Far From the Tree

  Grace tried desperately not to think of the hospital, of that drive home that felt like it was tearing something out of her body, the farther away she got from Peach. “I want to find my biological mom,” she said. “I want her to know that I’m okay. And I want you to be okay with that.”

  “We are,” Grace’s mom said. “We will be. Whatever you need, Gracie. We’re always going to be there for you, no matter what.”

  Grace remembered how tight her mom’s grip had been on her hand during her contractions, how she had never left Grace’s side, how her dad had watched Netflix for hours with her without saying a word. The older she got, the more human her parents seemed, and that was one of the scariest things in the world. She missed being little, when they were the all-knowing gods of her world, but at the same time, seeing them as human made it easier to see herself that way, too.

  “Grace, have you talked to any other girls who have been through this?” Michael asked. “A support group, maybe?”

  Grace shook her head. Talking to strangers about Peach seemed impossible, almost like a betrayal.

  “There are a lot of girls who are in the same situation you’re in,” Michael said, but his tone was gentle. “Is that something we can maybe explore, at least?”

  Grace nodded.

  “I think we’re going to make some really good progress in this room,” Michael said with a grin, and Grace sat back in her seat and closed her eyes.

  Progress, she thought, sounded exhausting.

  “So let me get this straight,” Rafe said. “Elaine from down the street tattled on me?”

  “And me,” Grace said, sipping at the last of her milkshake.

  “Elaine from down the street needs a hobby,” Rafe muttered.

  Rafe had texted her the afternoon after the therapist’s appointment. Got running shoes?

  What? Grace had responded.

  Let’s go for a run. Meet you in thirty minutes behind the park?

  No thanks, Grace started to reply, then looked at the letters and deleted them. OK, she sent instead. You’re on.

  Rafe was the kind of running partner that she liked: quiet. Her shoes still fit, and while she wasn’t in the best shape of her life to be sprinting up a hill, the stitch in her side and the wheeze in her lungs made Grace feel like her old self, like she still had one thing that was the same even after so many changes. The weather was cool, the autumn air finally feeling like autumn instead of just an extra-long summer, and when she and Rafe made it to the top of the hill, Grace turned to him and smiled. “Not bad,” she said.

  “Kill me,” Rafe had wheezed in response, his hands on his knees.

  Grace had just laughed.

  Afterward, they sat side by side on the roof of Rafe’s car. Grace felt both cleaner and heavier, like someone who had done half their chores but saved the worst ones for last.

  Sitting with Rafe on the edge of a parking lot, though, made all of it seem a little less heavy, at least.

  “You know why Elaine from down the street called your parents, right?” Rafe said, and there was an edge in his voice that Grace had never heard before.

  “Because she thinks I’m trying to get impregnated by every boy north of the equator?”

  Rafe laughed a little. “Ha. Maybe. But c’mon, Grace. You’re a white girl and I’m Mexican. Do the math.”

  “You think so?”

  “I mean, I’m not one hundred percent sure, but definitely ninety-nine percent sure.”

  “You know that I don’t care about that shit, right?” Grace said. “Fuck Elaine from down the street if that’s her problem.”

  Rafe couldn’t hide the smile that played at the corner of his mouth. “If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not fuck Elaine from down the street.”

  “Shut up!” Grace giggled. She had no idea why she always giggled with him. She couldn’t decide if it was a good thing or a bad thing. “You know what I mean!”

  “Yeah, and you know what I mean, too,” Rafe said. “Don’t worry, I’m not, like, mad at you about it. But you don’t see things the same way I do sometimes. You don’t have to.”

  Grace nodded. “I think we should put a For Sale sign on Elaine’s house,” she said. “Like a neighborhood cleanup.”

  Now it was Rafe’s turn to laugh. “You go for it,” he said. “I’ll be right behind you.”

  “Don’t tempt me.” Grace rested her feet on the edge of the car’s bumper. They were sitting out on the far edge of the parking lot by the mall, the one that looked over the city. From that angle, it almost looked like a big town. Almost.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Hit it,” Rafe said, then sipped at his milkshake.

