Our Year of Maybe
ANOTHER FRIDAY NIGHT, ANOTHER RAINY football game. I squint up at the stands, but everyone’s REI parkas blur together in one big swatch of bluish gray, and I can’t find Peter.
We’re not supposed to bring our phones onto the field—Montana thinks it looks bad for people in the bleachers to see us staring at our screens—but I tucked mine into the waistband of my skirt, and I steal peeks at it when the rest of the team is distracted by the game.
Mostly, I’m staring at the message Peter sent two hours ago and trying to figure out how to respond.
Can’t make the game tonight. Band practice
I must have sat through at least a dozen of his piano recitals. So far this year, he’s seen me dance at one game. He missed my dance recitals all the time when he wasn’t feeling up to it. Sure, I danced when we Terrible Twosomed, but that was different. The rest of the time his health came first. It had to.
“Everything okay?” Liz asks, nudging my shoulder.
I wrap my phone in my sleeve, trying to hide it. “Fine.”
Next week? I finally text back, staring at the screen for a reply, as though if I blink, I’ll miss something.
For the past couple weeks, I’ve been wrestling with an ugly thought. I thought the transplant would make us better than best friends, that I’d somehow graduate to a new level of importance in his life. It’s not why I did it, but at the same time, I couldn’t fathom a future in which the transplant didn’t connect us even more deeply. But our present is not that future. I don’t understand why he’s so adamant about our relationship staying the same when he’s the one changing it.
He has a small part of me, and I’m the one with a gaping hole that can’t be fixed.
By the following week, the team nearly has my piece memorized, and I’m feeling pretty fantastic about it. When I get home after practice Thursday, I’m humming the song under my breath, still bouncing with energy. I’m not ready for homework, but I’m too tired to go back out. I drop my backpack in the hall and wander into the kitchen. Tabby’s standing at the counter, dipping a spoon into a jar of Nutella.
She waves at me with the spoon before she licks it. “Hey.”
“Hey.” The house is eerily quiet. “Where’s Luna? Actually, where’s our whole family?”
“Josh has her. They’re visiting his grandparents at their retirement home tonight. And Mom and Dad are out with Peter’s parents.”
I open the drawer and find a spoon of my own to dip into the jar. “It’s so weird. They’re BFFs all of a sudden.”
“I know!” Tabby exclaims, holding out the jar for me. “I guess that’s how it used to be, but I barely remember it.”
“Right, because you were so young back then.”
Tabby rolls her eyes. “Wait, you’re older than me? I had no idea.”
“What are you doing tonight? Besides this,” I say as I take another spoonful.
She lets out a long sigh. “I switched shifts at the diner so I could go to the movies with Mia and Steph, but they had late rehearsals for Sweeney Todd. I mean, it’s fine. I don’t even like Sweeney Todd that much anyway. Well, the movie was awful, but some of the songs are okay. . . .”
What she doesn’t say: If Luna hadn’t happened, she’d be rehearsing for Sweeney Todd too.
“You would have been an awesome Mrs. Lovett,” I tell her.
“I totally would have,” she says with a sniff. “So. Now I have a thrilling night of homework ahead of me.”
She’s trying to snark about this to make it better, but it can’t have been easy for her to give up theater.
“Do you, um . . . want to do something instead?”
She taps her fingers on the table. “Depends. Make me an offer. Bonus points if I don’t have to change out of sweatpants.”
I snort. Then it comes to me. “Let’s have a sleepover.”
“What?” She laughs, this high-pitched sound that’s nothing like my own laugh. When I used to watch my sister onstage, I was amazed by how she could morph into a completely different person. Sometimes it made me wonder if I knew her at all.
“Let’s have a sleepover here. We could play with makeup and watch TV and eat terrible, wonderful food.”
“That actually sounds really fun. I haven’t done anything like that in forever.”