As usual, I wake up with a stomachache. That’s what I take to school with me these days, instead of lunch money. That, and a bottle of…water.
Kane meets me at the car as I pile my books into the back seat and set my water bottle in the console. Before I know it, he’s unscrewing the top. He takes a sniff. “Just checking,” he says.
I yank it from him and tighten the lid. “Who are you, my mother?”
“I’m your passenger. And I don’t want you driving if you’ve been hitting the sauce.”
I try to start the Jeep. It stalls a couple times in the cold before roaring to life. Kane doesn’t know me anymore. He likes to think he does, but I have changed. And spending a couple minutes every day in the passenger seat of my Jeep won’t make him a Hailey expert.
Coming back to Deer Hills three months into the school year is hard enough when you don’t have memories of your dead boyfriend haunting you. I’d kept up with schoolwork at the hospital and came back the week of Thanksgiving because Juliet said a short week would make reentry less stressful.
Wrong.
So by the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, I’d started self-medicating, taking sips from my mom’s Absolut supply. It worked fine—in fact, too fine. I’d liked how it numbed me so much that I started upping my dose.
And so I got in a little trouble. Okay, more than a little trouble, since it happened twice. The first time, Principal Williams said that because of all I’d endured, he’d let me slide. The second time, he said that because of all I’d endured, he’d let me slide, but there’d better not be a third time, or I’d be welcomed to Suspension City.
There hasn’t been a third time. Yet.
Until last year, I hadn’t so much as looked at a teacher the wrong way. I was the good girl: Student Council representative, Key Club president, girlfriend to the esteemed Declan Weeks. Now, I’m none of those things.
Not a single one.
Instead I’m a Cheez-It chomping, vodka-guzzling loner.
I think of when I was younger. I wanted a talent so bad it about killed me. Everyone had one, but me? Nothing. When I’d confessed this to Declan, he’d said my thing was being me, and being his. He’d told me that if I could juggle knives or sing beautifully or whatever, I wouldn’t be his Hailey. At the time, I’d melted.
Now, I’m no one.
I look over at Kane. If they took before and after pictures of us, mine would be a total one-eighty. His, mirror images. It’s so mystifying that I forget to upshift to third as we pull onto the main road.
“Whoa, babe,” Kane says, nearly putting his hand on mine as I struggle with the clutch. Then he thinks better of it and pulls away. He studies me. “If Williams sees you’re drunk—”
“I’m not!” I shout at him, then lean forward and breathe heavily in his face. “Happy?”
“Minty fresh. But, you know, vodka is odorless.”
“No, it’s not.”
We pull into the senior parking lot, where Luisa is waiting by my usual space. Before, she used to wait at the front of the bus line for me. Now, when Kane hops out of the car, she hooks an arm through his and starts to pull him toward the front of the school before I can gather my stuff out of the back seat.
It’s Kane who hangs back. He grins at me. “See you, Hail.”
Luisa looks back at the Jeep and seems surprised to see me there. “Hey, Hail.” Then she tilts Kane’s chin toward her, her eyes begging so he has no choice but to kiss her. He must’ve done something for her last night, judging from the way she can’t keep her hands off him. I don’t want to think of what.
He probably flashed that smile of his. The kid is lethal that way.
But the two of them together? Super lethal. Pale people can go one of two ways: either veiny, uncooked chicken flesh or perfect, porcelain china doll. Luisa’s the latter—skin so white and milky, with pale, barely-there eyelashes and hair. She’s not the type to suffer sunburns. Luisa is too prepared for that. Plus, she’s brilliant—straight As, ever since elementary school. She’s the person you’d hate if she didn’t have an innocent, sweet, soft way of talking and look like a freaking angel placed directly on this earth by the hand of God. Our falling-out—or drifting apart, whatever it was—would never be attributed to her. It’s all on me, the girl who lost her boyfriend and, subsequently, her mind.
I never knew what people meant when they said a thing was “greater than the sum of one’s parts.” But that’s Luisa and Kane. Enviable on their own, but as a couple, they rule.
I have no choice but to trail behind them like the court jester. I think about how Luisa used to always sleep over at my house when we were younger. Most of the time, we’d talk and giggle about boys, wondering what two specific boys were up to across the street. I never slept over at her house, even though she had a much ritzier home with an in-ground pool. There was something more exciting about being so close to two gorgeous brothers. As we got older, the four of us would light fires in the old fire pit and hang out in the woods behind the cul-de-sac on warm summer nights. I’d almost think Luisa was using me if I hadn’t known her well before boys became interesting.
I shiver and blame the chill on this bleak, seemingly endless winter.
When we get to the school, Kane holds the door open for me. As I pass through, I think about the picture Declan’s mother gave me. THIS ENDS HERE. I’m about to tell him about it when he whispers, “Take it easy, okay, Hail?” and then he sweeps Luisa back into his arms.
