When she refused, we didn’t speak for a month.
We visit Nana every few weeks, but I like to supplement those visits, so sometimes I tell Mom I’m staying late after school, and I wait on the corner for a bus that takes me thirty minutes to the neighboring town of Lincoln, where Nana’s apartment is. Today everything is gray outside the bus window: the clouds overhead, the building she lives in. There is a flash of black and gray on the building’s sign. Joe. It isn’t the first time he’s followed me here.
I step from gray into yellow. The walls are goldenrod, and in the waiting room is an ancient sofa covered in lemons, faded and soft on their edges where the fabric has been worn. I sign in, and the receptionist waves me up, recognizing me.
Nana greets me with a long hug. “Leighton! What a lovely surprise. It’s been weeks since you last visited.”
“Hi, Nana. I’m sorry. School started.”
“Don’t you dare apologize. Let’s have tea. When’s your bus?”
I put her kettle on for tea and crack her windows open for fresh air.
“An hour,” I say, and settle on the chair across from her. Some days she’s every ounce the woman I’ve always known, and today is one of those days. Her mind sharp and her memory untouched. “Mom doesn’t know today.”
She nods her understanding. She knows I sneak here.
“The girls?” she asks.
“The same,” I say.
“Your mom?”
“The same,” I say, but my voice catches. It’s all the same.
Actually, that’s not true anymore; it’s worse.
I don’t tell Nana that part.
“Tell me about school,” she says, and our chat is easy and warm. There’s a lot I miss about their old farmhouse and, of course, Grandpa, but these last two years have brought Nana and me closer, too. There’s a softness in our understanding of things at home and my parents. I don’t have to be guarded in how I speak. It’s how I imagine talking to Mom would feel if we didn’t have my father like a wedge between us, making us dance around the most crucial thing, the thing we can’t talk about. But with Nana, there are no topics to avoid.
Our hour goes too fast.
I clean our mugs and straighten her kitchenette. I close her windows. It’s just a sampling of what we had at her old home, but the warmth is the same. The smells. A hint of her favorite perfume on everything.
“Things will get better, Leighton,” she says as she hugs me goodbye.
“I know,” I say. It’s an easy lie for both of us.
“Before your grandpa passed, I used to pray to God every night that you girls would stay with us. Where you would be safe.”
“And after Grandpa died? Did you stop praying?”
“I started praying to your grandpa instead. I’m hoping he has some pull up there. I keep waiting for some message from him.”
“I’ll look for a message, too.”
“You do that, dear.”
And I do. On the walk to the bus stop, and on the ride home.
There is one highway into Auburn. When we cross into the town limits, there is a large green sign that reads, “Welcome to Auburn, Pennsylvania. Population: 2,378.” And at the bottom of the sign, the town’s slogan: Auburn Born, Auburn Proud.
I keep looking for a message from Grandpa, some hint of that feeling I always got when I stepped into their home. That things would be okay.
But when I get off the bus and look around Auburn, there’s nothing but crows.
Chapter Eleven
I THINK I LOVE BRAND-NEW NOTEBOOKS for the same reason people love babies. For a moment in time, they are perfect. Unblemished. Pure potential.
Then we make it our job in life to ruin them.
We add to them, encumber them. Erase and try again, never quite able to fully obliterate the original mark. We fill them up with our words and wishes and desires. It is an imperfect, imprecise process, and we don’t always get it right.
I got what I wanted for the newspaper this year: my own column. But our first issue will be published online at the end of the week, and I haven’t figured out a theme yet. Sofia has sports, so she’s been busy cheerleading and covering football games. Our team is the high school equivalent of a Greek tragedy every week. Everyone is hoping for a better ending than what is delivered to them, yet they keep coming back for more. You wouldn’t know they lose by how this town loves the game, though. We almost won state once nineteen years ago, and our football players are still treated like All-American Gods.
I think of Liam McNamara.
And then I deliberately don’t think of him.
I tap my ultra-sharpened pencil on the blank page in front of me. The tip breaks off. I side-eye the pencil sharpener on the other side of the room. No hurry, brain. No important things to write. No looming deadline. I drop the pencil and hit the power button on my computer’s monitor instead—our newspaper is operating on some ancient behemoth desktops—and wait for it to power up. My desk faces the windows, and outside are the baseball fields. They are covered in crows. I can’t hear them from in here, but I see their open beaks, and I know they are cawing. The crows are always cawing.
Sofia sits on my desk.
“Hey,” she starts. “Were you ever gonna tell me that you and Liam are a thing?”
“We aren’t a thing,” I protest, but Sofia holds up her hand.
“I didn’t say what kind of thing, but you most certainly are a thing, because that at lunch yesterday was not a nothing.”
“Sorry, Sofia . . .” I stand and stretch. Maybe movement will help me figure out this column. “What are you working on?”
“Don’t change the subject,” she says. “What is going on with you and Liam?”
“We’ve just been talking—” I pause while Sofia squeals. I smile. Leighton alone would put the whole Liam thing in a tiny box and not open it until later, if at all. Leighton alone doesn’t have time to think about a guy when she has an article due. She has a portfolio to round out if she wants to get into one of the top journalism schools in the country. Acceptance to college—and escape from this town—depends on that tried-and-true Leighton focus. No distractions.
But Leighton with Sofia is different. A little less intense. A little more seventeen. This Leighton opens the box, and peers inside. What is going on with Liam?
“Our lockers are on top of each other,” I explain.
“Dirty,” Sofia says.
I raise my eyebrows. I’ll turn this car around.
“Sorry. Go on,” Sofia says.
“So we started talking between classes, and we have lit together, and, I don’t know, he’s so smart. Did you know how smart he is?” I circle my desk while we talk. I walk over and crack the window. Now I hear the crows. The cawing is louder than I expected.
“It’s finally happened,” Sofia says. She sighs behind me.
“What has?” I ask over the sound of the birds.
“My little Layyyton has a guy!”
“I don’t!” I say.
“Only because you haven’t said yes, yet. Which you will.”
“I won’t.”
“Loooooovebirds,” Sofia serenades as she retreats to her own desk, her mission complete. Who needs instruments of torture to get information when you could just send in Sofia Roman? She could make anyone sing, even a raspy, mangy old—