17

THE PHRASE “THE TRUTH HURTS” is so literal right now it could be my theme song. Whoever is in charge of the universe’s sound track should cue it up every time I float through a wall or talk to someone who can’t hear me. I don’t bother shaking out the pain stinging me from my scalp to my toes; I hardly feel it. I’m too numb.

Madison helped Caleb try to break up Ethan and me. The thought is so absurd I can’t even begin to process it. And Caleb asked me to meet him at the bridge. I agreed, and I definitely went, but was he there? Was he the guy with the schnapps? Did he push me off the bridge?

I start walking even though I haven’t gotten my sight back yet. The sense of normality that putting one foot in front of the other brings me is worth not knowing where the preternatural force is guiding me. It seems to be growing stronger, harder to resist, the more I remember. Part of me is relieved to have some direction, albeit involuntary, but a larger part is terrified of where it might lead me.

Along the way I tilt my head back and blink into focus the leafless trees towering above me. The snow on the sidewalk doesn’t crunch beneath my feet the way it should, but there’s a woman walking a pug two houses up; her steps could be mine. If I close my eyes, I can pretend I’m me—Alive Me—taking a leisurely stroll for no particular reason, enjoying life.

The pulsing draws me toward a hunter-green house that I know almost as well as my own. I try to resist the pull, but I feel so weak from shouldering the weight of what I last remembered. The best I can do is pause for a moment next to the car parked at the top of the circular driveway: Madison’s car.

That teal Jetta has been a fixture in her driveway since the summer before fourth grade, when her family moved to town. It belonged to her mom back then. We used to sneak out with the cordless phone and climb into the backseat to prank call boys in the middle of the night. It was Madison’s favorite sleepover activity since it would’ve mortified her mom if she’d found out we were breaking the no-calling-boys rule—in her car nonetheless; gasp!—that she’d implemented after Madison got sent home for kissing boys on the playground in fifth grade.

Mrs. Scott was always very concerned with what everyone else thought: the neighbors, her friends, other kids’ parents. All her worrying had the opposite effect on Madison. I wonder what Mrs. Scott would think if she knew her daughter was a relationship-sabotaging frenemy.

I uselessly try to dig my heels into the snow as I’m drawn through the perfectly sculpted bushes flanking the Scotts’ front door, hoping the pulse isn’t guiding me where I’m sure it is.

As soon as I’m inside Madison’s bedroom, I go on hyperalert, overwhelmed by paranoia, because I don’t trust her anymore. Even if she can’t see me, merely being near her now feels like walking into a trap.

She’s sitting at the desk that lives in the alcove surrounding her dormer window. She has pictures scattered haphazardly across the L-shaped white work surface, and her moss-green satin photo box is on her lap.

“Looks like Nancy got to you.”

Short little whimpers shake her shoulders every couple of seconds. I step soundlessly across the pink rug in the center of her wooden floor and see a picture of the two of us on the desk in front of her. In it, she’s leaning into my shoulder with her hip popped out, flashing her fake camera smile. The picture is off center so it looks like the woods are posing with her. I’m looking off to the side.

Another whimper breaks the heavy silence that feels so out of place in her bright and girlish room.

Seeing her cry makes my anger fade some. Whether it’s about my death or what she did, at least she feels remorse about something. I bend down to get a closer look at the picture and glimpse her face. It’s as white as a candlestick, not red and blotchy like I’d expect from someone crying so hard. A twinge of sympathy rises in me, but I push it down.

Madison traces the tiny oval of space between our necks where she’s propped her head against mine in the picture. Our shoulders are smushed together and I’m holding a red cup full of grape jolly vodie. We could pass for sisters with our matching hair. We seem so in the moment. Well, she does. I look like I’m being pulled out of the moment. I can see that thick oak in the foreground to my right, where Caleb promised to tell me the truth she was too cowardly to admit.

This was taken right after I heard those girls, Carly and Megan, gossiping at the party about Ethan breaking up with me. When I left my friends to find Ethan and ended up finding Caleb instead. Somewhere between posing for this picture and dying I found out one of my closest, most trusted friends had betrayed me.

I rip my eyes away from the photo and force myself to look at Madison. A tear drips off her cheek onto the image of my face in the picture. She uses her thumb to wipe it away, but she’s pressing too hard and the glossy image starts to smudge. The ink spreads across my face, almost as if a strong wind has picked up in the snapshot of a world that doesn’t exist anymore and blown my hair awry.

Madison reaches across the desk with her free hand and begins to methodically fan out the photos like she’s searching for a specific shot.

