Sheila closed her eyes. “You know what? I can still see us, sitting there. I’m looking at my mother’s kitchen right now.”

“In your mind’s eye,” I told her.

“Exactly.” She took a deep breath. “Our mother said, ‘Jesse, this never happened. We never sat here tonight, and you never said those words. Do you understand?’ And then she stood up from the table. After a second, our dad got up, and then Mission stood up, too. And all three of them walked out on him. I stayed up all night with Jesse. He cried, mostly. I did, too.”

“But what did she mean? When she said it never happened? I don’t get it.”

“It meant Jesse had to choose, Bea. He had to choose between himself and the people he loved.”

It hurt, hearing that. I was pretty sure nothing like this had ever happened to Dad.

“So that’s why he didn’t call off the wedding? Or tell anyone else that he’s gay?”

Sheila said, “I told Jesse over and over—that I loved him, and that I would be there, no matter what. I told him that we could go talk to Ellie and her family together. But it wasn’t enough. I wasn’t enough.”

We heard Mom’s keys in the door. Sheila leaned over and squeezed my fingers. “Some people would probably think it’s wrong for me to be telling you this, Bea. But you might as well know right now that there are people who will try to make you choose between who you are and who they want you to be. You have to watch out for those people.”

“Hello, gals!” Mom said. She looked happy.

“Fun night?” Sheila called to her.

“Yes!” Mom said. Her cheeks were pink and she was wearing her nice coat.

“Ooh, I love your hair pinned up like that,” Sheila told her.

“But what about now?” I said quickly. “Mission might be different. Maybe we should tell him about the wedding.”

Sheila stood up. “Forget about Mission, Bea.” And she went to give Mom a hug.

—

I put my medicine on very carefully that night and tried not to scratch in bed. I laid my arms outside the covers exactly the way the doctor told me to, straight down on either side of my body. “Pretend you’re a little princess,” the doctor said. I remember Mom laughed.

Sheila made it sound simple, like everyone has one real self. But what if I didn’t? Or what if my real self was no good? I kept imagining Angelica’s face, half like usual, half not working right. Sometimes I felt like that on the inside, like I knew how I wanted to be, but it didn’t match up with how I really was.

I closed my eyes and sent Mission a message: Don’t come.

Definitely Maybe