She hands me a mug. It’s eleven at night, but the curtains block out the moonglow. Mama paces, and I brace myself for the lecture about boys and staying out late. I close my eyes, and I see the walkway outside, hear the quiet song of streetcars and crickets. The crisp near-autumn air, the rumble of Gabe’s laughter. Our hands dangling between us like pendulums.

  “Laila Saab,” Mama starts, and I remember how much I loathe my name. Difficult night. Difficult girl. Difficult through and through. “What exactly do you want?”

  She’s stopped near the kitchen, and I blink, taken aback. “Like, for dinner? Isn’t it sort of late for that?”

  “No, no.” Mama gives me a hopeful smile. “Next year. After you graduate. Have you decided what you want?”

  The room suddenly goes cold; my hands tremble around the teacup I’m holding. I don’t like this. I don’t like where this is going. But those words won’t come. “I . . .”

  “You’re smart, habibti,” Mama says like a plea. “You’re a smart girl. You can be anything you want.”

  But Jad can’t, I want to say.

  “Your father and I were talking,” she tells me. At the mention of Baba, I glance toward his empty study. He’s been on a business trip for days, somewhere up north. He always orbits to cold places at this time of year. Late summer in Reves is wrought with scars.

  Mama goes on, “We’ve been saving. And Laila, we think you should apply. Wherever you want. You loved music, remember? Singing? Or something else. It can be literature, medicine. Your choice. ” She takes a breath. “We just want you to pick someplace. Anyplace. And we’ll follow you.”

  I stare at her, wide-eyed, mouth open. It doesn’t compute. “What?”

  “We think,” Mama says, “it’s time to leave Reves.”

  A great many thoughts cross my mind. There are a million ways for me to argue, to disagree. But the only thing I can manage is, “M-my garden.”

  It’s Mama’s turn to be surprised. “What?”

  “What about my garden?” I ask. “I need—I need to watch over it. I need to take care of it. I need to do a good job.”

  Mama’s eyes redden. “Laila. It’s fine. Someone else can watch it. I’m sure . . . that Briar boy would.”

  I shake my head, not listening to her. “What’ll happen if I go? If I don’t pay attention? I need to watch it well. I need to, Mama. I do.”

  She wraps her arms around me, touches my cheek like I’m glass, porcelain, bone—and I break. “I was supposed to look after him,” I say. “He couldn’t swim. But I left him all alone!”

  Mama rocks me back and forth, saying, Hush, hush, but I can’t. I can’t do anything but cry and let everything out. I’ve tried so hard to be small, to be nothing, hoping that all this anger and sadness and rue would vanish along with me. But it’s still here. Like a sickness, it grows and grows, even though my brother never will. He’ll always be that little boy who was afraid of water, just like I’ll always be the sister who lost him to Reves, where dreams are laid to die, and how can I leave him again?

  How can I live with myself if I do that?

  Days, weeks, months pass. I send applications out to colleges on Mama’s watch. I don’t know how I feel about any of them. Undecided, I check over and over. It’s perfect, fitting for a mess like me. Undecided.

  Eating has also become a chore. The garden keeps reminding me, Eat, eat, but I forget. Or I let myself forget. A glutton for punishment—that’s what they call difficult girls like me. Baba returns with sweet gifts, and Mama cooks me beautiful dishes: chicken with pine nuts, flatbreads dipped in spices and olive oil, steaming rice rolled in grape leaves. All my childhood favorites. But if you’re never hungry, you never long to be full, and that’s the trick to yearning, I think. If you don’t want something, if you don’t pine for it, it won’t help you, but it won’t hurt you either. You won’t lose it.

  You’ll remain whole.

  Winter arrives, along with letters. Frost clings to the air like a diamond cloak, lulling my garden to sleep.

  There’s one letter I’ve been musing over for days. Congratulations, it says, and though it’s not the first to say so, it’s the first to stir something within me. The brochure is as glossy as the others, and the promises of success and ambition seem just as airy and thin. But I keep going back to it. And I don’t know why.

  I turn eighteen on a Thursday in January. I eat cake. One bite, two.

