When You Were Here

Kyoto. A year later my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Six years later, Laini doesn’t even send me a graduation card.
    My doorbell rings, and Sandy Koufax erupts in a flurry of barks from her post on the couch. When I answer the door, Holland’s there. I tell myself to be stoic, especially since she’s still wearing that star ring I gave her last summer. I hunted it down for her at a funky little clothing store on Melrose Avenue, since I knew that’s where Holland liked to shop, where she loved to pick up cheap, little plastic bracelets and other jewelry.
    “What?” She puts her hands on her hips and gives me a playful look as if I should have remembered she was going to be here. Fact is, I’m pretty sure she did tell me she was coming by. Maybe I didn’t want to believe it. Maybe I made myself forget, even though she’s been around the house a few times since she finished up her freshman year at the University of California at San Diego. She stopped by withKate a week ago and brought me that homemade lasagna that she’d cooked herself, since Holland has a magic touch with pasta. “You didn’t think I was going to let you get ready for graduation all by yourself, did you?”
    “Pretty sure I can get ready by myself.”
    “Well, it’s not like I brought makeup or five different outfits for you to choose from,” she says, and lets herself in. It’s just us alone in my house. I could shut the door and pull the blinds and watch movies on the couch with her all day. We could hole up here and never leave, just Holland and the dog and me. Order Chinese takeout from Captain Wong’s around the corner for every meal. Yes, this is how I could get through an endless summer on a lonely planet.
    Holland peers down the hall. “Where’s you-know-who?”
    “Who would that be?”
    She waves a hand dismissively. I know she means Trina. I just want her to say it. I want to know she’s bothered by the hot doctor who hangs out at my house.
    “Dr. Asvati,” Holland says, drawing out the name, like it’s an insult. Maybe it is to her.
    “Trina.”
    “Trina,” Holland repeats, the word heavy in her mouth. She’s jealous. She has to be jealous. This is excellent. I would like her to be jealous.
    “She’s not here.”
    “She’s not coming to your graduation?”
    I shake my head. Trina and I don’t have that kind of relationship.
    Holland walks to the living room and sits down next to my dog. She pets Sandy Koufax’s ears and talks to my dog in a high-pitched voice, telling her she is the cutest dog in the whole wide world. Sandy Koufax rolls over and lets Holland pet her belly. Seeing the two of them like that, the girl who likes the dog, and the dog who likes the girl, makes me want to blurt out the invitation: Let’s shack up here all summer and not leave until August. Maybe she’d feel sorry enough for me to say yes, to stay, to say leaving me last fall was the dumbest thing she ever did and will you please take me back?
    Why yes, Holland, I think I would take you back. Even though I don’t have a single clue as to the secret of why you left me in the first place.
    Holland points to my cap on the coffee table. “This cap thing. Pretty sure it’s supposed to go on your head.”
    “That’s what all the graduation how-to books say.”
    She grabs the cap and walks back to me. She hands me the mortarboard and I put it on, far back on my head.
    “That’s all wrong.” Holland laughs, shakes her head, as if this is normal, as if she can just slide into the way we used to be good buds before last summer, before everything else. “It’s supposed to sit on your forehead.” She mimics pulling a mortarboard down on her forehead, pointing to this spot right above her eyes where the cap is supposed to rest.
    “Fix it,” I say, and it comes out raspy, like a croak. I know I should say please fix it or can you fix it? but this isall I can manage, this two-word admission, as I do everything not to sound hungry for her.
    “See! You did need me to get ready,” she says, then looks at me, half-nervous, like she’s waiting for an answer, waiting for me to admit I needed her.
    I just point to the cap. She nods, then wiggles the cap farther down my forehead. Her fingers brush against my face. My heart pounds a tick louder at her touch, but I look away, because the ache is too much. She pulls my cap down for a final tug, then stops to consider a strand of my brown hair. “I can’t believe my mom didn’t make