untitled (41 page)

I’d gotten him to wait, called Trev to drive him home, and

Matt had gripped his sober chip and my hand like a lifeline

until he arrived.

There’s this long road ahead. It’s never-ending, because

you don’t get over losing someone. Not completely. Not

when she was a part of you. Not when loving her broke

you as much as it changed you.

I fear it, that long road, just as Matt must. For months,

the urge to use has been buried beneath my need to fi nd

Mina’s killer. Now I need to be strong for myself.

“Change is good, right?” I ask Rachel.

“Right,” she agrees.

Mom and I still don’t talk much—though we never have, so

it’s not a big deal. Sometimes we sit together at the kitchen

T E S S S H A R P E

333

table, her working on legal briefs, me going through seed

catalogs for plants suited to Portland’s weather. But it’s

always quiet, the fl ip of pages, the scratch of her pen the

only sound.

One night she folds her hands over her briefcase and

waits until I raise my eyes to meet hers, and I know, with

more than a little dread, that she’s fi nally ready to talk.

“I should have stopped and listened to you when you

told me you were clean.” It sounds like she’s rehearsed this

in the mirror, like she’d written it down and crossed things

out, painstakingly trying to get the words right, like it’s a

speech instead of a confession.

I’m quiet for a long time. It’s hard to even think about

what to say. Her words can’t change what she did; they

can’t erase those months I spent trapped at Seaside, forced

to fi gure out how to grieve on my own. But I can’t change

that no matter how wrong it was. She did it only because

she was trying to save me.

She will always try to save me.

That, more than anything else, is what makes me

apologize.

“Look, I get it. I do. I lied and I kept everything from

everyone and I just . . . I wasn’t very good, and I’m sorry—”

“Honey.” Mom’s face, always so composed, crumples,

worry lines appearing out of nowhere. “You’ve been

through so much.”

“That can’t be an excuse,” I say. “There can’t be any

excuses. Every single therapist you’ve sent me to will tell

you that. I’m an addict. I’ll always be an addict. Just like

I’ll always be crippled. And you’ve never been okay with

334

F A R F R O M Y O U

either. I am. It took me a long time, but I am. You need to

be, too.”

“I’m okay with who you are, Sophie,” she says. “I prom-

ise. I love who you are. I love you no matter what.”

I want to believe her.

Mom reaches out and takes my hand, tilting it so the

rings—Mina’s and mine—shine in the lamplight. She

doesn’t touch them, seems to understand that she shouldn’t,

and I’m grateful for that small gesture. For the strength of

her fi ngers, smooth and comforting, wrapped around mine.

“When you were in Oregon, Mina would come by. I

used to fi nd her up in the tree house. Or she’d sneak into

your bedroom to do homework. We’d talk sometimes. She

was scared you wouldn’t forgive her for telling us about the

drugs. I told her that she shouldn’t worry. That you were

the type of girl who didn’t let anything stand in the way of

loving someone. Especially her.”

I look up at her, surprised at the warmth in her eyes

that’s almost encouragement. Mom smiles and brushes her

cheek against mine. “It’s a good thing, Sophie,” she says

softly. “Being able to love someone that much. It makes you

brave.”

I squeeze her hand tightly and I choose to believe.

“You sure you want to do this?”

I stare down at the black notebook in my hands. When

T E S S S H A R P E

335

Trev brought her diary to me, turned up by the police dur-

ing a second search of the house, I didn’t even want to

touch it. I could barely stand to keep it in the house. So

a week later we drove to the lake and built a fi re on the

beach, waiting for night to fall and delaying the inevitable.

“Do you want to read it?” I ask him.

He shakes his head.

My fi ngers stroke the smooth black cover, tracing the

ridges of the binding, the edges of the paper. It’s like touch-

ing a part of her, the core, the heart and breath and blood of

her in purple ink and cream-colored paper.

I could read it. Finally know her through all her layers

and secrets.

Part of me wants that. To know. To be sure.

But more than anything, I want to keep my memory of

her untainted, not polished by death nor shredded to pieces

by words she meant only for herself. I want her to stay with

me as she always was: strong and sure in everything but

the one that mattered most, beautifully cruel and wonder-

fully sweet, too smart and inquisitive for her own good,

and loving me like she didn’t want to believe it was a sin.

I drop the diary into the fi re. The pages curl and blacken,

her words disappearing into smoke.

The two of us stand silently and close until the fi re dies

out. Our shoulders brush as the wind carries away the last

of her secrets.

It’s Trev who fi nally breaks the silence. “Rachel told

me you got your GED. That means you’re going back to

Portland.”

“Yeah. Right after my birthday.”

336

F A R F R O M Y O U

“Know what you’re gonna do yet?”

“I don’t,” I say, and it’s wonderful, not to know anything

without dreading the feeling. To not have a suspect list in

my head. To not think about what’s next except for an open

road and a little house with a yoga studio and a vegetable

garden in the backyard. “College, I guess, eventually. But I

think I’ll take a year off, get a job, fi gure some things out

fi rst.”

He smiles, all lopsided. His eyes go bright.

“What?” I ask.

“She would’ve loved you like this,” he says.

