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special brand of acute misery, my head hurts with such a vengeance that I think I’m going to be sick.
    I roll onto my back, hanging my head over the side of the bed as Morrissey sings, “So you go, and you stand on your own and you leave on your own.…”
    On your own.
    Alone
. It’s how I always feel lately. Alone or out of place. And now it seems a song understands me better than anyone on the planet does. “How Soon Is Now?” is the saddest, most painful thing I’ve heard. Worse than the day my father died. Like an infection that will never heal.
    Crippling loneliness. The certainty that you don’t belong. The suspicion that maybe you never will. I hang my head and wait for a stream of sickness that doesn’t come, feeling ancient as I listen to the rest of “How Soon Is Now?”—ancient and empty—and then I slink downstairs and bury my head in my mother’s shoulder as she stands at the kitchen counter chopping carrots. She swivels to fold me into her arms, rocking me wordlessly for what could never be long enough.
    I pull away first. Both our eyes are a messy pink because she misses my father too. Only whatever’s wrong with me isn’t just about my father. My tears now aren’t solely for him but I can’t say that to my mother.
    “Your grandfather’s coming for dinner on Saturday,” my mom says, sniffling back the rest of her sadness.
    Saturday
. The night of Corey’s party. I’d nearly forgottento talk to my mom about it for the second night in a row and when I open my mouth to ask if she’s okay with me going I’m honestly not sure whether I want her to say yes or not.
    Just before dinner on Saturday my grandfather asks many of the questions about the party that my mom forgot to pin me down on earlier and I have to call Seth to get Corey’s phone number and address to hand over to her. “What class did you say you share with the girl you’re going to the party with tonight?” my grandfather pries as we sit at the kitchen table, him occupying my father’s spot.
    This is another detail my mother may have honed in on if she were feeling better but there’s a lot on her mind. Sometimes I think the constant support of her friend Nancy and my grandfather are the only things really holding her together. That should make me more patient with my grandfather’s questions and it probably would if I’d grown up around him, but aside from the last few weeks my memories of him are sparse.
    I frown at my mom directly across from me, wishing she’d make him stop, and then plunge my fork into my lasagna. “History,” I mumble. If my mom knew there was a guy involved she might have wanted to meet him. I made things easy for all of us by leaving that part out.
    My grandfather scratches the end of his nose and scrunches up his eyebrows. “Do you know many of the other kids who will be there?” he cross-examines.
    Mom lays her right hand on her father’s arm. “It’s okay, Dad. Freya will be fine. She knows she can call me if she needs to and you’ll be home by midnight, right?” Midnight was my party curfew in Auckland and Mom turns to me for confirmation.
    “For sure.” I bob my head, grateful for her intervention. “If not earlier.”
    “I don’t think I want to go to parties when I’m older,” my sister claims, her eyes sullen and both her elbows on the table exactly like they’re not supposed to be. “Teenage parties always look dumb.”
    “That’s just from the movies and TV you’ve seen.” Annoyance creeps into my voice because Olivia has a habit of saying stupid things just to get a reaction. “You’ve never been to a real teenage party so how can you have a clue what they’re like?”
    My grandfather laughs and when I shift my gaze to him to figure out why, he remarks, “Typical sibling rivalry—one says left and the other says right.”
    My head twinges right behind my eyes and I set down my fork and rub my forehead with two fingers. I haven’t woken up with a headache