“So, about you,” she said as I pulled away from the curb. “You said you notified your mama that med school was a no-go, and you’re still alive. So how’d that conversation go?”

“She’s in full-blown denial. I’m pretty sure she’s setting her sights on one of the waitlisted programs coming through. Like getting into Harvard or Michigan would make any kind of difference to me when I was sitting right there telling her what I want to be and what I don’t.”

She grunted a soft laugh and mimed blinders on either side of her face. “Mothers are good at ignoring what they don’t wanna hear.”

There was no reason to point out that blinders block peripheral vision, not the ability to hear. It came to the same conclusion either way. I’d described my vision of the life I wanted to live and who I wanted to be, and Mama wasn’t having it.

I’d always thought my mother was superior to all other mothers because she’d sacrificed everything for me—the love of her life, her family and friends, the place she was born and raised. I assumed she’d forfeited these pieces of herself because she believed in me, because she meant to provide me with every chance to dream and reach and become. I assumed that what I dreamed and reached for and became would be my choice.

Until today, I hadn’t understood that I was the one wearing blinders, and she was the one who’d put them there.

Boyce:  Meet up tonight?

Me:  Good timing. Dropping Melody off in a few minutes.

Boyce:  I’m all about timing, baby.

Me:  *insert eyeroll*

Boyce:  ;)

Chapter Six

Boyce

Brent died when he drew enemy sniper fire. On purpose, according to the final report we got. To divert attention from half a dozen fellow Marines bent on storming a building where intelligence had pinpointed a nest of insurgents. A year later, he was posthumously awarded the Silver Star Medal for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity.” The day he died, though, we knew nothing more than the fact he’d been killed.

It was June. Without a word, I walked past my father in his mute shock, through the open doorway. I got on my bike and pedaled to the Merry Mermaid, the tattoo parlor where Brent’s girlfriend worked. Flying down the side of the road—past colorful stores and restaurants, imported palm trees, and out-of-towners laughing in rented golf carts that were street-legal in town—I was numb. The sky was cloudless, the sun straight overhead. The shadow my body cast was a shapeless, fluid blob, caught beneath the fat tires block after block. Without Brent, I was a formless, unconnected outline.

“I need to see Arianna,” I said to Buddy, the guy who ran the place. My voice cracked on her name, like I was a squeaky preteen with a crush instead of a stand-in for the angel of death.

Buddy, silver-haired but lean and muscled, was the color of wet sand wherever he wasn’t covered in ink. He pulled a pocket watch from the front pocket of his black Dickies, flicked it open and glanced at its face. “She’s finishing up with a client—be done in five or ten.” He squinted at me then, his forehead a canvas of baked-in creases. “You Brent’s little brother?”

I nodded and tried to swallow, nearly choking on my own spit. I’d been to the shop a few times with Brent. Brent, who was dead. His last breath exhaled in a foreign country. His blood spilling out there. His heart stopping there. His eyes closing there for the last time. My fingertips went so cold I couldn’t feel them. I could barely breathe. My eyes burned. I was like water trying to choose a suitable form—ice or vapor.

“You okay, son?” Buddy asked.

I shook my head, or thought I did. I wasn’t sure. Maybe I didn’t move at all.

Buddy’s expression altered then, his pale eyes wide and piercing from the other side of the counter. He wasn’t often startled, and his face wasn’t familiar with the shape it took. “Brent okay?” he whispered, two words barely audible over the classic rock blaring from speakers set into the back corners near the ceiling. The vocals repeated the same line, louder and louder—Do you wanna die? Do you wanna die?—while the bass thrummed, keeping pace with the pulse in my ears.

Buddy turned as Arianna parted the threaded seashells strung on lines from the lowered ceiling, separating the front room from the corridor where the tattooists did their work. Unlike Buddy, her visible tattoos were confined to one arm, which looked like an incomplete puzzle. A blue-haired mermaid was pinned to the curve of her shoulder, sitting on top of an albatross I’d once made the mistake of calling a pelican. Brent had laughed until tears filled his eyes. A hodgepodge of patterns were scattered from her elbow to her wrist—outlines, empty of color. Unfinished.

Her tank and jeans concealed the tats on her abdomen, lower back, calf and hip—I only knew about that last one because Brent had slipped and told me and then made me swear never to say a word to her or anyone.

“She’s the strongest woman I’ve ever known,” he’d said then, a sort of awe to his voice. Staring up at our ceiling, he lay on his bed with an arm behind his head, across the thin stretch of dingy carpet from my bed.

“So you don’t want her to get mad?” I’d asked, turning to watch him. It was the summer I turned eleven. The last summer we’d shared the cramped bedroom on the side of the trailer that leaned into the brick exterior of the garage—a setup that completely blocked two of the three windows. The lone working window was shoved all the way up, and a fan swung back and forth from a short dresser under it, pulling damp air from outside and blowing it around in a useless attempt to cool the room. We both stripped to our underwear and slept on top of our sheets every night. None of these efforts made much of an impact.