The Second Chance Year(69)

I head upstairs to my childhood bedroom, closing the door as quietly as possible so I don’t wake up my parents. A couple of years after I moved to New York, my mom packed up my books, movie posters, and other remnants of high school into boxes in the closet and turned it into a guest room. I sit on the bed, staring at the wall that’s now painted neutral gray instead of the pale pink of my childhood. The queen replaced my old twin-sized canopy bed, but the matching white dresser and bookcase are the same. My gaze locks on that bookcase, on the shelf that used to hold my rows of CDs.

I jump up off the bed and fling open the closet door. In the back corner, behind the camping gear my parents haven’t used in twenty years, sits a pile of cardboard boxes labeled with my name. I haul them out into the room, one by one, and slice open the packing tape. There’s really no rhyme or reason or much organization. My mom wouldn’t have considered my keepsakes from high school to be very important.

In the first box, I find a stack of old yearbooks, a jewelry box of mostly tarnished silver necklaces given to me by old high school boyfriends, and a folder of recipes I’d cut out of magazines. Another box holds the young adult novels I used to love and that my parents never considered to be quality literature. I’m surprised my mother didn’t burn these in the backyard firepit. Another box holds more stuff: framed photos and old journals and sparkly pens. I open the final box to reveal a haphazard pile of old CDs. I dig through them until my hand closes over the one I’m looking for.

When I read the words carefully written on the cover in black Sharpie, my eyes burn. Songs for Sadie by Jacob Gray.

How was I so thoughtless? So stupid?

I run my hand over Jacob’s neat script. I remember those ds and bs from when I lived in his apartment during my Very Bad Year, when he’d scrawl his grocery list on a notepad on the fridge. Small round circles with long tails, sort of like backward-and forward-facing half notes.

I turn back to the box of keepsakes. Now that I’ve found the CD, how am I going to listen to it? It’s not like I keep a CD player lying around. I wouldn’t even know where to buy a CD player, at least not in person, and definitely not in New Brunswick on Christmas. I bet Owen would have some ideas—maybe he left an old CD-ROM drive in the basement that he could hook up to a laptop—but then I’d have to tell him why I need it. Defeated, I’m about to stuff the CD in my suitcase to figure out when I get home in a couple of days, when inspiration strikes.

My mom’s car. She drives a twelve-year-old Honda. My parents are always talking about replacing it, but it still runs well, so they’re too practical to justify the expense. I’m almost positive it has a CD player.

I tiptoe out of my room and back down to the entryway. My mom’s keys are hanging by the door on a nail next to the coat hooks. I slip my feet into my shoes and open the door. At some point in the hour since I arrived home, it started snowing. Our ordinary suburban neighborhood has turned into a magical sparkling wonderland with snow dusting the lawns and Christmas lights blinking on houses. My spirits lift, just slightly. I didn’t used to believe in miracles, or second chances but, well, here I am living this year over again. So, maybe there could be a chance for me and Jacob.

Out in the car, I back out of the driveway and head down the street. When I’m around the corner and out of sight of the house, I pull over and park. If anyone in my house wakes up, I don’t want them to find me in the driveway listening to Jacob’s CD. I can tell them I forgot my toothbrush and ran to the twenty-four-hour pharmacy or something.

I leave the car running, and with shaking hands, I carefully pull the CD from the case. After a bit of trial and error, I figure out how to open the player, and a little plastic tray comes sliding out. I lay the CD on the tray and the dashboard sucks it back in. There are a few clicks and whirs, and then the digital display blinks the words Track 1. And suddenly, the car fills with the first gentle chords of a piano.

It takes me a second to register what I’m hearing. But when I do, my heart bursts open like molten chocolate cake.





Chapter 35


I’d know that haunting melody anywhere, the beautiful chords of the song Jacob played on the piano that night in his apartment.

That song was for me? He wrote it for me?

Tears well in my eyes, and I’m filled with an overwhelming longing to be there with him again, on that night, on the couch in the semidarkness. He loved me then, I know he did. Before I screwed it all up, before I wished away that year and wished for this one instead. I’d wanted Alex and my job and so many things that I can see with such clarity were wrong for me. When what I really needed was right there in front of me. If I could go back, I’d do it all differently. I’d never let him walk out thinking everything that happened between us was a mistake.

I turn up the volume as the music swells around me.

I’d never let him walk out at all.

A few more bars of the music play, and then—Oh God, what’s happening?—the player starts to rattle. I lean in, searching for a power button to switch it off. But there isn’t one, and the noise grows louder, sort of a creaking now. I frantically hit the eject button to get my CD out. The disk stays in the machine, but now it’s making a horrible, scratching, metallic whir. I try the eject button again, over and over. Oh please.

Finally, the CD player jerks open with another terrible screech, and my disk comes flying out with a pop. I grab it, and when I do, it cracks into two pieces.