Chapter 31: Keeping Score

I turned thirty on a Saturday, and I woke up before the alarm.

The window was open an inch.

Nobody had put a hand on my wrist to check my pulse.

Sam was asleep on his stomach with one arm flung across my side of the bed.

I lay there and listened to my own breathing.

It was slow and a little rough on the out-breath, and it was mine.

I got up quietly and opened the drawer in my grandmother's dresser.

The white card lay at the bottom, face down, where I'd left it.

It had been there six weeks.

I picked it up, sat on the edge of the tub in the bathroom, and turned it over.

It was a recipe card, the lined kind, with a printed title at the top that said FROM THE KITCHEN OF.

Dylan had crossed that out.

Under it, in his neat hand, he had written a list.

1. What do you want for breakfast? 2. What did you want to be at ten years old? 3. What music do you play when nobody is home? 4. What do you want?

There were no answers.

He had left the space under every question blank.

At the bottom, smaller, he'd written: No answer needed. I'm learning how to ask.

I read it twice.

I sat there until the tiles were cold through my pajamas, and then I put the card on the windowsill, face up, in the sun.

I wasn't ready to answer it.

But I was no longer afraid of what was on the back.

When I came out, Sam was awake and dressed, with a paper bag in one hand and a ridiculous grin.

"Happy birthday," he said.

"What's in the bag?"

"Look."

Inside was a thin hardcover book with a green cover, a ruled grid inside, and two sharpened pencils held with a rubber band.

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