Girls in Pants - Ann Brashares [5]
“Okay,” he said.
One day in the early spring when Lena stayed home sick from school, she watched a young woman on a daytime talk show who’d written a book about being adopted. This woman had never met or been contacted by her birth mother, and yet she spent her whole life wishing and hoping her birth mother would find her. She talked about how she didn’t want to move from the home where her parents had first adopted her. She didn’t like to take long trips. She always left explicit forwarding instructions when she moved. She made sure her phone was listed under her own name. She left her little trail of bread crumbs. She wanted to make sure she could be found.
Since then, Lena had thought about this woman many times, and she wasn’t sure why. She didn’t dwell on it. Minds worked in weird ways. Like how Lena always thought of Ritz crackers when she shaved her legs. Who knew why? And did it even matter?
But now, as she lay on her bed, filling out forms for school in September, Lena thought about the woman on the talk show again. She filled out a roommate questionnaire and she kept flashing on the woman’s sad gray eyes. She filled out the dorm preference sheet and she saw the woman’s twitching lower lip.
And as Lena lay back on her bed and put her hands over her face, it finally dawned on her. This woman reminded Lena of herself.
Without even realizing it, Lena had subtly resisted the idea of going away this summer. Even a week away from home made her feel slightly unglued. The thought of moving to another city in September, thrilling as it was, was also a source of agony.
Lena wanted to leave home. For one thing, she was ready. For another thing, since her dad had forced Valia, his widowed mother, to leave her beautiful Greek island and relocate to suburban Maryland, the Kaligaris house had been full of tension.
Lena looked forward to RISD. She wanted to be an artist, she was almost sure of it. Her art class this summer was the single joy in her life, apart from her friends.
And yet. And yet Lena didn’t want to go. And the reason was that she didn’t want to leave the place where Kostos could find her. And on a deeper level, she didn’t want to put more distance—in time or in space—between now and the time when he’d loved her. She didn’t want to become a different girl from the one whom he had loved.
The phone rang and Lena snatched it up before Valia could get it and yell at the innocent caller.
“Hello?”
“Hi, it’s me.”
“Carma. Hi. What are you doing?”
“Getting dressed. I had another waxing fiasco. What are you wearing?”
Lena cast her eye at the clock. She was supposed to meet everybody at the senior party in half an hour. She was bringing Effie as her date, because she had no other date and because Effie was spocking on some senior guy or other.
Lena then cast her glance on her open closet. She had no excitement in getting dressed. Her wardrobe had two categories: the clothing she had worn with Kostos—filled with memories—and the clothing she hadn’t—empty. She didn’t want either.
“I don’t know. I didn’t pick yet.”
“Lenny, it’s a big night,” Carmen cajoled. “Get dressed. Wear something great. Put on makeup. Do you need me to come over?”
“No. I’m all right.” She didn’t feel like setting Carmen loose in her closet.
“Don’t wear that khaki skirt,” Carmen warned.
“I’m not,” Lena said defensively, even though it was exactly what she had planned to wear.
Unfortunately, Lena’s wardrobe represented her life. It was binary, like a computer with its universe of zeros and ones. Lena had two settings: 1. Thinking about Kostos. 2. Avoiding thinking about Kostos.
Lena deeply empathized with the adopted woman on the talk show. Lena too had been abandoned by the person she thought loved her best of all. And without meaning to or wanting to, she harbored a passive, unquenchable hope that someday he would come for her.
Where there is great love, there are always miracles.
—Willa