Our Year of Maybe

Sometimes my body feels more like a medical experiment than something that belongs to me. If the transplant isn’t successful—I let the thought back in for a moment—well, I’ve already lived that life. But if everything goes smoothly . . .

Optimism. I imagine myself back at school, taking AP courses and playing piano in band. Sitting next to Sophie in class, if we’re lucky enough to have any together. Parties on the weekend. Making other friends who could hang out with me here when Sophie’s not answering her phone.

No. Not here. We’d be anywhere but my room.

Music and Mark and everything else in this room are only such good company. They can’t hold conversations with me. They can’t laugh. And when Sophie’s not here, they can’t tell me how much I mean to them, even if they mean a hell of a lot to me.

CHAPTER 3

SOPHIE

A BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR A one-year-old is pretty pointless. Luna obviously has no concept of the passage of time, despite how cute she looks in a hat too big for her head. That didn’t stop my sister, Tabby, from decorating the backyard and inviting over a dozen friends. Any excuse for a big production.

If the yard is a stage, I’m merely an usher. I offer smiles to Tabby’s friends as they arrive, tell them where to place their gifts. Then I escape to a lawn chair in the corner with my earbuds and a cup of punch.

Most of Tabby’s friends are theater kids too. Though we’re both involved in the performing arts, our interests have never exactly overlapped. Tabby loves musicals but can’t dance, and the idea of memorizing a script makes me sweat. We’re only a year and a half apart and she’s a junior like Peter, but her friends have always very clearly been Her Friends, while he has always been mine. It’s not that she doesn’t like Peter, but this party is for her—well, for her kid—and his family didn’t make the guest list.

While the party people coo over the spectacle that is Luna playing with a bubble wand, I scroll through my phone until I find my current favorite song. It’s a remix of a nearly century-old jazz piece—when you are on dance team, you listen to a lot of remixes—with horns and bass and a catchy chorus. I envision the choreography as anachronistic too, vintage Fosse moves mixed with modern and hip-hop. Over and over, I play the first eight bars, trying to visualize how I’d position our dancers. My favorite choreographer, Twyla Tharp, mashed up music and dances that weren’t supposed to go together all the time: a ballet choreographed to a Beach Boys song in the 1970s, for example. I’d love to create something unexpected like that, something risky and new.

Every so often my mind drifts to the woods behind Peter’s house, his side warm against mine as we sat on the blanket. I crave physical contact between us, but it’s also a special kind of torture, one I analyze and reanalyze after every time I see him. The rare moments that seem to dip beyond friendship, like when he slid his hand beneath my sweatshirt and my tank top, are just that: moments. Fleeting. Agonizing.

“Sophie?” Dad’s voice cuts through my song. I pause it and whip my head around. He’s standing on the porch, hands jammed in his pockets, shoulders hunched in an I’m-not-sure-what-I’m-doing-here-even-though-I-live-here kind of way. My dad and I are the kind of people who are okay one-on-one but disasters in large groups. He’s a sound engineer at an NPR station in Seattle, and he spends most of his time dealing with knobs and wires instead of people. “Could you come help with the cake?”

“O-kay,” I say tentatively, unsure how a dessert has bested my father.

“You looked lonely out there,” he says in the kitchen as he starts slicing the carrot cake, confirming he did not, in fact, need that much help—maybe he just wanted to talk to me.

“You know me.” I hold out a plate so he can place a cube of cake onto it. “Not exactly a party person.”

“It’s a little much,” he agrees, gazing out into the backyard. “But you only turn one once, I suppose.”

He and my mom never expected to be grandparents so young, I’m sure. But when Tabby told us that she was pregnant and she and Josh Cho, whom she’d been dating since eighth grade, had decided to have the baby, Mom and Dad seemed to skip the judgmental phase and climbed right aboard the supportive-parents train. Now seventeen, Tabby’s taking classes online, waitressing at a diner in the evenings, and living across the hall with her baby. Josh, who goes to North Seattle High with me, spends so much time here he might as well move in.

Most of the time it feels too crowded. Like there isn’t enough space for quiet people like my dad and me to simply be.

Mom slides open the door and joins us in the kitchen. “Phil! I saw that,” she exclaims as my dad licks buttercream frosting off a finger.

“Guilty,” he says, and she laughs, swatting his arm.

“Soph, where have you been all night?” Mom says. “I’ve barely seen you.”

My mom, who’s high up at Starbucks corporate, has always been the alpha of our family. She and my dad met in Israel on a Birthright trip, and a couple years later, she was the one who proposed to him.

“I’ve been here.”

“Did you have a good last practice?”

“Pretty good. Not sure how I feel about our new captain yet. She’s . . . a little intimidating.”

“I’m sure you’ll get used to her.” She reaches into the fridge for more sodas. “I wonder if Tabby and Josh will sign Luna up for dance classes when she’s older. Can you imagine how cute she’d be in a toddler tutu?”

“So cute,” I agree.

When Tabby got pregnant before she turned sixteen, it seemed like an opportunity for me to step into her “good daughter” shoes. I could be the easy kid. But nothing in my sister’s life changed that dramatically. Her schedule shifted around and she couldn’t do as many plays, but she and Josh stayed together. She kept her friends.

And yet, when I told my parents I wanted to get tested to see if I’d be a match for Peter, they lost it. “There are so many health risks,” Dad said. “What if something happens to your friendship and you regret donating?” Mom asked.

The only regrets I have when it comes to Peter are things I don’t do. Things I don’t say.