Текст книги "Where She Went"

Автор книги: Gayle Forman

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Текущая страница: 8 (всего у книги 12 страниц)

FIFTEEN

I’m pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates—and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour’s notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we’d drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we’d even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock ’n’ roll house.

I don’t know if it’s because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped.

Everyone, that was, except for Mia Hall.

“I sleep in beds,” was what Mia told me the first time I invited her to go camping for a weekend. To which I’d offered to bring one of those blow-up air mattresses, but she’d still refused. Kat had overheard me trying to persuade Mia and had laughed.

“Good luck with that, Adam,” she’d said. “Denny and I took Mia camping when she was a baby. We planned to spend a week at the coast, but she screamed for two days straight and we had to come home. She’s allergic to camping.”

“It’s true,” Mia had said.

“I’ll go,” Teddy had offered. “I only ever get to go camp in the backyard.”

“Gramps takes you out every month,” Denny had replied. “And I take you. You just don’t get to go camping with all of us as a family.” He’d given Mia a look. She’d just rolled her eyes back at him.

So it shocked me when Mia agreed to go camping. It was the summer before her senior year of high school and my first year of college, and we’d hardly seen each other. Things with the band had really started heating up, so I’d been touring for a lot of that summer, and Mia had been away at her band camp and then visiting relatives. She must’ve been really missing me. It was the only explanation I could imagine for her relenting.

I knew better than to rely on the punk-rock mode of camping. So I borrowed a tent. And one of those foam things to sleep on. And I packed a cooler full of food. I wanted to make everything okay, though to be honest, I wasn’t really clear on why Mia was so averse to camping in the first place—she was not a prissy chick, not by a long shot; this was a girl who liked to play midnight basketball—so I had no idea if the creature comforts would help.

When I went to pick her up, her whole family came down to see us off, like we were heading off on a crosscountry road trip instead of a twenty-four-hour jaunt. Kat waved me over.

“What’d you pack, for food?” she asked.

“Sandwiches. Fruit. For tonight, hamburgers, baked beans, s’mores. I’m trying for the authentic camping experience.”

Kat nodded, all serious. “Good, though you might want to feed her the s’mores first if she gets cranky. Also, I packed you some provisions.” She handed me a half-gallon Ziploc. “In case of emergency, break glass.”

“What’s all this stuff?”

“Now and Laters. Starburst. Pixie Stix. If she gets too bitchy, just feed her this crap. As long as the sugar high is in effect, you and the wildlife should be safe.”

“Well, thanks.”

Kat shook her head “You’re a braver man than I. Good luck.”

“Yeah, you’ll need it,” Denny replied. Then he and Kat locked eyes for a second and started cracking up.

There were plenty of great camping spots within an hour’s drive, but I wanted to take us somewhere a little more special, so I wound us deep into the mountains, to this place up an old logging road I’d been to a lot as a kid. When I pulled off the road, onto a dirt path, Mia asked: “Where’s the campground?”

“Campgrounds are for tourists. We free camp.”

“Free camp?” Her voice rose in alarm.

“Relax, Mia. My dad used to log around here. I know these roads. And if you’re worried about showers and stuff—”

“I don’t care about the showers.”

“Good, because we have our own private pool.” I turned off my car and showed Mia the spot. It was right alongside the river, where a small inlet of water pooled calm and crystal clear. The view in all directions was unfettered, nothing but pine trees and mountains, like a giant postcard advertising OREGON!

“It’s pretty,” Mia admitted, grudgingly.

“Wait till you see the view from the top of the ridge. You up for a walk?”

Mia nodded. I grabbed some sandwiches and waters and two packs of watermelon Now and Laters and we traipsed up the trail, hung out for a while, read our books under a tree. By the time we got back down, it was twilight.

“I’d better get the tent up,” I said.

“You need some help?”

“No. You’re the guest. You relax. Read your book or something.”

“If you say so.”

I dumped the borrowed tent pieces on the ground and started to hook up the poles. Except the tent was one of those newfangled ones, where all the poles are in one giant puzzle piece, not like the simple pup tents I’d grown up assembling. After half an hour, I was still struggling with it. The sun was dipping behind the mountains, and Mia had put down her book. She was watching me, a bemused little smile on her face.

“Enjoying this?” I asked, perspiring in the evening chill.

“Definitely. Had I known this was what it would be like, I would’ve agreed to come ages ago.”

