What could possibly be in the driveway?
My bare feet squeak against the tile floor as I walk to the front door. A few months ago—a million years ago—I would have thought that it was my brothers, waiting there for me. I would have believed that somehow, some magic had led them back to the glass house, where they were waiting patiently in the driveway to surprise me with their presence. But today, the idea doesn’t even cross my mind. My brothers are dead, and I’ve finally begun the long process of learning how to live without them.
The sun is bright in my eyes when I open the front door. I squint, holding one hand like a visor against my forehead. There, leaning against the side of my car, all wrapped in a big red bow, is a surfboard. I take a few tentative steps toward it, as though I think it might sprout legs and run away if I get too close too fast. I glance back at my parents, who are grinning from the doorway.
The board is beautiful. Creamy white on the sides, with fading blocks of pale green, yellow, and pink floating across its center. It’s actually the perfect length for someone my height; even in my fantasies, I never actually surfed on a board that was the right size for me. Still, the new board towers over me. My father has even tied a block of wax to the board, and it dangles from a string beneath the red ribbon.
I reach out and touch it, feel the familiar texture of fiberglass, eye the sharp fins at its bottom. I turn back to my parents.
“This is for me?”
They nod, coming through the door arm in arm.
“It’s for you,” my father answers.
“We know how badly you want to learn to surf,” my mom says. “You talked about it in family session all the time. And then, the other day at the beach, we just thought…” She pauses, chewing her lip. “We thought maybe this was something you wanted.”
I nod. I think maybe I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want to grab this board and run with it into the waves.
“We could go to the shop later and get a rack installed for you on the roof,” my father adds, gesturing to my car. “You’ll need it to drive the board up to school with you.”
“To school?” I echo.
He nods. “I know Stanford’s not exactly on the coast, but there are plenty of beaches in driving distance.”
I nod; the words he doesn’t say float between us. The beach where I was found is only a couple hours’ drive from Stanford.
“Just be careful,” my mother begins, but my father shakes his head, silencing her.
I study my parents’ faces; they’re smiling, but there is such fear behind their eyes. My mother has her fingers wrapped around Nana’s collar to keep her from running into the street, but she’s holding on more tightly than is really necessary, like she just needs something to hang on to. I realize just how much this gesture means, what a sign it is of their trust in me, of their bravery, to push me out onto the water, where I most want to be, despite everything that happened to me and everything that happened to my brothers.
“If it’s not the right height,” my mother adds, “or if you don’t like the color—”
I shake my head. “No,” I say, a smile creeping across my lips.
I can already imagine the water beneath my beautiful board, the sensation of falling as I drop into a wave.
“It’s perfect,” I add, pulling my mother into a hug. “I love it.”
38
January is unseasonably warm, even for southern California. The forecasters on the evening news don’t bother masking their surprise each time the temperature rises: seventy-three; seventy-eight; eighty-one; and, on the day I leave for college, eighty-four.
“Beach weather,” my dad says carelessly as he loads my bedding into the backseat for me. I nod, glancing at my surfboard, secured tightly to the rack on the roof of my car.
I spent last night—when I should have been packing, or at least looking at my course catalog on the computer—waxing my board. I couldn’t help myself. I want the board to be prepared, perfect for when the time comes. My mother has already told me that when I’m ready, they’re going to treat me to surf lessons at the beach of my choice. They’ll hire me a private instructor. I almost groaned when she mentioned it—what could be lamer than an expensive private teacher on the beach?—but I could see how much it meant to her. She’s willing to let me go out on the water, her face said, but please, please, let her have this one thing, this assurance that I’ll be out there as safely as possible.
So I stifled my groan and thanked her instead.
I don’t really plan to head to the water anytime soon, despite the unseasonable warmth. I’m really excited to start classes, to have a schedule, to study and write papers. It’s been so long that I’m worried I may have forgotten how.
My dad startles me by taking a picture. I don’t have to see it to know what it looks like: a girl with straight brown hair and pale skin, standing beside her shiny new car, ready to begin the next chapter in her life. But he holds his camera out in front of him to show me the photo. I’m surprised by what I see; maybe Fiona wasn’t just being nice the other day when she said I looked good. In fact, maybe I’ve never looked quite so good as I do right now, with my car and my surfboard behind me. Even in the photo, I can see that my eyes have some light behind them, just like my brothers’ always did.
There is empty space on either side of me, space that my brothers would have taken up if they were here today. Maybe there will always be empty space on either side of me, the places where my brothers should be standing. And I know now that I will live with that empty space every day for the rest of my life.
“Oh,” my father says, slipping his hand into the pocket of his jeans. “I almost forgot. This came for you in the mail.”
He holds out an envelope addressed to me. No return address, not even a postmark, as though someone slipped it in our mailbox overnight while we were sleeping.
“Thanks,” I say, taking it from him and ripping it open. I stifle a gasp when I see what’s inside: a photograph with two handsome men—boys—tan and muscular, their arms draped lazily around each other, their surfboards propped up in the sand on either side of them. One of them has hazel eyes ringed in a yellow as bright as the sun, and the other’s are icicle blue.
I hope my father doesn’t see that my hands are shaking as I stuff the envelope and photo into my purse. I shrug like it’s nothing, but my heart is pounding so hard that I’m surprised my father can’t hear it.
My mother comes out of the house carrying a paper bag, Nana trotting along beside her. “Just some snacks for the road,” she says, holding it out.
“You know there are, like, a million restaurants between here and Palo Alto?” I say, but I take the bag nonetheless. I lean down to kiss Nana goodbye and press my cheek to her soft fur.
“Drive safe,” my mom says, hugging me tight. “And call us the minute you get there.”
“I will,” I say. “I promise.” She offered to drive with me, but I turned her down. I want to make this trip alone, and now, as the picture makes my bag feel like it weighs a hundred pounds, I know why.
My father hugs me next, kissing the top of my head the way he did when I was a little kid. I wave to my parents through my open window as I pull away, the shadow of my surfboard visible on the driveway at their feet.
At every red light between the glass house and the entrance to the freeway, I pull the photo from my bag and turn it over in my hands, gazing at it as though I think that if I just stare at it long enough, it will reveal all the answers. Maybe there’s some secret message, some tiny writing stashed in the corner, hidden in the sea behind them.
But there is nothing. No hint, no clue. I don’t even recognize the handwriting on the envelope. It could have been any of them—Jas, Pete, Belle, even Hughie or Matt—who sent this photograph to me.