“What happened to you, dad?”

He looked up, searching the clouds. Looking for shapes or answers or an escape, I wasn’t sure, but searching for something. “When a child dies, a parent loses a part of themselves,” he said. “Your whole world ceases to exist and you’re nothing but a shell of the person you once were. Your mom has dealt with it in her way, me in mine, and you in yours,” he said, lifting his hand off of John’s gravestone and rising. “Your mom hates the world, I avoid it, and you try to save it.”

“Tried and failed,” I muttered, not about to count the ways.

“I know why you try to save the world, baby,” he said, extending his hand down to me. “Because you’re trying to atone for John. To atone for the guilt you feel for it not being you that day.”

I stared down at the dates of John’s life. A life cut short because I was being a brat and made my older brother deliver dad’s lunch. “I’ve saved nothing.”

“You saved yourself, Lucy,” he said, his forehead lining. “You saved me. That first year, the only thing that kept me getting out of bed in the morning was you.”

I stared at his outstretched hand, not able to accept it. “I didn’t save John.”

“Oh, sweetheart. John wasn’t yours to save,” he said. “I didn’t save him. God didn’t save him. How much longer are you going to let the guilt of the past hinder the present?”

I looked up at him, grayed, wrinkled, and sad. He’d aged thirty years in the span of five. “I could ask you the same.”

“I know,” he said, extending his hand again. “But you’re stronger than me, my Lucy in the sky. You’re stronger than you credit yourself.”

I took his hand, letting him lift me up. “You are too, dad,” I replied, leaning in and kissing his temple. “You are too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

The last couple days leading up to graduation were packed with senior breakfasts, cap and gown distribution, cruises around the lake, and yearbook signings. I’d chosen not to participate in any of it. Despite dad’s and my “pep” talk at the cemetery, I couldn’t seem to accept his words as truth. Fathers were meant to encourage and believe their daughters were infallible creatures. I knew dad believed in what he’d said to me, but it was because, as a father, he was incapable of looking at me in an impartial light.

I was his baby girl. His Lucy in the sky. That was all he saw when he looked at me; he couldn’t see what I’d become. But he was right about one thing—I couldn’t save the world. It wouldn’t change what had happened and it wouldn’t bring John back. However, having accepted that, I no longer knew what to do with myself. My life felt kind of empty and upside down, and that was no recipe for celebrating with a bunch of people I’d known less than a year and wouldn’t be in contact with in a week.

I’d been silent in my assigned metal folding chair, waiting to get this thing done with so I could put this year of my life up on a shelf and forget about it. The rest of the three hundred plus graduates were trickling in, everyone hugging and smiling and gushing about how they’d stay friends forever and would never, ever lose touch.

It was all way too much mush and bullshit for me.

A few more minutes passed and the majority of the seats filled in. I bit at my tassel. Fifteen minutes down, two hours left to go of blah, blah, blah, our future is bright, blah, blah, blah, you can be anything you want, blah, blah, blah.

Blah.

One of the last remaining stragglers weaved through the row a few in front of mine. Sawyer was moving a bit awkwardly, like something wasn’t working quite right, or something like his hand had been glued to his dick. I didn’t even try to help the laugh that burst free.

A few heads turned, including his, but as soon as he saw it was me, his head snapped away like I’d just clocked him in the jaw. I’d kissed that dirtbag. I’d done more than just kiss him. That was enough to make a girl swear off men forever. Especially a girl about to head to college where I’d heard the guys who’d been dicks in high school turned into Grade A a**holes, and the few good ones were already taken by the time fall rolled around. Outlook in the man department was bleak, so I’d just pretend there was no department with that title. Better off alone and marginally happy than coupled and positively miserable.

Principal Rudolph appeared from behind the burgundy colored curtains and headed for the podium. This was going to be painful. I actually felt bad for my parents, who were both in attendance, smiling and waving at me every time I glanced in their general area.

“Students, parents, faculty,” he began, going for the whole ominous thing that just wasn’t working for him, “this is truly a time to celebrate the past, the present, and the future.”

What was it with these graduation speeches? Was there some law they all had to be the same, old, tired thing?

“I’d like to take this time to—” Principal Rudolph froze in place, his mouth open and his eyes wide. Making his way onto the stage, Jude jogged across the stage, holding out his hand to Rudolph.

He gripped the mike harder, shaking his head, so Jude snatched it right out of Rudolph’s death grip. I hadn’t seen Jude since Sunday morning, and everything about him was different. He looked like a man at peace. A man who’d uncovered all of life’s mysteries. A man who still, despite all the revelations and words, made my heart throb.

