“So, I want to thank you all for staying in the rain for me. Coffee anyone?”

“My bus will be there in 10 minutes,” Lena replies.

“And I was just waiting with her to congratulate you,” I say.

“We can wait for her bus together and you can join us,” he offers.

“No, I should get home, really.” I’m not eager to get home, but I also can’t be late for dinner so I don’t see the point of going with them if I have to leave 10 minutes later.

“Something tells me he didn’t stay for you…” So, I just decided I don’t like Jen.

“It makes sense that the two of you get along,” Emma comments. “You know, being the two newbies.” Her tone is still really nice, but… the feeling I had before, about power moves, comes back.

Austin rolls his eyes at the girls and gives me a look that says ‘just ignore them’.

“I’ll come!” Jen says.

It’s a very petty thought, but I find her a bit desperate now.

Lena’s bus should be here any moment now.

“So… Do we like Jen?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “If by ‘we’ you mean you’re asking for my opinion, then I would say that we don’t really have an opinion on Jen.”

“She’s into Austin, right?”

“Oh yeah. She invited him to the dance last year, very publicly, and he said yes, because he would never humiliate anyone in public, but they didn’t go together… so read into that what you will.”

“And… do we like Emma?”

Lena sighs. “It’s… I don’t dislike Emma. And I don’t think she dislikes me either. I just think that she feels forced to be friends with me because of Austin and Noah. Everything feels fake, and I don’t know why. I know she’s nice, and I don’t want her boyfriend or her brother…”

“So we really are outsiders, huh?”

“It’s a small place. All of them pretty much grew up together. So some of them will always see us as the ‘newbies’, even if we’re still here in 20 years. But most of them aren’t like that. Noah likes you, even if it’s hard to tell with him sometimes. Austin clearly clicked with you instantly for some reason. I think we’ll all become real friends. I mean, you sort of owe us for turning your hospital room into an actual bedroom anyway.”

She nudges me softly with her shoulder. I see her bus coming down the street, but there is one last thing that must be said before she goes.

“Lena?”

“Yep?” She picks up her bag.

“What Jen said… I was really here for Austin.”

“I know. Look, I would be flattered to be inside your head, but something tells me that it takes more than that to impress you.”

She seems to genuinely believe that I don’t have a crush on her, which is good, and she doesn’t seem disappointed, which is great. But she’s also wrong. Because someone definitely worked his way through my mind already.

My dad is reading the paper in the living room, like every evening. “Hi, Will. How was school?”

I never know how much information he really wants when he asks me that. “It was fun. I went to the baseball tryouts.”

My dad puts the newspaper down and looks at me a bit taken aback. “You tried out for the baseball team?”

“No, I went to support a friend.”

For a second, I am afraid that my father would be disappointed that I didn’t try out. But he actually appears relieved. I think he would have been sad if he had missed such a change in my life.

“I’m glad that you made friends so quickly.” Me too. I’m amazed, really. “Did he make it to the team? Or she?”

“He. Yes, I think so. Honestly, I didn’t get most of what was happening.”

My father has a faint smile which is the best we can get from him lately. “Yes. Baseball isn’t my favorite sport either.” I didn’t even know that my father had a favorite sport. “I used to play lacrosse in high school.” I didn’t know that either.

It suddenly hits me how little I know about my parents. Even before we all stopped talking, I always saw them as parents and not as individuals. But they had lives before me. They had lives before each other.

“Were you any good?”

“Not really. I was on the bench most games. But I liked being part of a team.”

My response gets lost in my throat because something catches my eye. At first, I can’t tell what. And then…

“Where is the picture?”

“What picture?” I can perfectly hear my father’s tone that he perfectly knows what I’m talking about.

“The family picture. Where is it?”

“We talked about it with your mother. A family picture should be of family members, and Peter is… not.”

“Mom let you take the picture down?”

“Her doctor thinks it’s for the best.”

Here we go. The magic words. The doctor thinks. It’s not even the doctor said. For all I know it could be my father’s own interpretation of things. The doctor thinks we should get a change of scenery, so we’re going to move. The doctor thinks it would be good for you to take pills until you’ve dealt with your emotions. The doctor thinks we shouldn’t obsess about what can’t be changed.

I know my father means well, but I think everything would have been much smoother if we just talked about it. At least once.

To be fair, we talked about it before it happened, but none of us had any idea of what life would be like after. And then… I don’t know. Maybe things would have played out differently with Matt too if we had handled the Peter thing better.

It’s confusing and frustrating. It hurts. Maybe “the doctor” is right. I should stick to the pills.