Take it easy. The way he says it is not a casual send-off. It’s full of caution and worry. Because it’s par for the course for me to take everything hard.
At my locker, I see Javier and Nina. Javier is my locker neighbor, and you’ll rarely see Javier without Nina. They’re the last third of our sextet. Javier transferred to Deer Hills from Spain during the middle of his sophomore year and barely spoke English, so Kane was elected to help him around school. Since Javier and Declan were the only new kids at Deer Hills, they quickly became friends. Nina was always Luisa’s friend because they live in the same neighborhood and went to dance class together.
Because the six of us always hung out together, eventually Nina and Javier became a couple. Kane may complain about Luisa in secret to me, but Javier and Nina have the opposite dynamic. They constantly look like they can’t stand each other. Their fights are explosive, the result of being two people who probably never would’ve gotten together if it weren’t for us pushing them that way.
They’re at each other’s throats again. Nina’s dark cheeks are flushed, and she’s scowling. She grabs my arm as I approach and says, “Oh good, Hailey. Tell him.”
I run the dial on my lock, cursing when I can’t remember the numbers. Details I know by heart leak away, somehow. Finally I pull open my locker and look over at Nina, who is looking at me expectantly.
Nina has a habit of thinking people can read her mind. “Tell him what?”
She sighs. “That you can’t go naked under your cap and gown.”
I raise my eyebrow at Javier, happy to have something else to talk about.
He grins at me. He usually says shit like this to get Nina riled up, and even after more than a year together, she still hasn’t wised up to the ploy. Nina is more serious than a heart attack. Javier says, his accent thick, “Oh come on, Nee. It’s going to be hot under there.”
I don’t have to look at him. From his tone of voice, I can tell he’s kidding. I get my books for first period and say, “He can if he wants to. But I think the fabric is kind of sheer. We might see your junk.”
She screws up her face. “God forbid. No one wants to see your junk.”
Javier nods. “But my junk is so impressive, no?”
She punches him. “You wish.”
He grabs his arm and winces. Overpowered by a girl who’s half his size and probably weighs ninety pounds soaking wet? Javier is the biggest wimp ever. “Come on, Nee. I was kidding. Mi madre bought me a three-piece suit with a top hat, un reloj de bolsillo, y un monóculo. Happy?”
“I have no idea what that is, but it sounds better.” She smiles and smooths her shiny, black pixie hair as I slam my locker door. When I look back up, she’s peering at me in a very familiar way. Javier is too. Nina’s father is a police officer and was first on the scene when Mrs. Weeks called 911 about Declan. It’s highly likely Mr. Paradis shielded his daughter from the most gruesome details, but I can’t help thinking that she knows more about what happened that day than all of us, simply because of her connections.
I wince, waiting for it. The two of them exchange glances, daring each other to broach the subject first, so I say, “Nice talking to you,” and turn to make my escape.
Nina hooks my arm in hers and walks with me toward first period. “Really. We just want to know how you are. You know. Because of everything.”
Because of everything. It occurs to me that she can’t zero in on one thing because everything in my life is shit. “Everything”—I emphasize the word—“is fine.”
“You were okay yesterday?”
I take a sip of my water. “Sure. Easy-peasy.”
She touches my water bottle. “So, what’s that?” she singsongs.
I sigh. “Water. Really.” I ignore the fact that she’s leaning in, probably to smell my breath. “Geez. Can’t I make a mistake once without everyone getting on me for it?”
Javier falls in line behind us. “It was twice.”
“Thank you for keeping score, Jav,” I grumble. They’re not the only ones taking an interest in my water bottle. Mr. Vanderbilt, my chem teacher, watches from the door of his classroom. It’s hazy, but I think I fell shitfaced off one of the stools in his lab before Christmas and he had to carry me to the nurse’s while I drifted in and out of consciousness.
“Fine. You know what?” I stalk past a trash can and drop the bottle in it. “I’d rather dehydrate like a sad raisin than hear it from you guys.”
I try to be light and fun about it, grinning, but there’s this underlying tension to my voice. The more I push for normalcy, the less I succeed. “You look tired,” Nina observes.
“I never wear makeup first thing. Gym,” I tell her. Or at least that’s what I tell everyone. It doesn’t make sense to dress up first thing when I’m going to have to change into sweats and run the track. But really, I haven’t put much into my appearance for a long time. The meds have wreaked havoc on my body, making my skin break out, adding pounds… I know I look different, but I’m here, at least. I make a mental note to put on some lip gloss when I change into my school outfit. “So what’s the deal? You guys have a good Valentine’s Day?”
Nina and Javier exchange worried glances. I don’t know who issued the command that the V-holiday couldn’t be mentioned in my presence. I brought it up, after all. Finally, Nina says, “Um, fine.” Then she quickly adds, “Did you do that problem set for trig?”