When her cell chimes somewhere in the room, she drops the picture of us and pushes her chair back so quickly that I almost don’t have time to move out of the way. She grabs her car keys, halfway through replying Not home to whoever texted her, and whips open her bedroom door.

“Omigod!” she yelps. Her cell clatters to the wood floor when she sees Drew standing there. His face gets this sad light about it when he bends to pick up her phone and sees what she’s typed. She says, “I was just on my way out.”

“Where to?”

She ignores his question. “What are you doing here?”

“Your mom let me in.”

Madison sighs. “Of course she did.”

He hands her her cell. “Thought I’d skip out on lunch to see why you weren’t at school.”

“I didn’t want to see anyone,” she adds with a biting connotation toward him.

He pretends not to hear it and steps around her into her bedroom. “Don’t worry. I made sure nobody talked about the fight you had with Cassidy at the party.”

“That’s not why I didn’t go,” Madison says in a defensive tone, watching Drew closely as he wanders her room.

He stops in front of the desk and picks up a photo of her reading Cosmo next to my pool during last spring break. She’s wearing a green-and-pink striped bikini with a gauzy sarong wrapped loosely around her hips. Aimée took the picture while Madison wasn’t looking and ended up getting dunked in the deep end for it. It’s one of the best pictures of Madison I’ve ever seen. The way she has one leg bent up accentuates her curves and her hair is flowing down her back in its natural straight style. This was before she dyed it, so it’s that cheerful shade of strawberry that always reminded me of summer. The main reason she looks so good is she didn’t know her picture was being taken; she wasn’t on.

Drew points at the desk. “When did you take these? There must be a hundred pictures here.”

Madison snatches the picture he’s holding and throws it into the satin box. “I hate how I look in that picture.”

“I think you look phenomenal, but if you don’t like it, why’d you print it?” Drew asks.

Madison draws her arm across the desk and bulldozes the rest of the pictures into the box, undoing the organized line she’d fanned out before he arrived. “I print everything within twenty-four hours.”

“Like Quik-Sav’s lab,” Drew says, trying to make a joke and failing miserably.

Instead of answering him, Madison stares at Ethan’s yearbook picture, which is resting on top of the overflowing stack; it’s the one she drew the hearts on the back of. I watch her staring blankly for a long time, wondering why she wanted to break up Ethan and me. Had I upset her somehow?

“You printed the ones from Saturday night already?” Drew’s voice is low as he picks up the picture of Madison and me that’s still on the desk, knocking the one of Ethan off the stack and upside down. The Magic Marker–hearts on the back of Ethan’s picture have been rubbed out, like my face in the picture Drew’s holding, and an answer to my breakup question begins to form in my head.

It takes Madison a second to pull her eyes away from the stack. “I’m supposed to be getting pictures together for some school thing. I thought there would be more of Cassidy, and I could…” She shakes her head. “I guess it’s my fault there aren’t more. I spent half the party inside.”

“I know,” Drew says intently. “I did too. Remember?”

Madison murmurs, “Not so much.”

“Hey, don’t feel bad. She was drunk.” Drew’s tone is blunt. It stings—not in the physical, ghostly memories way, but in a hurtful, emotional way. “It doesn’t even look like she knew you were taking this one.” He studies the picture of me, of the woods, and the tree. “Are there any of me in here?”

“No.” Madison shuts the box on his hand as she wipes at tears sneaking out of her eyes.

Drew’s mouth curves into what I think he means to be a sexy smile, but it looks more like a smirk. He walks to her side. “Don’t let what happened with her ruin what happened with us. We’re finally together—officially. No more breakups and makeups.” He wraps his arms tight around her waist and leans in for a long kiss that she cuts short. His expression tightens. “Maddy, you promised if I—”

“I know,” she interrupts, “but I think that maybe I need, like, time or…” She pushes her fingers through her half-curled, half-fallen-straight hair and claws at her scalp where her strawberry roots are growing in.

He bends to whisper something into her ear that I can’t make out. Her blue-gray eyes flood with an unidentifiable emotion. She leans away from him, reaching for the door. I’m sure that she will open it wider and shove him out in their usual off-again style, but she quietly shuts the door instead and leaves her hand pressed against the door frame.

Without facing him she asks, “You would tell me if you knew something about Cassidy’s fall, right? Like if you’d heard something from someone?”

“Of course. I tell you everything. Besides,” Drew coos, “none of this is your fault, babe.”

“This is completely your fault!” I yell at Madison. “You’re the one who’s always hot and cold, not Drew. You faked all those times he stood you up, didn’t you?” I choke out a laugh of disbelief.

