“It is,” he insists.
“It’s the least I can do.”
“You keep saying that.”
“Everyone keeps saying that. They’ve been saying it my whole life.”
The coin clicks open, shut.
“Because you’re normal?” he asks.
“What’s normal?” I say. “Besides, it’s a Track A requirement for pretty much everyone but you. But yeah. Because I’m normal.”
“That doesn’t mean you owe everybody.”
“That’s not why I owe everybody.”
“Why then?”
Click.
“Because I’m going to leave them.” It’s out of my mouth before I’ve decided whether I’ll try to explain this—to him or even to myself.
In third grade, Petra and I started planning to go to college together and share a dorm room, and then get jobs together and share an apartment, and then marry brothers and share a giant house with a swimming pool. We were eight-year-olds when we concocted this plan, and, of course, it’s nuanced over the years, but we still plan to go, together and far away—we talk about it, study and prep for it, all the time—and how did I imagine that was going to happen while I stayed here with my sisters and my mother? I didn’t. I couldn’t have. But somehow, my brain disconnected that from leaving, not like I thought there was a way for me to be elsewhere and still here, like I thought there was a way for me to be elsewhere and still with them, a way for me to leave without leaving my family.
I glance over to see if River is appalled because it is appalling.
“Sure.” He is the opposite of appalled. “I mean, it’s not like you can go to college here.”
“Or maybe anywhere.”
“Anywhere?” Like he never knew anyone who didn’t go to college. “You might not go at all?” Like I said maybe after high school I’d still have earlobes but maybe not.
“It’s abstruse.”
“Abstruse?”
“Hard to understand. Complicated.”
“Oh.” Then, “Don’t worry, there’s financial aid.” He opens his fingers to reveal the coin sitting on his palm. Like all you have to do is turn your hand over to find it full of money. Maybe that’s true for him. “Or you could get a scholarship. You’re really smart.”
I turn not just my eyes, not just my face, but my whole body toward him. “I am?”
He laughs, closes his fingers over his coin again, jostles his shoulder into mine like we’re joking together. “I guess maybe not that smart if you don’t know it.”
I do realize that this is embarrassing and also that we’re getting off topic, but he’s an opportunity I can’t pass up. I’ve been told I’m smart all my life, but it’s closer to accusation, recrimination, than compliment. I’m not smart like Mirabel. And I may not be smart for the rest of the world. I may only be smart for Bourne.
“How do you mean?” I fish.
He shrugs. Can’t quantify how. “You know, smart. You’d get into college no problem.”
“And flunk out?” Because I could probably get in somewhere. Petra and I still had a few baby teeth when we started studying, and my grades are good. But an A at Bourne High is what at a normal school? If I got in, would I be able to do the work once I got there? Up against kids whose brains were fed by blood cleaner than mine?
“You’d be fine. I bet you’d love it after, you know…” After living here, he means.
“What about you?” The wealth of options open to him takes my breath away. “Where are you going to go?”
“Who knows? My dad’s all about the ‘Family Legacy.’” He deepens his voice and scratches the air with two fingers as if family legacy is a strange and complicated concept I might not be familiar with. There are a lot of things in this conversation I’m not familiar with, but family legacy isn’t one of them. “He wants me to go where he went and his father went. My parents are both Ivy Leaguers so of course they have these expectations…” Jesus. Ivy League. “I have the same problem you do, I guess. Not sure I can cut it. Not even sure I want to.”
“Yeah,” I breathe. It’s all I can do. To have all he has and be just the same as me. But though I do not know the cause of his doubt, I am certain it is nothing like mine. “I don’t know if I can leave them.” I don’t even know why I’m telling him this.
“Of course you can. You have to.” Then he adds, “Who?”
“My sisters. My mom. This town.”
“You’ll visit. You’re not leaving forever. But you can’t spend your whole life here, Mab.” He doesn’t even say this convincingly, persuasively, just throws it off like it’s the simplest thing in the world. Nothing more or less than true. “You know they want what’s best for you.”
Like there is a best thing for me. Like there’s no question what that thing is. Like that thing can’t possibly be family and sticking by them and putting their needs first. Like when you’re stuck in Mirabel’s body—or stuck caring for Mirabel’s body—there’s enough room left to consider what’s best for anyone.
Like when Bourne runs through you, there’s any way to leave it behind.
“Anyway”—he clicks the magic coin open again—“thanks for bringing me out here. It’s pretty.”
“And quiet,” I add so he remembers he has a secret and the reason we’re here is so he can tell me without being overheard.
When we sat down, we were not touching. Now, somehow, we are, just a little. I can feel his leg through my jeans, through his jeans, like he’s giving off heat. Or I am.
“It’s good to have a tour guide,” he says. “You’re like my Virgil.”
“Virgil?”
“You know, Virgil? Dante’s guide through hell? In Dante’s Inferno? You guys didn’t have to read that in tenth grade?”
“No.”
“Oh. We did. It’s pretty good.”
Wait a minute. “Does that make Bourne hell?”
“Well, kinda.” He laughs. “I mean, there’s nothing to do. I got beat up a lot. The water might be poisoned, and you and your sisters are my only friends. Plus the pizza’s lousy.”
He’s trying to make me laugh, I think, and it’s probably not fair to be offended about something you yourself believe. Bourne is hell in lots of ways, but with at least one important difference.
“But people go to hell because they sinned,” I point out, “and we’re not here because of sinning. At least, not our sinning.”
“No, I get that.”
“Your sinning,” I add, in case he actually doesn’t.
“Well, my family’s, yeah.”
Also, he thinks we’re his friends, and I don’t know if we want to be his friends.
But before I can decide, he takes a deep breath. “Okay, so.” He lets it out, doesn’t say anything else for a while and then finally does. “I have to tell you something.”
And at last, this is it. I wait and try to slow my own breathing.
And he says, “My father’s only pretending to be drinking.”