Me again.
Mom and Dad have finally let me out of their sight to go to bed. It was pretty obvious something was wrong 59
with me because I couldn’t stand another moment of their stupid show about some stupid guy who built churches, and I got up and—well, I got up and just stood there, shaking. I stood there because I wanted a drink and hated myself for it. I hated myself for wanting it because it took me back to that night, to that quiet road, to the way I lay shivering in the ambulance, cold even though I shouldn’t have been, surrounded by people hovering over me but without the one person I most wanted to see.
My parents talked and talked, said all the things I suppose Laurie and Pinewood taught them to say. The truth, J, the truth I know you already know, is that their talking isn’t what stopped me. Pinewood isn’t what keeps me from drinking either. It never has been. The reason I don’t drink is because of what happened to you. What I did.
I tried once, the morning after you died. I rolled out of bed, rested against the fl oor until I felt strong enough to stand. I found a bottle in my bottom dresser drawer.
I went to pick it up and saw your face, heard you crying and me promising everything would be all right. I opened the bottle, and you stared at me, eyes open and glitter dusted across your cheekbones. I took a sip, and I could 60
see out the ambulance window. You were lying on the ground, your hands open wide, holding on to nothing.
There were people standing over you, looking down at you, and I knew you’d never see them.
I couldn’t swallow. I opened up the attic window, gagging, then grabbed the bottle and tossed it as far as I could. That afternoon my parents started talking about Pinewood. They started talking about it more when I said, “Fine. Whatever. I don’t care.”
I thought about killing myself the day after your funeral. I was in my room, behind the locked attic door staring at the picture we had taken the time we skipped school and went to Adventure Park. Remember that? You talked that guy into letting us in for free and we rode on all the rides and bought a picture of ourselves smiling with someone in a squirrel suit. I knew Dad kept a bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom he shares with Mom, for the times he’s overseas and has to sleep because he has an early meeting about whatever merger his company is working on. They wouldn’t have noticed till it was too late.
You know why I didn’t do it? It wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I did. God, I did. I didn’t because living with what I’d done to you was what I deserved. I deserved to 61
be alone. I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn’t.
I deserve to live like this now, to have tonight happen to me. I deserve to remember the way things were and realize they’re gone. That I destroyed them. I won’t drink and let myself wipe it away for a little while.
When Mom and Dad were done talking tonight they made me sit between them on the sofa. Dad fi ddled with the remote and patted my knee. Mom put an arm around my shoulders, squeezing gently every once in a while. We watched a movie, something with wacky misunderstand-ings and an ending where everything turned out okay. I could tell because there was happy music. It was a very long eighty-seven minutes.
“You did it,” Mom said as the credits rolled. Dad said,
“Amy, we’re so proud of you.” It made me happy to hear them say that, and I don’t deserve that either. I always wanted family stuff like this. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?
All those years of great grades when I was young, all those years of trying to squeeze into their world, and it turns out I just needed to stop caring, become a drunk who dragged her best friend into a car and—
62
I can’t stand this, you being gone. I’m so sorry, J. You don’t know how sorry I am for what happened. For what I did.
I know they’re just words. But I mean them, I swear.
I’m sorry. Please forgive me everything.
63
S E V E N
I TOLD JULIA about tonight, but I didn’t—I didn’t tell her about school. I tried, staring at the paper, pen in my hand, but the words wouldn’t come. I don’t want . . .
I don’t want her to know what I saw today.
I was at my locker at the end of school, grabbing my stuff. Everyone was talking, planning their weekends and discussing what we’re all supposed to care about, who did what to who and why.
I shut my locker, and Kevin was standing there. Rich, his stupid-ass best friend and the last guy I slept with—
number five and the biggest waste of my time because he actually tried to act like my boyfriend afterward till I had to tell him to get lost—was standing a few feet away, acting like I wasn’t there. That didn’t surprise me.
64
I was actually surprised either of them would come near me at all.
“Hi,” Kevin said.
He really said that. “Hi.” Like it was just another Friday and not ninety-nine days since Julia had strode down the hall and said, “God, I’m so glad to be free of this place till September!” Like it wasn’t ninety-nine days since she’d died.
I stared at him.
“I want to show you something,” Kevin said, and pushed up his sleeve. He had a tattoo spiraling around his wrist. Julia’s name, written out dark and forever.
“She’d love it,” he said, and put a hand on my arm. He sounded so sure.
I wanted to take his face in my hands and pull. I wanted to rip off his skin, tear it to shreds, and leave him broken.
Julia’s name on his wrist, like it would fix what happened, like it could ever fix what happened: Julia’s swollen red eyes, her sobbing as we stood in someone’s house, and him staring stone-faced, not even calling her name as we left.
I know what I did to her, and I know—I know I have no right to talk. But I hate him. God, I hate him.
“I really loved her, you know,” Kevin said, as if I’d commented on his tattoo, as if I’d spoken. “I loved her so 65
much. And now—” His voice broke, his eyes fi lled with tears, and I saw girls walking by look at him, sympathy and lust on their faces, and maybe he does miss Julia, maybe now he loves her like she always wanted. But that—that writing Julia won’t ever see, those tears and regret she didn’t get until it was too late—the wrongness of it made me want to scream.
I pushed his hand off my arm. He gave me a dark look and smeared over it with a smile. “I forgive you for what you did, you know.”
My vision went dark, spotted red and hazy. I shoved past him, his predictable muttering (“Be that way, bitch”) washing over me and making the red haze I saw beat like a second heart. Rich said something to me too, as if I would care what he thought, as if sex with him once (for thirty-seven whole seconds) meant something. All I could think about was Julia. Her shattered face after she saw Kevin with that other girl. My hand on her arm, guiding her away. Leading her to the car.
I wanted to get away and couldn’t. I was trapped in the school, in walking past the thing her locker had been turned into. I was paying for telling her we should leave the party, I would always be paying. I bumped into someone just as I heard Mel say, “Hey, watch where— Hey, Amy, you okay?”
66
I blinked, confused, and saw Mel watching me from a few feet away. I didn’t understand. How could he be over there when I’d just bumped into him?
I hadn’t. I’d walked into Patrick. He just hadn’t said anything. I looked at him and he—he was looking at me.
He looked at me like no one, not even Laurie, has. He looked at me like he could see everything, all the way down into the rotten places inside me.