  “So you know my brother, Joaquin, the one I told you about? He’s half Mexican, but he grew up in a bunch of different homes with different families. Do you think . . . I mean, I think it’s hard for him.” Grace wasn’t sure what she even wanted to say, or how to say it.

  “Are you asking me to comment on this as a Mexican kid? You know that’s racist, right?”

  Grace waited an extra breath before answering. “I don’t know how to ask some of these questions,” she admitted. “But Joaquin’s my brother, and he’s hurting, and I don’t know how to help him.”

  They were quiet for a second. Rafe shook his milkshake. Grace had never seen him so contemplative before. “Some people think you’re less Mexican if you don’t speak Spanish, and some people don’t care. But then there’s religion—which church does your family go to, you know? How do you celebrate Christmas? Where’s your family from originally? Are you first or second generation? What traditions do you have? All these things go into it, and if you don’t have them, and the rest of the world sees you as all in on that, then it’s gotta be hard.

  “I mean,” Rafe continued, then paused. “It’s like with Elaine down the street. She made assumptions about me, probably, but at least I can go home and talk to my brother about it and we can laugh about how stupid she is. I’m proud of who I am, and I would never want to be anyone else, and when people are assholes, at least I can go back to my family for support. If your brother doesn’t have any of that, then that’s got to be fucking hard.”

  Grace listened, then scooted over until their legs were pressing next to each other. It had been a very long day, after all, and she wanted to feel a little less alone in the world. Rafe didn’t move away. “Do you think you could talk to Joaq?” she asked.

  Rafe smirked. “What, teach him how to be Mexican?”

  “What? No! No, I would never—”

  Rafe smiled down at her. “Relax, I’m kidding. And yeah, sure, give me his number, I’ll text him. Maybe we can hang out. Besides, I’d like to shake his hand after he almost beat up that guy for calling you a slut.” Rafe’s voice was dark again. “Asshole.”

  “Adam is definitely an asshole,” Grace agreed. “And thanks.”

  “No problem. But you know, Joaquin just probably needs less people talking to him and more people listening to him.” Rafe nudged at her shoulder. “And you’re a pretty good listener, Grace.”

  She nodded, not sure if that was entirely true but hoping that it was.

  “So now I have a favor to ask you,” Rafe said, clearing his throat. “This is important.”

  “Anything.”

  “Can you please stop chewing on your straw?!” Rafe took her milkshake away from her, inspecting the top of the straw. “Look at this! How are you not bleeding to death right now?”

  “Give it back!” Grace cried, but she was laughing as she reached for it. “I just have nervous teeth, that’s all!”

  “Nervous teeth!” Rafe howled. “What does that even mean?”

  “Shut up!” Grace said, but she was laughing, too, and when she made another swipe for her drink, she fell into him.

  They both stopped laughing then.

  Grace knew what she was supposed to do in the TV-show version of this moment: kiss him. She knew what she wanted to do: kiss
him. And she knew what she couldn’t do, not just yet.

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I—”

  “I know,” Rafe whispered back, and he moved her hair out of her face in a way that Max had never done. “It’s okay.”

  “I need you to know it’s not you,” Grace said. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to. It’s not like you’re hideous.”

  Rafe grinned at her. “That’s what I’ve always wanted a girl to say to me. Thank you for making that dream come true.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah, I do,” he said. His arms still wrapped awkwardly around her, he gave a gentle squeeze. “You want to sit up?”

  “Not yet,” Grace said.

  “You got it,” Rafe said, then looped his arm over her shoulders more comfortably. “We’ve got all the time in the world.”

  They didn’t, of course. Grace chose to believe Rafe anyway, as they sat together, lying in wait at the edge of the world.

  MAYA

  Nearly a week later, Maya still wanted to pound that kid Adam’s face in.

  And she wasn’t too thrilled with Lauren, either.

