In 2004, Jet preferred visiting the oak growing from Lillian’s grave to attending high school. Her grades fell, and when teacher Ms. Collier offered a test retake, Jet ripped it up, resentful of pity and wanting equal treatment. At home, Nana gently intervened, urging Jet to finish high school, reminding her of past ambitions. Though Jet felt indifferent to the future and hostile to school, she agreed out of loyalty to Nana.

Jet met with the guidance counselor to map a path to graduate: an economics paper, a calculus test, and a physics project, to be completed in summer school, which would allow an August diploma but no spring ceremony. Jet reflected bitterly on her lost dreams of college and medicine and on society’s misplaced focus, but committed to completing the tasks for Nana, learning about scarcity, derivatives, and refraction despite seeing no personal purpose.

On senior picture day, Jet wore a black dress and Lillian’s silver necklace. Her boyfriend Sully accompanied her to the cemetery afterward. There, Sully kissed Jet and touched the necklace, offering sincere but trite sentiments about Lillian. Feeling exposed and irritated by perceived pity, Jet dropped Sully off and returned alone to the cemetery for solitude among the graves.

By late summer, the counselor confirmed she would receive her diploma on August twentieth. Jet’s first reflex was to imagine celebrating with Lillian, then she remembered the loss. On the day itself, she showed the diploma to Seth on Nana’s patio. Nana lit a citronella candle and served brisket and corn, telling Jet that Lillian would be proud; Jet bristled at others speaking for the dead. Jet deleted a congratulatory voicemail from her father Ryan. Nana, ever practical, noted a dentist appointment, and Jet acquiesced to avoid Nana’s anxiety loops. Jet noticed Seth’s struggle with depth perception, and later let him sleep in her bed, privately defying Lillian’s former rules.

Shauna, who had invited Jet to monthly lunches since Lillian’s death, invited her again, and Jet accepted largely because the restaurant was Kincaid’s. Over burgers, they discussed graduation, Nana, Seth, and Sully’s kindness. Shauna shared lighthearted stories about her trip to Mexico with her husband Michael and their clinic work. Jet did not disclose her self-induced vomiting. Afterward, she resumed declining Shauna’s invitations; the contact stirred grief she could not face.

Jet reflected that she still felt stuck in the night of Lillian’s death, haunted by everyday memories—songs, tea, rain—and overwhelmed by Lillian’s pervasive absence. She also examined her conflicted feelings about Ryan: she missed him when apart but wanted distance when with him due to his continued drinking. She removed her photography from his gallery, declaring he could not have her work without wanting her sober presence. Seeing his devastation made her wonder if love, not alcohol alone, was the more dangerous force, and she concluded she might need to swear off love.