“No.” He shook his head. “No way.”
“How are you so sure?”
“Emb, just because we weren’t together doesn’t mean you were unknown to me. You weren’t taking drugs or acting crazy. Actually, you were doing kind of okay after our breakup—I was in a darker place, probably. You were hanging out with your dance friends, Lissa Mandrup and those people.”
“Lissa…” Lissa had been in Holden’s class, and had graduated last year. She’d been captain of our dance troupe. I could see her clearly in the dance studio, those red lips, those long black braids spinning with her as she executed a perfect pirouette. She’d always been a bit of a free spirit, fun and quirky. I hadn’t known her well. At least, I hadn’t thought I had.
Wow, that was something—friends with Lissa. She was studying dance full-time now, over at ABT. Maybe I could get her new email. No doubt Birdie had it. Though that would mean emailing Birdie…and I wasn’t sure I was ready yet.
Holden’s arm was around my shoulders. I’d missed that weight. It wasn’t until Kai had kissed me this afternoon that I realized how much I’d missed boys in general. Holden’s clean, cotton T-shirt smell could be intoxicating. But when he shifted his arm to pull me in, I winced.
Immediately, he let go. “You hurting still?”
“I’m achy tonight. Like maybe I slept weird on myself.”
“Want me to get you some aspirin? Anything?” Holden peered at me, and his good looks struck me fresh—he could have modeled for one of those preppy catalogs. With the golden retriever at his side and a Martha’s Vineyard breeze at his back. Except Holden wasn’t vain. The furthest thing from. He’d never tried to be anything other than his own sweet self.
“No, thanks. I’m good.” I stretched out. Just like old times. “It’s only…after a day like today, I can’t stand not knowing myself at that time,” I confided. “It’s so frustrating, that this sliver of me has been spirited away. And I think I was changing. Really changing.”
“Changing how? Talk to me.”
“It’s little things. Hints and whispers. But I came back from Addington to find this poster in my room. You know that group Weregirl? I listen to their music all the time now. And when I was in Bushwick, I went to check out this dance club I’d been to. And I didn’t remember it exactly, but I could swear I’d been there before. The thing is, I’ll follow any clue because I keep thinking I’m missing something. Something big. Some, I don’t know, elemental piece of myself.”
I could sense Holden working through his words. “I wish I could help you with this. You know how much I’d want to. We broke up last Thanksgiving, and in January we weren’t hanging out. We were really trying to give each other space.”
“Right, I know. Dr. P says it’s natural, almost normal, that I’ve blocked those weeks before my accident. He promises I’ll get it back. I’ve looked at calendars. My last memory sputters off around the end of December. And January, forget it—it’s gone. Like it never happened. Bits and pieces start creeping in in late February. After I’d been at the hospital for about a week.”
Holden stretched, extending his arms along the back of the couch as he tipped back his head. “First time they let me visit you had to be the end of February. Do you remember that?”
“When I was still drinking meals through a straw.” And peeing through a catheter, and barely tolerating the pain that hammered down my spine, through the backs of my legs, into my feet, even through the wall of painkillers.
“But we broke up three months before the accident,” said Holden. “The plain fact of it is we weren’t together. And you weren’t spending much time with Rachel.”
“I don’t remember. I don’t remember about Lissa, either. January is just so not there for me.”
“Well, in terms of the whole Rachel thing, neither of us wanted to involve her to the extent that she wanted to be involved. Rachel can be really bossy—”
“No way! Rachel?” I snorted.
Holden grinned. “Exactly. And it was a private thing.”
Yes, private. Like that night, back in October, when Holden and I had been fooling around, nearly naked under the duvet, a nest of warmth against the autumn cold snap. Holden’s parents had been away that weekend. He’d bought an apple votive from Yankee Candle. Docked “our” playlist. Made everything perfect. Except it wasn’t perfect. I’d used the moment to confess that I thought we were getting too serious. The pre-breakup breakup. I remembered it perfectly.
He’d been crushed. So had I. A year ago. Did he still think about that night?
“Lissa’s uptown, doing the full ballet press. I think you should get in touch.”
“Did I really know her that well?”
He nodded. “Yeah, she was with you a lot, you know, after you and Rachel had a falling-out.”
“Wait—now you’re saying I had a falling-out with Rachel? Why?”
“It sounds mildly ridiculous to say our breakup was major drama for Rachel, but there it is.” Holden shrugged. “She was like this kid that we both had custody over. And we wanted to be good parents, but sometimes we couldn’t because that would have meant getting back together. Which was the only thing she wanted.”
“I can’t imagine not being friends with Rachel.”
When he looked at me, eyes narrowed, I could feel it. Something Holden could have said right then, in the intimacy of the moment.
Could have said, but wouldn’t. And I didn’t even know how to ask for it.
“What’d I miss?” Rachel bounded like a gazelle into the room, hurtling over the back of the couch to land between us, then taking charge of the remote control.
“Nothing,” we answered in unison.
8
Moments of Departure
Dear Ember,
Of course you’re not “bugging” me. I’m glad to hear from you, and to learn that you’re handling a full school-day workload. You’ve come a long way. And I promise to explain my answers to your questions in “regular” (I’m guessing by that you meant not too technical?) words. Send me a follow-up if there’s anything you don’t get. Or call me directly. Or, better yet, stop in—I can always make time for you!
1. Numbness/disembodiment. A common problem. We’ve spoken about miscalibration. People who sustain frontal lobe injuries often find it hard to emotionally communicate in response to a personal/charged situation, even if they are connecting with it. In response, they check out—the med-slang term is “to dishrag”—rather than react “correctly” to sudden noises, lights, loud music. Dishrag responses should mitigate with time. Ember, at vehicular impact, your brain was subjected to massive depolarization from acceleration/deceleration. It is the cause of most neurological fatalities. And even when the victim survives, it can take years for brain tissue to fully regenerate. You are probably far more sensitive to these “moments of departure,” however, than those around you. Accept them; do not let them shock you.