"Oh no, I am planning on coming to that," I tell her. "I"ve just had a lot on my plate lately, so I haven"t gotten around to-"
"Are you considering another school?" she asks me, point-blank.
"No!" I blurt. "No. It"s MIT for me. It"s always been MIT."
"Because I will just tell you, and not because it"s my job to tell you this at this point, but if you love math, you should come to MIT. It"d be stupid to go anywhere else."
"I completely agree," I say. "That"s why-"
"Not just because the professors are phenomenal and you"ll be challenged and you"ll be working on things you"ve never dreamed about, but because you"re allowed to be yourself here. You"re not expected to mold yourself into something else. You"re celebrated for your own particular intellect. And that"s something I don"t think you can find anywhere else. Okay?"
"Okay."
"So sign up for the campus visit. I"ll show you around."
"Okay."
"And keep those grades up, all right? They were serious about that. Because yes, they will accept you for who you are here, but they will also expect nothing less than your very best work. Got it?"
"Yes," I say, finding myself nodding even though she can"t see me. "I understand."
"I"ll see you in a few weeks, then," she says.
"Yeah. I"ll see you then."
The minute I hang up the phone Mom comes charging back into the kitchen. I wonder if she was just outside the door listening, although I"m sure she couldn"t have gotten much from my series of okays.
"Everything all right?" she asks.
Excitement flutters in my stomach.
"I"m really going to MIT," I say, and it finally feels true. I have to write that stupid essay for English cla.s.s, if Mrs. Blackburn will accept it more than a month late. I have to go to Miss Mahoney and see if I can improve upon my tragic midterm score. I have to show them my best.
Mom smiles, too. "You"re really going to MIT."
I"m still in a bit of a daze from the MIT call when I meet Damian in the cafe at the SouthPointe Barnes & n.o.ble. He looks freshly showered and he"s wearing a black polo and clean jeans and not his standard gray hoodie.
I order a green tea latte.
"Are those good?" he asks when I pick it up from the end of the counter. "They"re so green. They look like blended gra.s.s."
"They grow on you," I answer.
He orders a salted caramel mocha. We sit at a table for a while and discuss Kafka. Damian gives me a few other t.i.tles to try: Dostoyevsky"s Crime and Punishment and James Joyce"s Dubliners and Herman Melville"s Moby-d.i.c.k. I"m going to be busy reading for a while.
Then the conversation stalls.
"So," I say after a few minutes of awkward silence. "This is going to sound silly, but I"ve become interested in poetry lately."
"What"s silly about poetry?" he asks, shifting in his chair.
"Nothing! There"s nothing silly about poetry, but I"ve been wanting to write some, and I"m finding out that I"m not any good at it. Do you read poetry?"
"Yeah. I read poetry," he says lightly. "I write some, too."
"Maybe you could give me some suggestions for poets I could read, and then I could imitate them or use them for inspiration or you could tutor me-"
"Lex," he interrupts. "Stop."
I stop my babbling. "What?"
"You don"t have to . . ." He smiles. "You don"t have to come up with ways to get my attention."
He reaches across the table and puts his hand over mine.
"I get it," he says. "I know what you"re doing."
Heat rushes to my face. "You do?"
"When did you figure it out?" he asks.
I stare at him, then at his hand. "Figure it out," I repeat.
He laughs. "I knew it. On Wednesday, when you came up to me and wanted to talk about Heart of Darkness, I thought, She knows."
Naturally I have no idea what he"s talking about. There"s something off about the way he"s looking at me. A warmth in his gray eyes. An expectation.
He"s been interpreting this all wrong.
I am stupid.
I am smart, sure, but oh boy, in the romance department, I am a moron.
"Damian . . ." I don"t know how to back out of this.
He lets go of my hand to reach down to unzip his backpack. "I brought you something."
He pulls out a rose made of paper.
It"s made of red paper, this time. There are words on this one, too, an entire poem I can only read part of: Loving in truth, and fain in verse my love to show That the dear She might take some pleasure of my pain Pleasure might cause her read, reading might make her know "It was you," I breathe.
"Guilty," he says.
"Last year, too. Valentine"s Day. It was you."
"I found a pattern for a paper daisy in one of my mom"s old magazines," he says. "And I thought of you. I"m glad you figured it out. I"ve wanted to tell you for such a long time."
"Why didn"t you just write your name on it?" I ask, stricken.
"Too chicken, I guess. It was more romantic that way, right? And then you had a boyfriend, and you seemed happy with him, so I didn"t want to-" He puts his hand over mine again. "But then you broke up with your boyfriend, and you and I started to talk more, and I thought . . . Lex?"