“I’m glad you find it so amusing.”

“Oh, I do. But are you sure you wouldn’t like some help? You’ll need me to hold a flashlight if this takes much longer.”

I sighed. Held my hands up in surrender. “I’m being bested by a piece of sporting goods.”

“Does your opponent have instructions?”

“It probably did at some point.”

She shook her head, stood up, grabbed the top of the tent. “Okay, you take this end. I’ll do this end. I think the long part loops over the top here.”

Ten minutes later we had the tent set up and staked down. I collected some rocks and some kindling for a fire pit and got a campfire going with the firewood I’d brought. I cooked us burgers in a pan over the fire and baked beans directly in the can.

“I’m impressed,” Mia said.

“So you like camping?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said, but she was smiling.

It was only later, after we’d had dinner and s’mores and washed our dishes in the moonlit river and I’d played some guitar around the campfire as Mia sipped tea and chowed through a pack of Starburst, that I finally understood Mia’s issue with camping.

It was maybe ten o’clock, but in camping time, that’s like two in the morning. We got into our tent, snuggled into the double sleeping bag. I pulled Mia to me. “Wanna know the best part about camping?”

I felt her whole body tense up—but not in the good way. “What was that?” she whispered.

“What was what?”

“I heard something,” she said.

“It was probably just an animal,” I said.

She flicked on the flashlight. “How do you know that?”

I took the flashlight and shined it on her. Her eyes were huge. “You’re scared?”

She looked down and—barely—nodded her head.

“The only thing you need to worry about out here is bears and they’re only interested in the food, which is why we put it all away in the car,” I reassured her.

“I’m not scared of bears,” Mia said disdainfully.

“Then what is it?”

“I, I just feel like such a sitting target out here.”

“Sitting target for who?”

“I don’t know, people with guns. All those hunters.”

“That’s ridiculous. Half of Oregon hunts. My whole family hunts. They hunt animals, not campers.”

“I know,” she said in a small voice. “It’s not really that, either. I just feel . . . defenseless. It’s just, I don’t know, the world feels so big when you’re out in the wide open. It’s like you don’t have a place in it when you don’t have a home.”

“Your place is right here,” I whispered, laying her down and hugging her close.

She snuggled into me. “I know.” She sighed. “What a freak! The granddaughter of a retired Forest Service biologist who’s scared of camping.”

“That’s just the half of it. You’re a classical cellist whose parents are old punk rockers. You’re a total freak. But you’re my freak.”

We lay there in silence for a while. Mia clicked off the flashlight and scooted closer to me. “Did you hunt as a kid?” she whispered. “I’ve never heard you mention it.”

“I used to go out with my dad,” I murmured back. Even though we were the only people within miles, something about the night demanded we speak in hushed tones. “He always said when I was twelve I’d get a rifle for my birthday and he’d teach me to shoot. But when I was maybe nine, I went out with some older cousins and one of them loaned me his rifle. And it must’ve been beginner’s luck or something because I shot a rabbit. My cousins were all going crazy. Rabbits are small and quick and hard for even seasoned hunters to kill, and I’d hit one on my first try. They went to get it so we could bring it back to show everyone and maybe stuff it for a trophy. But when I saw it all bloody, I just started crying. Then I started screaming that we had to take it to a vet, but of course it was dead. I wouldn’t let them bring it back. I made them bury it in the forest. When my dad heard, he told me that the point of hunting was to take some sustenance from the animal, whether we eat it or skin it or something, otherwise it was a waste of a life. But I think he knew I wasn’t cut out for it because when I turned twelve, I didn’t get a rifle; I got a guitar.”

“You never told me that before,” Mia said.

“Guess I didn’t want to blow my punk-rock credibility.”

“I would think that would cement it,” she said.

“Nah. But I’m emocore all the way, so it works.”

A warm silence hung in the tent. Outside, I could hear the low hoot of an owl echo in the night. Mia nudged me in the ribs. “You’re such a softy!”

“This from the girl who’s scared of camping!”

She chuckled. I pulled her closer to me, wanting to eradicate any distance between our bodies. I pushed her hair off her neck and nuzzled my face there. “Now you owe me an embarrassing story from your childhood,” I murmured into her ear.

“All my embarrassing stories are still happening,” she replied.

“There must be one I don’t know.”

She was silent for a while. Then she said: “Butterflies.”

“Butterflies? ”

“I was terrified of butterflies.”

