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Springtime. I’ve always loved the spring. And today’s going to be perfect. It’s the senior trip today. Time to get myself up and out of bed.
Ow.
Wait. Why does my head hurt this much?
A knock on my door. Mom? No, she doesn’t knock that way. Who is it then?
The door cracks open. “Dad?” I squint at him. Maybe it’s because I don’t have my contacts in yet. Is that what’s wrong? He looks different.
“Dad?” I say the word again because I’m not sure it came out right last time.
“Hiya, Mimi.” He’s smiling at me. That cheesy grin. I try to remember the last time he came to my room in the morning. Why isn’t he at work already?
“Hi,” I answer tentatively. My head is swirling with questions, but it’s also swirling with pain. Pain and fog and confusion. I think I’m scared, but it’s hard to remember.
Remember ...
Dad sits on the corner of my bed. He looks smaller. Maybe it’s because he hasn’t done this since I was a little girl, coming into my room like this. There’s something in his eyes. Like he’s embarrassed to tell me something. No, not embarrassed. That’s not quite right. So what is it?
Oh, no. Has something happened to Chris? Is that what he came in here to tell me? What if Mr. Gomez finally got arrested? Or even worse, what if his dad beat him up? I know I promised Chris I wouldn’t tell about his family, but I didn’t know what to do. I had to let somebody know. Did Chris’s dad find out and get so mad at him that he ...
“How you feeling?” Dad asks me, and I honestly have no idea how to answer.
He takes a deep breath, and I prepare myself. It’s Chris. I know it is. I promised when we started dating that I wouldn’t tell anybody about his dad. What could I do? He was crying on my shoulder, just like a terrified little child. And he was blubbering, begging me not to share his secret. So I assured him I wouldn’t. I made him a promise.
And now something terrible has happened.
I should never have told ...
But why does my head hurt so much?
Dad clears his throat. “So, baby, do you know what today is?”
What kind of a question is that? Of course I know what today is. It’s the last Friday in May. It’s senior skip day. Chris and I were planning to ...
I glance at the clock. The time is right. Same time Mom wakes me up every morning. That part hasn’t changed, except it’s Dad here and not Mom. But there’s something else not quite right.
Dad’s got his hand on top of my blanket, holding down my leg. Does he think I’m about to jump up and sprint out the door? Mom couldn’t be having second thoughts about senior skip day, could she? She’s been as excited about our camping trip as I have ...
So it is Chris. I knew it. Something happened. Something terrible. I shiver a little. Dread? Uncertainty?
“Mia.” As soon as Dad says the word, my stomach drops. Mia. Not Princess or Mimi or any of those other pet names that he always uses.
Mia.
I try to sit up, but I’m so dizzy. He takes his other hand to keep me down on the bed. Something’s glistening in the corner of his eye. I refuse to admit it might be a tear. When’s the last time I saw Dad cry? Come to think of it, have I ever seen Dad cry? It must be something else. The bright light shining in from the window, blinding him, making him squint.
Except there’s no bright light shining in from the window. Just that early morning gray.
My brain feels like it’s trying to tell me something. Trying to wake up or recover some missing piece. But I have no idea what I’ve forgotten. No idea why Dad’s looking at me with a tear in the corner of his eye. No idea why he’s the one waking me up instead of Mom.
“Mia, I want you to listen to me very carefully,” he says. I stare into his eyes, looking for comfort or strength. Instead, that tear. That one single sparkling tear.
It must be worse than I thought. What if Chris is dead? What if his dad ...
“You’ve been out of it for a little while,” Dad says. I want to laugh. You have no idea how much I want to laugh. It’s the kind of thing Mom might do. A joke. Like the time she changed my clock then ran into my room and told me I missed my AP psychology test when instead she just wanted to wake me up early so we could go get donuts before she dropped me off at school.
But Dad never jokes. Not like this. And he never gives surprises.
“What do you mean?” I croak.
Dad sighs, and there’s something vaguely familiar about that sigh, like I’ve heard it before. It’s like studying for a calculus exam only to walk into the wrong classroom where the teacher hands you a test in French. The problem is you don’t know French because you’ve been studying Spanish since sixth grade so you can become a doctor and set up a free health clinic along the Mexican border.
In other words, I have no idea what Dad’s saying.
“There was an accident,” he begins, wincing when he gets out the word. “A terrible accident.”
There’s something in the way he says it. Something in his voice, his expression. I’m not entirely convinced this is all about Chris anymore. Because if my boyfriend got into an accident and died, Mom would be the one to tell me, and she’d be crying for real, not just sitting here with one single tear in the corner of her eye. Mom adores Chris. Dad not so much. So if there was some kind of accident, if something happened to my boyfriend, Dad wouldn’t be the one to come in here and tell me about it. Which can only mean ...
I sit up in bed, ignoring the pain in the back of my skull, shaking off the dizziness as best I can. “Where’s Mom?” I demand.
Dad’s holding my shoulders, trying to pin me down. I think I’m crying, but I’m not sure. My throat feels sore, like it wants to let out a sob. “Where’s Mom?” I repeat. “I want to talk to Mom.”
And a strange flash, a sort of deja-vu flits through my head, but only for a fraction of a second. A fraction of a second that throws me totally off balance, makes me stop struggling so hard. Because I’ve got this sense I’ve done this before.
Dad opens his mouth.
“Mom can’t be here right now, Mimi. We have to have a talk.”