I don’t blink, and the steps start to melt in front of me. Dripping, oozing. They run together until they’re no longer recognizable.

Deep in the recess of my mind, there’s a realization that none of this is real, but I let that knowledge stay tucked away. In this moment, I’m where I need to be.

I’m transcending something.

I remain motionless, watching the melting continue.

I don’t know how long I sit here, but it seems forever. With each passing minute, the hum deepens. Grows louder. Tells me it needs to be fed.

Finally, I talk. Offering the stairs what I think they need. Just two words.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, and my voice is like cannon fire. The hum protests, as if unwilling to accept my apology.

“I’m sorry,” I repeat, a bit more forceful. The hum digs into my brain.

I wait a moment, take a breath, hold it for as long as I can, then release.

“I’m sorry,” I scream, and after I do, the hum shatters into the millions of words of which it’s comprised, each flinging off into the outer edges of my mind. Whether real or imagined, the explosion causes a sharp pain to the front of my brain and I wince against it, closing my eyes for the briefest of moments.

When I open them, the stairs have returned to their normal imposing and solid state. There is only silence. A deep, dark, and lonely silence, the sound of a shipwreck sleeping for centuries within the deep silt of an ocean floor.

The silence affirms what I’ve known all along.

I can’t change the past, and my apologies go unheard by those who need to hear them. I can’t do anything to change these basic facts.

All I can do is pull my knees up, lower my head, and cry.

So I do.

Seventeen

October 13

Two Weeks Later

Fifteen more minutes in my shift, then off to pick Max up from school.

I got a job.

I didn’t need to. My father has made it very clear that as long as I’m back at home, I don’t need to worry about frivolous little things like earning a living. But I felt a need to contribute something. My self-worth might be measured in pennies, but it’s not bankrupt.

I’m working twenty-five hours a week at Tuli’s, a boutique grocery store on Union Avenue, five minutes from Middleton Prep. When I was growing up, this used to be a mom-and-pop hardware store, but the demands of creeping affluence (not gentrification, since the area never sank to a depth where gentrification could occur) necessitated an independent grocery store catering to Bury’s choosiest. Essentially a smaller and pricier Whole Foods, Tuli’s is owned by Nathan and Joanne Carnes, a middle-aged couple from Concord. The Bury store is their third in New England, and given how busy this one is, I imagine more are on the way. The Tuli’s logo is the face of the Carnes family dog, a goofy, wide-eyed mutt.