Page 103 of Better Than Revenge

“I am,” I said. Because I was.

“How are you going to fix it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

She patted the chair next to her. “Come tell me about it, dear.”

And so I did. I pulled myself out of bed and sat next to her. She handed me the headphones on the desk, and I chuckled but slid them onto my head. She put hers on as well. She’d seen me do this so much that she even knew how to connect them and start the recording. I wanted to turn it off, but it didn’t matter. It’s not like I had to do anything with the audio. I could be the subject today.

“Tell me what happened?” Grandma said.

“I let anger take over my judgment. I thought I’d feel better if I took something away from someone who took something from me, but I feel worse. And now I have something that I don’t want.”

“You’re speaking in riddles,” she said.

“I know.” I didn’t want my grandma to be disappointed in me. It didn’t feel good yesterday, and I wasn’t sure I could handle her reaction all over again today. I didn’t want her to say that I was too good to do bad things sometimes.

But she surprised me by saying, “We all make mistakes. It’s how we deal with our mistakes that really define our character.”

“Can mistakes be purposeful, though? I did this very much on purpose. I knew what I was doing.”

“You thought it would help you?”

I breathed in. “I did.”

“But it didn’t.”

I shook my head, a podcast error. People couldn’t hear body movements. So I held the mic closer to my mouth and said, “It didn’t help at all.”

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I think I need to start over. I need to hit the reset button. I need to forget the last month even happened. Maybe even the lastyear.”

“Now, now, honey. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’m sure some good things happened in the last month, the last year. Mistakes aren’t all-encompassing. Things aren’t only black or white.”

She was right. I was reverting to what I always did: quit. I wasn’t going to do that. I didn’t want to do that. “You’re very smart, Grandma. Do you know that?”

“Of course I do, dear.”

“So I need to keep the baby and throw out the bathwater?” I asked.

“Exactly.”

I tried to think about the good parts of the last month or so. They were definitely the things that didn’t involve Jensen. Like interviewing my grandma and searching for her surfboard. Even though I still hadn’t found it, the process had been fun and interesting.

“Do you remember telling me about the boy who painted a surfboard for you, Grandma?”

“Andrew,” she said.

“Yes, Andrew. I tried to find that surfboard, but the owner of his old house ran us off. I wanted to find it for you.”

“That’s sweet, honey. But I can’t surf anymore.”

I laughed. “I know, Grandma. I thought you might want to seeit.”