6. Get your feet wet. Literally. It’s time to learn to swim so you don’t drown, because not-drowning is a good thing.
* * *
7. Test your limits. Maybe even say the hard thing . . . because you’re so good at the hard thing, my dearest, bestest friend. I believe that and so should you.
5
Ruby
I jog down the alley toward the main drag, ignoring Jesse’s shout for me to wait.
I can’t deal with this. Any of it.
Not the list or the way reading it made me feel—like I was drowning on dry land—or Jesse leaving in two freaking weeks and acting like it’s no big deal that he’s bailing on everyone in New York who loves him.
It’s too much, too sudden, too soon.
The list is a starting gun, trying to force me into a sprint when I’m not even done stretching. I just finished PT. I’m finally back to normal, and I want to enjoy that for a while.
But are you enjoying anything?
Jesse’s right.
You haven’t been yourself and you know it, Miss Dread Balloon.
And it looks like Claire knew it too.
I slow to a walk, swallowing against the sour taste rising in the back of my throat.
Claire knew I was struggling even back then. Two years ago, it wasn’t a dread-balloon situation, but I’d felt . . . frustrated.
Stuck. Like Jesse said.
That was why Claire and I had taken that girls’ trip to Maine to stay in a haunted bed-and-breakfast, eat lobster rolls on the beach, and journal and make lists until we figured out what came next for us. We’d both been going through our mid-twenties, post-college slump, and were determined to find what we needed to change to get closer to living the lives of our dreams.
And then one of those famous Maine moose we’d been hoping to see on the canoe trip earlier in our vacation had run out in front of us on the highway, totaling Claire’s car and changing those dreams forever.
We’d both been rushed to hospital, but only one of us had come out again.
Claire’s dreams were over, and mine were packed away while I dealt with more pressing matters—like grieving, healing, and figuring out how to make my way in the world as I recovered. There were days when figuring out which subway stations were easiest to navigate with my wheelchair, and later, my cane, would bring me to tears.
My parents always offered to help, to fetch things for me or to pick me up in their van and take me wherever I needed to go, but I wanted to be independent. I wanted my life back, the one I’d had before. Sure it hadn’t been perfect, but at least I’d been able to do my own shopping and put clean sheets on my bed without running into every piece of furniture in my tiny bedroom and wanting to smash things in frustration.
On days when I’d felt particularly smashy, Jesse always seemed to sense it. He’d show up with pizza, turn on old episodes of Saturday Night Live, and sneakily make my bed or run down to the laundry in the basement when I wasn’t paying attention.
He was a lifeline, not just making things easier, but making me laugh too. Making me hope.
I’d needed hope so much.
There were days, right after the accident, when the pain of losing Claire and my sense of normalcy were enough to make me wish . . . bad things.
To wish I’d been the one in the driver’s seat instead of my best friend.
I’d felt so out of control—of my emotions, my life, everything.
I can’t go back to being out of control. I just can’t. Not right now. Not even for Claire.
I must keep moving forward and zero in on normal, no matter what Jesse and his soulful eyes and tender hands have to say about it.