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MY PHONE DINGS so many times that day and

the next, that, after a while, I just block Nick’s number.

Then Sar tries. William. Greer. Whitty. I block all of them, one at a

time. It hurts, but the pain feels right. Necessary. Like I deserve it for wasting

their time.

I’d taken Nick’s necklace off as soon as I got home and

buried the chain and coin under some socks in my drawer.

I’d thought myself brave for facing the Order. For chasing down

the truth. But every time I close my eyes, all I see are the faces of the people

I’ve lied to in order to find it.

My mother didn’t pursue the Order and its war.

My mother didn’t share her Rootcraft. Not with me and not with

anyone else.

The least I can do, after defying her in so many ways, is finally

follow in her footsteps.

The next days pass in a blur because I force them to. I focus only

on what’s in front of me.

Classes, studying in the library, meals with Alice, sleepless nights.

Repeat.

I take the sling off in public, so no one asks questions. Alice asks

questions anyway. I tell her I fell during initiation.

Patricia made good on her promise to call my father

and tell him we weren’t a good fit, that she wishes me well. I know she said

that last part because he calls me to ask if I’d like to talk about it. I say

no.

I walk the campus half expecting Nick or Greer or even Sel to jump out

at me from behind a line of students or a tree. Not that they ever have; I think

it’s a Legendborn rule to avoid one another on campus. But they could find

me… if they wanted. It makes it much easier on me that they don’t.

I can do what my mother did, I think. Live oblivious in the world the

way that everyone else does. Maybe our paths were different, but my mother and I

came to the same conclusion.

I have to forget them, because remembering is too dangerous.

“… Maybe after class?”

“Mm.” I chew absentmindedly on my blueberry

jam–smothered biscuit as I read the DTH. I didn’t even know until

this week that Carolina had a school newspaper.

“Bree.”

“Yeah?”

“You’re making a mess.”

“What?”

Alice points at my lap where three warm pools of butter have expanded

into lakes that stretch from the horoscope section to an article on student body

elections. A biscuit crumb falls from my hand into the center of a butter lake and

promptly drowns. “Damn.” I push the paper away while she covers a laugh

behind her coffee cup.

I’d let Alice drag me out of bed earlier than was strictly

necessary, at least by my own standards. “So we can actually eat

breakfast” is the type of reasoning that only sounds reasonable if

you’re Alice. Alice, whose parents get her up at six thirty a.m. even on

weekends.

“Did you hear anything I just said?”

“No…?”

She puts her cup down and gives me a long stare. A

clunk-clunk-c-c-clunk reaches us from across the dining hall, where

students are dumping used and empty food trays onto a conveyor belt with varying

degrees of care. “You’ve been weird all week.”

I poke at my bowl of cheesy grits and shrug. “Just focusing on

school stuff. I got a C minus on that English test, so it’s clearly warranted.

What were you saying?”

“A C minus? Matty, you’ve never gotten anything below an A

in English in your life. What’s going on?” Alice tilts her head and

fixes me with a stare. I stare back. After a moment of silence she sighs, wrinkling

her mouth and nose together. “I said I know you don’t have a dress for

the gala thing this weekend. We should go shopping after class. There are a ton of

boutiques downtown, and I saw some sales.”

I look away and gnaw at the inside of my cheek. “Yeah, about

that. I’m not going.”

Alice rears back, gawking at me like I’ve grown scales.

“I’m sorry, what did you just say?”

I blink. “I decided not to go through with that group. So,

I’m not going—”

“Hi, yes, hello. I regret to inform you that you’ve had a

temporary lapse in judgment. These things happen, and I’m going to try not to

make you feel too badly about it. But you’re going to that gala.”

I groan. “Alice, I don’t want to go.”

“You are going to that gala, Matty, even if I have to force you

into one of Charlotte’s dresses!” Alice says, her eyes gone flinty

behind her frames.

I sigh and fold up the greasy newspaper as neatly as I can, then toss

it onto my tray. “You don’t understand.”

