Far From You

46

TWO YEARS AGO (FIFTEEN YEARS OLD)

I dig in the dirt, making small furrows. “Will you hand me that flat?” I point to the seedlings I nursed under fluorescent lights for weeks, waiting until they were strong enough to transplant. I was pretty proud of them; they were the first I���d grown under the lights Dad had bought for my birthday.

Mina sets her book down and gets up off the wicker chair so she can move the flat closer to me. She balances delicately on the edge of the redwood bed, eyeing the soil suspiciously. “What are these going to be, again?”

“Tomatoes.”

“Seems like a lot of trouble for tomatoes,” Mina says. “Couldn’t you just get the plants at the garden center? Or one of those plastic upside-down-hanging planters to put them in?”

“These are different. They’re purple.”

“Really?”

“Yes, I ordered the seeds specially.”

Mina beams. “You could’ve just gotten me flowers.”

I set a seedling carefully into the dirt. “Where’s the fun in that?”

“We can make purple pasta sauce,” she suggests.

“As long as you’re doing the cooking.”

“Oh, come on—remember that vegetable soup you tried to make? There was only a teeny tiny fire that time. You’re getting better.”

“I think I’ll stick to what I’m good at.” I dig a third hole, lift another seedling out of the tray, and set the fragile roots into their new home.

“Aren’t you glad I made you get a hobby?” Mina asks, grinning. “When you become a world-famous botanist, I can say I’m responsible whenever I brag about you.”

“I think out of the two of us, you’re going to end up being the world-famous one,” I say, laughing.

“Well, that goes without saying,” Mina answers. “I’ll make sure to thank you when I win my Pulitzer.”

“I’m honored.”

Mina goes back to her chair and book, and I go back to my tomatoes. She flaps the neck of her tank top back and forth. “It’s so hot,” she complains.

I grind my good knee into the dirt, spacing the seedlings evenly apart, neat rows of three across, four down. “The twentieth’s coming up,” I say finally. “You okay?”

Mina shrugs, eyes glued to the page. The sun beats down my back, and I wonder if I’ve gone too far.

For a moment, I think that’s all I’m going to get out of her. But then she looks up at me. “I’m going to spend the day with Mom and Trev. She wants to go to Dad’s grave in the morning.”

“Do you…do you go out there a lot?” I ask. I’m curious, all of a sudden, and she seems willing to actually talk about it for once. I know that Mr. Bishop is buried in Harper’s Bluff, that he grew up here and that’s the main reason they moved back after his death. And the only reason I know that is the first time Mina and I got drunk, she’d slurred it out against my shoulder and cried and didn’t—or just maybe wouldn’t—remember the next morning.

“Sometimes,” Mina says. “I like to go and talk to him. It makes me feel closer. Like, I don’t know, maybe it’s easier for him to check on me there.”

“Check on you from heaven?” I ask, and I don’t mean it to be there, but there’s skepticism in my voice.

Mina frowns, sitting up straighter in her chair. “Of course, from heaven,” she says. “What—you don’t believe in it?”

I look away, shy under her scrutiny. We’ve never talked about this. I’ve avoided the subject. Mina isn’t devout like her mom, but she’s someone who believes. Who goes to Mass when her mom asks her to and wears the little golden crucifix that her dad gave her.

And I am me. I would’ve lost my faith after the crash, if I’d had any to lose.

“Not really.” I won’t lie about this when I’m already hiding more urgent things from her: the crushed-up pills and the dirty straws, the need for numbness that eats more of me up each day. She’s starting to notice how often I nod off in class. I make excuses, but she’s watching me closer.

I brush the dirt off my hands, standing up to find her staring at me like I’ve declared the sky is green. “Soph, you have to believe in heaven.”

“Why?” I ask.

“You just…you have to. What do you think happens when we die, then?”

“I don’t think anything happens,” I say. “I think this is it. All we get. And when we’re gone, we’re gone.”

She shifts in her chair, and the unhappy curve of her lips makes me wish I’d never answered the way I did. “That’s a crappy way to think. Why would you want to believe that?”

I’m quiet for a moment, rubbing my fingers against my knee, tracing the scar by memory. I can feel the bumps of the screws that lay under my skin through the material. “I don’t know. It’s just what I think.”

“It’s horrible,” Mina says.

“Why does it matter? I’m not an expert.”

“It matters,” she says.

“What, are you worried that I won’t end up there if there is a heaven?” I ask.

“Yes!”

I can’t stop the smile that stretches across my face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” Mina says angrily. “Like you think it’s cute or something. My dad missed everything, all of my and Trev’s lives. The idea that he’s here still, that he’s keeping an eye on us? That’s not cute—that’s faith.”

“Hey.” I reach out to grasp her hands. She doesn’t pull away, even though my fingers are still dirty. “I didn’t mean…I’m—I’m glad it makes you feel better. But I don’t have that in me. It doesn’t make me right or you wrong, it’s just how it is.”

“You have to believe in something,” Mina protests.

I squeeze her hands and she grips mine back, tight, like I’m going to disappear any second.

“I believe in you,” I say.