"Why?" was the first word that sprang out of my mouth, though I immediately wished I had chosen a gentler one.

Piper just laughed at my response, though, and even Robbie seemed to get a chuckle out of it.

"Sorry," I stammered, trying to change my face into one that was a bit more receptive to their news. "I just mean, why now? You're so young." Piper and Robbie were only twenty-one. It was like they were telling me they were moving to a submarine beneath the Atlantic Ocean: technically feasible but what would be the point?

"Because we're sure," Piper answered, her hand grasping Robbie's with a determined squeeze.

A fleeting, and admittedly unflattering, thought crossed my mind: Does she just want to see how she'd look in a cute wedding dress? But I made myself dismiss it almost as soon as it appeared. This was right in line with Piper's way of fixing problems, after all: Robbie has bipolar; I'll fix it by demonstrating my undying love for him.

It was just so typical of her, I had to admit. Her unyielding optimism; the way she walked through a room like everybody in it was thrilled to see her, which they probably were.

But did she really know what she was signing on for?

I could tell from Robbie's face that he held the same reservations. This had obviously been her idea, which must have been what all those excited whispers were about earlier.

"I'm gonna go call my cousins and see if they can come," Piper squealed, giving Robbie's hand one more pat before dismissing herself.

My brain latched onto the next question like a stone skipping across a lake: "Wait, have you already set a date?" I called after her.

"Next month!" she answered, then all but flew to their room and closed the door.

I turned to my brother, whose sheepish face told me he had already considered all of my objections and was ready to combat them.

"Robbie?"

"Come on," he shrugged. "Let's go get a cup of coffee."

*

I could feel my foot tapping to its own frenetic rhythm under the corner table of our local coffee shop—a place the three of us had spent so many hours in at this point that we were practically part of the staff.

As if on cue, I saw Robbie up at the counter grabbing a napkin from the dispenser to wipe down someone else's spilled coffee near the register. It gave my heart a reassuring sensation to see Robbie do things like that, those little moments of kindness and consideration that were always second nature to him.

When he was first diagnosed as bipolar, after a series of bad late-night attacks, I would often find myself watching him for any indication of these impulses. It was my way of holding on to him. Of believing that no sickness could ever take away the parts of my big brother that made him whole, that made him Robbie.

I realized it was too much pressure for him sometimes—he had become the barometer by which I could gauge the rest of the world. If he was having a good day, I treated it as a sign from the gods that nothing could really be that wrong. And if he was having a bad day, well...

But even as I sat there, reassuring myself that everything was fine today, I was distracted by a tenuous wave of scattered thoughts. Had I simply been imagining that the phone call with Brady was as strange as it seemed? Was I reading too much into it? I mean, of course he was being short and awkward with me. Look at what I had done to him. And so what if he had talked to Principal Farghasian lately? He worked at the gas station closest to the school. She probably came in for gas.

But that didn't explain everything, did it? That's what Elaheh said.

Why were they talking about the portals at all? And since when were they on a first-name basis?

I moved my winter coat and hat off my lap and shoved them under my seat as Robbie approached. He plopped my small cappuccino down before me, the maple-leaf design in the foam already dissipating, and crossed his arms, ready to hear my counter-arguments against his impending nuptials. His own iced coffee—which he drank no matter what the temperature outside—began to sweat before him, as though it was nervous to begin.

"I'm not gonna say anything," I said.

"Sure you are," he laughed.

"I just want to know if you're sure."

"I'm sure."

"Okay." I blew on my drink and licked away some of the foam, leaving a brown and white swirl in the shape of a deformed head.

"We're practically married anyway," he argued, finally reaching for his drink.

"Will you want me to move out?" I asked, my eyes tipping up to meet his.

"What? No, of course not."

"It'll be weird—"

"It won't be weird," he stopped me before I could finish. "It's your house too. Your name is on the deed."

"Only because Piper insisted on putting it there."

"That's right, she did," Robbie said, leaning forward onto his long forearms. "Because it's your home."