“What is it with you and nature?”

She shook with silent laughter. “I know,” she said. “And can there be a less-threatening creature than a butterfly? They only live, like, two weeks. But I used to freak any time I saw one. My parents did everything they could to desensitize me: bought me books on butterflies, clothes with butterflies, put up butterfly posters in my room. But nothing worked.”

“Were you like attacked by a gang of monarchs?” I asked.

“No,” she said. “Gran had this theory behind my phobia. She said it was because one day I was going to have to go through a metamorphosis like a caterpillar transforming into a butterfly and that scared me, so butterflies scared me.”

“That sounds like your gran. How’d you get over your fear?”

“I don’t know. I just decided not to be scared of them anymore and then one day I wasn’t.”

“Fake it till you make it.”

“Something like that.”

“You could try that with camping.”

“Do I have to?”

“Nah, but I’m glad you came.”

She’d turned to face me. It was almost pitch-black in the tent but I could see her dark eyes shining. “Me too. But do we have to go to sleep? Can we just stay like this for a while?”

“All night long if you want. We’ll tell our secrets to the dark.”

“Okay.”

“So let’s hear another one of your irrational fears.”

Mia grasped me by the arms and pulled herself in to my chest, like she was burrowing her body into mine. “I’m scared of losing you,” she said in the faintest of voices.

I pushed her away so I could see her face and kissed the top of her forehead. “I said ‘irrational’ fears. Because that’s not gonna happen.”

“It still scares me,” she murmured. But then she went on to list other random things that freaked her out and I did the same, and we kept whispering to each other, telling stories from our childhoods, deep, deep into the night until finally Mia forgot to be scared and fell asleep.

The weather turned cool a few weeks later, and that winter was when Mia had her accident. So that actually turned out to be the last time I went camping. But even if it weren’t, I still think it would be the best trip of my life. Whenever I remember it, I just picture our tent, a little ship glowing in the night, the sounds of Mia’s and my whispers escaping like musical notes, floating out on a moonlit sea.

SIXTEEN

You crossed the water, left me ashore

It killed me enough, but you wanted more

You blew up the bridge, a mad terrorist

Waved from your side, threw me a kiss

I started to follow but realized too late

There was nothing but air underneath my feet

“BRIDGE”

COLLATERAL DAMAGE , TRACK 4

Fingers of light are starting to pry open the night sky. Soon the sun will rise and a new day will inarguably begin. A day in which I’m leaving for London. And Mia for Tokyo. I feel the countdown of the clock ticking like a time bomb.

We’re on the Brooklyn Bridge now, and though Mia hasn’t said so specifically, I feel like this must be the last stop. I mean, we’re leaving Manhattan—and not a round-trip like our cruise out to Staten Island and back was. And also, Mia has decided, I guess, that since she’s pulled some confessionals, it’s my turn. About halfway across the bridge, she stops suddenly and turns to me.

“So what’s up with you and the band?” she asks.

There’s a warm wind blowing, but I suddenly feel cold. “What do you mean, ‘what’s up?’”

Mia shrugs. “Something’s up. I can tell. You’ve hardly talked about them all night. You guys used to be inseparable, and now you don’t even live in the same state. And why didn’t you go to London together?”

“I told you, logistics.”

“What was so important that they couldn’t have waited one night for you?”

“I had to, to do some stuff. Go into the studio and lay down a few guitar tracks.”

Mia eyes me skeptically. “But you’re on tour for a new album. Why are you even recording?”

“A promo version of one of our singles. More of this,” I say, frowning as I rub my fingers together in a money-money motion.

“But wouldn’t you be recording together?”

I shake my head. “It doesn’t really work like that anymore. And besides, I had to do an interview with Shuffle.”

“An interview? Not with the band? Just with you? That’s what I don’t get.”

I think back to the day before. To Vanessa LeGrande. And out of the blue, I’m recalling the lyrics to “Bridge,” and wondering if maybe discussing this with Mia Hall above the dark waters of the East River isn’t such a hot idea. At least it isn’t Friday the thirteenth anymore.

“Yeah. That’s kinda how it works these days, too,” I say.

“Why do they only want just you? What do they want to know about?”

I really don’t want to talk about this. But Mia’s like a bloodhound, tracking a scent, and I know her well enough to know that I can either throw her a piece of bloody meat, or let her sniff her way to the real pile of stinking corpses. I go for the diversion.

