* * *
Later that night, when I’m back home, I call Sam again to talk about everything that happened. He picks up right away this time, like he was expecting me. I thank him for talking with Mika, and for letting me share this connection with someone else.
“I wasn’t sure if it would actually work,” I say, holding the phone tight. “How come you never mentioned you could call me before?”
“Because I’m not supposed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want you to know yet. Because if I ever call and you don’t pick up, our connection ends right there.”
“You mean, forever?”
“Yeah.”
A chill goes through me. “How do you know that?”
“It’s one of the few things I know for sure,” he says. He doesn’t explain things further.
I swallow hard, thinking about this. “That scares me, Sam. If that’s true, you shouldn’t call me again. From now on, I’ll only call you, okay?”
“That’s for the best,” he says.
A breeze blows in through the open window, swaying the curtains. I go over to shut it. Outside, tree branches creep up like fingers, tapping against the glass.
“I’m sorry,” Sam says, a bit out of the blue.
“For what?”
“Not picking up earlier. I guess I was nervous. About what might happen.”
“But nothing happened,” I remind him. “Everything worked out fine. It’s even better now! Because Mika knows, and now she understands everything. You guys even got to talk again! Aren’t you glad we did this?”
A silence.
“Sam?”
“It’s sort of complicated…”
Before I can ask what he means by this, the sound of static comes through the line.
“What’s that noise?” I ask.
“Noise? I don’t hear anything,” Sam says, and suddenly, I notice something strange with his voice.
“Sam, you sound like you’re moving farther away.” Like the receiver is drifting from him. “Is everything okay?”
More static comes through. I stand and tilt my head, adjusting the angle of the phone to try to get a better signal.
“Everything will be okay, Julie,” Sam says. “I promise. But I have to go now, okay?”
“Wait—go where?” I ask him. But he doesn’t answer this. All he says is, “I’ll talk to you soon. I love you.”
The call ends abruptly. I stand by the window in silence, wondering if I should call him back. But something cold I can’t explain creeps up my spine, telling me not to. That I shouldn’t. So I go back to the bed and hold the phone close to me. I stare at the blank screen all night, trying to stay calm.
Did I ruin everything again?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Something’s wrong with our connection. Something terrible. I don’t know how to fix it, and neither does Sam. It reminds me of when a storm comes, and thunder flickers the lights, throwing off all the electricity in the house, and nothing works. I keep waiting for the clouds to part, for the weather to change, but every time I look out the window the sky is still bruised and purple. It’s hard to not let it get to me, because I asked for this, didn’t I? This is my fault. I made Sam talk to Mika, and ever since then, our calls are not the same anymore. They have to be spaced further apart and don’t last as long. We used to be able to speak for hours, whenever I needed him. Now I have to wait for days to pass before I can call him again, and if our conversation goes longer than ten minutes or so, static comes through the line and it scares me. It hurts that I can’t even call him out of the blue anymore, even when I’m desperate to hear his voice. When I feel like I’m about to fall apart, I have to remind myself I haven’t lost him yet—I haven’t lost Sam. I know I messed up our connection, but he’s still with me. And as long as we plan our calls better, keeping them short, and finding those places where our signal is the strongest, we can make this work. We’ll figure it out. Maybe there’s a way to fix things.
It’s been two weeks since I told Mika everything. Since I let her and Sam speak to each other again. But not all good things come without consequences. During our last call, Sam told me something I refuse to believe. He said there’s a chance we only have a few calls left before our connection ends forever. The worst part is Sam warned me this could happen, but I didn’t listen. At least he got to speak with Mika one more time. The look in Mika’s eyes after their call made the risk worth it. At first, I was desperate to have someone else tell me these past few weeks have been real, that Sam’s voice hasn’t been all in my head. But once I reconnected Mika and Sam again, it became so much more than that. Mika looks like herself again, and the two of us are spending more time together. I think the call gave her the peace of mind she needed and a new starting point to heal. And now that there are no secrets between us, it feels like we can finally be there for each other.