I don’t hear from Jack all night, but I do hear from plenty of other people. Pooja, checking in. Friends from my old junior high in Nashville. The Hub Seed reporter who wrote the article on me and Jack, asking for comment. My dad.
And then Paige.
“This has gone too far,” says Paige, before I even finish telling her what happened. “She’s out of her mind.”
“Okay,” I say, in a measured tone that I’m all too practiced in, “yes, it sucks, but it’s not like she could have seen this coming.”
“Bullshit. She should have known something was going to happen.”
The thing is that I agree with her. This part is squarely on Mom. But telling Paige about this even though I knew it would only make things worse is decidedly on me. Now, yet again, I’m backtracking, trying to undo the damage.
Too late.
“Why are you always defending her?” Paige snaps. For once, it seems like some of the anger is directed not just at her, but at me. “This is all her, you know. Twitter. Those stupid Stone Hall kids. If she hadn’t just uprooted you—”
“Paige, I came here by choice.”
Paige huffs. “You were fourteen. You were a little kid who didn’t know any better.”
My eyes squeeze shut, the words slicing in an unexpected way. Maybe because they’re true, but maybe because they’re not—maybe because even at fourteen, there was something in me that knew, deep under the frizzy hair and the acne and awkwardness, that I was supposed to be here. That New York was something I might never grow into, but would grow around me, making space where there wasn’t any before. That the future was going to be a big unknown either way, but I wanted to be with Mom when I faced it.
But in this moment, it doesn’t matter what I thought, not at fourteen and not right now—because the anger is suddenly so white-hot that I can’t stop myself from saying what I say next.
“But you did.” My voice is shaking. I don’t want to say it, but it feels like I’ve been pushed and pushed to an edge that I can’t lean over anymore, and it’s all just falling out. “You did know better, and you came out here anyway, and wrecked things with Mom when you could have just stayed and let it be.”
Paige doesn’t hesitate. She says it with a conviction so quiet and firm that I know there’s no way it isn’t true. “I came to New York because of you.”
The indignant breath I was sucking in stops in my throat, almost painful. It hovers there in the awful silence, as I scramble to make sense of something that makes too much sense all at once.
Some of that firmness is gone when Paige continues, like her voice is farther away than it was moments ago, farther even than the miles separating us. “I came because I thought you’d get eaten alive. And I thought—I thought maybe Mom would see how miserable we were and change her mind.”
I close my eyes, already anticipating the wave of regret before it crashes into me—only it isn’t a wave. It’s searing, like my blood is suddenly on fire with it.
“But you weren’t miserable. It only took you a few weeks to fit in. And I…”
She stayed miserable. I remember. The slammed doors, the long walks—the way she went from being one of the most popular girls in her old school to being this angry, pale version of herself, stalking in and out of the apartment like a ghost.
“I didn’t know.” My eyes are stinging, my face burning. I don’t know what to say, except to say it again: “I didn’t know.”
There’s a beat. “Yeah, well.” The words are wet, like she’s crying too. Before I can say anything else, she says, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go.”
Then she hangs up. I don’t try to call her back; I know better than that. And I know better than to think that whatever just fractured between us won’t eventually heal. But it still hurts just the same, in some core of me that I thought was too deep to be shaken.
All this time, I have blamed Paige and Mom for the fights that tore us apart. I never once thought the root of it all just might be me.