Before Drew can say another word, she abruptly turns from the door and throws herself at him, smashing her mouth against his. He stumbles back a few steps and rights his footing in a way that tells me he’s used to the spontaneous tongue assault.

I so am not.

“Seriously?” I gawk at them. “You’re going to fool around now?” I don’t even bother telling her how repulsed I am by her actions. What’s the use? She can’t hear me, and she’s obviously not the person I thought she was.

When Madison reaches for his belt, he tilts his head back and moans, “Maddy.” That one word stops her cold. She looks past his shoulder at the stack of pictures now spilled out of the box on the floor. When he follows her eyes, she grips the sides of his face and pulls him into one of those desperate kisses that you see in movies when someone’s about to go off to war. The raw emotion of it is palpable. Something feels off though. Maybe it’s the fact that her eyes are still open. I’ve never seen anyone kiss with their eyes open.

My eyes squeeze shut because I can guess where this is going and I don’t want to be around if Madison decides to give Drew what she “promised.” Before I can think of a specific person like I usually do when I ghost out of a room, the air shifts, inexplicably thickening, and the pulse in my chest slows to a steady, repetitive beat. I open my eyes to the glow of a fish tank.

“Ethan?” My voice dithers. I’m not sure I’m ready to see him, knowing what I now know.

He sits up in his bed, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth when he sees me. It makes me feel like the worst person in the world. “Cassi. I thought—” He pushes the covers back and stands.

“Wait.” I hold up my hands. It’s so dark in his room I can hardly see them in front of me. “We need to talk—”

“Shh.” He silences me with one finger on my lips. “Don’t ever leave me like that again,” he says softly.

“Like what?” I ask, momentarily forgetting what I needed to tell him.

“Without saying goodbye. Dealing with that once is enough for a lifetime—too much.”

My head drops with what’s left of my heart. Would he still want me to stay with him if he knew how I’d abused his trust? He lifts my chin and gazes at me. Having his skin against mine feels so incredible I can’t imagine how I stayed away Tuesday night and most of today. I almost forget why I did. Almost.

“Ethan, I’m sorry I didn’t come back yesterday, but I had to go to school with Aimée again.”

“Why?”

“I’m worried about her. She’s on this mission to find out who was on the bridge with me, and she got this threatening note.”

His brow furrows. “Threatening?”

“Well, sort of. Someone put a note in her school bag that said, ‘It’s easy to jump when you get a push.’”

“Is that supposed to be about you?”

“I think so because she found another one in my locker.” I take a second to search for the right way to say what I need to ask. “What did we talk about on the bridge?”

His face does this tightening thing that looks both agonizing and wistful. “Cassi, can we not … It’s like this miracle that I get to have you back. I don’t want to drag up stuff that reminds me of how I lost you.” He gently rests his hand over the place where my heart once lived. An echo of a beat awakens with the heat of his touch.

I back away from him even though it’s the last thing I want to do. Ethan takes hold of one of my hands and sets it on top of his heart. When his palm presses against the back of my hand, there’s a tingling right beneath my skin that reminds me of being alive. I look up at him through my eyelashes and my heart flutters up into my ears. It pulses there for real! I can feel it!

He leans forward, his lips inching toward mine, so close I can feel the warmth of his breath on my tongue. Our noses nuzzle each other, and I’m sure he’s going to kiss me. My ears are on fire. I can’t even remember what we were talking about twenty seconds ago. I hold my impossibly real breath …

Then sharp bites of pain nip at my ankles, stinging up my legs, gnawing away the sensation of our almost kiss and replacing it with the ache I felt at the river when I first awoke to this new ghostly existence. I pull away.

He steps back quickly. “I’m sorry.”

I touch my lips where the shadow of his almost kiss lingers, trying to capture the heat wafting off me as it floats away with the sense of realness in my phantom pulse. My skin goes cold, suddenly unsubstantial.

I shake my head wearily. “How weird is it that kissing has become this off-limits thing for us? We used to kiss, like, thirty times a day—and it felt amazing.”

“Is that what—does it hurt you being so close to me?” I don’t answer. He turns his face away from me. “I suppose things are different now.”

“Yeah.” I tuck my hair behind my ears. Things are different now. We’re different. In the nearly three years we’ve been together, I’ve told Ethan everything, even things Aimée and Madison swore me to secrecy about. Not because he asked me to or anything, but because I wanted him to know. I trusted him with every part of me, knew he’d understand better than anyone else because he and I were meant to be, true love revealed on a sunny day on the reflective river.

