20. Mina

The sun makes my eyes water on the drive home. My dad's parents live in an assisted-living community called the River House, which seems more like a spa than anything else, in the village of Grosse Pointe Shores. That's actually what it's called. They seem, to me, to be very able-bodied. And busy. Busybodied. I blink in the glare and ignore the routine dread that being on the highway gives me. It's funny how you can get comfortable with a bad feeling. How it becomes your friend. I think about asking my mother for her sunglasses since I'm the one driving, but I don't really want to see her face.

When we pull into our driveway, I see Caplan sitting on the roof under my window. He waves. I get out of the car without waiting or speaking to her, glad, after all, for the excuse.

He looks over his shoulder at me as I climb out of my window. He smiles, sheepish. I sit next to him, with some space, but let my legs hang down next to his.

"So, did you mean it?"

"Which bit?" I say.

"Are we okay?"

His hair is wet and dark. I can smell his shampoo. He's wearing a washed red long-sleeved shirt, pushed up to his elbows.

"Of course we are," I say.

"More than I deserve."

"Well, maybe."

"Look, Mina—"

"If you start apologizing, I'll push you off."

"Well, you deserve an explanation. And I know I'm no good at this, you know, these kinds of conversations—"

"No explanation necessary," I say. "I get it. Let's agree to not talk about it again, okay?"

"That's sort of, like, against the spirit of no neverminds, wouldn't you say?"

"Could you do me a favor, just this once, and let it go? I know you want to talk about it even less than I do."

"Right."

He looks across at his house, at the sun, half there, half gone at the roof's peak.

"I know you said it's okay, but it doesn't, like, feel okay."

"Well, it is," I say. "I feel fine about it. Maybe you just don't feel okay."

He looks at me then, hurt and open.

I swallow, make my face nothing. "You kissed me and it didn't mean anything to you, so you feel sorry for me. But I'm telling you now that it's fine—that's it. It's done. Let's not be precious about it." I made sure to cry about it last night so I wouldn't cry saying it to his face.

He's still looking at me like he's working something out, figuring how to spin it for me.

"I'm sorry," I say, "but I don't want to talk about it anymore. It was a long day."

"How was lunch in Satan's fanciest circle of hell?"

"Oh, the usual."

"You don't get two passes in a row," he says.

I lie down on my back and look at the trees, full and green above us.

"All they did was talk about Yale. And when I would say I wasn't sure or try to bring up Michigan, they would laugh, like I was joking. They were going on and on about some granddaughter of their friend who's going to be a freshman. They want me to room with her. Her name is, I shit you not, Arabella van den Gers."

"She sounds like a party. What did your mom say?"

"Fucking nothing."

He lies down next to me. "Should we just run away together?"

I don't say anything. If I stretched out my fingers, they'd touch some part of him. I don't know which, though.

"They can't make you go," he says.

"I know that. But sitting there, it felt like they can. Actually, it feels like they already have. Like it's all set. At one point, my grandma even got all weepy and said my dad would be so proud if he knew I was following in his footsteps."

"What'd you say?"

"Nothing. I'm my mother's daughter."

"Don't say that."

"None of this would be happening if he were here." Irritated, I wipe my eyes. "Well, who even knows if that's true."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. Well, they say the things you remember most often are the least accurate. Like, each time you revisit a memory, your brain changes things a little. So all my memories of him are probably fiction at this point. I have no idea what it would be like if he were here. Maybe he'd push Yale harder than anyone."

"I can't really picture that," he says.

"How would you know?" It comes out too harsh, but I mean it. I want him to know, even though it's illogical.

"I met him, remember?"

"Once, when you were seven."

"Well, yeah. But I did have like, an impression of your dad. Or sense of him, I mean. I remember seeing you two skating at Pond Lake the first winter I moved here."

"Really?"

