The next day, Dad met with my mother over lunch. And as normal of an activity as it seemed for people who used to be best friends, the way she left him heartbroken and alone made me wary of any contact between them.

When he came back, I anxiously watched all his moves, but he didn't give anything away. He didn't seem to share my frustration over her return and I didn't know how to interpret it.

I didn't want to ask about it either even though I yearned for explanations. I couldn't help but glance up at him from time to time as we ate dinner which made for a pretty awkward atmosphere. His eyes occasionally met mine and he shook his head, amused as if he knew.

"How are you doing, Avery?" he asked finally.

"Quite well. You?"

He seemed to notice the actual meaning behind my question but he did not acknowledge it.

"Good," he simply answered. "Is there anything you want to talk about?"

"No." Then I sighed and it came out. "Why are you so okay with Mom coming back? It's like just another day for you."

"How do you want me to react?" he asked, slowly.

"I don't know." I did know, but I couldn't tell him that. I wanted him to feel angry so that I could rationalize my feelings. I wanted him to feel just as resentful as I did, but he was too much like Riley to dwell on these negative feelings.

I knew exactly how she would react if she were here. I could hear her voice so clearly in my head, as if she really was in there, peeking over my shoulder, and hanging on every word I said.

"That's insane! She's really back. Aren't you curious why she came back?"

I would probably ignore her in response but as usual, that wouldn't stop her.

"Stop acting," she would add, squinting her eyes at my indifference. "You know you want to know." It was as if she were at the table with Dad and me, nodding at his comments and laughing at my reactions, and maintaining the harmony between us with her mere presence. "Do you think she wants to connect with us?"

Us. The word snapped me out of my fantasy because there was no more us. All that was left of us vanished with her like the words on the sticky notes we posted on her wood panel.

"I'm too old to hold a grudge," Dad said and the corner of his eyes wrinkled with an affectionate smile.

For the first time in a while, I noticed that he was indeed aging. Even though he was just about to turn 48, he seemed to be in his sixties. Wrinkles surrounded his permanently-exhausted eyes and his once-glorious hair was receding, reduced to disheveled graying strands.

"I don't want to spend the rest of my life blaming her for leaving. Besides, Becky and I had a good time chatting earlier."

The nickname awoke a bitter feeling in the pit of my stomach that I didn't know I still harbored.

"You know, she wants to talk to you," Dad said and his words sounded cautious like he knew he was navigating slippery roads.

I fiddled with the fork in my hand, desperate for any sort of distraction. I didn't want to see my mother again. I was too afraid she would be able to read pain on my face instead of hostility and grief instead of resentment.

As long as I stayed away from her, I could hold on to the spitefulness that anchored me to the ground and prevented me from floating away from emptiness.

"She's seventeen years too late," I replied and Dad nodded.

He didn't insist, just like I expected. I knew he understood my reluctance to see her, but just like Arson, he probably saw more pros than cons.

Before he could add anything on that same topic, I changed the topic. "Arson said you allowed him to take off his splint. Do you think he's okay now?"

"'Allow' is not the word I'd use. I advised him against removing it and he gave all sorts of arguments about how he had developed a scientifically-proven allergy to the splint." Dad shook his head, but couldn't suppress a smile.

"Scientifically-proven? Is that what he calls his crazy theories now?" I asked and he laughed, but the grave look in his eyes showed that he did not forget about our earlier discussion and unfortunately, neither did I.

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I only allowed myself to think about the incident with Avan two days after it happened.

I was sitting on my bed early the next morning, grateful that it was spring break and I didn't have to go anywhere.

I had quite a few things to keep me occupied. The pile of incomplete assignments had not shrunk yet since the last time I had stared at it, hoping that would do the trick.

I still hadn't fully processed my mom's return and avoiding her had not brought any answers. But most importantly, the conflicted emotions I felt, as I recalled what happened with Avan, had kept me awake.

I remembered the tingling sensations I felt in my heart when Avan kissed my cheek and the hurt when he didn't recognize me. I hated these feelings and I didn't want to know what they meant.

At the same time, I was glad he loved my sister so genuinely that he hallucinated about her when drunk... so genuinely that he saw only her.

Frustrated by the scattered emotions, I covered my face with my pillow and wished that the issues would sort themselves out alone.

I lay like this until my ears picked on a slight tock. As I tossed the pillow away and stood up, I realized that someone was throwing rocks at my window. I pushed up on the double-hung window to open it just as another pebble came flying and hit me square in the forehead.