I might never have been the class clown, but people used to joke with me. They used to have fun around me. Now, I can’t get through a conversation without awkward silences and half-uttered sentences. “Yeah,” I answer. “It sucked.”
Trig is usually easy for me. But last night, it wasn’t. Every two seconds, my eyes would wander to that Yuengling box filled with Declan’s stuff. It had seen his last moments. Those moments before he went down into the basement and pulled Mr. Weeks’s handgun out of its case. Before he’d gone out to the shed, broken open the lock, and…
Before, we used to go to the movies at least once a month. To the diner. To the mall. As six, it worked out nicely. We’d all pile into Javier’s SUV. Now, we’re an odd five. We haven’t been anywhere as a group in more than a year. The last time, we’d gone to see some forgettable comedy that wasn’t worth the price of admission. It was such a low-note ending. Like Declan’s last tweet, a day before: Wawa packed with people getting bread and milk. Couldn’t get gas.
Not exactly profound.
All of it was so dull, so everyday. In fact, nothing he had done said, This is my last.
When I break out of my trance, Nina and Javier are staring at me. It’s obvious Nina asked me another question while I was spaced out. “Huh?” I ask.
Nina massages my shoulder. “I was asking if you heard what happened with Luisa and Kane. I heard they had a real big blowout yesterday.”
The six of used to hang out before first period in front of my locker and Javier’s, since they were central to our classes. But that changed last year. Luisa and Kane usually go off on their own to who-knows-where, and I barely see them throughout the day. “That’s old news,” I mumble. “I saw them this morning. They’re fine.”
“Oh. Really? Well, that’s boring. She’s a total bitch anyway, ignoring us like she does.”
Not ignoring us. Ignoring me is more like it.
I tell Nina I’ll see her in trig and head off toward the locker rooms, my mind swirling more than ever. Juliet said that I’d think about him less and less as time went on, but she failed to tell me that every anniversary—of our first kiss, our first date—would stir up the memories afresh.
IT ENDS HERE.
Yes, if by “it” you mean everything normal about my life. It all ended that day. These days, I’m the odd girl out. The leftover. Maybe I’ll never be anything else.
Gym is my least favorite class because I don’t have a single ally there anymore. I used to be…not popular, but someone who held her own. Popular seniors wouldn’t be buddy-buddy with me, but they’d talk to me here and there. Now, they turn the other way when I come near.
They don’t know what to say, so they avoid, avoid, avoid.
It’s probably good, since even the stupidest, silliest comments have a way of reducing me to tears. Declan was the brain, the thinker. He wanted to go into engineering and architecture—urban planning, he thought. He was constantly working with his hands, getting them all cut up building models. At any time, he’d have half a dozen bandages on his hands. So a couple months ago, when I got a paper cut in art, I started to sob uncontrollably when the teacher offered me a Band-Aid.
No wonder they all expect me to have a mental breakdown. It wouldn’t be the first time.
I trudge into the locker room, and the smell of body odor and baby powder assaults my nose. Everyone in my row stops and looks at me as I sit on the bench and bend over, taking my combination lock in my hand. I spin the lock face, trying to clear my mind so that I can focus on the numbers.
IT ENDS HERE.
Not the pain. Juliet was wrong. The pain grows. It grows and stretches until it’s bigger than me. It’s spiraling out, and sometimes I can feel it not only in my chest, but radiating out of my arms and legs, suffocating me and everything around me.
That feeling comes, silent and dark as fog. Before I can channel one of Juliet’s coping techniques, it settles over my mind, extinguishing all but one thought there.
Bleed.
Cut yourself, and bleed.
Bleed. Declan bled out too. I’d joked that he was the Gentle Californian Soul, but nothing about his death was gentle. I didn’t see much, but in my mind, he’s crouched in the corner of the shed, his head reduced to nothing but globs of flesh and shards of bone sprayed out onto the particleboard wall like a child’s excited finger painting. He reduced the shed to something so grotesque and irreparable that the only solution was for his father to burn the damn thing to the ground.
Declan never did anything half-assed. Go big or go home.
Me, however? I was always the wishy-washy one. The I don’t know, what do you want to do? type. I never had an opinion. The scars on my wrists have become chicken scratches, half-hearted cries for help.
Mrs. Wilbur calls everyone out to the gym. The others file out, their voices fading away, leaving me with the sounds of the whirring of the fans above me.
I finally pull open the lock and look at my hands. They’re white and trembling. I spy it on the ground. A flash of silver. Someone left a nail file. I pick it up. I feel like it’s here for a reason.
There is a reason for everything.
And that reason is still haunting me every damn day: Declan.
Using the faint, raised scar on my wrist as a guide, I watch the blood bubble up as I begin to slice.