It’s nice, thinking about the future as something that won’t entirely suck.

But things are different now than they were when I filled out my college applications.

March 5. I haven’t told my parents. Not Dave, when we had our session yesterday. Not my friends. I don’t know how to slip it into the conversation at school. I guess it should be as simple as Guess what? I got into MIT. Hooray-hooray! But whenever that pause happens, when I could make the announcement, I choke.

If I tell people, they’re all going to watch me for my super-elated reaction. And I’m not Beaker; I’m no great actress. I’m happy I got into MIT, I am. But I don’t know if I can do happy at this stage in my life. Not in public. Not at the level they’re all going to expect.

Still, I bring the acceptance letter with me, tucked in with the Ashley letter in the front pocket of my five-subject notebook, and every now and then I open the notebook and stare at the envelope and think of all the promises collected in this one place, all the hope.

Maybe that’s it, what’s holding me back from telling people—the hope.

I’m not used to hope anymore.

It’s hardest to hold the MIT news inside me during calculus. We’re learning how to find volumes of rotations using integrations, and Steven is up at the board writing out these gorgeous equations, his handwriting so much neater than mine and so much more careful, which is why Miss Mahoney called him up there, so he could show us the answer the way a painter might create a still-life that looks like:

“So,” Miss Mahoney says when he’s nearly finished. “Let’s say Steven is a glassblower, crafting a vase. He could use this method to understand the different shapes he’s making and the amount of water the vase would hold.”

“Yeah, Steven,” El snickers. “You’re a glassblower.”

He grins and shrugs one shoulder. “It’s a job.”

“What kind of vase are we talking about, here?” pipes up Beaker. “What color of glass? I’ve always been fond of blue glass. Can you do a blue glass vase for us, Steven?”

“All righty,” he says, and turns back to the board. “Blue glass coming up.”

The class laughs, and we understand it’s a tad lame, but I’ve always appreciated the way Miss Mahoney tries to give us real-world applications for the things we learn, so it’s not just math in a box. She wants us to see the beauty in the equations, how absolutely cool it all is, but she also wants it to be real for us. It never fails to amaze me, in these moments, that the numbers explain something tangible and true about life. The numbers make sense of things. They make order of a disordered world.

I want to say thank you to Miss Mahoney. For giving me that. For trying to make it fun and not just “neat,” unnecessary knowledge.

I want to say, Hey, Miss Mahoney, I got into MIT.

Then I want to tell Beaker. And El. After all the daydreaming we did. MIT is a real place, and I am going there. I’m going there.

I want to tell Steven.

But I can’t find the words.

Words were never really my forte.

17.

WHEN I GET HOME I FIND MOM’S CAR in the driveway. That’s twice now that she’s been home when she’s supposed to be working. I go inside and call for her, but she doesn’t answer. Some part of me goes into panic mode, and I run to her bedroom, holding my breath until I can confirm that she’s not sprawled across the bed with her arm trailing off the mattress, a spilled bottle of pills scattered on the carpet.

Where did I get that image, I wonder, the go-to scene of fatal overdose that you always see in movies? Why did my mind go straight to the worst possibility?

Because it happened, I answer myself. The worst possibility already happened once. It could happen again.

“Mom?” I yell.

There’s no answer. I check Mom’s bathroom, Dad’s office, and the kitchen without success, which gets the adrenaline flowing again.

She could be out with a friend, I reason. Then I come across her purse on the kitchen counter, her phone inside it. Her coat is slung across a kitchen stool. Everything here but nothing in its proper place.

“Mom!” I scream. “Mom!”

I stand still for a minute, holding my breath, listening. Then I hear it.

Music. Very faint music.

Coming from downstairs.

I find Mom in Ty’s room. Led Zeppelin is pouring out of Ty’s clock radio: “Stairway to Heaven,” a song that he and Patrick and Damian used to play on a constant loop back in middle school, again and again and again until Mom and I could have sung the lyrics in our sleep. Mom is standing with her back to me, hands pressed to a Kevin-Durant-making-a-slam-dunk poster on the far wall.

My heart sinks. She’s taking down his room.

It was going to happen at some point, I suppose.

“Hi,” I rasp. “I was looking everywhere for you. Did you hear me calling?”

She shakes her head. Her small shoulders are trembling. She’s crying again.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“I’ve been better.” She takes a deep breath and then smooths the poster down, pinning a corner with a gold thumbtack.

She’s putting it back up, I realize. Not taking it down.

I scan the room and spot a large cardboard box near the bed that contains more of Ty’s stuff: his basketball jersey, a mason jar of fifty-cent pieces he collected from the tooth fairy, a tie he wore to church sometimes, a belt, his baseball cards.