6. Mina

For my eighth birthday, my dad bought me a pair of black high-top Converse, because I'd seen them on a billboard while we were in the car and said that they looked like something Harriet the Spy would wear, which was the book I was reading and rereading at the time. Someone on adventures, not worried about fashion, getting things done. Then, a month later, he died in a car accident on the same highway. He was less than a mile from the same billboard and the exit that would have brought him home to us. The other driver had a heart attack, so it wasn't anyone's fault. That was made very clear to me.

I wouldn't take the shoes off for anything, not the funeral, not for my first panic attack when my mother stripped me out of the rest of my clothes and stuck me in the shower to get me to calm down, and certainly not for school. When I walked into our third-grade classroom on the first day and Caplan Lewis, king of my torturers, was wearing the same shoes, I knew in my bones it could mean nothing good. Quinn Amick wasted no time in standing on his chair and pointing down, announcing to everyone that I was wearing boys' sneakers, because they matched Caplan's. Everyone laughed. At first, I continued to wear them just so they wouldn't know I cared, and then two weeks later, I did stop caring. Because my dad was gone. I continued to wear the shoes every day. People whispered that I probably didn't even take them off to sleep, and laughed, and then went back to their coloring and spelling.

Unfortunately, the word about my dad spread pretty quickly. He was one of three pediatricians in Two Docks. By third grade, almost all my classmates knew him in that background way you know certain adults in childhood. I think most of the parents used it as an opportunity to gently introduce their kids to the concept of death. It was different from a grandparent dying, and everyone could tell. It was a tragedy. I remember a lot of different adults using that word. I think they thought I wouldn't know what it meant, and my mom would. But my mom was sporadically catatonic at that point, still in the same white nightgown with blue flowers she'd been wearing for weeks, the one she put on the day she came home from work after getting the call, and I had an excellent vocabulary.

I'm not really sure if, from a psychological standpoint, we were helped or hurt by the fact he'd been such a known entity. At the time, I remember wishing everyone would stop staring at me, and the sad, awkward cloud of pity clung to me, making me an unideal candidate for playdates and birthday parties for the rest of my prepubescent experience. Then, of course, there were the birthdays I was invited to just because of my dad. Ruby Callahan said it to my face, in her sweet earnest way: I know we aren't friends, but my mom said I should include you cause, you know, and yeah.

I did not attend. Every girl got a headband with a unique fake flower tacked on the side as a party favor, and they all wore them to school the next week.

I'm sure in some invisible way that I didn't appreciate back then, it was good to have the community mourning with me. I'm not claiming he was some kind of hometown hero. But, as the older lady who, after realizing my mother wasn't going to make eye contact with her at the funeral, leaned down to clasp both my hands in her cool leathered ones told me, "He was just a really wonderful guy." She smelled intensely of cinnamon gum, and she wore a sparkling elephant pin. That's all I remember from that day.

A few weeks after the funeral during free draw, when someone else, I think one of the girls, whispered loud enough for me to hear that I was actually wearing black sneakers because of my dead dad, I finally cracked and started to cry. Then something miraculous happened. Caplan Lewis slammed his fist down onto his desk, snapped the cap on his marker, and said very loudly, for all the class to hear, that maybe I wasn't wearing boy shoes. Maybe he was wearing girl shoes. I will never forget Quinn's face, mouth popped open in shock. No one made fun of my sneakers after that. Or my dad, for that matter. They made fun of plenty else, and Caplan remained recess royalty and acted like it hadn't happened, but from that day on, he wore the shoes every single day, too.

A few months later, we became reading partners and, eventually, friends, so I told him that my dad had given me the shoes for my last birthday. My next birthday that following summer, the first without him, was particularly bleak. My mom was still sleepwalking around and crying at strange times and definitely not up to cake, presents, or songs. But Caplan came home early from soccer day camp and surprised me. We watched the third Harry Potter movie, because we'd just finished the book. He brought cupcakes and grilled cheeses and a gift—a fresh pair of new black high-tops, exactly the same as my first pair but one size bigger, for me to grow into. When his birthday came around in March, I bought him a new pair, too. Converse don't hold up super well, especially if you wear them every single day. And that's what we've given each other for our birthdays, each year since. We don't wear them every day anymore. I'm well adjusted and normal and therapized within an inch of my life. But we still match sometimes—our four black high-tops slapping against hallway linoleum together, bearing on through it all.