And despite my best efforts, the tears began to sting behind my eyes. It always happened when Robbie used words like "home" or "family." How precarious life is. How quickly it can disappear.

"I talked to Brady," I said, blinking back a tear that defied me by falling down my cheek anyway.

Robbie's tone was softer when he talked again. I had told him that I'd cheated on my boyfriend last spring, although of course I had never told him the details. Robbie didn't know Brady, but he knew that he was someone special to me—someone I had hurt deeply. He had had a front-row seat for the guilt parade that had been my life since then, and he took all the newest developments in the drama in stride. "Did he forgive you?"

I could only shake my head. My throat was too tight to form the word.

"You'll try again," he said, a certainty in his eyes. "You'll keep trying until he does."

"What if that's never?"

Robbie nodded, considering it, and I thought to myself, not for the first time, that he was going to make an excellent psychiatrist. Having lived through so much in his short life, he knew no other path but empathy.

He reached out and patted my hand, leaving a cold, icy splotch from his cup.

"Come on," he smiled. "Let's get back."

The air had settled into the kind of winter freeze that just felt like stillness. With the black, starless sky above and the petrified sidewalk below, even sound seemed to evaporate as we walked the short block back to our brownstone.

I focused on the slap of cold against my red cheeks, the way the chill had already started penetrating my boots and working its way up my legs. I took another sip of the cappuccino.

"M?" Robbie asked tentatively when we were about halfway there.

"Yeah?"

"I'm going to invite Kieren. To the wedding."

I didn't say anything. I nodded, but he wasn't looking at me.

"It's time," he continued.

"Okay."

"Will it be weird for you?" he asked, still walking forward with a steady pace.

"No, it's fine. I've actually talked to him lately. It's..." I took a deep breath and watched the white wisps of exhaled air escape into the night. "It's fine. Besides, it's your day. It's not about me."

He paused when we got to our front stoop, turned and faced me.

"I don't want to be angry anymore," he said. "It's too much to carry."

I smiled, wondering if I would be able to do the same in his shoes. But the mention of wedding guests made me realize there was another question I needed to ask.

"Will you invite her?"

He sighed, twirling his now-empty plastic cup in his hands. "You're going to have to talk to her eventually, you know."

I buried my face in my own cup, waiting for him to continue. "Is that a yes then?"

"No, I won't invite Mom. Or John. I'll just tell them about it after it's over. Okay?"

"Thank you."

Robbie shook his head, an admonishment in his eyes. "What did I say about carrying anger around?"

But I didn't care if he was right or not. I liked my life the way it was now—without her in it.

He turned and opened the front door. "Baby," he called up the stairs to Piper. "We're home!"

Once I was back in my room, I determined to put everything else out of my mind and get to work on the physics problem set that I should have been doing in study group that night. I had blown the meeting off, unable or maybe just unwilling to take the bus back over the bridge once I had gotten back from an afternoon class and snuggled my feet into my comfortable slippers. Now I had to pay the price by doing it alone.

But as I laid the work out before me, trying to remember the escape velocity formula off the top of my head, and finally conceding that I would have to look it up, I found that my eyes kept drifting back to my phone at the edge of my bed.

Maybe I had just misunderstood him. Maybe Brady had said "good night," not "goodbye."

Landing on a decision, I scrolled to the incoming call log and hit the most recent number twice, rolling my neck to relax a bit as I waited for the phone to place the call.

The number you have dialed has been disconnected...

I listened to the message several times before the voice stopped, and a silence registered in my brain.

If you'd like to place a call—

I hit "end," dropped the phone, and shook my head, forcing myself to dismiss it as yet another explainable development. Brady didn't want to talk to me, that's all. He had used a temporary number so I wouldn't be able to call him back.

And nothing matters now, I reminded myself, except escape velocity.

Two hours later, I fell asleep with the phone clutched back in my hand, the lights still blaring in my room, the problem set painfully unfinished, and the phrase repeating in my mind like a skipping record:

Escape velocity. Escape velocity. Escape.

***

Going to a wedding with your ex. What could go wrong?? 

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