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walk?
    All I want
    is to go upstairs to Brian’s room.
    I want to open his window
    and sit on his bed,
    but I can’t.
    It doesn’t feel right
    with all these people here.
    Without Brian here.
    I want
    to say something
    to Brian’s friends and family,
    but I don’t.
    What would I say?
    “Hello, I’m the girl
    who was in love with Brian.
    Oh? You haven’t heard of me?
    That’s because we weren’t really dating.”
    Instead, I leave with Marissa.

On the way upstairs to my bedroom,
    I pause to look at the photos on the wall.
    There’s one of my mom’s parents
    on their wedding day.
    Both of them died before I was born.
    My mom says I look like my grandma,
    but I don’t see it.
    There’s a photo of my mom
    the day she graduated nursing school.
    There’s one of me as a baby,
    sitting on a man’s lap.
    My whole hand is curled
    around one of his fingers.
    You can’t see his face—
    just his hand and his crotch.
    This is my father,
    Robert Rollins,
    and it is the only picture of him
    on display in our house.
    He left when I was only a year old.
    My mom almost never talks about him.
    She says that the last thing
    they ever agreed on was my name.
    She wanted Anna.
    He wanted Leah.

Every day at Sacred Heart Hospital,
    my mother helps people heal.
    She gives them comfort.
    She listens to them.
    She sees
    them.
    But I do not think
    she sees
    me.

This time,
    when I walk past my mom’s room
    she is in bed,
    back from the night shift.
    She rolls over when she hears me pass
    and groggily says,
    “Annaleah, did you go
    to that boy’s funeral?”
    I nod and say, “With Marissa.”
    As I walk over to her bed she says,
    “Glad to see you and Marissa
    are talking again.
    It’s been a while.
    I hope that whatever came between you
    isn’t a problem anymore.”
    She takes in and lets out
    a deep breath before continuing,
    “Do you know how rare it is
    for a healthy seventeen-year-old boy
    to die from IHSS?”
    I do.
    I looked it up online.
    “Well, that was nice of you to go.
    This is such a small community.
    I’m sure his parents were glad
    that so many people turned out.”
    She shifts over,
    then pulls back the covers for me.
    “Wanna get in?” she asks.
    I slip in next to her.
    We’ve never done this.
    I wonder if she knows
    that I was lying when I said
    that I only knew Brian in passing.
    I wonder if she’s waiting for me
    to tell her everything,
    but I don’t.
    I can’t.
    My mom falls back into sleep
    easily, but I don’t.
    Instead, I think of my father.
    He lives in Los Angeles.
    He is remarried
    to a woman named Lauren.
    They have twin seven-year-old girls,
    Lisa and Sage.
    My father is an engineer.
    He likes to golf.
    He is training for a marathon..
    He also likes to cook,
    but is terrible at it.
    Lauren teases him,
    says his best meal is buttered toast.
    I tell myself these things
    when I miss my dad.
    They are a lullaby
    that calms me to sleep.

I wake up a little while later
    and find my mom, freshly showered,
    in my room, stripping my bed.
    “What are you doing?” I ask.
    “Laundry.”
    “Stop.”
    She doesn’t seem to hear me
    because she’s still tugging
    the sheet off the bed.
    “Stop.” I say it louder.
    She stares at me, confused,
    as she shakes a pillow out of its case.
    “Stop!” I scream.
    “You’re never here.
    You never do anything mom-like.
    Why are you starting now?”
    She drops the pillow to the floor
    and kicks her way out of the room,
    wading through the pile of linens
    like high tide.
    “Fine, Annaleah.
    Do it yourself.”
    I fall into the pile
    and tears roll down my cheeks.
    I raise a handful of cotton to my nose.
    Can I still catch a bit of Brian?
    Can I still smell him
    from the last time he was in my bed?
    All I can smell is me
    and maybe a little bit
    of my mom’s shampoo in the air.
    I go to my dresser
    and pull out a T-shirt
    that Brian left here weeks ago,
    a drawing he gave me,
    a postcard from the Metropolitan Museum of Art,
    and the article about Brian from