“He said I was being too
open
,” Mina snarls.

“Okay,” I say slowly. “You’re gonna have to fi ll me in more than

that.”

Mina rolls over to her side, freeing up some of the papers she’s

lying on. She grabs a stapled stack, handing it to me. “It’s my per-

sonal statement for the
Beacon
internship. I asked him to read it, and

204

F A R F R O M Y O U

because he’s an
asshole
”—she shouts the last word so he can hear it—

“he told me I shouldn’t submit it.”

“Can I read it?” I ask.

Mina shrugs, throwing an arm over her eyes dramatically. “What-

ever,” she says, like it doesn’t matter, which means, of course, that it

does.

She’s quiet for the fi ve minutes that it takes me to read. The only

sound in the room is the rustling of paper when she shift s on the bed.

When I fi nish, I stare at the last sentence for a long time, trying to

think of what to say.

“Is it that bad?” Mina asks in a small voice.

“No,” I say. “No,” I say again, because she looks so unsure, and it

makes me want to curl up next to her and tell her she’s wonderful until

she stops. “It’s beautiful.” I squeeze her hand.

“It’s supposed to be about what shaped me,” Mina says, almost

like she needs an excuse. “It was what I thought of fi rst. Trev said he’d

proof it for me. I didn’t think he’d get so mad.”

“Do you want me to go talk to him?”

Her gray eyes, still red and puff y, light up. “Would you?”

“Yeah. Be right back.”

I leave her in her room and walk outside to the shed in the back-

yard that Trev’s converted into a shop. I can hear the rhythmic scrape

of sandpaper against wood as I walk up to the doors.

Trev’s hunched over his workbench, sanding a pair of triangle trel-

lises for my garden. I watch for a moment, his broad fi ngers moving

confi dently over the cedar, smoothing the rough edges. I stepped for-

ward into his domain, breathing in the smell of sawdust and the sharp

bite of motor oil.

“I don’t want to talk about it, Soph,” he says before I can speak.

He keeps his back to me, moving to the other side of the trellis. The

T E S S S H A R P E

205

sandpaper rasps against the wood, little motes of sawdust fl oating in

the air.

“He was her dad, too. She should be able to write about him.”

Trev’s shoulders tense underneath the thin black cotton of his

T-shirt. “She can write whatever she wants. Just not . . . about that.”

“I didn’t know. She never told me.” I say haltingly. “That you two

were with him when he died.”

“Yeah, well, we were.” I hate how fl at his voice is, like it’s the only

way he can actually admit it. “Happened kind of fast.”

I don’t know what else to say. It makes me ache to think of ten-

year-old Trev playing ball with his dad and watching him drop of a

brain aneurysm between one pitch and the next.

“I didn’t realize how much she remembered,” Trev says hoarsely.

His back is to me, which might be the only reason he’s still talking.

“I told her to look away. She was good about listening to me when

we were little. And she never talked about it aft erward. I thought she

blocked it out or something . . . hoped she did.”

“She didn’t. So you guys need to talk about it.”

“No.”

“Yes.” I know I’m crossing a line here. Spurred on by Mina,

unheeding in her shadow.

He fi nally turns around, holding onto the sandpaper like a lifeline.

“Trev,” I say soft ly. “It’s been years. If you never have before . . .

you have to.”

He shakes his head, but when I hug him, he falls into me like I’ve

cut him off at the knees. I hold on tight, press my palms fl at against his

shoulders, two points of warmth seeping through his shirt.

When I look up, over his shoulder, I can see Mina standing on the

porch, watching us.

I hold out my hand, beckoning, beseeching and she steps forward

206

F A R F R O M Y O U

hesitantly, off the porch, one step, two, steadier now, until she’s in

front of me, wrapping her arms around Trev’s waist as I pull back.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, or maybe it’s her, or both of them who

say it, and I move away, out of the shed, toward the house.

Like a silent guard, I sit on the porch, the indistinct murmur of

their voices blending with the crickets and night noises, and I wish

that things were easy.

45

NOW (JUNE)

I’m supposed to rest after I get my shots, but when Dad goes

back to work, I drive downtown to the
Harper Beacon
offi ce.

The newspaper is in slanted roof, mustard yellow building

from the 70’s that’s next to the best—and only—Mexican

restaurant in town. The air is fragrant with cilantro and

carne asada as I push through the swinging doors.

The guy at the reception desk points me to the right

when I ask him about internships, and I make my way

down a winding hallway with framed front pages on the

walls, their headlines blaring. The hall leads to a room

neatly divided into a dozen or so gray cubicles, the over-

head lights bathing everything in a sickly blue sheen.

I make my way through the maze of cubicles. Every few

seconds, a phone rings or someone’s printer screeches. It’s

a low hum of computers and voices. I can just picture her

standing in the center of it all, that smile on her face as the

buzz washed over her.

This had been Mina’s fi rst step toward what she always

wanted. To become a part of the world outside of our dusty

little town, “to
contribute
,” as she used to put it

Instead, she’d been reduced to a handful of stories writ-

ten
about
her instead of
by
her.

208

F A R F R O M Y O U

“Mr. Wells?” I tap on the cubicle wall with his name on it

“Just one second,” he says before I can move into the

cube. All his focus is on his computer screen as he types,

giving me a second to look him over.

He’s younger than I thought he’d be. Only a few years

older than Trev, so maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. His

button-down shirt is half-tucked into his jeans, and he’s

wearing black Chucks. He’s cute in a rumpled sort of way,

like he spends a lot of time running his hands through his

brown hair, thinking big thoughts.

Mina had liked him. A lot, actually. Half of our conversa-

tions when I was in Portland had been about her internship

and Mr. Wells and how much he was teaching her about

digital media and what a great journalist he was.

She hadn’t mentioned he was cute.

Probably on purpose.

“Okay, hi,” he says. He spins around in his chair and

looks me up and down. “Internship apps, right? Jenny has

them, she’s right over—”

“I’m not here about an internship,” I interrupt. “I’m here