"Yeah, you were teaching him some spin you'd learned. You had your arms crossed in front of you, and I remember it looked really good to me. Very professional. And he kept trying to do it and falling down. And you were getting frustrated with him a little. And then you tried to put his hands in place and show him how to do it and you both fell and you were both sliding around trying to stand up and falling again. And I could tell you were both having, like, such a good time. Then I think you took one of his hands and started going around him in a big circle, and he stayed in the middle, but he was turning with you. You were so pleased he was finally doing it. And then you spun faster together, you in a circle, him in the same spot."

For a moment, I'm too stunned to speak. "I don't remember that at all."

"I only do cause I was jealous. I remember I thought he seemed like… you know. Like a really good dad. I also remember you were wearing a scarf with stripes. It was blue, red, and yellow. I thought it looked cool. I wanted one like it."

"I think I remember that scarf."

He takes my hand. He grabs it quickly, but our fingers come together very normally. It is strange and gentle. This is not a thing we do. We lie there, looking at the leaves arching above us, now cool and blue in the dusk, bending in the breeze. After some time, I let go and fold my hands in my lap.

"Have you made up with Hollis yet?"

"No," he says. He's looking up and not at me. "No, I think this is it. I think it should be it."

"So much for my time in the sorority."

"What do you mean?" he says.

"Well, you get me in the divorce, obviously."

This makes him smile. "I get you." He turns his head, and then our faces are only a few inches apart.

"What was your word of the day, yesterday?" I say quickly.

"Incandescent."

"Hm. That's a nice one, actually."

"It's ridiculous. I'll never use it. Imagine me using it."

I laugh. "I can't."

He sits up. He pulls out his phone and checks the time.

"Wanna come over for dinner? Ollie and I are making spaghetti."

"That's okay," I say.

He notices me looking at his lock screen. It's a photo of Hollis as a little kid, a ballerina with strawberry-blond hair and one arched eyebrow. I have this bizarre surge of feeling for her. I want to text her and say something, but I don't know what. Then again, I'm sure Hollis doesn't want to hear from me.

"I guess I should change that," he says.

"I guess you should. See you tomorrow."

"That," he says, reaching out for the top of the jungle gym we've never taken down, maybe because my dad built it, maybe because Caplan always climbs it, "is my favorite thing you say."

"Caplan?"

"Yeah?"

I know it's cowardly to bring it up once he's already on the ground. "Maybe don't say things like that to me, about running away together."

He gapes at me.

"Just so I don't get the wrong idea."

I climb in and shut the window. I move around my room, cleaning everything up, making noise so my mom can hear me and know that I'm ignoring her. This gets boring pretty quickly. Being petty usually does.

Caplan and I don't often talk about my dad, but every year on September 22, which is the day he died, Caplan becomes very interested in planning to hang out. He never explicitly brings it up unless I do, and the whole thing always amuses me, since we hang out every day, anyway, but all things considered, the fact that I laugh on that day is more than the childhood grief specialist my grandparents insisted on paying for ever did for me. Mostly, she asked me to color my feelings. I can't really draw, but to her credit, when I started a game of tic-tac-toe, she played and didn't necessarily let me win.

In ninth grade, on September 22, we went to the diner. Caplan ordered his chocolate milkshake and then looked at me expectantly. Since we were little, I've ordered vanilla, he's ordered chocolate, and somewhere along the way, he got the idea to each drink half of our milkshakes and then mix the rest together. He called it chocolate vanilla swirl and maintained it tasted better than either flavor on its own. When our moms took us to the diner after fifth-grade graduation, I had asked him if he ordered both milkshakes for himself whenever I wasn't there. His eyebrows pinched together, and he said he would never come to the diner without me. I only really remember this moment because it came back to me the first time I saw a picture of him and all his other friends there in eleventh grade after a party, having a drunk feast. Hollis was sitting on his lap. They were sharing a shake with two straws. But freshman year, in September, there were still few places we ever went without the other.

"And a vanilla for her," Caplan said when the waitress tried to take my order.

"I'm not hungry," I said as she walked away.

"Sure, but I am, and I still want half and half."

"So you're gonna drink half of each and then mix them?"

"If it comes to that."

I don't remember what we talked about then. But somehow fathers came up, and then I said, "So. Who do you think has it worse?"