Alice crosses her arms over her chest. “I understand

you’ve suddenly stopped talking to a hottie-hot boy who adores you, and you

won’t explain why, and it sounds like he did nothing wrong. I understand you

have an invitation to a black-tie event that you seem to want to toss in the trash.

And I understand that I begged my parents to let me stay on campus this weekend just

so I could help you get ready, and honestly, Bree, we were way too

nerdy in high school for me to let you throw this opportunity away!”

I gape at her. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Sixteen years of Disney movies that I know you watched just as

much as I did, so what’s really going on here?”

“I don’t want to go!” I’m loud enough that

Alice flinches, and the two girls sitting beside us turn their heads in our

direction. I pull my bag out from underneath the table and start zipping it up.

“And I need to get to class.”

Alice watches me, shaking her head. “This ain’t it,

Matty.”

“What’s not it?”

“This.” She waves her hand at me. “A couple weeks

ago you were all over this group, texting this Nick kid all the time, going to

therapy, staying out late. And this week all of that’s gone? You get back to

the room earlier than I do? Spend more time studying than I do? Read the

school newspaper? And I know you’re not sleeping.” She shakes her

head again. “This ain’t it.”

“You get mad at me for not taking school seriously enough, and

now I’m taking it too seriously?” I scoff. “A couple weeks ago I

came home crying, too. Is that what you want?”

“Of course not. But…This week you’re a zombie. You

know what you need?”

I stand up and sigh. “You gonna say Jesus?”

“No.” She points at me. “You need

homeostasis.”

“Did you just… biology me?”

“Sure did.”

I falter, no comeback in sight. In the end, I give up. “I gotta

go,” I mutter. I pick up my tray and leave, ignoring the look of

disappointment on Alice’s face.

That night I lie in bed with the window open, twisting my hair and

listening to the shouts and conversations on the busy sidewalk below. Old East is

close to the north perimeter, so I suppose every week we’ll be able to hear

the undergrads leaving the campus grounds and heading to the main drag for the bars

and clubs. For a moment, I wonder if I’ll hear the Legendborn. Maybe they’ll go back to the biergarten to celebrate the end of the

Trials.

I make myself imagine the gala, even though it hurts. A grand room,

hundreds of people in formal wear. A stage. When I imagine Nick in a tuxedo and bow

tie, I curl into a tight ball of want on my bed. I lean into the vision to remind

myself of the loss. I see him. Tall, handsome, and—for a short while, a quick

moment, a heartbeat—mine.

On the other side of the room, Alice’s snores are light and

even. I know she’s right. I don’t have homeostasis. I don’t have

equilibrium, no matter the stimuli. Patricia knew it, saw it, and wanted nothing of

it.

My agony has a hunger, I’ve discovered. It doesn’t want

the truth. Not really. It just wants to feed itself sorrow until no other emotion is

left.

My father calls before eight on Friday morning. He knows I

don’t have an early class on Fridays, but he rarely calls me before noon,

especially this close to the weekend when his shop is busiest.

“Dad?” I say, holding my phone to my ear as I pull on a

pair of jeans.

“Hey, kiddo.” I half expect to hear the heavy clink of a

dropped tool on concrete and the high-pitched whirr-whine of a pneumatic wrench, but

there’s nothing like that. “You busy?”

“Nope. My first class is at ten. What’s up?”

“Come have breakfast with me. My treat.”

I chuckle. “If only.”

“Naw, kid. Meet me downstairs and bring your books.”

I freeze. “You’re here?”

“Yep. Sittin’ in the lot.”

“… why are you here?”

“Oh, just in the area.”

It’s a four-hour drive, and if he’s here, that means he

took off work. No “in the area” about it. I close my eyes and sigh.

“Alice.”

“Is a good friend,” he finishes with a warm laugh.

“Better hurry before one of these meter cops gives me a ticket.”

My father has worked with cars his entire life.