  She had flat-out refused to speak to her ever since the day Claire told her that Lauren had texted her about their mom. Lauren had pleaded with her, cried, begged, and finally even yelled, but Maya refused to open her bedroom door to her, refused to look at her, refused to acknowledge her in any way. “How long do you plan on freezing out your sister?” her dad finally asked her. “You only have one, you know.”

  “That is no longer a true statement,” Maya said primly. “Can I go back to my homework now, please?”

  It wasn’t any easier to acknowledge the missing person in their home, either. It wasn’t just Maya’s mom who was no longer there, but the space that her drinking had taken up seemed to hang over the house like a cloud, reminding Maya of all the time that she had invested in solving a problem that wasn’t even hers to fix. Lauren seemed to compensate by watching TV for hours at a time, housewives and fix-it shows and singing competitions flashing across the screen every time Maya came downstairs for a snack. Some of the shows looked interesting, but she felt so betrayed by Lauren, so shattered that her sister would go behind her back and talk to her ex-girlfriend. She had spent so long operating under the idea that secrets never left their house that she didn’t know how to handle it when any of them escaped, except to make her walls closer, tighter, hugging her in so that no one else would ever be able to enter.

  The pressure finally exploded one night at dinner.

  Maya had sort of known what she was doing. She sort of knew that it was a bad idea to bring it up this way, and she sort of wasn’t even sure if she wanted to go along with the plan in the first place. But she felt small and mean that day, felt like striking, felt like lashing out.

  “So Grace and Joaquin and I think that we should look for our bio mom,” she said.

  Lauren immediately choked on a bite of her salad and her dad had to thump her on the back.

  “You do?” their dad said once they could hear themselves over Lauren’s coughing. Her eyes were red and watery, her napkin covering her mouth as she glared at Maya. Maya pretended not to see her.

  “I think so,” she said, casually tearing off a hunk of bread. Her dad had gotten better with pulling dinner together. They hadn’t had pizza in nearly a week at this point. “You know, just to meet her. Learn about our story.”

  “You have a story,” Lauren said. “It’s here, with us.”

  “Maybe I have more than one story,” Maya shot back.

  “Girls, c’mon,” their dad said. “My, are you sure you want to do this right now?”

  “Yeah, why wouldn’t I? No time like the present, right?”

  The hole at the table where their mother normally sat seemed emptier than usual.

  “Well, it’s just . . . it’s been a really eventful couple of months. Your mom, finding Grace and Joaquin. Maybe you want to wait until things settle down a bit before you go on another adventure.”

  “An adventure?” Maya glared at him. “Is that what you think this is?”

  “Sweetie, no, I’m sorry. That’s not what I—poor choice of words, okay? I just think maybe you and your mom and I should talk about this.”

  Maya laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She laughed for an entire minute before she finally got control of herself again. “Well, you know what, Dad? I would love to talk to Mom about this. There is literally nothing that I would love to do more right now than talk to Mom, but you know what? I can’t, because she can’t talk to anyone. And then it’s Family Day, right? Where we all go up to rehab and pretend that everything is fine?”

  Lauren sat silent next to her, and Maya couldn’t help but wonder if she agreed with her.

  “We are not going to pretend that everything’s fine—” her dad said.

  “Really? Because this family is really good at doing just that.”

  Her dad took a deep breath and pushed himself away from the table. “I need a moment, girls,” he said, then got up and left the room.

  “What the hell is your problem?” Lauren hissed at her as soon as they were alone. “Seriously? You think Dad doesn’t feel bad enough right now?”

  “Oh, really? You think? Why don’t you go text Claire about it? I’m sure your new BFF would love to chat with you.”

