Later,” but instead I just stood there, and eventually he looked up and said, “Amy?” and I said, “You don’t know how I feel.”
I said that, and he looked at me for a long, silent moment, and then said, “You hate yourself,” quietly, so quietly, and I clapped my hands together slowly, applause for a moron because of course I do, it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and felt a smile cross my face because I’d shut him up.
Except I didn’t because he said, “You hate her.”
I stopped clapping and moved toward him like Julia used to when she was going to fight, deliberate steps, and for once being so tall was great because I’d be able to see the look in his eyes when I hurt him.
I wanted to hurt him. I wanted his words gone, shoved back down his throat, undone, unsaid. My mouth was open, my hands were curled, but I—
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I didn’t hit him. I could see it, my fists smashing into his face, his mouth opening not around words but breath, blood, but I didn’t do it.
I didn’t hit him. I remember seeing my hands, balled into fists and outstretched. I remember feeling something ripping up my throat, and then there was the bright whiteness of my knuckles smacking his chest.
And my open mouth, the one that was so full of words ready to rip out of me, you’re so wrong so full of shit you hide from the world so what do you know? It didn’t form words.
I didn’t say anything. I was silenced, like something inside me was broken. I just stood there, mouth open in a silent scream.
If he’d put his hands over mine, trying to comfort, I would have hit him. If he’d said something—anything—
I would have hit him. If he’d done any of that, it would have been—I could have dealt with it. My hands have been touched earnestly a thousand times, by my parents, by stupid counselors at Pinewood who “just wanted to reach” me.
He just looked at me.
He looked at me, and I saw he didn’t want me there, that having me in his home, in his room, in his space, was bothering him. He looked at me, and I saw that 227
he wanted me to go so badly he couldn’t say it, that he was afraid. That he knew what it was like to wake up every day and know that this life, the one you live, is not the one you ever saw or wanted but is yours all the same.
I always wanted to be grown up. When I was little I couldn’t wait to be a teenager and go to high school.
When I got there I wanted to be done with it, wanted to get out into the world, the real one, and live in it.
The thing is, that world doesn’t exist. All growing up means is that you realize no one will come along to fi x things. No one will come along to save you.
I put one hand on his throat. Palm down, resting against skin. He breathed, and I felt the rise and fall of his breath against my hand. I pressed my fingers in a little, flexing. Skin is so fragile.
The whole body . . . it shouldn’t be like it is. It shouldn’t be so easy to break. But it is, and in his eyes I saw he understood that too. I slid my hand up, rested it against his mouth, and in a moment replaced it with my own.
As soon as I did, I knew what would happen. It started one night, back when Julia was still here, and I pretended it away. It never happened, I told myself, but it did.
I touched my mouth to his because he hadn’t done what I expected, hadn’t tried to comfort me. I touched my 228
mouth to his because he didn’t say he was sorry for me, for my loss, or for what he’d said. I touched my mouth to his because he understood everything.
I touched my mouth to his because I wanted to. I kissed him, and this time I didn’t run away.
Patrick smells like fall leaves, the orange-brown ones that blow around your feet when you walk and swing into your face smelling of sunshine and earth. His skin is cool and pale, and I’ve traced his back, mapping the play of muscles under skin. I’ve felt his mouth against mine. I’ve felt his hands on my skin. There is a scar on his stomach, round and white, tucked up against the side of one rib. It is smooth to the touch.
I know all these things, and now they will not leave me.
I lay there afterward, eyes closed, feeling his mouth ghost across mine, and felt . . . I don’t know. I just know I felt okay.
I felt okay, and that wasn’t how I was supposed to feel. I got up, tucked my body back into my clothes, and shook my head so my hair slid over and around my face, covering me. It’s long now, almost to my shoulders. It hasn’t been cut since before Julia died.
Patrick was dressed when I finally looked over at him, his head emerging from his T-shirt and a red fl ush along his cheekbones. He saw me looking and the 229
red deepened, blossomed across his face. I opened my mouth, then closed it. He did the same.
I left his room, shut his door behind me. I didn’t look back, not once, but I walked home feeling strange, like I’d somehow lost part of myself, like somehow part of me was still with him.
Was this how it was for Julia with Kevin? Did it feel like this? Did she see him when she closed her eyes? Did she see him even when he wasn’t there? How could she stand it? Why would she want it?
I wish she was here. I wish. I wish. I wish.
I wish I didn’t hate her so much for leaving me.
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150 days
J—
I thought some stuff about you the other day, but I didn’t mean it. I should have said so sooner, but it’s just—
after everything that happened with Patrick two days ago, I haven’t been . . .
I wasn’t myself then.
I wasn’t.
Look, I know sex was a big deal to you, that you liked being with someone you thought you’d connected with, but I don’t want that. I don’t want a connection. It’s a stupid word.
What does it mean, really? Connection.
Nothing. That’s what it means, and I didn’t connect with him. What happened didn’t mean anything. It didn’t, it doesn’t, and I don’t—I don’t want to be thinking about 231
it. About him. I don’t want to wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s doing, if he’s thinking of me—
God! Look what you’ve done to me. Look what you’ve made me into. I don’t know why you—
We were both in your car. We both had our seat belts on. What was so different for you? That you were driving? You always drove. Why was that night so different?
Why did you have to leave me?
Patrick was right, J. I hate myself.
But I hate you too.
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152 days
J,
I meant what I said the other day. I hate you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
And knowing that—Julia, knowing that makes everything so much worse. I hate you for dying. It’s beyond screwed up. If I was the one who’d died you’d miss me and maybe talk to that picture of us you kept tacked up on your dresser mirror, the one from Splash World, but you wouldn’t write letters to me, boring wah-wah-wah letters.
You wouldn’t blame me.
I miss you all the time; how you’d henna your hair because it was a Tuesday, the way you’d laugh and say,
“A, you mope,” when I said something stupid, how you somehow always knew when I needed a bag of salt-and-233
vinegar potato chips from the vending machine to get me through the last few periods of school, but the past couple of days I’ve missed you so much it’s felt like missing you is all I am.
Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn’t be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There’d just be memories of you and all the things I’ve tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can’t because I don’t have the words. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. How can you? I can’t even begin to say.
I don’t know what to do about Patrick. It’s been four days, J. I haven’t spoken to him since that afternoon. He hasn’t spoken to me either. I should be happy about that.