  Then an idea comes. I place an extra slice in a plastic container, leaving my own half-finished. I breathe in, out.

  And I go.

  Gabe smiles when I walk in. The shop is empty, and I feel my ears go red when I hold up the cake and say, “For you.”

  He peeks inside and beams. “Strawberries and cream? Excellent taste.”

  “I try,” I say, taking a seat.

  Rather than joining me, however, Gabe grins even wider and says, “I have something for you too.”

  I anticipate the teacups he brings from behind the counter. What I don’t expect is the peony in his grip, pale as dawn. My blush deepens when he leans in close, so that the birthmark on his neck lines up with my lips. He tucks a strand of wavy hair behind my ear along with the flower and pulls back.

  “There,” he says. His voice is a hum. “Happy birthday.”

  The heat spreads over my skin, full force. “Thank you,” I murmur to my feet. Gabe lets out a bashful laugh before sitting down next to me. I train my eyes elsewhere, in search of a distraction, as Gabe stirs our drinks for us.

  Laila Saab, I warn myself. Don’t be a fool.

  While glancing around, I notice the lack of other flowers. Gabe has a bunch of succulents plotted around the register. A wall of seeds to choose from. I smell soil and earth, and the quiet hint of nectar.

  My eyes linger on the sign by the entrance: Briar Rose. Gabe’s grandmother’s shop. When I first met him, she had just passed, and I could tell how much he loved her. Her name was Rose Briar. Like a fairy tale. She was too good for this town.

  The way he said it, full of rue, made me want to tell him, So are you.

  In Reves, everyone knows of everyone, but it doesn’t mean you know-know. I knew about Gabe Briar, but I didn’t know him until that morning in December when I saw him sniffling in the snowy graveyard, placing a single lily on a frozen plot.

  I was going to visit Jad. But when I saw Gabe Briar, Reves’s resident fallen star, I went straight to him without a second thought.

  And that was how we began. Gabe and Laila, two kids with dim pasts and futures. We became fast friends, though it wasn’t all sadness and graves. It was tea; it was pitching wrong-handed in the Briar Rose parking lot. It was me shyly singing him one of my favorite songs. It was the whispers about us in school, in the town churches, in my parents’ hushed study.

  It was the garden that reminded me, day in and day out:

  Eat.

  People have plenty to say about us, together or apart, and I think they think I’m worse. Gabe never could’ve chosen his fate. But me? I’m the reason Jad is gone, the reason my family is a mess. I let myself go hungry all those years. There’s no one to blame but me.

  I wonder. I wonder if Jad blames me.

  I wonder if someday Gabe will blame me too. I contemplate this as I unfold the acceptance letter I’ve been obsessing over like an itch, an infatuation. Hulm College of Liberal Arts. Where your efforts reward you and happiness grows.

  I show it to him. He hands me my tea, then reads. Once, twice. He smiles. He’s always smiling at me. “Congratulations,” he says, and it sounds so sincere.

  “I—” The words get caught in my throat, thick as honey. “Should I go?”

  Something in his face changes, quick as a switch. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because,” I say. “Because . . . it matters to me. What you think.”

  Gabe shakes his head. “But this isn’t something for me to decide, Laila.”

  I set down my cup next to the uneaten cake and the crinkled letter, and I place my trembling hands over his. He feels warm, solid. I’ve never done this, and I wish I had sooner. I really, really wish I had sooner.

  “It’s in-state,” I tell him. “I mean . . . my grades aren’t wonderful. But they want me. You—Gabe. You’re so smart. You could go anywhere. It doesn’t have to be Hulm. It could be close by. Near Reves. It . . . it’s not too late. It doesn’t have to be just me.”

  Silence.

  Between the two of us there have been many silences, but none like this. Gabe’s expression is one I’ve never seen on him. His eyes are glassy, his mouth downturned. He’s looking at me like he doesn’t know me. Like he’s seeing all the ugly Lailas inside of me for the very first time.

  “Laila,” he says. “Please don’t.”

  “Will you think about it?”

