“But she let Jaime?” I ask.

She is nodding now.

“Did you get your closure?” I want her to say no. I want her to tell me that I’m not the only one here feeling like every breath is a fucking nail jammed straight into my lungs. If this is what love feels like, it’s complete bullshit. I want my money back because Shakespeare was right all along. True love truly sucks ass.

“No.” She bursts into tears. “She barely even told me goodbye. Did you?”

“Not by a fucking long shot.”

The next few weeks are pure torture. The days crawl, time slithers on the walls of a house that’s not empty, but not alive, either. Somehow, all those days add up to a month without Daria. A month in which Jaime comes back, acts like nothing is wrong, and every time he gets a call and it’s from her, he closes the door to his bedroom behind me and shoots me a don’t-even-think-about-it look.

Regretfully, I’m starting to fucking lose it. After caving in to modern society, I open Instagram and Twitter accounts only to find out that Daria is officially not active on any of them. She hasn’t deleted her Instagram, but she doesn’t post there anymore, so the old pictures of her with her cheer team and friends keep me going. I stare at them for hours every day as I do constructive, emotionally healthy things, like figuring out what time zone she is in by making a sheet with all the hours she calls Jaime and Mel.

Yes. About a month after she went away, Daria caved in and started speaking to Mel, too. Bailey always talks as though she’s been keeping in touch with her, too, so I guess it’s just the Scullys Daria wants out of her life, and I can’t even fucking blame her. We stormed into her life and ruined it completely in less than six months. If there were an Olympic medal event for being the biggest cunts, Via and I would have been the pride of this nation.

If my calculations are correct, Daria is still somewhere in the US. She calls very early in the mornings or in the early evenings, which gives me East Coast vibes, but it might be Midwest, too. Heck, maybe she just likes to get up super fucking early, and she is around the block. No one knows. No one will tell me. And I’d be climbing the fucking walls if I hadn’t fractured four of the five fingers on my left hand.

One evening, Jaime sits me down and tells me that we’re going to Notre Dame to check out the facilities, flirt, and say yes. He booked us both first-class tickets and all. I guess that means he is over the fact I had my tongue and dick in his daughter’s privates. Ain’t he a fucking champ.

“I don’t want any illicit behavior while we’re on campus. I catch you smoking, drinking, or fucking—simultaneously or individually—I swear you’ll be finding a different sponsor to subsidize your next four years because it’s not going to be me.” He waves his finger in my face.

I push the brochures across the coffee table and nod.

“Clear, sir.”

“Jesus.” He flings himself back on the couch, throwing an arm over his face. “You’re about as lively as a puppy that’s been run over by every truck in the state. At least try to pretend that you’re here.”

“I’m here, sir.”

“But you’re not present.”

What do I say to that? This bitch is Hare Krishna now?

“And stop calling me sir. You’re like a son to me.”

“I wish you’d stop saying that, sir, since I feel very strongly about your daughter and not in a sisterly way.”

He exhales, levels up, and slaps the coffee table to grab my attention. I’m still the same lax, drooped-over-the-couch motherfucker I was a second ago. Life just seems to have an aftertaste of nothing when Daria is not around, and whoever said time heals was given LSD or something. Because it wasn’t time that healed them. The more time that passes, the more I want to rip my own fucking skin from my body and let my heart pack a suitcase and go looking for her. It doesn’t escape me that I was crushed about Via—but never had the balls to actually go and find her. With Daria, it’s a different story. The Followhills can beg all they want. Come graduation, I’m packing my bag, breaking the piggy bank, and going to look for her.

“Penn,” he warns. I throw an actual pen—the one I’ve been using the past ten minutes to write all the shit about our bullshit trip down—and stand.

“Just give me her number. I won’t call. I’ll text.”

“You’re just making it harder. If you truly have feelings for her, you will let her have her way and not contact her, not go against her wishes while she’s trying to heal.”

“Like you did with Mel, right?” I chuckle bitterly, shaking my head. I make a beeline to my room, but he stands and raises his voice to me. For the first time, ever.

“Penn Scully.”

I turn around, slow-clapping him.

“Whoa. Escalation. You just used my full name. Not all of it, of course. You don’t know my middle name. You’re not my real dad, after all.”

I’m just being a double douche with a side of jerk. I don’t have a middle name. My mother never fucking bothered. And the truth is, even if I had one, my biological dad wouldn’t know it. If he knows the color of my eyes, then I’m the Pope.

“Stop feeling so goddamn sorry for yourself, Penn. She’s the one who has to handle life away from her house, her parents, everything she knows, and start from scratch,” Jaime’s voice booms.

“How is she doing?” I throw the question I’ve been asking for an entire month at him once again. “And please spare me the bullshit answer of ‘she’s handling it.’ Daria doesn’t handle things. She either slays or she crumples. She has no middle ground, and we both know it.”

And fuck, did I love it when she slayed and played with me. She was a sweet torture I’d go through all over again, even knowing how it’s going to end. She doesn’t want me. She made it perfectly clear.

“She’s dealing with it.” Jaime grins devilishly, sticking it to me, and his eyes are mad, sparkling bright blue. Like Daria’s when she’s in her element. “Now, are you going to get your head out of your ass and soldier through this like a man, or are you going to fall apart like a boy?”

“Only if you do something for me.”

“I think I’ve done quite enough for you, boy.” He throws his head back and laughs. But I’m dead serious. When he sees that, he stops laughing and rolls his eyes. Again—like Daria. It’s only now when I look for stuff to remind me of her that I’m beginning to see how alike she is to her parents. How can she possibly think she is an awful person when she is made of two people who took in totally vindictive, awful teenage strays when no one else would?

“You don’t want me to see her? Talk to her? Know where she is? Fine. But I want you to give her this.” I grab my backpack and take out a leather journal, identical to the one Daria had. It wasn’t by coincidence that we have the same journal. Melody gave it to Via the day she gave Daria hers, four and a half years ago. I think—though I’ll never ask to confirm—she wanted both girls to reach the same realization and try to bridge shit together. Much good it did Melody. Via bailed, and Daria went off the freaking rails. I don’t know why I kept the untouched journal. It just seemed like a waste to throw away something that seemed expensive, being leather bound and all. I started writing in it only four years later, the night my mother died, and I saw Daria for the first time in years.