Page 18 of April Flowers

“Are you sure?” Noah asked, reaching for the pot of coffee to pour himself one. “Wait, should you be drinking coffee?”

Avery ignored him. “I don’t want to sit around all day again. I can feel my brain melting.”

“Then let’s do something!”

Noah had been asking Avery to leave the house all week long. During the sunny Monday afternoon, he’d invited her to go for a walk. During the rainy Tuesday evening, he’d invited her to goout to eat downtown. Yesterday, a friend of his suggested that Noah and Avery hit up the Whaling Museum, but at the mere mention of a museum, Avery looked at Noah as though he had three heads.

Now, she wanted to go to school?

As Noah waited for Avery to get dressed and ready, he pondered what it might mean and decided that simply put, Avery wanted to be around kids her own age. She wanted to meet other sixteen-year-olds and kick-start her brand-new life as a teenager in Nantucket. She wanted to put the past behind her.

He hoped it would be healing, that she’d make friends and strike up a new hobby. She didn’t seem like much of a sports person, but maybe there was an art club or a jazz band or something. He’d seen her flipping through a book once. Maybe there was a reading club.

It was twenty minutes till the start of the school day when Avery and Noah reached Nantucket High. As other teenagers streamed inside, dressed in thick coats and running to catch up with their friends, Noah glanced at Avery’s face. What did she think of this new cast of characters? Would she remember some of them from four years ago? He guessed she would. But would they welcome her back with open arms? Or did she seem like a “city” kid now—too different to be accepted right away?

Noah’s heart burned with anxiety, or maybe it was the toast with butter and jam, and the extra cup of coffee he’d drank. He wished he’d taken an antacid tablet.

Signing Avery up for her junior year was easier than he’d thought it would be. Sitting quietly beside her, he watched as Avery selected an honors English class, a painting class, a geometry class, and others from the very long list the school counselor, Mr. Marcum, had pulled up on his computer. From her previous years in Nantucket, the counselor still had a file onAvery, and he requested a transcript from Avery’s Boston school that, miraculously, landed in his email inbox fifteen minutes later. When it was over, Mr. Marcum had another student come to give Avery a tour and help her find her first class. Avery hardly glanced at Noah before she left the office. Feeling anxious, Noah listened as Avery and the other student talked about lunchtimes and homeroom until their voices faded out.

Mr. Marcum folded his hands beneath his chin and looked at Noah. Noah was accustomed to being in this office, as he was called in frequently to chat with at-risk youth and other kids who’d spent or were about to spend serious time at the juvenile detention facility. But because now he was serving as the “parent,” he felt jittery and put on the spot.

“It’s come to my attention that Avery was taken to juvie last weekend,” Mr. Marcum said.

Now, Noah really felt like he was in trouble. But he didn’t want to make things worse for Avery.

“That was my fault,” Noah said. “It was a communication error. Avery thought she was going to meet me in Nantucket, and I thought I was going to pick her up in Boston. Everything got convoluted.”

It was a blatant lie. Mr. Marcum knew it just as much as Noah did. Yet for some reason—maybe because of previous professional respect—Mr. Marcum didn’t call him out on it.

“Her mother recently passed?” Mr. Marcum asked.

“My sister.” Noah nodded. Again, he felt a flush of heat over his chest. “It was really sudden.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Mr. Marcum said, although his eyes echoed with curiosity, too.

Noah had no plans to tell him how his sister had passed.

“I’m surprised she’s back at school already,” Mr. Marcum said.

“She wanted to come,” Noah said proudly. “I think she wants to find a way back to herself. You know how it is.”

Mr. Marcum remained quiet for too long. And then he said, “And you, Noah? Will you be resuming your after-school program soon?”

Noah’s mouth tasted like cotton balls. He understood why Mr. Marcum needed to know. There were kids at stake and teenagers who needed him. But when could he realistically return to work? When could he realistically shove aside the pieces of his broken heart and keep going? He didn’t know.

Avery was superhuman compared to him.

“Two weeks,” he said because it sounded like a reasonable amount of time. That was probably a lie, too.

“Great.” Mr. Marcum got up and extended his hand across the desk. “We hope Avery will have an easy transition.”

“She’s a good kid. Smart as a whip,” Noah said.

“I’m sure.”

Noah left the school and drove back to his house as fast as he could. He wasn’t sure why, but he had a terrible feeling, a sickness that crawled through his gut. He tried everything to distract himself: watching television, making an elaborate sandwich by nine forty-five, which was far too early to eat a sandwich, lifting weights, and going for a walk. He even spent fifteen minutes looking at the available dogs on the humane society website, sure that adding a pet to his dynamic with Avery would make her happier and their lives together easier. He was delusional.

Just when he thought he might jump out of his skin, Samantha Coleman called.

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