"What do you mean?"

He knew what I meant, so I waited.

"Seriously?" He poked around with his straw. "I'm not answering that."

"Fine. Never mind."

"All right. Well played. You, obviously," he said.

"You think?"

"Well, you had a great dad, and I had a bad dad. You had more to lose."

"You still have a dad, Caplan."

"Not really," he said. "He never wanted to be a dad, so."

"That's not true," I said stupidly, not even fifteen, thinking I knew anything at all.

"Yeah, it is. He told my mom."

"He said that in front of you?"

"Well, they were yelling. And my mom said he could at least pretend he'd wanted to be a father." He stirred his shake. "I didn't hear his answer, but I can guess."

At this point, we were almost a year into Caplan physically pulling me through the days. I wanted to be able to do the same for him, if only for a second, but I didn't know how.

"Besides," he said, "people's parents split up all the time. Less than they, you know—"

"Get road-killed?"

"Jesus Christ, Mina."

"Sorry. That was a joke."

"You have a real gift for comedy. You should do stand-up."

"Yeah, right, me onstage in front of people." I unwrapped my straw for something to do.

"You didn't used to mind. Remember the all-county spelling bee?"

"Yeah, well, I didn't used to mind lots of stuff. That's called growing up. Speaking of, I wanted to talk to you about homecoming."

"Oh, me, too, actually," he said.

"No, me first," I said. "I'm done. I'm putting my foot down. I've spent my entire prepubescent existence allowing you to sucker me into going to those godforsaken cult-adjacent archaic functions, but we're in high school now and it's not cute anymore. It's just sad. It is time for us to accept that we can be into different things and still be best friends."

"I love when you admit we're best friends." He had a chocolate mustache. That's how I see his face, when I remember him saying that. Fourteen years old, the chocolate, and the collar of a red-and-white-striped rugby shirt, one side popped by accident. "And are you saying I'm into archaic cult functions?"

"Well, I get it. Your disciples all gather there," I said.

"I don't know what that word means, and I bet it's mean, so—"

"More mean to them than you…"

"What I actually wanted to talk to you about—"

"Though I guess the king of fools is the biggest fool of all—"

"I thought I'd ask a date this year." At this point, he'd wiped the mustache off. He was looking down at his glass.

"Ask a date?"

"Yeah, like, a girl." He realized right away. "Sorry, I mean, obviously, you're a girl. I meant, like, I might ask someone out to the dance. Not as a friend. So I just wanted to check with you, since we always go together, if you'd be fine with that, but it sounds like it's a win-win if you're sure you don't want to go, anyway."

"Oh," I said. "Right. Totally. Win-win. So, who's the lucky girl?"

"That's the other thing—"

"Are you asking Hollis or asking someone else to make her jealous?"

I knew I'd surprised him, which was ultimately an insult to my intelligence. Everyone who was paying attention knew they liked each other. They always had. As far back as I can remember, whenever Caplan did something particularly impressive with a soccer ball at recess, he'd look up to see if she was watching.

"I was thinking," he said, "in the spirit of honesty and maturity, I should just ask Hollis."

"That would probably be best."

"I'm sorry. I know she can be, you know—"

"A horror show?"

"She can be harsh. In a, well, performing kinda way. Okay, yeah, a horror show. I don't even know why I like her."

"Well, I do."

Hollis was a person who inspired action.

I can't specifically recall the decision to not speak at school anymore. I'm sure there was a period of time when certain teachers pushed back against it, but when my clear and chronological memories pick back up, most of them had simply stopped calling on me. Maybe I had enough goodwill after all my years of occupational teacher's-petting. Or maybe my written work could speak for itself. I never missed a single class or a single assignment. I just refused to speak out loud to anyone but Caplan, his mom, and my mom. Then we started high school, and none of the teachers knew me any differently.

