“Not,” she adds quickly, like she’s worried it might upset me, “that I’ll ever know any of those girls the way I know you.”
I’m not sure I know me anymore. I’d been so certain that my summer in the sun was real, so certain that Fiona and Mary and my parents were wrong.
I was supposed to be a detective hunting for clues, but it turns out that my brain just constructed some kind of elaborate scavenger hunt for me, the same way I used to do for my brothers.
I close my eyes and remember the day that Fiona and I met in kindergarten; we were instant friends because we were both wearing the same purple striped shirt. We held hands on our first day of high school, terrified of the seniors, all of whom seemed a foot taller than we were. I remember the day Fiona passed her driver’s test and the first day of our senior year, the way we walked side by side, giggling because now the freshmen seemed so small. I can still hear the catch of pride in her voice the first time she called Dax her boyfriend, and I can still feel the way she hugged me tight even when she thought I was losing my mind. Which it turns out, I kind of was. I smile. I have plenty of memories that are real.
Poor Fee was right all along. I guess she really does know me best. She saw right away that I’d made up Kensington, Pete, Belle, Jas. All the money my parents spent on therapy and doctors, all that analysis to discover that I’d created a world where I could put off mourning my brothers because I was too busy falling in love and being loved, until my fantasy brought me to Witch Tree and finally began coming apart at the seams. I needed to see what my brothers saw; I even invented someone revealing their death to me. Fiona could have explained it all for free.
I reach across the front seat to squeeze Fiona’s hand on my fresh new steering wheel. I have a best friend who is real, who loves me, who tried to save me when I was going mad. I don’t need Pete and Belle; I don’t need Jas. I have something real right here.
“Of course not,” I answer finally. I pause, the beginning of a smile tugging at the corners of my mouth. “I think you might actually know me better than I know myself.”
37
Driving home later, I wonder what Mary would say if she knew I went to Kensington today, if she knew that now I’ve seen what’s really there. Mary would argue—she has argued—that I have every right to mourn the loss of Jas and Pete and Belle and Kensington and the life I thought I knew there. She’d say since they had all been real to me, I ought to grieve for them now that they’re gone. It’s the kind of logic I’ve always hated. You shouldn’t be able to have feelings for things that aren’t real. Or for people who aren’t real.
So I’m not crying over my loss as I drive down the PCH, putting miles between Kensington and me. Instead, I’m laughing. I’m laughing because I should have known all along that it wasn’t real; it was so obvious, now that I think about it. I left myself such an enormous clue, right in the center of my delusion:
There’s no way I ever would have really taken a wave, no matter how much I wanted to.
By the time I get home, I’ve decided that I’m going to major in math when I get to Stanford. There’s no such thing as imaginary numbers.
Except, of course, there are.
I go to my room and close the door. The other day my mother gave me back the notebook she’d confiscated months ago, the one in which I’d kept all my notes when I thought I was living in Pete’s house. It’s lying forgotten on my desk, but now I open it, run my hands over my scribbles. Even my handwriting doesn’t look like my own; it’s messier, somehow desperate-looking. The handwriting of a person having a mental breakdown. I slam the book shut and drop it into the trash can beneath my desk.
In therapy yesterday, Mary asked me whether I ever said I love you to Jas. I didn’t answer her. Already my memories—or whatever I’m supposed to call what I remember of my hallucinations—are beginning to fade. They’re fuzzy, like a painting onto which someone has thrown a bucket of water, the borders between each image bleeding together until they’re indistinct.
She pushed me; I must have loved him, she said, if I was planning on running away with him, traveling the world with him, giving up my whole life—school, family, friends—just to be with him. I must have loved him, she said again. Didn’t I?
I never actually told her that I was planning on running away with Jas. I must have said something about it when I was half-conscious, babbling endlessly, calling out in my sleep. She must have sat by my bed taking notes.
I refused to answer her. And I certainly didn’t tell her that when I woke up in the psych ward months ago, my first thought was the words I love you, too. In the water, when he was trying to save me—when he told me he loved me—I never had a chance to say it back; the water was crashing over me so rapidly, I hardly had time to open my mouth to take a breath, let alone utter four syllables.
I decide that next week, I’ll answer Mary’s latest question. I’ll tell her that I didn’t say I love you to Jas because you can’t love someone who doesn’t exist. Whatever this ache in my chest is, it can’t be the pain of missing him, because he was never here to begin with. This ache is just wasted space.
The next morning, as I make myself a bowl of cereal, I discover that we’re out of milk. My mother will send me out to the grocery store for more later. She doesn’t even think twice about sending me out on errands anymore. It’s even a little annoying how quick she is to say, “Wendy, dear, can you go pick that up?”
Just a few weeks ago, that would have been such a big deal. A few weeks ago, I was excited to be sent out for milk. I smile as I eat my dry cereal, Nana’s enormous head resting in my lap; that’s progress, I guess.
I haven’t bothered getting dressed yet today; I’m still wearing pajama pants and a shirt I stole from Michael a couple years ago, long before he and John disappeared. He used to wear it to the beach, and it got so soft and faded in the sunshine that when it was accidentally folded in with my laundry, I never gave it back. He huffed and puffed looking for this shirt, and I never confessed to him that I had it all along, tucked away at the bottom of my drawer, waiting to take it with me when I left for college, a little piece of home.
Now, at least, I don’t have to hide it anymore.
I’m tossing the last of my dry cereal when my father comes bounding through the front door.
“What are you doing home?” I ask. Since I got back from the hospital, he’s actually been going to work on time every day. My parents’ daily routine is beginning to look more and more like it did not just before I washed up on the beach but before my brothers ran away. My mother gets up and dressed every morning, goes for a long walk with Nana around the neighborhood. My father goes to work five days a week, and even works late once in a while, just like he used to.
He doesn’t answer me, just calls my mother’s name. She practically skips from her bedroom to meet him, her hair still wet from her morning shower. Nana dances at her feet, giddy because my parents are giddy.
“Wendy,” my dad says, barely keeping a straight face. “There’s a delivery for you in the driveway.”
I raise my eyebrows. They already got me a car, and that gift didn’t come with nearly so much fanfare. My father and I went to the dealership together; I test drove a few models and crunched the numbers alongside my dad before we decided which was the right one for me. I drove it home myself; there wasn’t any big reveal, no car waiting in the driveway with a big red bow tied around it.