When You Were Mine (30 page)

I turn the photo over, and there is a note on the back, scrawled in the same handwriting I now know so well. From hours spent in the bio lab, homework assignments, and corrected quizzes.

Rosaline,

I’m sorry for those things I said. I meant some of them, but not all. I still care about you. I’m here, whenever you want me to be.

Always,

—Len

I take the picture and stand up. Then I climb the stairs, walk down the hallway, and go into my room. It’s not until I’m in bed that I realize I have the picture pressed up against my heart.

My birthday this year comes too quickly. It’s January
first before the calendar can right itself from stumbling over Christmas. The morning usually begins with my mom making pancakes in the kitchen. Banana and chocolate chip. We’ve been having them since before I can remember. She makes hot cocoa with espresso and we all sit around in our bathrobes and pretend it’s snowing outside, which it never is.

“Just once, I’d love to have a white Christmas,” my dad says every year, “but I’d be just as happy for it to show up on your birthday.”

That’s how I feel about Rob. I half expected him to come over on Christmas. Usually I wake up before six. It’s one of those habits left over from childhood. The excitement to see what I’ve gotten
and what kind of gifts are under the tree. I went downstairs and just stood in the living room, looking out to our lawn through the double glass doors over toward his house. I stood there for hours, until my mom came and wrapped a blanket around me and forced me back to the couch. I was convinced, somehow, that if I stared long enough, I’d see him. That if I waited long enough, the universe would get tired and let him slip back to me.

I have a habit of waking up early on my birthday, too, but today I wake up at nine. It’s dark in my room, and if it wasn’t for my clock on my nightstand, I’d have no idea what time it is at all. My phone is flashing on the floor beneath me—three new text messages.

Two are from Olivia. She wrote the text of a birthday card and got cut off. The third, I know before I read it, will be from Charlie. She always sends me the same thing every birthday morning:
Happy birthday, bisnatch. Time to party.

The familiarity of the text sends me back flat against my pillows. Previous birthdays come sweeping in like leaves blown in the wind. Images and memories swirling around me. Charlie’s text and Rob’s visit, always in time for pancakes. Hot cocoa with my family. Presents and laughter and always the promise of more. Playing with our Christmas gifts from the previous week and running around on full stomachs. Dinner together and sometimes even the slight champagne headache from New Year’s Eve
the night before. A new semester of school. Times in which forever just seemed like a given. In which time seemed like a stroll on Olivia’s beach in Malibu: casual and unrushed.

Last year on my birthday Rob came over for brunch. My mom made her traditional pancakes, and we all sat around and joked about how long it would take my dad to set up the new DVR my mom had bought him for Christmas. Afterward my parents started cooking some elaborate birthday dinner, and Rob and I drove over to Olivia’s house. Charlie and Ben were there, and Jake, too, and the six of us spent the afternoon baking brownies and watching
Casablanca
. We ended up burning the first batch because we forgot about them in the oven, but the house smelled like chocolate for the rest of the day. I remember lying on Olivia’s couch and thinking there was nowhere else in the world I’d rather be. It was perfect.

My mom knocks softly on my door and comes inside. She sits down on the edge of my bed and then moves closer, placing one hand on my forehead.

“Happy birthday, baby. Are you coming down?” She starts running her hand through my hair the way she used to do when I was little and sick.

“Yeah,” I say. “Just thinking.”

She nods and motions for me to sit up. I slide until my back is flat against my headboard.

“Look, Rosaline.” Usually my mom only uses my full name like that when she’s mad at me, but it’s my birthday, and something about the way she says it makes me think of Len.

“You never call me that.”

My mom dips her chin down and kisses me on the forehead. “It’s your name, sweetheart. It’s who you really are.” She smooths my hair with the back of her hand. “Sometimes things happen in life that we don’t understand. That are unreasonably cruel.” She stops and touches my cheek. Her hands are warm. She probably already started cooking. “But that doesn’t mean you curl up and give in. Do you understand?”

I blink back tears, and she stands up, going over to my window. She pulls back the blinds, and light comes pouring into my bedroom.

“There are still some surprises left,” she says. “Come and see.”

“What?”

She doesn’t respond; she just keeps looking outside. I toss back the covers and realize it’s kind of cold in my room. I wrap my robe around me and go to stand behind her. When I get there, I gasp.

All across our lawn down below, covering our outdoor furniture and lining our deck, is a delicate white blanket of snow.

“It’s beautiful,” I say.

“So are you,” my mother says. She puts her arm around me, and this time I let her. I lean my head on her shoulder. I’m as close to anyone as I have been since Charlie collected me from my floor weeks ago, and maybe because I feel protected, for just a moment, it slips out.

“It was my fault,” I whisper. I’m blinking, my eyes struggling to adjust to the influx of light. “I know Juliet didn’t pull the wheel. It was Rob. He was drunk. He came to see me, and I turned him away. He should never have been in the car. It was my fault he died.”

“Is that what you think?” My mom takes her arm away from me and crosses it against her chest.

“It’s just true,” I say. “He should have been with me. I could have stopped this.”

“No,” my mom says, “that’s not how it works.” She wanders away from the window and over to my desk. She picks up a picture and sets it back down. “I realize I don’t know exactly what happened between the two of you. And there was all that stuff with Juliet. . . .” She loops her finger in the air a few times like she’s trying to hurry herself up. “But one thing I do know is that we don’t get to choose when we leave this world. And we don’t get to choose when others leave either.”

She drops her hands to her sides and sighs. “Honey, think about your dad. He didn’t speak to his brother for ten years.” She
closes her eyes like she’s trying to get the words right. “That was a choice,” she says, “and he missed out on getting to know his niece. We all did.”