I don’t think it’ll ever be easy to think about it, about all

the chances Mina and I missed, the beginning, middle, and

end we never had. Maybe we would’ve fi zzled out instantly,

her fear getting the better of her. Maybe we would’ve fi n-

ished with high school, with fi ghts and tears and words that

couldn’t be taken back. Maybe we would’ve lasted through

college, only to end in quiet, strangled silence. Maybe we

would’ve had forever.

“You could stay,” he says, looking down. “I could build

you that greenhouse you always wanted.”

My smile trembles at the edges. “You know I love you,

don’t you?” I ask him. “Because I do, Trev. I really do.”

“I know you do,” he says. “Just . . . not the way I want

you to.”

“I’m sorry.”

And the thing is, I am. In another life, if I had been a

different girl, if my heart had gone traditional instead of

zinging off after the unexpected, I might have loved him

T E S S S H A R P E

337

like he wanted. But my heart isn’t simple or straightfor-

ward. It’s a complicated mess of wants and needs, boys

and girls: soft, rough, and everything in between, an ever-

shifting precipice from which to fall. And when it beats, it’s

still her name that thrums through me. Never his.

When I kiss him, a quiet meeting of lips that’s there and

gone, it feels like good-bye.

66

TEN YEARS AGO (SEVEN YEARS OLD)

At lunch on the fi rst day of second grade, I’m eating with Amber and

Kyle when I notice the new girl at the far end of the courtyard, sitting

alone at a picnic table in her purple dress. Mrs. Durbin had put her

next to me in class, but she hasn’t said a word all day. She’d kept her

head down even when she was called on.

She still seems sad, so I grab the rest of my lunch and walk over

to her.

“I’m fi ne,” she says when I get to her table, before I can even say

anything.

Her face is wet. She scrubs at her cheeks with a fi st and glares

at me.

“I’m Sophie,” I say. “Can I sit?”

“I guess.”

I slide onto the bench next to her, setting my lunch down. “You’re

Mina, right?”

She nods.

“You’re new.”

“We moved,” Mina says. “My daddy went to heaven.”

“Oh.” I bite my lip. I don’t know what to say to that. “Sorry.”

“Do you like horses?” Mina asks, pointing to my sticker-covered

lunch box.

T E S S S H A R P E

339

“Yeah. My grandpa takes me riding on his land.”

Mina looks impressed. “My brother Trev says that sometimes they

bite you if you don’t give them sugar.”

I giggle. “They have big teeth. But I give them carrots. You have to

make your hand fl at.” I hold my hand out, palm up, to show her. “Then

they won’t bite.”

Mina does the same with her hand, and our fi ngertips bump. She

looks up and smiles at me.

“Do you have brothers?” she asks. “Or sisters?”

“No, it’s just me.”

Her nose wrinkles. “I wouldn’t like that. Trev’s the best.”

“Sophie!” Amber waves at me. The bell’s about to ring.

I get up, and there’s something about Mina, about the way she’s

been crying and how she looks like she’s lost, that makes me hold my

hand out to her again. “Come with me?”

She smiles, reaches out, and takes my hand.

We walk into the rest of our lives together, not knowing it’ll end

before it’s truly started.

On my eighteenth birthday, I drive to the cemetery at dusk.

It takes me a while to fi nd her; I trek across wet grass, weav-

ing in between headstones and angel statues to a shady,

secluded spot.

It’s plain, polished gray marble with white engraved

letters:

Mina Elizabeth Bishop

Beloved Daughter and Sister

I wish this could be like in the movies. That I were the

type of person who could reach out and trace the letters

of her name and feel peaceful. I wish I could speak to this

hunk of marble like it were her, feel comforted that her

body is six feet below, believe that her spirit is watching

from above.

But I’m not that girl. I never was. Not before or after

or now. I can live with this knowledge—a simple gift to

myself, quiet acceptance of who I’m becoming from the

pieces that remain.

I kneel down next to her and pull the string of solar

T E S S S H A R P E

341

Christmas lights out of my bag. I drape them on her head-

stone, trailing the strands down both sides of her grave.

I stay until nightfall, watching the lights begin to twin-

kle. My hand rests on the ground above her. When I get up,

my fi ngers linger in the grass.

I walk to my car and never once do I look back.

Mina’s night-lights will endure. Year after year, Trev will

replace them when they dim. And I know that someday,

when I’m ready to come home, they’ll light my way.

AC KNOW L E D G M ENTS

This book would not be possible without so many people’s

support and faith that carried me through its creation.

Writing can be a solitary thing until the village it takes to

publish a novel welcomes you into their fold. And I was

lucky enough to be welcomed by the best village of all.

Thank you to my agent Sarah Davies, for everything.

You changed my entire life and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able

to thank you properly for what you’ve taught me.

For my editor, Lisa Yoskowitz, thank you for your under-

standing of the characters and the love story I wanted to

tell. You raised me and my work to such heights.

Thanks to the wonderful team at Disney*Hyperion, who

put so much care and creative spark into all aspects of the

book. Special thanks to Kate Hurley, my copy editor, whose

sharp eye I am indebted to and Whitney Manger, who

designed me an absolutely beautiful cover.

For my parents and the rest of my amazing family. But

especially for my mother, Laurie. Thank you, Mom, for

reading every single thing I’ve ever written like it mattered ,

even my second grade opus “Two Fast Doctors”.

So much gratitude must go to my dedicated, brutally

honest critique partners: Elizabeth May and Allison Estry,