My teeth dug into my bottom lip so that I wouldn't scream when the pain kicked in. My forehead was a magnet for hazardous objects.

I patted my forehead, looking for blood but there was none. I heard the culprit run around the house to the front and I caught glimpses of the familiar onyx hair. I listened for the bell that came a few seconds later.

Holding my hand down on the aching part of my forehead to keep it numb, I climbed down the stairs to open the door.

Avan looked even more guilty now than he did yesterday night when he realized that I wasn't Riley.

"Does it... does it hurt?" he asked, visibly regretting his idea as I let him in, closing the door behind us.

And the endeavor seemed so ridiculous in the first place that I couldn't hold back my fits of laughter.

He looked a bit confused at my reaction, but he laughed too.

"No, no, it's okay," I reassured him, as the sharp sting on my forehead started to fade. "It's just that, well, this doesn't happen every day."

"I swear, it seemed like a good idea in my head," he said and I chuckled. "I didn't know you were such a light sleeper."

"I'm not. It's just... uh, I had trouble sleeping." I wasn't about to tell him that it was because of him but despite my efforts to play it cool, he seemed to have guessed it.

"About that, that night..." He stared at a random spot behind me to avoid looking at me.

The living room suddenly appeared much smaller and the walls began a slow sweep towards us, closing in on me. I longed to be somewhere where there was more oxygen, somewhere where I wouldn't have to look at him.

"Well, I came to apologize for what happened. Some parts are still blurry in my mind, but I think I got the gist of it. I don't know what came over me last night. I'm sorry you had to see that."

"It's okay, Avan." If I was allowed to drink, maybe I would have done it as well every time I had wanted to simply forget the pain. "Matthew is the one who brought you to my house. I think we can both agree to blame this on him." I laughed nervously, hoping it would return the walls to their regular positions but they obstinately continued to target me.

He smiled, but his expression went back to serious immediately. "Do you want to go for a walk?" Maybe he had noticed the anxious sweat on my forehead.

"Yes!" I said, as soon as he asked, and he gave me a curious glance as we stepped outside.

My eyes instantly searched for small details to keep me occupied as I pretended not to notice he was looking at me. The lawn hadn't been mowed in weeks and if when slightly bent down, my palm could graze the tallest branches of grass. The flowers Dad had so cautiously cared for before were now worn and faded, an accurate depiction of the interior of the house and the people who lived in it.

We continued to walk side by side in silence. I focused on the sun adorning the sky in an artistic jumble of colors. The beautiful rays distracted me from the unpleasant feelings inside of me that I wasn't proud of.

I saw Avan wince from the corner of my eyes and I wondered if he remembered something else from two nights ago. He stopped walking and turned to me.

"Avery," he mumbled more to himself than to me, as if to remind himself never to use the wrong name again. "I'm sorry if I hurt you."

"Don't worry about it."

He cleared his throat as he started walking again. "How do you deal with pain so well?" he asked, and maybe I would have laughed at the irony of the question if it had been in a different context.

Instead of replying to his question, I took a page out of the complex encyclopedia of my previous therapist and Mr. Andrews. "Do you feel like you're not dealing with your pain the right way?"

He smiled at the question and I knew that he understood what I was doing, but he answered all the same. "I think I learned something, two days ago, when I replayed the past year in my mind. I never approached this the right way, so it was a doomed process from the start."

He must have noticed the puzzled look on my face, because he continued, "Every time I thought that I missed her, it was always for the wrong reasons. I wanted her back because of how she made me feel: because it hurt me, because it was hard for me, because she could no longer be with me. All selfish reasons. It's a pathetic rut of self-pity that I don't know how to get out of. If there's ever any right way to grieve, this was definitely not it."

Avan was right, of course. I couldn't step out of myself and stop perceiving this situation from another perspective that didn't include me. Rarely did I think of the terms of her death from a view that wasn't centered around me.

The "I"s and the "me"s, I couldn't get rid of them no matter how much I wanted to. It was all about me, and this mindset would only extend my pain until I overcame it. There it was again, my pain. I could only perceive all things from inside my mind.

This was my world and one of its inhabitants was missing. And all of this bargaining and denying was a pointless chase to get her back or to pretend that she was back.

Because dealing with her death the correct way would force me to realize that I didn't have the control I thought I did.

The control I so badly needed to hold on to.