I"ve closed my eyes.
Steven didn"t give me the flowers. He didn"t write those words to me.
The disappointment of this revelation is like a knife in my chest-a hard pain, sharp and penetrating.
This is our place, too. This bookstore. Where Steven asked me.
Right over there.
Where I said yes, and part of the reason I said yes was the paper flower.
It"s not fair, I think. On top of everything else that gets taken away.
I want Steven to be the one who made me that flower.
"Lex?" Damian tries to console me for all the wrong reasons. "Hey. It"s okay that you didn"t figure it out earlier. You figured it out now. We can make up for lost time, right?"
I open my eyes just as he"s leaning across the table to touch my cheek. I flinch and pull away, my hand sliding out from under his. "No."
His smile fades.
"I"m sorry," I gasp. "This isn"t . . . I didn"t mean to lead you on. . . . I didn"t know."
He sits back. "You didn"t know I made the flowers."
I shake my head, horrified at my own stupidity.
"But then why have you been . . . talking to me? You"ve been acting interested. You were acting like you liked me."
This is a train wreck. "Damian, I do like you," I begin. "But I don"t feel like-it"s not a romantic kind of thing. That"s not what this is about for me."
His gray eyes are like cool stone now. Unreachable.
"You were b.u.t.tering me up," he says in a low voice. "You were using me."
"No."
"Did you even read The Metamorphosis? Or was all of this some kind of bribe? So you could prep for MIT?"
"Yes! I mean, no, it wasn"t a bribe. I did read the book. I liked it. I swear."
"What is this, then? What do you want?"
He"s talking so loud that people are starting to glance over.
"Nothing," I say quietly. "I thought you seemed lonely, is all. I thought you could use a friend."
Wrong answer.
Damian draws himself up. "Oh. How altruistic of you, Lex. Since you"re such a friendly girl yourself."
"Hey," I object. "Let"s not forget that you had ulterior motives here, too. You were using the book thing to seduce me, right? You weren"t just helping me out of the goodness of your heart."
He snorts. "Seduce is a strong word. And I was only doing it because I thought that"s what you were doing. I thought you liked me," he accuses, spitting out the t on thought. "I really thought you liked me." For a moment his expression is tragic, like he might cry. Then he hardens himself. "I was wrong."
He"s so upset that his hands shake as he gathers up his books.
"Damian, please. I"m so sorry."
"Don"t," he says sharply. "I don"t need your pity. You don"t get to use me as your charity case because you feel bad that your brother died. I"m fine."
Then he"s gone. The people around me stare for a minute and then go back to their previous conversations. I swallow.
I have to live with the fact that, in spite of my good intentions, I have just made everything worse.
30 March The last time I saw my brother-in real life, I mean-it was the morning of December 20. The morning of the day he died. It started like any other morning. Mom cooked breakfast. We all sat around the table together, Mom with her cup of coffee and her toast, looking through a nursing scrubs catalog and me daydreaming about MIT, which I had just sent in my application for, and Ty doing what he always did at breakfast time: eating enough food to sustain a small African village.
I probably made some comment about it, the way he always ate like he was never going to get another meal.
He probably made his usual comment that he was a growing boy.
I don"t remember that part. What I do remember is that sometime during that meal, Ty cleared his throat and said, "I was thinking about maybe getting my own car."
Mom stopped perusing uniforms, and I stopped imagining the tree-lined walkways at MIT, and we both looked at him. This comment was a little out of the blue, I thought. He hadn"t even mentioned the idea of his own car around his sixteenth birthday.
"Okay," Mom said thoughtfully. "So how are you planning to acquire this car?"
His face fell. "I was thinking that maybe, between you and Dad, you might be able to-" He swallowed hard. "It wouldn"t have to be a very nice car."
Mom was already shaking her head. "We don"t have that kind of cash right now, honey. I"m sorry."
Because of the divorce, I thought and didn"t say.
Ty turned to me for support. I lifted my hands in surrender. "Hey, don"t look at me. I worked after school for three years to buy the Lemon. And it"s the Lemon."
"Yes, that"s what you"ll have to do, honey," Mom said. "You"ll have to save up."
Ty nodded, but it was a resigned kind of nod. He knew there was no way for him to get a real job with all his extracurricular activities-basketball being the big one.
I tried to soften the blow. "But come on, what would you do with a car, really?"
His eyes flashed. "I"d drive to school. I have my license. I"d take girls out on dates. I"d take road trips, get out of the state of Nebraska for once in my stupid life."
Mom and I exchanged worried glances.
Ty closed his eyes and sighed. "Anyway, it"s fine. I just thought I"d ask."