  “There’s nothing,” he says, his voice strained, “to think about.” He moves his hands from under mine. “I just don’t . . . I didn’t know. You took me by surprise.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t think,” he says quietly. “I didn’t . . . I thought, when you kept coming here, that you saw what I saw. A beautiful place. A good life. It’s not what I wanted. It’s not what I dreamed about. But it’s mine, you know? And I thought you felt the same.”

  I look at him, and he looks at me, and it’s wrong. He’s got me all wrong. This isn’t pity or some cheap request. Because I’ve seen Gabe—really seen him—tracing baseball diamonds on countertops, staring outside whenever cars or buses pass, holding out his garden-dirty hands and imagining something else. I’ve seen him content within these four walls, and I’ve seen him caged, and I believed the truth was someplace in between. I believed it was . . .

  With us.

  “I just don’t want—” I don’t want this to end. “I thought. We could—be.”

  The together is unsaid, but I can tell Gabe understands. He clenches his jaw, his body taut. Around us, potted plants sway in the blare of the heater. The scent of spring, fresh and Eden-green, permeates the room. Outside there are trees and houses and roads, dipped in sugarlike snow, and there is a graveyard that holds my brother and Gabe’s grandmother, and another sunken space, deep beneath my ribs, where the happiness has struggled for so long to grow.

  Here and now, Gabe says, “I like you, Laila,” and I freeze. He says, “I like you. But I don’t control you. I want you to choose whatever makes you happy. So please, do the same for me.”

  He turns, and I realize that this is it. My cue to go.

  But I don’t want to. I want Gabe with me, and I want to move on, and I want to live, and I want to love, fiercely and deeply, like Jad did in his short span of time. I want so much, want to dream again, to unbend all my old yearnings and start anew. I want to figure out the right thing to say and the right thing to do, but sometimes there is no right thing. Sometimes you just have to choose and have faith in that decision.

  But I’ve never been good at any of that.

  “Good night,” I say.

  Goodbye, I don’t say, even as I turn to leave.

  I’m okay, and that’s what makes this so much worse. When you’re a mess, no one expects anything of you. But I’ve been so good. There’s beautiful, beautiful stuff I’d be throwing away if I screwed up now. Because I’m okay.

  And it’s so, so hard to be.

  I haven’t seen Gabe in weeks; I don’t have an excuse to anymore. Winter eats away at both me and my garden. Outside there’s a single rose left. Mama points it out, and I pretend not to care. But it hurts me to look at it. A lone flower amid all that death and rot. It just wants to live. It just wants to be. When I started that garden, I made a promise. I will help you live. I will protect you as you protect me. But I lied.

  What do I know about keeping things safe?

  Maybe I was wrong about those magic seeds. Because no matter how many I plant, no matter what I do, nothing seems to grow anymore. Shouldn’t magic be able to tide everything over through winter?

  Shouldn’t this be enough?

  But it’s not. It has never been enough. The hunger I clung to like penance, the hurt I carried like pride. Gabe and the garden and the acceptance I’ve stowed like a gem. I traded away my will and strength long ago, have leaned against one pillar after another. But nothing has changed.

  There is no spell for healing. No easy fix.

  I want you to choose whatever makes you happy. Those words should’ve changed everything for the better. I should be delighted. Instead I trudge to and from school, quiet as a ghost, biding most of my days alone. Deadlines loom near, and Mama asks me over and over when I’ll send a response to any of the colleges.

  I tell her I don’t know, because I don’t.

  I really, really don’t.

  Miss Reed, my guidance counselor, corners me in the hallway on a Friday afternoon. Class is out, and there’s a long weekend ahead, but I don’t have any plans. Sleep, maybe. Whatever passes the time, I suppose.

  “You,” she says, pointing—rather rudely, I might add. “Miss Laila Saab.”

  I shrug. “That’s me.”

  “I have a bone to pick with you,” she says, and I almost snort, because who talks like that? A bone to pick? Really?

  It’s like an episode of true-crime TV. One second I’m in the hallway, and then I’m being spirited away to an empty classroom. I watch with no small amount of horror as Miss Reed shuts the door behind us.

