I had no idea.
I glanced behind me into the rows of families, scanning until I found her. My mother, dressed in black despite the heat, straight-backed, eyes on the stage, waiting. And, because she didn’t realize I was looking, everything she felt was written clear across her face: a current of raw emotion, passing like clouds across the sky. Even as it hurt me to watch, I couldn’t help thinking how alike we were, as much as we’d always tried not to be.
At the very least, we’d both made it here, to this day. My father hadn’t. I’d started this whole thing for him, but she—she, who’d never wanted it in the first place—was the only one left to finish.
***
The graduation concert was a Duquette tradition. The Alumni Office sponsored it, hired some big act every year, and as if to mark our transition from students to real adults, the Duquette administration let its hair down and served wine and beer to everyone. This year, the party was bigger and better than ever, because Mint had graduated, and the Minters—despite the real estate crash—did things bigger and better than anyone else, including showy donations.
They’d built a memorial for Heather. A wall, covered in pictures of her, notes, teddy bears, and bouquets of cheap flowers she would have hated. I couldn’t look at it—couldn’t stand to see her face, over and over. Heather at Homecoming senior year, red and white ribbons in her hair; Heather in a Chi Omega shirt, gold crown, and pink boa on Bid Day; Heather’s baby face, wearing her confident grin, outside East House freshman year. And my face, staring back from so many of the pictures; my eyes seemed to follow when I passed, like a haunted painting, trying to communicate something was wrong though my mouth was locked in a permanent grin, frozen forever on film.
Heather’s family came—Mr. and Dr. Shelby, and Eric—but they’d left shortly after Eric walked stiffly across the stage, accepting Heather’s honorary diploma.
I breathed easier once they left.
Now my mom sat at a table with the impossibly glamorous Mrs. Minter and her paramour, the board member, a tall, gruff man with a handlebar mustache. Mint’s dad was mysteriously out of the picture. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable. Lately, every time I tried to ask Mint about his dad, or about how his parents’ company was surviving the crash, he shook his head, refusing to say a word. Sometimes, if I pushed, he left me for the night, and I wouldn’t see him until the next day, when he was apologetic but no more forthcoming.
The Minters, as I’d realized long ago, were a fucked-up family.
But at least they were in good company with my mom, who sat still and quiet as a statue, radiating sadness.
“Mint,” I whispered, turning to him. He wore a splendid navy suit with glossy buttons, every inch the graduating prince. “Let’s get out of here.”
He gave me a grateful look. “I thought you’d never ask.”
We got champagne and strode to the edge of the crowd gathered around the stage, where some rock band was trying its hardest to turn the party into a night at Madison Square Garden. If our story had unfolded the way it was supposed to, without Heather dying, Jack would have been right there in the front row, our resident music geek, with Frankie beside him, ready to throw his body around with wild abandon. Caro would have been squished between them, dodging elbows but happy to stick close, and Heather would have spun through the crowd, talking to everyone.
I blinked away the what-if. In the real world, Heather and Jack were missing entirely, and Frankie and Caro were sitting on the outskirts of the lawn with their families, quiet and somber.
Maybe Mint saw it, too, the ghost of the should-have-been, because he waved me away from the stage.
“Too loud,” he yelled.
“I don’t mind,” I answered, once we were far enough away to hear each other. “The ride home with my mom is going to be four and a half hours of silence. I’ve got to soak up sound while I can so I don’t forget what it’s like.”
He eyed me, and I could tell he was wrestling with something, at war with himself. Finally, he forced it out. “What if you didn’t go home? What if you came with me to New York?”
I looked at him in surprise. I’d been so focused on getting through each day that I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about what would happen next between Mint and me. “And do what?”
“Anything you want. We can get an apartment together on the Upper East Side. I’ll go to law school, and you can find a job. There has to be something. Maybe consulting. That’s prestigious, and they’re probably one of the few places still hiring. You could make lots of money.” Mint’s brow was furrowed, his gaze focused on my shoulder. The way he spoke—pushing the words out—was like he was forcing himself to do it.