Page 70 of To the Moon and Back

STEPH CONTACT LIGHT

We exhausted ourselves. The four of us talked for nearly three hours, with breaks to carry strange combinations of food from the kitchen to the living room. Macaroni leftovers and cookies. Frozen, microwave-steamed vegetables and a jar of pickles. A single biscuit cut in fourths.

At one point, midway through someone’s story, Kayla leapt off the couch, shouted “the light!” and raced to our old bedroom.

She came back with her film camera, which I didn’t think she’d touched in years.

She took a picture of the coffee table, every inch of it covered in cups and plates and little pieces of food.

My bandaged leg rested on it, and beside me Felicia was half-asleep.

Her head was on my lap, and over her shoulders was the old blue quilt.

We hadn’t realized it was our grandmother’s.

(We’d only just been told it was stolen, by our mother on the night she left home.)

I didn’t have my sister’s eye for light, but I could tell it had shifted in some way. It made me stand up and stretch and look out the window. There were leaves on the ground, the first I’d seen of the season. Fall, with the start of school, had always felt like the new year.

My mother set me up on the couch, my leg propped up on a small pillow. She gave me a hug and left the room. I called Nadia.

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Why are we whispering?” she whispered back.

“My whole family is napping. I woke them up at the crack of dawn and made them talk through our deepest family trauma. I’ll fill you in later?”

She laughed. “So, you called, but you can’t talk.”

“I told you I’d call, though,” I said. “So I’m calling!”

She laughed again. “Okay. I like the follow-through. How’s your shark bite?”

“I love it. I think it makes me look tough. Yours?”

“My mom thinks it’s gonna scare away Daryan. She won’t stop ordering me turtlenecks from Lands’ End.”

I smiled. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Say hi to Imane and Jim for me?”

“Uh, okay?”

“Okay. Cool. I miss you.”

“Bye, Steph.”

“Bye!”

I pulled my laptop into my lap and leaned back. I started working on what I hoped would be, if I could get it right, an email to Della. Calling Nadia when I had said I would, as her friend, was a very small thing. But it had made me feel like it wasn’t too late for this. I could try.

The email took every free moment when I wasn’t with my family. That afternoon, that night, and again the next morning. I finished it in the kitchen, while my sister and mother enjoyed some new just-them routine on the front stoop.

If I was going to say anything to Della, to bring this all up again even in her head, it couldn’t be for me.

I didn’t want to write to her in a selfish way, not to find her or claim her or keep her.

I wanted to write to her like an old friend.

She had known me before. When I knew nothing of anything that matters to me now.

Della,

I’m sorry. For wanting you and chasing you and trying to pin you down.

For pushing you to throw yourself in with me so quickly.

For all the department lectures and weekend museum trips and conversations about my own godforsaken college major!

—how stupid to want to prove myself during nights we could have made each other laugh or I could have learned more about you or we could have been together, which I always, always loved.

I’m sorry I didn’t ask you—not genuinely—about your parents (all of them), or about that hard time in your life.

When we met, your background was like a story to me, something to learn the beginning and middle and end of.

It kept going, though, your story kept going, and I was only interested in the parts that fit in my life.

The parts that might let me keep you? I’m sorry for thinking “good riddance,” when you lost your faith.

I’m sorry for insisting I was first, for assuming you were second, for believing your dreams were less meaningful than mine.

I’m sorry for that night in our junior year, you know which one, when I said you weren’t really Indian.

I don’t even know what I meant by that, why I tried to cut down what I knew was the most precious to you, the most vulnerable, the most endangered.

Except that I’d seen other people do it—I’d seen the highest court in our country debate “how much” you were of who you are.

I knew it would hurt you, and I knew, in that way, I could win.

I think, back then, people would look at the two of us and believe that I had the more straightforward history.

The hard parts of my childhood had not been featured on the news, and I was ridiculously vocal about where I was headed.

And those same people might think it was a wonder you knew anything about yourself, let alone your Indianness or your queerness or anything else you had to fight for.

I admire you for that fight. For all the different parts of yourself that you held close.

I picture you in those quiet moments from our past. I’d come home from class some days to find you lying on your stomach in the sun outside the house, barefoot, a flowy patterned skirt spread out on the grass.

Your legs crossed behind you, your head at rest on your hand.

Your gaze down, your eyes racing across a page.

You had so many things you were interested in. You were so interesting, yourself.

I picture you now as something like you were then, your hair and face and body maybe changed as mine have, but still with the science journals stacked on the grass beside you, dog-eared and highlighted.

Still with large headphones over your ears, with a planner open to today’s date, with a neatly written list of everything you want to do next.

Purple ink. A graphic novel in your bag, a paperback thriller you’ve read once before.

A jacket folded, just in case. In those moments you were so at peace, so happy to be alone, so happy to be with yourself.

I wish you that, always.

Steph