Starting in the shop before moving up to manager ten years ago. He still gets into a

repair every now and then; it shows in the ever-present gray-black line of grime

under his short nails and the faint grease fingerprints on the upholstery of his car

door. He’s my height and stocky, and if he’s not in the shop polo and

khakis, he’s in a tracksuit and a cap. His skin is a deep, earthy brown the

color of fallen pine needles. When I open the passenger side door, he smiles, and

his entire face rises until his eyes tilt up at his temples.

“Seat belt.” His eyes flick down to my waist and then to

his side mirror as we pull out of the drive. Black and blue striped tracksuit today.

White cap with a blue Tar Heel.

His car smells like home. I expect to feel the twinge of pain in my

chest, and I do, but it’s chased by warmth.

The Waffle House is thick with the smell of processed syrup and

stale coffee. Mostly empty booths line the wall to our left, and a mottled gray

counter runs down the right. The quiet murmurs, the sizzle of the griddle in the

kitchen, and the low jukebox music remind me that there’s life outside UNC.

The woman behind the counter barely glances up when we enter.

Dad leads us to the empty booth that looks the least sticky. The red

cushion backs hiss and sigh when we slide in, and there’s a constellation of

crumbs strewn across the creaky table.

A waitress strolls over, one hand deep in her black apron and the

other clutching a pair of stained menus. “I’m Sheryl. I’ll be

takin’ care of you today. Here’s a menu. Can I start y’all off

with some drinks?” She tugs a notepad out and waits, watching us from

underneath a black visor.

Dad flips his menu over once, then hands it back to her.

“Coffee, please. Black. And I’ll have a waffle with city ham and

smothered and covered hashbrowns, large.”

“How ’bout you, sweetie?”

I hand mine back too. “A large orange juice. Pecan waffle with

regular hashbrowns, smothered, covered, and peppered, please.”

Dad waits until Sheryl’s on the other side of counter before he

sits back and looks me full in the eye. The silence is interminable. The kind that

makes everything said afterward a thousand times louder.

I avoid his eyes and inspect the condiment collection at the edge of

the table. It’s the usual suspects: A1, Heinz ketchup and mustard, salt,

pepper, and a glass sugar dispenser heavy enough to double as a free weight. I

wrinkle my nose at the Tabasco bottle; Texas Pete or nothing. Thank goodness

there’s a small bottle of it at the back.

“You gonna make me pull it out of you?” My father’s

voice is low and measured, slower in person than on the phone. It releases that part

of me that I’m always holding tight at school, even if what he’s saying

makes me shift uncomfortably in my chair.

“You bribin’ me with hashbrowns so you don’t have

to?”

“Yep.”

“That ain’t right.”

“Life ain’t fair.” His tone sharpens. “You

gonna make me ask again?”

I swallow, hard. “No, sir.”

He sniffs, nodding a thank-you to Sheryl when she drops off our

drinks. My lower lip trembles. My chest tightens. I don’t want to lie again. I

can’t. But I can’t put him at risk by telling the truth. The hands of

the Order—and my mistakes—are still clenched tight around my neck,

squeezing when they want to, suffocating me. The tears I’d held back since

I’d heard his voice on the phone fill my eyes now, and I look down at my

orange juice to hide them.

“Bree,” he says softly. He reaches a weathered hand out to

me across the table. I shake my head, refusing to look at him. “Look at me,

kiddo. You can come home if you want. I’ll move you out today, but it better

not be because that dean got you scared.”

I stare at him, gobsmacked, while Sheryl deposits our food.

“What?”

“Alice says you been going hard with school, not acting like

yourself. I didn’t send you here so you could run

yourself into the ground. I heard the better-than-you in that man’s voice.

Just don’t want you doing all this because of him.” By the time he

finishes, Dad is smearing butter into his waffle’s squares in angry, hard

strokes.

My father has never gone to college himself. He’d never gotten

the chance to, not really. But now I wondered if he wished he had, or if he’d

tried—and met his own Dean McKinnon.

“That’s not it,” I mutter. “I can handle

classes, and the last time I heard from the dean was the day he called

you.”