“I just didn’t think it would happen like this.”

“I know, baby,” she says, “but this is life. We can’t plan it; it just happens. The only thing we get to choose is how we react to it.”

I think about Charlie and what she told me.
We can choose to be happy. You can choose not to blame yourself.
Then I get it. And there’s one more thing I think we can choose too.

I take out my phone and text her back.
Dinner at my house? Love you
. I get one back immediately:
DUH. Luv u 2, Rosebud.

“So are you going to join us downstairs for your birthday?” my mom asks.

“In a few minutes. First there’s something I have to do.” She nods and smiles at my dad, who’s just come in. He’s holding a big white envelope.

“Happy birthday, cookie,” he says. “In the midst of everything, we forgot to give you this.”

They look at each other and then at me as my dad slides the envelope onto the bed. Embossed on the front is the Stanford logo. Of course. I’d forgotten to check online.

“Go ahead,” my dad says. “See what’s inside.”

I pick it up and turn it over. I’ve been waiting for this moment
for ten years. Longer, even. I always imagined how it would go. I would call Rob, excited and breathless, and he would come over. We’d sit on the floor in my bedroom and I’d put a hand over my eyes and hand him the envelope. “I can’t do it,” I’d say. “Just tell me.”

He’d open it and read it to himself with a straight face, nodding soberly. Then he’d look up with a blank expression and say, “Rosie, here’s the deal.” He’d pause, and my heart would be beating out of my chest. Then his face would crack into a gigantic smile and he’d say, “You got in!” He’d thrust the paper into my hands, and I’d read with completely shaking fingers, the letter flapping everywhere.

But now it’s just me and the envelope. No Rob. No nerves, even. I turn it in my hands, just holding it, and then I set it back down on the bed.

My dad frowns and looks at me, but my mom is smiling slightly, that little smile that says she just
knows
. “We’ll be here when you’re ready,” she says, and ushers my dad outside.

Something is coming back, some life force I’ve been missing since Rob died, maybe even before. Probably before, actually, because it feels like my entire life I’ve been just floating along, anticipating one thing and then another, like my life was a checklist and I just kept ticking items off. I used to think that was safe, comfortable. Like nothing bad could happen if I just stuck to the
list. Now I realize it was downright constricting. I don’t want to live like I know what’s coming.

I throw myself into my bathroom. I run a brush through my hair and gargle with some mouthwash. I’ve looked better, but I just don’t care. I’m buzzing now, humming with the excitement of what I’m about to do.

I jump into some jeans and pull a long-sleeved T-shirt over my head. Then I throw on a sweater. After all, it’s snowing outside. For the first time I kind of understand what my mom’s been talking about. That it’s my birthday and the start of a new year. It’s cool, really, that I get this chance to do things differently. That one day, one moment, can mark the beginning of all kinds of change.

My parents are hanging out in the kitchen when I get downstairs. They actually went over to Juliet’s parents’ house the other night. I don’t know if they will fix things, but I think they’ve started to try, and for just a moment I’m grateful for that, for the fact that sometimes things turn out the way they do, and even if unthinkable things happen, there is good buried underneath. Feuds can end. Families can reunite. Friends can change and grow, sometimes even with you. The possibilities of life are unknown and endless, and the staggering reality of that, of how much things can change in a moment, suddenly seems less scary and more full of hope. Overwhelming, but tinged with excitement. Like the edges don’t recede away into oblivion, stretching
out forever, but instead are lit on fire. Energized, somehow. Like life isn’t something that happens
to
us but through us and by us. Like we’re a part of something. Like we have choice. Because having a plan is great, but sometimes you realize that the thing you really want, you forgot to write down.

“I’ll be back later,” I say, and shout good-bye. I pull on boots and slip outside. My car is parked in the garage, where it always is, and for a second a familiar fear catches in my throat, but today I push it to the side. It’s now or never, and I don’t want to wait anymore. I tap my unused license in my palm as I climb inside and put the keys into the ignition. When the car starts, I just keep telling myself that I can do this, that I’m not afraid, that it will all be okay.

And it is. As soon as I start driving, the fear begins to melt away. My hands relax on the steering wheel and I’m cruising down the highway. Effortlessly. Past Grandma’s and Charlie’s house and school and the place where I fell last year while biking with Olivia and skinned my knee, and where Jake and Rob used to go surfing at the cove. And just like that, I need a new seven. Because not driving is no longer the thing that defines me. And I’m not so sure anymore that there is one thing that defines any of us. Because the fact that Lauren does SAC or that Olivia likes purple or that Charlie has Big Red doesn’t really tell us anything about them. Or if it does, it doesn’t tell us nearly enough. Their
sevens should be that Lauren picks up any responsibility, without ever asking for any credit, and that Olivia stands up for her friends when it really matters, and that Charlie is resilient and strong and that she will hold you up when you can’t do the same for yourself. Those are the things that define us. The way we love the people around us, and the choices we make to show it. That’s what makes us who we are.

As I keep on driving, it’s like a huge gravitational force is pulling me by my belly button toward the Cliffs, tugging me closer and closer so that it feels almost like I’m on autopilot. I don’t need to think. Something else, something bigger than me, is doing it for me now.

When I pull into the parking lot, it’s empty. For a moment I’m disappointed, wondering if maybe I was wrong, but then I see a figure over to the side, by the rocks. I slam the door and walk closer. He looks just like I thought he would. Shirt and jeans, familiar and exhilarating. I approach him from behind. He’s busy bent over something, studying it. I want to go and put my arms around him, bury my head in his shoulder and tell him how I knew I’d find him here. That if he was anywhere, he’d be here, of course. With me. And that there’s something I really need to tell him.