Page 32 of What I Like About You

“No, youdidn’tthink.”

I swallow my words. I don’t know what to say next. Whatever I do say will be wrong.

“You can’t just start taking things that aren’t yours, Hal. You didn’t even ask. You can’t just bust in here like nothing has changed wheneverything—”

He pauses. Blinks once. Twice.

“Just clean it up, okay?”

He turns his back to me and walks upstairs without another word.

I lean forward and press my hands against the counter. All the emotion I’ve kept in since we got here bursts out now that Gramps looked at me like I’m theworstgranddaughter in the world and justleft. Tears stream down my face. Iamthe worst. The real reason it was all in the garage is so obvious now. Gramps literally stripped the house of everything Grams in a matter of months and Ihateit.

My movements through the kitchen turn static. I’ll work on the cover reveal another day. I frost the cupcakes standardlyand put the ingredients away. I scrub the bowls until my fingers prune and there are no more signs of sugary batter or memories of Grams. Scrub until I can convince myself that it doesn’t even look like I used them, not really, and I can forget the broken heart plastered on Gramps’s face.

I can’t.

I dry the bowls and pack everything back intoKITCHEN STUFF.Tears dry on my cheeks as I lift the box and carry it into the garage, back to its spot on the shelf that I now realize is all Grams’s stuff. Cupcakes gave me tunnel vision—because it only now hits me that everything that was Grams, everything thatisGrams, has been reduced to boxes in a garage.

CLOTHES (1/4)

SHOES (1/2)

BOOKS (1/10)

PHOTOS

Someday, we’ll all just be boxes in someone’s garage.

TheKITCHEN STUFFbox nearly crashes to the floor, my hands shake so violently. I can’t breathe, my chest is in knots, and I’m so hot and I’m gasping for air, gasping for anything to make this stop.

It doesn’t stop.

I am going to die, I think.

I’ll only be three, maybe four, boxes when I die,I think.

“Hal?”

In an instant, Ollie grabs my hand and pulls me away from the boxes, toward the steps of the garage.

“Breathe,” he says.

I squeeze my eyes shut. Listen to Ollie.

Breathe.

Ollie holds my hand tightly and lets me breathe my way through this. And I do get through it. Slowly my muscles relax, my breath steadies, and I’m not going to die—at least not today.

The first time I had a panic attack, Ollie was nine. Our uncle had died suddenly—I didn’t know him well, but the idea that he was just gone? The idea that somedayI’djust be gone? It was too much. I cried so hard I couldn’t speak, or breathe. I thought,This is what dying is, isn’t it? It’s not being able to breathe—which only exacerbated the situation.

Ollie found me on my bed, sobbing my brains out and hyperventilating. He didn’t say anything. He just climbed into my bed and held my hand until it passed.

He’s held my hand through every panic attack since.

The tightness in my chest eases and I let go of Ollie’s hand. “Sorry,” I say. “I thought I was—”

I don’t finish my sentence because whatever I thought I was, I clearly wasn’t.

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