When You Were Here

with Trina, but that’s okay. She likes it this way, and it’s easier, and she’s never not hot. She’s always ready, she’s always racing, and she’s always got her hands all over, and it’s great, really, it’s great.
    Even though she’s not Holland.
    I curse silently.
    I’d like to not think about Holland when I’m with someone else. I’d like to not picture Holland—her wavy blond hair, her sky-blue eyes, her lips tasting like strawberry, her smell—all girl, all pure, perfect, blond California girl.
    But I can’t not picture Holland.
    So I close my eyes and go with it, imagining it’s Holland holding me down. And it feels fantastic like that with imaginary Holland. It feels like I’m alive again, like I’m real again, like the earth is rotating around the sun again.
    Then we’re done, and Trina conks out in thirty seconds flat. Her face is pressed against my sheet; she doesn’t even make it to a pillow. I watch her doze for a minute. Sometimes I think with every breath her brain is releasing all the X-rays and EKGs and patient reports she had to keep in her head all day. Sometimes I imagine her waking up next to a sea of warped, distorted readouts that have sort of melted out of her.
    A strand of her long hair falls over her mouth. Her lips flutter while she’s sleeping, trying to blow the hair away. I adjust her hair for her, tucking the strand behind her ear. Then I nod off too, not thinking about the people outsideor the broken guitars. When I wake up in the middle of the night, my dog is wedged against me, and Trina is gone. But the good doctor has left something for me.
    A fresh orange bottle of pills on my nightstand.
    I’ll need them to get through my graduation tomorrow. My mom was supposed to be in the front row.

Chapter Three
    I always imagined that the morning before graduation would pass by in a blur of noise and barked orders. Did you remember this? Did you forget that? Fix your hair; it’s a mess.
    Like when Laini graduated. My dad grabbing his camera, my mom making sure Laini’s cap was on right, me calculating how long I’d have to wear the striped polo shirt with the collar.
    Now, as I pull on shorts and a T-shirt since it doesn’t matter what you wear under the robe —because I refuse to call it a gown —the only sound I hear comes from Sandy Koufax, from her nails clicking against the floor as she switches locations, shifting from her early-morning yard patrol to her late-morning lounge-around-on-the-couch relaxation.
    We didn’t even have Sandy Koufax six years ago whenwe raced out of the house for Laini’s graduation, the last time we were all together—my mom, my dad, my sister, and me. That evening we went out to dinner in Chinatown at a restaurant Laini had researched because it had the best traditional Chinese dumplings, she said. She had already started down the path of reconnecting with her roots, so she ordered for all of us in Chinese too because she’d been studying the language.
    “That’s my girl,” my dad said, then planted a kiss on Laini’s forehead. She pretended to be cool and aloof, but she leaned into him, then responded in Chinese, and he laughed, then said something back. He had learned Chinese over the years, had taken classes, listened to Chinese podcasts, and had all the Learn Mandarin CDs in his car. My mom and I didn’t know a word.
    When the food arrived, my mom held up her glass and offered a toast. “To my daughter. I couldn’t be more proud.”
    Then my dad. “To more education, which is Latin for… more bills .”
    “Sorry I didn’t get a scholarship,” Laini said, and my dad immediately corrected himself. He never wanted Laini to feel bad about anything—fight with a friend, crummy grade, crappy haircut. Whatever it was, he’d save the day for her, even if he was the one who’d been sarcastic.
    “I’m just kidding,” he said. “Of course we’ve got the money.”
    “I’ll go to state school,” I offered, my contribution to the conversation.
    “You’re such a suck-up,” Laini said to me.
    My mom held out her hands. “Enough. Can we just have a nice dinner out?”
    “How about a redo?” my dad said, and held up his glass. “To Laini Kellerman, who we are happily sending to college.”
    “Much better,” my mom said, and nodded.
    Laini held up her Coke and offered a toast. “To the end of an era.”
    Laini turned out to be a fortune-teller. A month later my dad was killed when he was hit by a truck in