  My fears are dispelled, however, when she says, “I see you haven’t chosen a school yet, Laila.”

  I’m a bit taken aback, though I don’t show it. She isn’t wrong; I haven’t picked. I’m undecided, and even if I do go somewhere—anywhere—I’ll remain the same. Everybody waxes poetic about these big choices, these moments and musings that can rule an entire life. But what about mistakes? They’re choices too, and they take only a second to make. I would know. I do know.

  “Laila?”

  The three-way discussion—Miss Reed vs. me vs. my brain—in this gym-sock-scented classroom has become too much. So I try to nod my way out of it. “Yeah. You’re right.”

  “According to the school portal, you’ve been accepted to most of the places you’ve applied.” She bites her lip. “You mentioned Hulm during one of our meetings. Are you still interested?”

  I shuffle my feet. This is, well, a lot, considering the fact that five minutes ago I was on my way home to nap. “I, uh. Maybe?”

  Muted sunlight gleams through the window. It’s pale, watercolor, half-bright and half-asleep. It’s funny—in winter the sun is only part of itself, all light and no warmth. That heat goes elsewhere, across the world, unbottled and free. Emotions are the same, depending on how you work with them. Those unspent feelings, those parts of you that remain hidden and dormant—how do you let them out? A fight? A love? A dream?

  How do you stop being half-you? Half-asleep?

  Miss Reed takes a hesitant step toward me and pulls two glossy stubs out of her sweater pocket. Gingerly, she holds them out.

  “Bus tickets,” she says, and when I don’t move, she goes on, “Hulm is a few hours from here. There’s a tour this weekend for accepted students, transportation and housing included. They sent us a letter. I thought you might want to go.”

  I blink at her. My face is probably blank as a slate, because she takes my hand in hers and opens it, pressing the tickets into my palm. “It’s your choice. I just wanted you to know.”

  She lets go of me and ambles to the door. I thank her, or at least I think I do, because she winks on her way out.

  “It’s your choice,” she repeats from the doorway. Then she’s gone.

  Instead of going home, I go to see Jad. It’s been a while since I’ve visited, and the guilt gnaws at me. I should’ve come on my birthday. He would’ve liked the cake.

  By the time I make it to his grave, it’s nearly dark. I use my phone light to guide me and send a quick message to Mama about Hulm. I wonder what she’ll say.

  Then I sink down in the dirt. I face Jad, and I apologize, like I have many times before in the four years he’s been gone. I don’t want his forgiveness, though. I want him to be here. But both are impossible now. Even if every other wish of mine in this life comes true, this will never, ever be granted to me.

  “I miss you,” I say. “Every single day. And I’m scared, Jad. That I’ll miss you even more if I go.”

  The wind blurs past, and I wait. For a sign, for guidance, for Jad’s laughter to comb through the air like music. Yet none of that happens. The stars above remain still, refusing to align. They glint down like eyes, neither cruel nor kindred, and a ruined emotion stirs within me, full of grief and shame and hunger. I choke on the shape of it, both barbed and beloved, before it escapes in a single name:

  “Jad.”

  I know he won’t hear me, but I can’t stop. “I don’t want to leave you.” I bring a hand to my heart, clutch at the fabric of my coat. “I don’t want to forget. If you asked me to, I’d be miserable for as long as I live. I’d be nothing.

  “But, Jad, I—” The confession bursts out, along with a sob. “I want to be happy.” My gaze floats up to the stars, then down again. “I want that for both of us. Maybe not how we used to be. But I want us to be happy.”

  My entire body rattles as I heave in a deep, unsteady breath. “I can’t do it without you, so please, tell me. Is that okay?”

  I don’t get a response, though I wasn’t fool enough to expect one. I could only hope. So when I finally look up again, my heart stammers when I see it, dimly in the moonlight.

  A clipped dandelion, splayed in the grass. I pick it up with shaking hands. There’s a ribbon around its throat, a red Briar Rose tag hanging from the bow. I remember a cool spring morning outside of Gabe’s shop, when he told me, There’re two languages everyone in the world can understand: the language of music and the language of flowers. They’re magic.