But I can’t believe that. All I can do is feel what I feeclass="underline" a vague sense of relief, dulled by shock and the spacey haze that’s stolen over me.
Now it’s only me keeping the monsters at bay: I have no mission, no crusade, nothing else. Mina’s memory will sustain me for only so long. It scares me, how easy it could be to fall back down that hole I’ve worked so hard to climb out of.
Ten months. One week.
I want Aunt Macy. I grab the cell phone my parents left for me and punch in her number with shaking hands.
“I’m on my way right now,” she says when she picks up. “I’ll be there in a few hours.”
I let out a shuddery breath. “It’s over,” I say into the phone.
“Yes it is. Remind me to kick your ass later for putting yourself in so much danger,” Macy says, the relief in her voice robbing the threat of all of its power. “This almost-dying thing is getting to be a habit with you. Not good.”
“I guess I just take after you,” I say.
Macy laughs shakily. “Hell, I hope not.”
I’m quiet for a long time, listening to the buzz of Macy’s radio, the occasional honk of an eighteen-wheeler as it passes her car. She’s on the highway, driving to me. Just the sound of it soothes me in a way nothing else could.
“I’m scared,” I say, breaking my silence.
“I know you are,” she says, her voice ringing out over the traffic noise. “But you’re brave, babe. You’re strong.”
“I want…” I stop. “I really want to shut down right now,” I confess. It’s sharp in my gut, that need to numb myself, to bury every worry about the future, avoid all the hard choices I have to make.
“They didn’t give you anything, did they?”
“No,” I say. “Mom wouldn’t let them. I don’t want any.”
“That’s smart.”
We’re quiet again, and eventually I fall asleep, the phone cradled against my ear.
Around two in the morning, the click of the door closing wakes me. I sit up, expecting the nurse, but it’s Kyle.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
“Charmed the nurse into letting me in.” Kyle sits down at the foot of the bed, dropping a handful of candy on my lap. “I raided the vending machine.”
He looks as bad as I feel. His eyes are all puffy and red, and he’s careful not to meet my eyes as he pushes a pack of licorice toward me.
I sit up, tearing the bag open and popping a piece in my mouth. “I don’t know what to say,” I tell him.
Kyle makes a sound in the back of his throat, an almost childish whimper. “Are you okay?” he asks. “I shouldn’t have let you go off alone. You were just gone for a second and then we couldn’t find you.”
“I’ll be fine. It’s not your fault. I thought Adam was okay. I walked right into it.”
“This is so fucked up, Soph,” he says, his voice rough. He rakes his hand through his floppy hair, making it stick up. “He was one of my best friends. We were on the same soccer team since we were, like, six. And he…he took her away.”
Kyle swallows, fiddling with an open bag of M&M’s. He starts to group them by color, eyes focused on his task instead of on me.
“I hate him,” I say. It feels good to say it out loud again. It rushes underneath my skin, the fact that now I know.
“I want to fucking kill him,” Kyle mutters as he makes a neat pile of the green M&M’s before moving on to the blue.
“I tried,” I confess quietly.
Kyle pauses, turning his head just a sliver toward me, his brown eyes determined. “Good,” he says, and the word echoes between the beeping of the machines. For some reason, it makes me breathe easier.
“I’m glad you didn’t die,” Kyle says.
“Yeah, me, too,” I say, and it’s the truth. It feels good for it to be the truth.
I shift in the bed, wincing when the movement jostles my ribs.
Kyle stares at my IV bag like it’s gonna tell him what to do. “Want me to get the nurse?”
I shake my head. “They can’t do anything. No narcotics, remember? Anyway, I don’t want to sleep. I’ll be fine.”
I sound sure, even to my own ears. I know the truth: that months in David’s office are waiting for me. That I’m going to have to work at it, through it. That there’ll be nightmares and freak-outs and days I jump at the slightest thing and days I want to use so badly I can taste it and days all I want to do is cry and scream. That David is probably going to be on speed dial, and it’s going to suck and hurt, but hopefully there’ll be some light at the end of the tunnel, because there usually is.
“I’m sorry I’ve been so shitty to you,” Kyle says.
I take a red M&M from his pile. “I’ve been shitty to you, too,” I admit.
For the first time since he came into the room, he looks up, his expression serious and measuring. It makes my mouth go dry.
“What?” I ask, half hoping he’ll break the gaze.
But he doesn’t. “I know I promised I wouldn’t talk about it,” he says. “What she told me, about her, about the two of you. But I’m gonna break that promise, this one time.” He stares me down, and there’s a gentleness in him I’ve never seen before.
“She was in love with you,” he says. “And I don’t think she got to tell you, did she?”
My heart lurches, seizes inside my chest, fluttering to life at the words I’ve always wanted to hear. I shake my head. Tears spill down my cheeks.
“She loved you. She wanted to be with you. That’s why she told me about herself. She said she’d made her choice. It was you. I think it was always you.”
I look away from him, out through the blinds at the lights of town, and he stays quiet, a comforting witness, letting me cry.
Letting me finally let her go.
64
A YEAR AND A HALF AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)
“Watch out!” Mina stomps into the puddle. Muddy water splashes against my back, drenching me.
“Oh my God!” I shriek, spinning around. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
She beams over her shoulder, rain dripping down her forehead. She’s abandoned her umbrella on the sidewalk, and she’s standing smack-dab in the middle of a room-sized puddle. When she tilts her head to the sky, opening her mouth to let in the rain, my stomach swoops. “Come on. Play with me.”
“You are such a brat sometimes,” I tell her, but when she pouts, I grin and kick water her way, wading in after her. In the deepest part of the puddle, the water reaches my ankles. My feet squelch in the mud as we splash each other, helpless with laughter. We fling mud like we’re seven again. I rub it into her hair, and she darts around me like a seal, quick and sleek.
For once, she falls first, right on her ass in the mud, and instead of getting up she holds her hand out, pulling me gently down with her. Just the two of us and the mud and rain, side by side, like we’re supposed to be.
Mina sighs happily, her arm looped in mine. She leans her head against my shoulder.
“You’re crazy. We’re gonna catch pneumonia.”
She squeezes my arm, snuggling closer to me. “Admit it. There’s nowhere else you’d rather be than here with me.”
I close my eyes, let the rain fall on my face, let the weight of her press into me, her warmth seep into my skin. “You got me,” I say.
65
(NOW) JULY
“How are you feeling today?” David asks.
I bite my lip. “I’m okay.”
“We had a deal, remember?” David says. “It’s been six sessions. It’s time, Sophie.”