You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone

My heart is full. Throat dry. I can’t speak.

“This one does mean something,” he says, “but I’ll let you figure it out.”

Someone raps lightly on my bedroom door.

“Come in,” I call without glancing up from where I’m lying in bed with my laptop.

“Hi,” Adi says, and I sit up straight. Her hair is in a whatever

ponytail and her face is makeup free, her mouth not its usual red. “What are you doing?”

“Browsing the University of Washington’s course catalog. What do you think, should I take History of the Circus or the Anthropology of Chocolate?”

“Both.” She perches on the edge of my bed, but barely, like my sheets are made of lava.

“When do you sign up for classes?”

“They’re all basically decided for me, but, you know, that’s what I want. All viola, all the time.” She doesn’t say anything about taking classes at Johns Hopkins.

“It’ll be the perfect place for you,” I say, because it probably will be. Adina can have Baltimore. She deserves it.

Adi gives me a slight smile. “Thanks for saying that.”

She stares up at my walls, all of which are bare now. My room is no longer a museum of all my accomplishments, all my dreams. It’s one big blank slate.

“I don’t hate you,” she says to the walls. Quietly. The opposite of how she said that statement’s opposite.

For about a minute I don’t say anything.

“Tovah?”

“I heard you,” I say. “I—I think I knew that. But . . . thanks for telling me.”

Adina crosses her legs, the bed squeaking beneath her. “I shouldn’t have said it. I shouldn’t have said a lot of things to you that night. What I said about death with dignity—that’s not happening. I don’t want that. I hadn’t thought anything through, and I was acting reckless, like you said, and . . .” She trails off, as though waiting for me to say something.

I shut my laptop. I wanted more time to prepare for this conversation, if it’s something I could ever be fully prepared for. I want to do what I wasn’t able to do after our mom was diagnosed. I want to hold her in my arms and keep her there and make sure nothing bad ever happens to her. I want to be there, because maybe if I am, it’ll stop her from thinking such horrendous thoughts.

I should have planned some grand speech. Convince her that life is still worth living. Fill it with quotes and statistics and facts about how people with this disease aren’t doomed the way she thinks they are. But with Ima getting worse, that’s tougher for me to wrap my brain around. Tougher for me to believe.

“I want to believe you,” I say. “I really, really want to believe you, Adina.”

She stares at me, unblinking, and there’s a rawness and sincerity in her gaze that makes me realize: she wouldn’t lie to me about this. It’s too massive. “I swear to you. When I went to the doctor last week, I was terrified, really fucking terrified, that they were going to diagnose me with Huntington’s and what that would mean. That I’d have to start going through with this ‘plan.’ And I didn’t want that. I couldn’t envision it. I thought that was the one way I had to control this, but I can control so many other things. I’m still scared of what’s going to happen to me someday, but . . . I have some time. To do the things I want. And”—she chews her lip—“those things don’t have to involve destroying objects that are important to you.”

“You have so much time.” I want to hug her, or touch her shoulder, but I don’t have the courage to do either yet. “If you ever feel that way again, tell me, okay? Or tell Ima, or tell your doctor, or . . .”

“I’m starting some antidepressants. And the doctor mentioned a support group. I’m going to go. See what it’s like.”

“That’s good. Really good. I could go with you, if you want.”

She twirls the end of her ponytail around a fist, checking for split ends she doesn’t have. “I think I have to go on my own. But thanks.”

In the silence that follows, I mimic her, running my hands through my own short hair. It may never look like hers, but I don’t think I want it to.

“I need to confess to something. I was jealous of you. You were right. I spent most of elementary school and middle school being jealous of you. You had—still have—this confidence I wish I had most of the time. And you’ve always known what you were meant to do.”

Adina’s eyebrows crease together. “But you couldn’t stand my music.”

“I couldn’t stand that because you could play an instrument, you were the music expert, even though I love music too. But viola became who you were, and that was what I wanted. Something for myself.”