Caplan's mom is working late at the clinic, so when we get to his house, she texts him to start on dinner. I call my mom and ask if she wants to join us, but it goes to voicemail. Then she texts me that she has a migraine again. My mom is objectively idle. She actually used to be quite an important librarian. She used to be a lot of things, I think, before my dad died, that now she is not.

I realize important librarian sounds like an oxymoron, but she was one of the very first people to successfully digitize the classification system in libraries, when the tides turned from all things analog. Then she consulted on the transition for what seemed like every library in the Midwest, from tiny church-basement operations to the big universities. I learned the Dewey decimal system before I learned my multiplication tables. And though my mother was a traditionalist at heart—she liked to collect what she called the "borrowing cards" from famous editions or favorite books, vanilla-colored slips with the list of readers who'd borrowed and loved them (sometimes multiple times in a row, or every five years, or just once, overdue, and then never again)—she was one of the people who figured out how to put the Dewey system into the computers and keep the books themselves on the shelves, when there were people who were considering libraries to be beyond use in totality, what with the internet and the growing popularity of e-readers. Things like the interlibrary loan, the literal act of sharing permanent and preserved physical knowledge, were possible because of her. I remember my father telling me she was like a superhero. That if it weren't for my mother and other librarians like her, all those books may have been packed up and left somewhere to gather dust or even, unthinkably, be thrown away. Books that had been handled and loved by so many being discarded was such a harrowing concept to me that I accepted it without question. My mother was indeed a super something. She'd saved the books, and the practice and community of a library, for everyone.

And for me, her daughter, she'd saved their borrowing cards. I memorized the decimal numbers at the top and made up lives and personalities for each person who'd borrowed the books. I imagined the discussions we would have, and the books I'd recommend to them, if they'd indeed loved A Wrinkle in Time (813.54, for North American fiction, 1945–1999) as much as I did. I think maybe she kept them for me because she felt guilty, doing away with the old system. Or maybe it wasn't guilt. Maybe she was just a recordkeeping enthusiast and couldn't quite let go of the past. This didn't serve her, of course, when my dad died.

Now I'm not even sure she reads. Eventually, she took off the white nightgown with blue flowers, but she never went back to work. I understood that it didn't really matter, since, after he died, the medical practice was sold, and I guess that money has kept us afloat this long. I'm not sure what we'll do if it runs out. My grandparents on my mom's side died before I was born, and my dad's family doesn't particularly like my mom and me. I think maybe we remind them of the fact that their son is gone, which is fair. Either way, I've never known people who are more passionate about being involved in the lives of people they don't seem to enjoy or approve of than my grandparents. They were super into the idea of me going to Yale, like my dad. They sent a very fancy flower arrangement when I got in. It was the first time I'd seen flowers in our kitchen since the funeral. My mom did not see how this was funny, but she did let me throw them out after I mentioned it.

When she asked me last August if I planned to apply, I was so surprised that I said yes. Of course. Because she was there with me, in the kitchen, in our life, participating. It was the closest we'd come in four years to saying my dad's name.

While we wait for Caplan's mom, we decide to make grilled cheese, because grilled cheese is Caplan's answer to anything—good times or bad—with Annie's Mac as our appetizer, and Oliver hears us banging around.

"Bro!" he yells from the top of the stairs. He comes down fast, two steps at a time and turned completely sideways, facing the banister and the kitchen and us. Oliver has always done stairs at this angle. I can picture him as a toddler, holding the same banister with both hands, putting one small foot and then another on each step. He's fourteen now.

"You're a dumbass," he says as he hugs Caplan, "but you're a dumbass who can do anything."

"Ollie, language, man," says Quinn.

"Actually, I'm going by Oliver, since I'm in high school now," says Oliver.

Quinn and Caplan bust up laughing.

"Dude!" Oliver says to Caplan.

"I think Oliver suits you," I say to Oliver.

"Thank you, Mina." He turns very red as he says it. He blushes worse than Caplan, since he's even fairer, with less eyebrows, more freckles. This makes Quinn and Caplan laugh even harder. Oliver has sort of always had a crush on me. He slams himself down into a chair.

"Whatever," he mumbles. "Congrats, dickhead."

