Better Than Perfect by Melissa Kantor

visit my mother at the hospital every day. Apparently she was still fairly dopey from the different medications they were giving her. I couldn’t see why the doctors couldn’t just figure out what she needed to clear her head and ask her if she’d tried to kill herself, but Kathy told me I needed to be patient. I reminded her that patience was not one of my virtues. Oliver finally arrived at some spot in the Adirondack Park with cell service, got the ten million messages we’d left for him, and came home. He went to visit our mom, then met our dad for dinner in the city and stayed with him. Somehow his choosing to stay in the city instead of at the house felt like a decision to align himself against me and Aunt Kathy, and when he called and asked me to have dinner with him and our dad, I said I had plans. He asked me how I was and I said I was okay. I asked him how he was and he said he didn’t know. Part of me wondered if he might offer to stay at the house with me after Aunt Kathy left, but he didn’t. I guess I shouldn’t have expected him to. It wasn’t like he didn’t have a life in New Haven. And school was starting for him soon, too. We promised to talk in a couple of days, but after I hung up, I had the strangest feeling—so strong it was like a premonition—that I would never see him again.
    Friday when I got home the house was empty. I tried to do my SAT homework. Glen, my tutor, was on vacation, but when he came back, he was going to want to see all the progress I’d made while he was away. There was also preseason coming, whichI was totally unprepared for. Out my back window, I could see the pool. It was pristine, shimmering red and gold with the light of the setting sun, and I thought about the pool guy and how he kept coming every week even though nobody used the pool and how he’d keep coming even though soon nobody would be living in the house. The pool guy, the gardener, the housekeeper . . . my house was its own little economy. All these people working so hard to make everything clean and pretty and well-manicured.
    And with all that, my parents still hadn’t been able to be happy together.
    I turned away from the window. The thought of motivating myself to get off my bed, go outside, and swim laps was exhausting, and instead I lay down and tried to get through a reading passage on the creation of the EPA.
    I must have conked out, because the next thing I knew, Aunt Kathy was shaking me awake gently. “Juliet,” she whispered.
    I sat up, sweaty and disoriented. She was sitting on the edge of my bed, smiling at me, and she looked so much like my mother that it hurt to see her. I closed my eyes and leaned back against my pillow.
    â€œYou were really asleep there,” she said, patting me.
    â€œI was having the strangest dream. . . . I was on a boat, and you were there. And Mom. And we’d forgotten something, and I think we had to go back to get it, but I couldn’t figure out how to work the sails. . . .” I shook my head. “I can’t remember.Maybe you weren’t there.” The dream receded, leaving in its wake the sense that I’d done something wrong.
    â€œCome on,” she said, when I didn’t say any more. “Let’s go have some dinner.”
    Downstairs Kathy stood at the counter chopping while standing on one foot, her other foot against her knee, like a flamingo. I sat on a stool, watching her and trying to wake up. “Have you given any thought to my suggestion? About coming to Oregon.” She was leaving Sunday morning. I wondered if she’d made me a reservation just in case.
    â€œI have.” I wasn’t lying, either. I’d imagined packing a suitcase and taking a plane to Oregon with Aunt Kathy. Waking up in the guest room. Going to the high school Andrew and William would go to in a few years.
    â€œAnd?” She dropped the tomato cubes in a bowl and sprinkled some feta