“Actually, that part’s kinda interesting. The reporter, she asked about you.”

“What?” Mia swivels around to face me.

“She was interviewing me and asked about you. About us. About high school.” The look of shock on Mia’s face, I savor it. I think about what she said earlier, about her life in Oregon being a lifetime ago. Well, maybe not such a lifetime ago! “That’s the first time that’s happened. Kinda strange coincidence, all things considered.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences anymore.”

“I didn’t tell her anything, but she’d gotten a hold of the old Cougar yearbook. The one with our picture—Groovy and the Geek.”

Mia shakes her head. “Yeah, I so loved that nick-name.”

“Don’t worry. I didn’t say anything. And for good measure, I smashed her recorder. Destroyed all evidence.”

“Not all the evidence.” She stares at me. “The Cougar lives on. I’m sure Kim will be delighted to know her early work may turn up in a national magazine.” She shakes her head and chuckles. “Once Kim gets you in her shutter, you’re stuck forever. So it was pointless to destroy that reporter’s recorder.”

“I know. I just sort of lost it. She was this very provocative person, and she was trying to get a rise out of me with all these insults-disguised-as-compliments.”

Mia nods knowingly. “I get that, too. It’s the worst! ‘I was fascinated by the Shostakovich you played tonight. So much more subdued than the Bach,’ she says in a snooty voice. ‘Translation: The Shostakovich sucked.’”

I can’t imagine the Shostakovich ever sucking, but I won’t deny us this common ground.

“So what did she want to know about me?”

“She had plans to do this big exposé, I guess, on what makes Shooting Star tick. And she went digging around our hometown and talked to people we went to high school with. And they told her about us . . . about the . . . about what we were. And about you and what happened . . .” I trail off. I look down at the river, at a passing barge, which, judging by its smell, is carrying garbage.

“And what really happened?” Mia asks.

I’m not sure if this is a rhetorical question, so I force my own voice into a jokey drawl. “Yeah, that’s what I’m still trying to figure out.”

It occurs to me that this is maybe the most honest thing I’ve said all night, but the way I’ve said it transforms it into a lie.

“You know, my manager warned me that the accident might get a lot of attention as my profile went up, but I didn’t think that the connection to you would be an issue. I mean, I did in the beginning. I sort of waited for someone to look me up—ghosts of girlfriends past—but I guess I wasn’t interesting enough compared to your other, um, attachments.”

She thinks that’s why none of the hacks have pestered her, because she’s not as interesting as Bryn, who I guess she does know about. If only she knew how the band’s inner circle has bent over backward to keep her name out of things, to not touch the bruise that blooms at the mere mention of her. That right at this very moment there are riders in interview contracts that dictate whole swaths of forbidden conversational topics that, though they don’t name her specifically, are all about obliterating her from the record. Protecting her. And me.

“I guess high school really is ancient history,” she concludes.

Ancient history? Have you really relegated us to the trash heap of the Dumb High-School Romance? And if that’s the case, why the hell can’t I do the same?

“Yeah, well you plus me, we’re like MTV plus Lifetime,” I say, with as much jauntiness as I can muster. “In other words, shark bait.”

She sighs. “Oh, well. I suppose even sharks have to eat.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s just, I don’t particularly want my family history dragged through the public eye, but if that’s the price to be paid for doing what you love, I guess I’ll pay it.”

And we’re back to this. The notion that music can make it all worthwhile—I’d like to believe. I just don’t. I’m not even sure that I ever did. It isn’t the music that makes me want to wake up every day and take another breath. I turn away from her toward the dark water below.

“What if it’s not what you love?” I mumble, but my voice gets lost in the wind and the traffic. But at least I’ve said it out loud. I’ve done that much.

I need a cigarette. I lean against the railing and look uptown toward a trio of bridges. Mia comes to stand beside me as I’m fumbling to get my lighter to work.

“You should quit,” she says, touching me gently on the shoulder.

For a second, I think she means the band. That she heard what I said before and is telling me to quit Shooting Star, leave the whole music industry. I keep waiting for someone to advise me to quit the music business, but no one ever does. Then I remember how earlier tonight, she told me the same thing, right before she bummed a cigarette. “It’s not so easy,” I say.

“Bullshit,” Mia says with a self-righteousness that instantly recalls her mother, Kat, who wore her certitude like a beat-up leather jacket and who had a mouth on her that could make a roadie blush. “Quitting’s not hard. Deciding to quit is hard. Once you make that mental leap, the rest is easy.”

