Sam

by Allegra Goodman

He also says if you don’t talk to strangers you won’t meet anyone.

She looks all around, and then she looks at her dad, even though she knows him by heart.

A ship is a metaphor. It’s a dream. When your ship comes in you can do anything. You can live in a tent. You can walk around the world. You can climb mountains. Someday he and Sam might climb the White Mountains. Money is one thing, but you can be rich in other ways—like magic. Magic will show you what’s invisible; it will dissolve material things.

“Magic makes you question what you used to believe and believe what you were questioning.”

“What are you studying?” “Oh, you know. Living without magic.

But they are wrong. Sam is a lonely molecule.

“Were you ever in love with the wrong person?” Mitchell looks surprised. “Sam, what’s going on?” “Nothing!” “Is no news bad news?” “Dad, stop!” No one else comes in. They sit alone there in the sun. “Usually I was the wrong person,” her dad says.

:(

It’s more like it’s okay, you didn’t break my heart. Try knives. Try torches. My dad is a professional.

It’s not like she holds a grudge. It’s self-defense, because the sadness and the pain come from seeing him.

“Yeah, that’s how you can tell you’re an adult,” her mom says. “People start thinking you know what you are doing.”

She should have called him, but she did not. She should have talked to him, invited him, forgiven him, but she did not. She treated him like he was dead—but she did not understand what dead meant. She knows now because it is too late. That’s what dead means. Too late for everything.

You turn the page, and, nothing personal, but you keep turning. Or you rip the pages out.

“I don’t know anything, and I don’t believe anything, but I keep going anyway.”

Justin is used to it. He and his mom were close when he was little and then they fought, but now they’re in a kind of truce.

When Beth starts lecturing, he says, I know what you think, Mom, and she stops talking.

Maybe it’s just that her mom knows her too well. “That’s what I would do,” says Courtney, “but you’re not me.”

And I’m going to be fine, because you know why? You know my secret weapon?” “Determination?” Courtney waves that away. “I have my whole life ahead of me.”