I didn’t even realize I’d stopped telling him everything until he asked to come over one night to watch a movie. I knew both my parents would be home—and predictably acting out their own drama—so I told him I’d rather see a new movie in the theater instead of admitting why I hadn’t invited him over in a month. Avoiding my house meant less privacy, which meant less making out. At first we’d say extra-long “goodbyes” in his car when he dropped me off, but the thrill of that wore off after a couple weeks and we sort of became … boring.

But now when we’re together—even when we’re not—he brings a small piece of me back to life. And that kiss, even if it was only an almost kiss, was the definitive opposite of boring.

“Ethan.” My voice comes out gravelly. “I need to know what happened on the bridge.”

He grips the back of his neck with both hands. “I told you. We talked.”

“You mean we argued. I remember you were mad at me about…” I open my mouth to say the words I’ve been dreading since I remembered kissing Caleb, but I have this flash of me stumbling into Ethan and being pushed off him. “Did you push me?” I ask, still half consumed by the image.

“No!” Ethan takes a step back, shocked. “I can’t believe you asked me that.”

I hold my hands up. “That’s not what I meant. When we were arguing, I stumbled into you and got pushed away, right?”

He avoids my eyes. “Oh. That was—that wasn’t me.”

“Someone else was with us?” I bite my bottom lip, bracing myself to hear Caleb’s name.

“Mica thought you were trying to hug me or whatever and stepped between us.”

“Mica?” I struggle to fit him into my memory of that night.

“Yeah, he’s the one who found you two on the bridge.”

“What do you mean ‘you two’?”

He stares at me expectantly. “You really don’t remember?”

“No. Not a thing—” That’s a lie, and I can’t bring myself to lie to Ethan. I start over. “I don’t remember our argument.”

“Do you remember leaving Madison with me before you went to the bridge?” he asks. I give him a blank look. “She was upset and crying?”

I recoil at the thought. “I would never leave Madison like that,” I protest. Unless it was after I found out she’d invited Caleb.

“Guess you had someplace more important to be,” he replies derisively. “Drew told me you wanted to meet me at the bridge. So I went and … you weren’t alone.”

“I wasn’t alone,” I reply, hoping saying the words out loud will shake some small bit of memory loose. I touch my lips, stirring the syrupy taste of schnapps. “Ethan, I—I wasn’t with him like you think. We were just … having a drink,” I finish lamely.

“Yeah, so was the rest of the party, around the bonfire. Why did the two of you need a private drink on the bridge together?”

I can’t speak. There are no words to make anything that I can remember about what happened sound acceptable. There’s no way to explain what I did.

“Why did you have Drew tell me to meet you? Did you want me to see that?” Ethan’s voice gets louder with each question. “What would’ve happened if I hadn’t shown up? How many drinks would you two have had together?”

“No, I didn’t want you to—I don’t know why. I don’t even remember talking to Drew.”

He laughs a harsh laugh and pushes his hands through his hair. “You can only play that card for so long, Cassi.”

Anger fills me. “Maybe if you tell me what you know I could remember more.” He shakes his head, and I grit my teeth. “I don’t understand why you’re keeping the truth from me. Do you want me to stay like this forever?” I gesture to my iridescent freak-show body. “I’m not me anymore. This isn’t how I want to spend the rest of my li—” I throw my hands up. “Whatever this is. Why won’t you help me?”

Ethan’s Adam’s apple works up and down his neck as he swallows hard. “You think I want to relive the most painful night of my life? Sometimes I tell myself I never even went to your party so I can avoid thinking about it.”

“Well, it’s the last night I have, Ethan!” I struggle to lower my voice. “I know I did something … something bad happened and I need to make it right. I need to find out the truth so I’m not remembered as some drunk girl who was desperate enough to jump off a bridge instead of facing her mistakes. I know it hurts, but you’re the only person I can ask for help.”

“It’s not only that I don’t want to hurt.” Ethan hesitates. “I don’t want to hurt you again.”

“Again?”

“After what I saw…”

“Ethan, there’s more to that than you know. Someone was trying to break us up.”

“Y’think?”

I shake my head. “You don’t know.”

My chest feels like it’s cracking under an enormous icy weight. Moist flakes of snow sprinkle my face, gathering at the corners of my eyes, blotting my vision.

“No. You can’t do that now!” Ethan shouts at me. “You can’t leave like this again.” All the guarded tension in his voice gives way to frustration and pain. The pain is so intense I wonder how he’s not falling to pieces.

I am. I’m falling away into tiny drops and the last thing I hear before I’m gone is my wavering voice asking him, “Again?”