“Really? Was that how you quit me?”

And just like that, without thinking, without saying it in my head first, without arguing with myself for days, it’s out there.

“So,” she says, as if speaking to an audience under the bridge. “He finally says it.”

“Was I not supposed to? Am I just supposed to let this whole night go without talking about what you did?”

“No,” she says softly.

“So why? Why did you go? Was it because of the voices?”

She shakes her head. “It wasn’t the voices.”

“Then what? What was it?” I hear the desperation in my own voice now.

“It was lots of things. Like how you couldn’t be yourself around me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You stopped talking to me.”

“That’s absurd, Mia. I talked to you all the time!”

“You talked to me, but you didn’t. I could see you having these two-sided conversations. The things you wanted to say to me. And the words that actually came out.”

I think of all the dual conversations I have. With everyone. Is that when it started? “Well, you weren’t exactly easy to talk to,” I shoot back. “Anything I said was the wrong thing.”

She looks at me with a sad smile. “I know. It wasn’t just you. It was you plus me. It was us.”

I just shake my head. “It’s not true.”

“Yes it is. But don’t feel bad. Everyone walked on eggshells around me. But with you, it was painful that you couldn’t be real with me. I mean, you barely even touched me.”

As if to reinforce the point, she places two fingers on the inside of my wrist. Were smoke to rise and the imprints of her two fingers branded onto me, I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. I have to pull away just to steady myself.

“You were healing,” is my pathetic reply. “And if I recall, when we did try, you freaked.”

“Once,” she says. “Once.”

“All I wanted was for you to be okay. All I wanted was to help you. I would’ve done anything.”

She drops her chin to her chest. “Yes, I know. You wanted to rescue me.”

“Damn, Mia. You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

She looks up at me. The sympathy is still in her eyes, but there’s something else now, too: a fierceness; it slices up my anger and reconstitutes it as dread.

“You were so busy trying to be my savior that you left me all alone,” she says. “I know you were trying to help, but it just felt, at the time, like you were pushing me away, keeping things from me for my own good and making me more of a victim. Ernesto says that people’s good intentions can wind up putting us in boxes as confining as coffins.”

“Ernesto? What the hell does he know about it?”

Mia traces the gap between the wooden boardwalk planks with her toe. “A lot, actually. His parents were killed when he was eight. He was raised by his grandparents.”

I know what I’m supposed to feel is sympathy. But the rage just washes over me. “What, is there some club?” I ask, my voice starting to crack. “A grief club that I can’t join?”

I expect her to tell me no. Or that I’m a member. After all, I lost them, too. Except even back then, it had been different, like there’d been a barrier. That’s the thing you never expect about grieving, what a competition it is. Because no matter how important they’d been to me, no matter how sorry people told me they were, Denny and Kat and Teddy weren’t my family, and suddenly that distinction had mattered.

Apparently, it still does. Because Mia stops and considers my question. “Maybe not a grief club. But a guilt club. From being left behind.”

Oh, don’t talk to me about guilt! My blood runs thick with it. On the bridge, now I feel tears coming. The only way to keep them at bay is to find the anger that’s sustained me and push back with it. “But you could’ve at least told me,” I say, my voice rising to a shout. “Instead of dropping me like a one-night stand, you could’ve had the decency to break up with me instead of leaving me wondering for three years. . . .”

“I didn’t plan it,” she says, her own pitch rising. “I didn’t get on that plane thinking we’d split up. You were everything to me. Even as it was happening, I didn’t believe it was happening. But it was. Just being here, being away, it was all so much easier in a way I didn’t anticipate. In a way I didn’t think my life could be anymore. It was a huge relief.”

I think of all the girls whose backs I couldn’t wait to see in retreat. How once their sound and smell and voices were gone, I felt my whole body exhale. A lot of the time Bryn falls into this category. That’s how my absence felt to Mia?

“I planned to tell you,” she continues, the words coming out in a breathless jumble now, “but at first I was so confused. I didn’t even know what was happening, only that I was feeling better without you and how could I explain that to you? And then time went by, you didn’t call me, when you didn’t pursue it, I just figured that you, you of all people, you understood. I knew I was being a chickenshit. But I thought . . .” Mia stumbles for a second then regains her composure. “I thought I was allowed that. And that you understood it. I mean you seemed to. You wrote: ‘She says I have to pick: Choose you, or choose me. She’s the last one standing.’ I don’t know. When I heard ‘Roulette’ I just thought you did understand. That you were angry, but you knew. I had to choose me.”