I put the water on to boil, and the boys get out bread and cheese.

"All the freshmen are talking about how you and Hollis were fighting outside during our lunch and you made her cry," Oliver says. He turns to me. "They're so immature."

I try not to smile, head down in the pot.

"Hollis never cries," Caplan says, "unless she's trying to make a point. Oh yeah." He pulls Quinn's hat out of his backpack and shoves it into Quinn's chest. "She gave me this for you."

"So you're back on?" Quinn asks.

"Mm, yeah," Caplan says, returning to the bread, buttering carefully to its edges.

"Good work, soldier," Quinn says to his hat, and then he jams it back onto his head. "I guess post-college-acceptance energy helped?"

"Oh, actually, that was before. I left her car when I got the email."

"You did it in her car?"

Caplan laughs and shakes his head, trying to cover Oliver's ears with his hands, but Oliver swats him away.

The pot boils over suddenly.

"Sorry I didn't tell you," he says to me.

"I don't need to know about your vehicular sex," I say, hoping I sound funny.

"No, that we got back together."

"So you did. Get back together?"

"Yeah, I guess we did."

"Well, that's wonderful."

"Is it?"

"I don't have to go to her birthday anymore."

"Oh," he says, "right."

"And now I don't have to go to prom, either. It was looking dark there, for a second."

"I hate that joke," he says.

"What joke?" Quinn asks, eating shredded cheese straight from the bag.

The kitchen feels hot, with all the burners going. I take my sweater off.

"Stop that," I say, taking the cheese from Quinn. "Wash your hands first or something. And it's not a joke. If Hollis and Caplan dump each other again before the prom, he's gonna drag me."

"You don't have a date to prom?" Oliver asks.

"What, you gonna take her to the ninth-grade dance?" Caplan says meanly, unlike himself.

"No, of course I don't," I say. "That's why Caplan knows he can count on me."

"You don't have a date," Caplan says, brandishing the tongs at me, "because everyone knows you don't want to go."

"I never said I didn't want to go," I say.

"Mina," Quinn says, getting down on one knee.

"Stop that," I say, pulling a handful of utensils from the drawer to set the table.

Quinn takes them from me and then gets back down on his knee. He holds up the knives and forks like they're flowers. "Mina Stern, will you please do me the honor—"

"Okay, fine," I say. "Fine, you're right, I don't want to go." I turn to Caplan. "Point made."

"Can you look at me and not at Cap for one fucking second," says Quinn. "I'm being serious."

"I was fucking around," Caplan says. "Mina would not be caught dead at prom—"

"Mina, if you actually wanted to, the ninth-grade dance needs chaperones—" says Oliver.

"EVERYONE SIT DOWN AND SHUT UP!" Quinn yells. "No, not you, Mina."

I stand. I cross my arms. "Quinn. Get up."

Quinn stays down, still holding out his silverware bouquet.

"Mina Stern," he says. "You are no one's benchwarmer, and you are not too good to go to prom. Please get down off your very high horse—"

"Oh my god—"

"On which you look great, don't get me wrong, but get down off it, cause you're our friend and prom is the last big thing we're doing together and it'll be a good shit show and you have to be there. As my date. Cause someday you'll shake your Ivy League six-figure-job keys at me and I'll get to say I took you to prom way back when. Let me have that."

I turn to Caplan. He's recording us.

"Are you paying him to do this?" I ask.

"Nope," he says.

"Are you serious?" I say to Quinn.

"Hell yeah," he says.

"Okay. I'll go to prom with you if Caplan doesn't post that video anywhere."

Caplan and Oliver cheer, Oliver a little mournfully. Quinn drops all the utensils with a clatter and scoops me into a hug so tight my feet leave the floor.

It's a funny feeling. I can't think of the last time a boy who wasn't Caplan touched me. Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of all the joy, of course I do think of it. For one second, I'm worried I'll burst into tears, but Quinn stays hanging on to me so I have a moment to fix my face in his shoulder.

"You can't, like, wear a clown suit as a joke," I say as he sets me down.

"I swear," Quinn says, looking oddly flushed and bright-eyed, "it will be a totally serious, romantic, traditional prom."

"Never mind. Wear the clown suit."

"Okay. Maybe just the nose."