“Excuse me for just one minute, everyone,” Jude said, stepping around the podium. Heads were turning, looking to their neighbors to see if they were just as confused. “No surprise I’m not here speaking as a valedictorian today, but I think all of you are surprised I’m graduating at all, so I’m interrupting this little borefest. Since we started the year with me ripping the mike out of Principal Rudolph’s hands, we might as well end it just the same.” A hushed round of laughter rippled through the graduates. “And I actually have something important to say, unlike the rest of these genius bastards down here in the front row.”

Everyone was either whispering to their neighbor, or trying to pull their mouth from the floor, or glaring at the stage like this was inexcusable. However, Lucy Larson was smiling. Seeing Jude up there in his cap and gown, about to graduate, moving on to some future that involved football warranted a smile. I was happy for his successes.

“This year wasn’t like any before it,” he began, looking out into the crowd. “I learned more about myself and life and even love than I have in the entire seventeen years before.”

A dozen heads turned and looked back at me when Jude said the “L” word. I wriggled down in my chair. I had no idea where Jude was going with this whole graduation, soul-bearing speech, but I knew it would mean embarrassment, in the best case scenario, for me.

“I learned I’m not the piece of shit everyone likes to believe I am. The piece of shit I believed I was,” he said as Principal Rudolph ran a hand over the sheen of sweat forming on his forehead. “Someone told me that again and again and again, and it took me the better part of the year, but I think I finally believe her.” His eyes flickered in my direction for the shortest second. “Because I don’t need to believe where I’ve been is where I’m headed. And I don’t need to believe that one tragedy can shape the future,” he paused, clearing his throat. “Only I can do that. I see that now.”

Another pause, and now the room was pin-drop quiet. “I also know that in the process of me learning this, the person who taught it to me lost her belief in me, and maybe even herself, and the whole damn world.” His fingers clenched around the microphone, no longer looking around the crowd—he was looking straight at me. “I could go to jail a million times and nothing would be worse than what I did to her. She taught me how to love—she even gave me chance after chance to show her that I was capable of it. And I failed her every time.” His face wrinkled into a partial wince, but he didn’t look away from me. “I love you, Lucy Larson. And I’m sorry I had to ruin everything we had to recognize that. And I get why I lost you and I’ll never get you back.”

My eyes closed; it was too much. The confession, the emotion behind the words, everyone in the auditorium looking at me, everything I was feeling.

“You saved me, Lucy, and I didn’t return the favor. And I’m sorry,” he said, his voice low. “I just wanted you to know.”

Opening my eyes, I made myself look at him as he backed away from the stage, handing the mike back to a red-faced Principal Rudolph. He was smiling at me, the one of Jude’s that was reserved for rare occasions, and I returned that smile.

In the midst of everything being very wrong, something right was pushing its way through. Something was rising up from the ashes.

Lifting his hand, he waved before turning and walking off the stage, leaving his past behind and getting after that bright future thing.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

My skin didn’t have a chance to brown before I was packing up and moving across the country. I’d passed the short weeks of summer dancing, reconnecting with my parents, and dancing some more. It was the kind of summer that could be considered close to perfect. Except for one thing.

Or, more like, one person.

Jude checked out of the boys’ home the morning after graduation and no one heard from him again. Of course more than a few rumors circulated, but after being a victim of the rumor circuit, I vowed I’d never give any credit to another. Some said he was at summer camp for some big NFL team as the biggest paid free agent in history. Some said he’d skipped the country after holding up a bank down south and shooting one of the tellers. And some said Jude had an utter and irreversible break with reality and threw himself off of Highman’s Bridge.

I liked to believe that, wherever he was, he was happy and, at last, at peace with himself and his past.

It was something I’d wished for myself after graduation and had made some progress towards. Happy was a stretch, but I leaned more towards the happy than the unhappy spectrum, and that was a victory. My past was still there, every morning and every night, ready to haunt me if I let it, but most days I didn’t let it. I remembered John for how he was meant to be remembered, not for how he’d died.

And as for saving the world, I hadn’t quite let that whole annoyingly altruistic idea go. At initiation, I’d signed up to be a dance teacher at a studio in the city where low income kiddos didn’t have to pay to learn dance. An alum had even set aside a fund so they didn’t have to buy their ballet shoes and tights. So I danced, and I taught, and I learned.

But something was still missing, or maybe I was missing something. Either way, a hole ached in me that I had to fight to get past every day. Most days I won that battle, engaging in classroom discussions, smiling at my new friends at the right moments, but other days the ache went too deep for me to keep up with the pace of life.

It was a good life, and I felt guilty for thinking it, but I knew it could be better.