Once I stopped talking, my tormentors had to adapt their tactics, since I was now giving them so little to work with. I have to admit, they evolved brilliantly. "Mina, if you're a loser, say nothing," is obviously not the most advanced dig, but as a concept, it was foolproof. And it endured. "If you live in the psych ward, say nothing." "If you're so flat-chested the bra falls off, say nothing." "If you sleep hanging upside down, say nothing." "If you want us to hold you down and pluck your unibrow, say nothing." "If you're going Stephen Hawking on us, say nothing." I think that one was Quinn, actually. During the first week of freshman year, as we walked out of the girls' locker room for gym, Hollis called out from behind me, "If you're a deaf-mute virgin, say nothing."

The whole question of whether or not I was a virgin was deeply confusing and upsetting to me at that time, for obvious reasons. Somehow, this irrelevant offhand comment shocked me into defense and, by accident, speech. I said back, without turning around, "If you're a predictable bullying bobblehead, gasp now."

And I shit you not, she did. I couldn't remember the last time I felt that cool. Or the last time I felt cool at all, for that matter.

After that, she never openly made fun of me again, but the pleasure of this peace faded quickly. Hollis can ignore you like a scream. Like a punch in the face. That's how real it feels, even though she's not doing or saying a thing, when she looks straight through you. It's remarkable. It was around that time that I had to face facts—it didn't matter if she was torturing me or not. I'd still notice her. Everyone noticed Hollis. She was one of those people. She was hard to look away from. Like someone else I knew.

"You know why I like her?" Caplan said, finally pulling my vanilla shake toward him. "Because if you do, please tell me."

"Because," I said, "she's a person of consequence."

"I don't know what that means."

"She's that girl."

It was also during that same period of freshman year that I started talking again in school. Bit by bit, day by day. But in my memory, talking back at Hollis was the moment I broke through to the other side, which wasn't a place necessarily devoid of nightmares or panic attacks that would double me over; but it was a place in which a human girl could speak, eat, sleep, and wake, in spite of it all.

"Cheers," Caplan had said, raising his half-chocolate, half-vanilla milkshake to me. I looked down at my own and realized it was also mixed. I had drunk it without noticing.

While we walked home, Caplan asked who I thought had it worse.

"I guess me," I said. "Your logic is sound. Your situation is more common, statistically."

"Yeah, but that's not what you thought at first."

"Yeah, well, whatever."

"No neverminds, Mina. You thought it was me."

"All right, yeah, I did."

"How come?"

I remember my stomach felt odd. I hadn't been full in a long time.

"Come on," he said. "I can take it."

"Fine. My dad would be here for me, if he could be. I think. Yours is choosing not to be."

He looked at me for a long time without talking.

"I'm sorry," I said.

He nodded and looked down the street away from me. We were standing at the corner of Corey Street. The entrance to our little dead end of the wide world.

"That's the point of no neverminds," he said. "And so is this. Why'd you stop talking last year?"

This time I said nothing.

"And eating. And, like, smiling."

I shrugged.

"What happened to you on that vacation, over winter break last year?"

I was so surprised then that I looked right at him. I guess I shouldn't have been. I guess it was obvious to anyone who was paying attention. Maybe I talked in my sleep. Maybe he read my journal. Maybe you always tell one person, in tiny ways, every day, without realizing. And that's how you come back to life. As long as they're the right person. As long as they're listening.

As I'm pretending to clean my room, I pick up the library borrowing card that Julia gave back to me. She said she found it in Caplan's pocket and that it almost went through the wash. I told him it was garbage. It is garbage. Still, the fact that he kept it and that Julia saved it rooted me to the spot on their kitchen stool with relief.

My room is clinically neat, which depresses me a bit, so I move downstairs. I have this idea that I'll deep clean, so I guess I'm in the mood to be miserable, but instead, I end up looking at the fridge, scanning the Christmas cards to see his face, test myself, but it isn't there. I look behind the fridge, on the floor, in the trash. I'm looking even though I suddenly know Caplan got rid of it. The space on the fridge, oddly clean, where it used to be, confuses me. It is a gift, and it is a jarring hole. I use the magnet and hang up the Chrysanthemum borrowing card.