Then Julia, Caplan and Oliver's mom, comes in with yellow and blue balloons and cake with sparklers. There are tears and shouts and hugs all around. We've burned the sandwiches, so we start again, and we have a competition to see who can make the best grilled cheese, for Caplan to judge. I win, with cheddar and hot sauce on whole wheat. Eventually, there's a soft knock at the door, almost lost in all the happy noise. It's my mother, looking sleepy like a child, in her athleisure from yesterday, but smiling and holding a bottle of champagne. The Lewises don't have champagne glasses, so we pour it into Solo cups, and Caplan swigs straight from the bottle. I see Julia smooth back my mother's hair and hug her. I have never understood their friendship, when my mother is so cold and distant, and Julia is the opposite—warm and constant, a wall of love. Then the thought comes—they are just like Caplan and me. I disappear to the bathroom to check if I still need to cry, and everyone moves into the living room to play Wii Just Dance, another Caplan favorite.

When I come outside, he's there in the hallway.

"Hey," he says.

"Hi."

"You splashed water on your face. And your wrists."

"It's a little hot."

"Did you—you know? Were you having a moment, for a second, down there?"

"When?"

"When Quinn hugged you."

"Oh. I guess. A little. I'm fine now."

"Okay, good." He smiles. "You neverminded me, in the car, by the way. I didn't forget."

"I did," I sigh, "didn't I? Sorry."

"What happened?"

"I got embarrassed, that you thought—when I said that thing about belonging together—"

"I know," he says, "that was stupid. I was being stupid."

"I meant like… in life. We belong in each other's lives. I can't believe you thought I meant it like… like something other than, you know, just wanting things to stay like this."

"Like what?" he says.

I shrug. Our mothers both laugh, loud and free, as Quinn and Oliver begin their seminal classic dance to "It's Raining Men."

"Like this," I say, waving my hand toward the stairs.

"It will stay like this," he says. "I promise."

"Okay."

"You have to promise, too."

"You're the optimist," I say.

"Promise me, too, Mina."

"I promise," I say, rubbing a finger across my brow, "that if things do change, it will be for the better."

"Okay. I'll take it."

"Congratulations, Caplan."

"You, too!" he says, grinning, wicked.

"Oh, for what?"

"You got asked to prom!"

I shove him, and he shoves me, and we go back downstairs.

Our house feels quieter than normal after being at the Lewises', which is really saying something. I ask my mom if she wants one more cup of tea, but she tells me she's too tired. I decide to make her one anyway, with the idea of bringing it to her in bed and talking to her about Yale.

When I go to her room five minutes later, she's already asleep on top of the covers, still in her clothes. I decide to find a spare blanket, and for the first time in ten years, I open her closet.

Her old sundresses are all still there, in their candy-necklace colors. I can picture her, as through a telescope to another universe, teaching me dances with funny names when my father put his old music on. She with her ancient little boxes of obsolete library logs, and he with his record collection. I can't really picture his face beyond what I know from photos, but I can remember him laughing over the music while she and I would dance. I don't know why I have clearer memories of her from that time than of him. Maybe it is because her outline is still here, so I can see where all the old details are meant to go.

I remember waiting and waiting, while she drifted around our house in the blue-flowered nightgown, for her to put one of her sundresses on again, but she never did. One night, well after the funeral and all the fuss and attention had died down, when she was sleeping on the couch, still in the nightgown, I went into their closet to look at all her dresses, just to make sure they were real, and I hadn't imagined them. Of course, they hung fresh and clean and sad next to all his clothes. I think even then I realized that sooner or later some other grown-up would come in to manage all his things and erase his items, like the phantom books if the libraries had closed down, fallen out of use and left abandoned and forgotten and disappearing into whatever corner of the universe it is where leftover things go. So, I pulled down a few of his work shirts, with stiff collars and neat rows of small hard buttons, and hid them in my own closet, where at least their existence would be known by someone. Even if the someone was eight years old and the shirts went down below her knees.

Then, as if some unseen force were about to sweep through my life and wash all the technically useless items away, I gathered all the old borrowing cards my mother had given me from where they'd been proudly housed in a little box on my desk, and I hid them in the folds of his shirts.

I realize I've been standing in front of my mom's closet for so long that the tea's gotten cold. I pour it down the sink, bring up the blanket from the living room to cover her, and turn off her lights.