  “Oh my God. Would you just get over yourself, My? I texted her because I was worried about you. You’re good with Claire. I actually like you when you’re with Claire.” Now Lauren was standing up from the table. “Would you quit acting like this whole family is trying to persecute you? You’re not the only one who had to dig wine bottles out of Mom’s closet, you know? You’re not the one who found her bleeding to death on the floor. But you’re the one who gets to have your little foot-stompy temper tantrum whenever someone does something that you don’t like. Well, too bad. I know you like to think that you’ve got this whole new family that you can just run away to, but you’ve still got a family here, too.”

  “Oh, yeah, Laur?” Maya said, and now she was standing up, too. “Tell me something. When Mom and Dad said they were getting divorced, did you wonder if they would still want you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lauren shouted.

  “Did you ever have to look at the pictures on that staircase and think, Do they hate me for ruining their perfect family? Am I the reason for all of this? Me and my freak existence? Let me guess, the answer to all of that is no. So don’t try to make me feel bad for trying to find my space in this world, okay? Because you’ve never had to worry about yours!”

  Now Lauren was crying in that terrible way she always did, but Maya was already turning on her heel and running upstairs.

  She couldn’t get far enough away, though. Not from herself. There weren’t enough stairs in the world for that.

  Maya couldn’t sleep that night.

  All she kept seeing when she closed her eyes was Grace’s face when Adam called her a slut, Joaquin’s face as he described Natalie falling to the floor, Lauren’s face when Maya had mentioned the pictures on the staircase. All of them made her stomach feel empty, like it was a pit that could never be filled, no matter how many good thoughts she had to replace the bad ones.

  At two o’clock in the morning, she gave up and went downstairs.

  Lauren was there, angrily twisting Oreos open and scraping out the cream filling into a bowl. Maya stopped when she saw her, about to turn around, but Lauren saw her, too.

  For a few seconds, neither of them moved.

  “I couldn’t sleep,” Lauren finally said.

  “Me either,” Maya replied. She hadn’t realized how tired Lauren had looked lately, but she guessed that now would be a bad time to bring that fact up. “I’ll leave you alone.”

  “I’m just going to throw this cream out,” Lauren said. “You might as well eat it.”

  Maya paused, then turned back around and sat down at the kitchen island, across fro
m Lauren. “I mean, you’re the weirdo who won’t eat chocolate,” Lauren added, scraping another cookie into the bowl.

  “You’re the weirdo who eats chocolate,” Maya said grumpily. It was two o’clock in the morning, after all. “It tastes like sweet dirt.”

  Lauren just scoffed and pushed the bowl toward her. They sat across from each other for a full minute in silence before Lauren finally broke it.

  “Do you really hate those pictures on the stairs?”

  “I don’t hate them,” Maya said. “I just hate that it’s so obvious that I don’t look like you.”

  “Do you hate me because I look like Mom and Dad and you don’t?”

  “Why would I hate you for that? It’s not your fault. You didn’t ask to be born.”

  “You know they would never pick one of us and not the other, right?” Even though she was sitting directly across from Maya, Lauren’s voice sounded very far away. “It’s not a competition, My. They love us both.”

  Maya sighed. All she wanted to do was eat her cream filling in peace. “I’m not upset I’m adopted. I love Mom and Dad and all of that, but sometimes, I just have questions that only strangers can answer.”

  “Like Grace and Joaquin?”

  Maya shrugged. “I feel like they understand what I mean when I say things like that.”

  Lauren’s eyes filled with tears.

  “Oh, Laur,” Maya sighed. “Seriously? Why are you crying?”

  Lauren wiped at her eyes, but that didn’t help much. “Because you loved Claire so much and then you just pushed her away as soon as you had one little fight—”

  “It wasn’t little.”

  “—and now you have these other siblings and this other sister and Mom’s gone and it’s just . . . I don’t want to lose you, too! You’re my big sister. I don’t care where you came from and I don’t care what you look like. You’re mine, you know? I don’t have anyone else except you.”

  “Laur,” Maya said quietly, “you’re not going to lose me as your sister.”

  “You wouldn’t even talk to me for a week!” Lauren sobbed. “You wouldn’t even look at me. It was like what you did to Claire all over again!”