“Well, what’s got you down, then? Was it therapy? Cuz we

can find you someone new.” He cuts a bite of waffle and sticks it together

with a piece of city ham. Before he puts it in his mouth, he gestures at my plate

with his fork. “Eat your food ’fore it gets cold.”

I pick up the Texas Pete and sprinkle it on my hashbrowns while I

think. Then, a question comes. “Did Mom ever talk to you about

Grandma?”

My father’s gray-flecked bushy eyebrows rise, and he sighs

heavily, sitting back in the worn booth. “Not much. Your grandmother died when

she was young. Eighteen or so, I think? So she was gone by the time your mom and I

met.” He looks out the window, eyes going distant. “I could tell her

mother’s death weighed heavy on her, you know? Real heavy.”

That surprises me. I knew the facts about my grandmother: she did hair

in a salon in Texas, where my mother was raised. She didn’t have any siblings

herself. She died from cancer. I knew about the woman, but I rarely saw my own

mother’s pain from losing her. “She never said anything.”

He smirks as he reaches for the Texas Pete. “It didn’t

come out like that. Came out in how she raised you.” He chuckles, tapping the

Texas Pete bottle until it half empties onto his hashbrowns. “I didn’t

notice it at first, but she had these nerves that started up when you were, what,

ten? Eleven? You’d do a sloppy job cleaning your room or forget to take out

the trash—didn’t matter, what it was, she just got on you for it. You

remember.”

“That’s just… parents, though?”

He shrugs. “Black parents been pushin’ their kids hard for

decades. My parents did it. I know your grandmother did it too,

but your mom took it to another level. She tried to control it around you, but in

private?” He whistled. “Anxious, rattled. Sometimes even straight-up

scared. Had nightmares about you getting hurt or kidnapped. A few years ago it

started taking longer and longer for her to calm down. One week when you were

thirteen, you left the milk out on the counter overnight, remember that? It took

three days for her to let it go. That’s when I finally told her, I said,

‘Faye, she’s a kid! She’s gonna mess up!’ She’d say

she just wanted to get you ready, make sure you could handle yourself if we

weren’t around.”

My chest tightens. Did she know?

My father reads my expression. “I think she was scared

she’d leave you early, just like her mom left her.” He inhales sharply

and draws his shoulders back, and I know we’re both thinking the same

thing.

That she was right.

My hands wipe at the tears traveling in quiet streams down my cheeks.

She knew what this is like.

He stares out the window, voice heavy with grief and regret. “We

weren’t raised with therapy and all that. Not somethin’ Black folks did

or talked about. If you said anything, you got sent to the church—” He

sighs, shaking his head. “Anyway, when you applied to Carolina, it was like

the dam she had inside… just broke. And all of it, every fight, every worry,

came out on you.”

“Because she never wanted me to come here.”

“Or maybe she just wasn’t ready to let you go and got mad

at you for forcing her hand. But that fight wasn’t your fault, Bree. And it

wasn’t hers, either. All of that stuff your mom was holding back,

hiding… It’s why I wanted to make sure you started seeing somebody soon.

So you could get some peace, maybe head all of that suffering off at the

pass.”

While my father takes a sip of his cold coffee and grimaces, then

signals for Sheryl, I look at him with new eyes. He’d done all of this

thinking and planning and hoping for me , because of the pain he’d

witnessed in my mother. Her death had sent him on his own mission to save our

family, and I’d never noticed.

I’d never taken the time to notice.

After Sheryl refills his cup and moves on, I ask,

“Why didn’t she move us away from here? Then I’d never even know

about this school.”

“In some ways, I think your mother couldn’t stand

Carolina, but she loved it something fierce, too. Said no matter how she felt about

that school, she never could get it out of her system.” He shrugs. “You

woulda found out about her graduating from here eventually. Maybe applied anyway,

just because she did.”

I take one of the too-small waxy napkins from the metal dispenser.

“I think she was right, anyway,” I whisper, and wipe my nose.

He looks up from blowing on his coffee, startled. “What

now?”

