“Well? What do you think?”
“Looks great,” Maya said. But there was something unsettling about seeing her old, familiar room filled with unfamiliar furniture. The bed was new, the dresser, the small flat-screen TV. The only thing her mom had kept was the nightstand. “Try the bed,” her mom said, pointing to the bare mattress.
Maya sat down and let herself fall back, sinking. “Soft.”
“Sheets are in the dryer. I’ll go get them.”
Staring at the ceiling, Maya recognized the view—this hadn’t changed. The water stain above her bed was as familiar as a birthmark. Alone now, she turned onto her side and saw that her mom had peeled off the stickers that Maya had stuck to the nightstand when she was little. Her old sticker collection. Traces of it still clung to the wood. She leaned closer, peered over the edge of the bed, and saw part of a sticker that hadn’t quite come off. A band sticker, black with purple lettering. Tender Wallpaper had been Aubrey’s favorite band; she and Maya had seen them in concert the night before she died.
This sticker had come with the tickets Maya bought for that concert, and the sight of it brought back the night （dancing with her eyes closed, Aubrey beside her） but also the next day （Aubrey collapsing on the stoop）。
Maya heard footsteps.
Her mom knew at once something was wrong—Maya could see it on her face as she walked in with an armload of sheets: the worry of a mother for her child. Maya’s instinct was to tell her everything, to lay it all down at her feet, unburden herself of the fear and guilt that weighed on her.
But Maya couldn’t risk sounding like Aunt Lisa. Not when she needed to be taken seriously. She did, however, have to explain the tears on her face, so she came clean about her other problem: “I’ve been taking Klonopin every night for sleep, and last week I ran out. I’ve hardly slept at all since.”
The worry deepened on her mom’s face. Before Frank, Maya had talked to her mom about everything. They made up the bed together as she spoke, fitting the sheets onto the mattress and topping them with blankets. There was such comfort in returning to the way things used to be. Before she had habits to hide.
“How much were you taking?”
“Two or three milligrams a night . . . and usually another half during the day.”
Maya’s mom looked disappointed but not surprised. “Dr. Barry never prescribed you that much, did he?”
Maya shook her head. When her mom walked over, she thought it was to hug her. But it was to check Maya’s pulse. “Do you know how dangerous it is to quit cold turkey?”
“That’s why I’m here.” Not the whole truth, but at least factual.
Her mom peered deeply into her eyes. Checking her pupils.
Maya leaned away. “Pretty sure I’m through the worst of it, though. I just need to ride it out, get some sleep.” That was the main thing, really—she hadn’t slept for more than a few hours in days, and she really could have used that hug, or any other comforting gesture. But instead Maya felt, as she had in other times of distress, that her mom, in her worry, was treating her like a patient.
She pressed her palm to her daughter’s temple. “At least you don’t have a fever, but tell me if you start to feel worse.”
“I—”
“Or start seeing flashing lights. Or hear anything that’s not there.”
“Okay, but—”
“Or notice any unusual smells.”
“Fine.”
Already, Maya regretted saying as much as she had. Her mom would clearly keep an eye on her now, which would make it even harder to do what she had to do, but there seemed to be no walking it back. Now her mom was looking at her with the vigilance of a retired paramedic who had never really made it off the ambulance.
NINE
Maya’s grandmother dies the month before Aubrey.
Later, Dr. Barry will point to these two losses, suffered so close together, as evidence that Maya was in a vulnerable state. Hence the psychosis. But later still—years later—Maya will see that it was grief that left her vulnerable to Frank. When she looks back at this time, it will seem obvious: He would have known that she was hurting when they met. He would have sensed it. Even if she hasn’t yet.
She doesn’t know how to feel at first. She has never even met her grandmother in person. She doesn’t know what to say when her mom knocks gently on the door of her bedroom to tell her that Abuela has died.
Maya had just started packing. She’s still two months away from moving into the dorms but had been too excited to wait. She started with her books and spent the last hour sorting through the hundreds that she has in order to decide what to take. She only has room for twenty and has just moved It by Stephen King over to the leave-at-home pile to make room for Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson, which her mom read aloud to her when she was ten and stuck at home for a week with strep throat. Holding the book brought back the sound of her mother’s voice and the story of two children who invent their own world. The memory glowed with such contentment that Maya hadn’t been able to part with it.
Her excitement to leave Pittsfield is tempered by sadness and a nagging guilt at leaving her mother behind. She tells herself she’ll come home once a month. This is what she’s thinking about when her mom gives her the news.
“What?” Maya says, staring up from the piles of books surrounding her on the floor, even though she’d heard the words just fine.
Her grandmother has died of a stroke in her home in Guatemala City. She was a constant, but distant, presence in Maya’s life. A voice on the phone several times a year. A photograph. Handwritten birthday cards. Maya’s father may be dead, but that’s how it’s always been. No one she actually knows has ever died.
“Aw, Muffin,” her mom says, entering the room as Maya flips back through her memory for the grandmother she has suddenly lost. And what Maya realizes is that she never really knew her. Her grandmother had been as abstract as death itself was up until this moment—an idea, nothing more—but suddenly Abuela’s absence seems very real, a hollowness growing in her chest.
Abuela was a connection to Maya’s father. The person who knew him best. There are so many questions Maya should have asked.
Her mom sits beside her on the carpet, careful not to disturb the stacks of books. She looks almost apologetic.
“I never wrote back to her last birthday card,” Maya says.
Her mom always impressed upon her the importance of getting to know her father’s mother, reminding Maya to write back to her, to call her. But Maya was too young to understand, or maybe too selfish, as children are. Too wrapped up in herself. Too self-conscious of her terrible accent to speak Spanish on the phone, forcing her grandmother to make all the effort on the rare occasions that they did speak.
Her mom puts a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry about that,” she says. There are tears in her voice.
“I want to go to the funeral.”
Her mom stares at her.
Maya has never been to Guatemala.
Her mom has always said it’s too dangerous—and all she has to do is point to what happened to Maya’s father: Jairo Ek Basurto was shot dead in the doorway of his parents’ house at the age of twenty-two.