“That’s your excuse for dropping me without a word? There’s cowardly, Mia. And then there’s cruel! Is that who you’ve become?”

“Maybe it was who I needed to be for a while,” she cries. “And I’m sorry. I know I should’ve contacted you. Should’ve explained. But you weren’t all that accessible.”

“Oh, bullshit, Mia. I’m inaccessible to most people. But you? Two phone calls and you could’ve tracked me down.”

“It didn’t feel that way,” she said. “You were this . . .” she trails off, miming an explosion, the same as Vanessa LeGrande had done earlier in the day. “Phenomenon. Not a person anymore.”

“That’s such a load of crap and you should know it. And besides, that was more than a year after you left. A year. A year in which I was curled up into a ball of misery at my parents’ house, Mia. Or did you forget that phone number, too?”

“No.” Mia’s voice is flat. “But I couldn’t call you at first.”

“Why?” I yell. “Why not?”

Mia faces me now. The wind is whipping her hair this way and that so she looks like some kind of mystical sorceress, beautiful, powerful, and scary at the same time. She shakes her head and starts to turn away.

Oh, no! We’ve come this far over the bridge. She can blow the damn thing up if she wants to. But not without telling me everything. I grab her, turn her to face me. “Why not? Tell me. You owe me this!”

She looks at me, square in the eye. Taking aim. And then she pulls the trigger. “Because I hated you.”

The wind, the noise, it all just goes quiet for a second, and I’m left with a dull ringing in my ear, like after a show, like after a heart monitor goes to flatline.

“Hated me? Why?”

“You made me stay.” She says it quietly, and it almost gets lost in the wind and the traffic and I’m not sure I heard her. But then she repeats it louder this time. “You made me stay!”

And there it is. A hollow blown through my heart, confirming what some part of me has always known.

She knows.

The electricity in the air has changed; it’s like you can smell the ions dancing. “I still wake up every single morning and for a second I forget that I don’t have my family anymore,” she tells me. “And then I remember. Do you know what that’s like? Over and over again. It would’ve been so much easier . . .” And suddenly her calm facade cracks and she begins to cry.

“Please,” I hold up my hands. “Please don’t . . .”

“No, you’re right. You have to let me say this, Adam! You have to hear it. It would’ve been easier to die. It’s not that I want to be dead now. I don’t. I have a lot in my life that I get satisfaction from, that I love. But some days, especially in the beginning, it was so hard. And I couldn’t help but think that it would’ve been so much simpler to go with the rest of them. But you—you asked me to stay. You begged me to stay. You stood over me and you made a promise to me, as sacred as any vow. And I can understand why you’re angry, but you can’t blame me. You can’t hate me for taking your word.”

Mia’s sobbing now. I’m wracked with shame because I brought her to this.

And suddenly, I get it. I understand why she summoned me to her at the theater, why she came after me once I left her dressing room. This is what the farewell tour is really all about—Mia completing the severance she began three years ago.

Letting go. Everyone talks about it like it’s the easiest thing. Unfurl your fingers one by one until your hand is open. But my hand has been clenched into a fist for three years now; it’s frozen shut. All of me is frozen shut. And about to shut down completely.

I stare down at the water. A minute ago it was calm and glassy but now it’s like the river is opening up, churning, a violent whirlpool. It’s that vortex, threatening to swallow me whole. I’m going to drown in it, with nobody, nobody in the murk with me.

I’ve blamed her for all of this, for leaving, for ruining me. And maybe that was the seed of it, but from that one little seed grew this tumor of a flowering plant. And I’m the one who nurtures it. I water it. I care for it. I nibble from its poison berries. I let it wrap around my neck, choking the air right out of me. I’ve done that. All by myself. All to myself.

I look at the river. It’s like the waves are fifty feet high, snapping at me now, trying to pull me over the bridge into the waters below.

“I can’t do this anymore!” I yell as the carnivorous waves come for me.

Again, I scream, “I can’t do this anymore!” I’m yelling to the waves and to Liz and Fitzy and Mike and Aldous, to our record executives and to Bryn and Vanessa and the paparazzi and the girls in the U Mich sweatshirts and the scenesters on the subway and everyone who wants a piece of me when there aren’t enough pieces to go around. But mostly I’m yelling it to myself.