“About me not being ready,” I explain.

His eyes sharpen, and he clunks his coffee down. “You got that

wrong. All wrong. And I thought you were smart. You’re wrong, cuz she was

wrong. It was never about you not being ready, kiddo. It was always about

her.”

I set my jaw stubbornly. “Stop trying to make me feel

better.”

He fixes me with a stern glare. “That’s the truth.

She wasn’t ready to let you face the world. But you been

ready, kid. She made sure of it.”

He shifts in his chair to dig into his jacket and pulls out a small,

square pocket Bible. I recognize the worn, cracked brown leather and the gilded

golden edges immediately. It’s my mother’s. The one she carried with her

everywhere.

“Flip to the back.” He hands it to me and I take it,

pushing my untouched plate of food aside to clear a space on the table.

“Probably not something she meant for anyone to see, but…” He

shrugs. “I love her, and I miss her, and…” His eyes fill with

tears, and he squeezes them and lets out a breath. “I think she’ll

forgive us for snoopin’.”

I open the Bible with shaking fingers. It feels like I’m

touching something intimate and private, and I am. Personal Bibles, even though

I’ve never owned one, always seem mystical. Like the longer someone carries

one, the more their spirit lives in the pages. As I flip through the thin,

small-print paper, her smell wafts over my nose: verbena and lemon, mixed with a bit

of leather. The last section is blank, for notes. On the very last page, in curling

script and dated just last year, is a small note.

Lord, she is already stronger than I ever

was.

I worry her challenges will be just as powerful.

I worry that I am running out of time.

Please, protect her and give me the strength to let her

go.

“Got something else for ya too, kid. It’s in the car. Be

right back.” My dad puts his napkin aside and shoves out of the booth. I nod

and stare down at the Bible in my hands, letting the gift of her words wash over

me.

My mother had carried so much pain from her own loss. Maybe the exact

things Patricia said I had inside me: traumatic grief, PCBD grief. Then, after I was

born, it became anxiety. Maybe she’d had the feeling like she could explode.

Maybe she’d had my fear and fury. And she hid it from me as best she

could.

Just knowing that we have this in common, knowing my feelings are an

echo of hers, is a revelation. It makes me sad that she suffered. It makes me wish I

could talk to her about it. It makes me want to tell her that I understand.

I’ve been chasing the hidden truth for so long, and now I find out that one of

her truths already lives inside me. It makes me feel closer to her somehow, and

right now, that feels like enough.

When my dad slides back into the booth, he’s laughing under his

breath. “I thought about maybe donating her clothes. You know how many clothes

she had. And shoes, my God.”

I smile. “Tall order. You might have to take a few trips to the

donation center.”

“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “Bringin’ myself

to do it’s another thing. Rich Glover down at the shop lost his wife last

year. He says that once you get rid of their clothes, that’s when you know

they’re really gone.” He shakes his head. “Anyway, I was in the

closet the other day, and I found this. Thought you might like to have

it.”

He hands me a square blue velvet box. I recognize it immediately: this

is where she stored her golden charm bracelet. She’d only ever had two charms

on it—one with my name and one with my father’s. It wasn’t one of

her nicer pieces, but it’s the one she seemed to love the most. Even now, the

smell of her in the velvet is strong and alive, like she’d never left. It

overwhelms me, bypassing any rational parts of my brain and

zinging straight to memory. It pulls at a weekend of shopping with her at the mall,

unearths the sensation of her hugs, sinks me down into her lap when I was little,

rushes me past every single one of her cool hands on my forehead when I was sick. I

move to open it, but he stops me. “Open it when you get back to your

room.”

I eye him. “So I’m going back to my room? You’re not

gonna tell me not to study too hard?”

“You can study hard, but only if that’s how you want to do

it.” He gives me a wry smile. “No matter what you do, you gotta live

your life, kiddo. You gotta be in the world. That’s what she would

want you to do.” He reaches across the table to take both of my hands in his.

“Don’t make your life about the loss. Make it about the love.”