Chapter Thirty-Four

Before

2/13

Dear Diary,

I might be losing my mind. I’ve been seeing her everywhere. She’s haunting me.

And I know it’s because this is all my fault, because I went back to Mel’s and didn’t call the police. By the time they got there it was too late. I’ve been going to school and everyone’s trying to act normal around me, but nothing is normal and it will never be normal again.

Maybe I was wrong to say anything about seeing Boyd out there with Kit, fighting. But I was just trying to tell the truth. That is what I saw. Have I ruined everything?

My whole family has been put on pause. We are frozen. We can’t move on from this and I don’t know if we ever will. How am I supposed to live with that? I’ve cried for days, and now I just feel . . . wilted. Wrung out.

I’ve tried to talk to Mel about it, but she’s only gotten more distant. I gently asked her if she remembered anything else from Saturday night, but she basically screamed at me. Then she told me she talked to Tessa this week—twice. Once underneath the bleachers at school and once at Jay Kolbry’s party. I didn’t even ask why she went to Kolbry’s, after everything that happened this week—I didn’t want to set her off again. She said Tessa has been bothering her and it’s tipping her over the edge, making her feel crazy. I was a bit shocked that she felt it too, felt the same way as me. I feel like I’m going crazy as well. But at least we’re in it together.

I keep wondering if Mel’s secrecy has anything to do with Dusty, since she was texting him so much that night. At least I assume that’s who she was texting. But when I tried to ask her about it, she basically broke down. Said all this crazy stuff about how she NEEDS Dusty. I kept being like, “But why?” and she finally said, “He makes me feel safe. Being with him is like erasing everything that came before.” I don’t know exactly what she meant by that, because she was a virgin before Dusty, so what is she trying to erase? Who is she trying to stay safe FROM?

Anyway. It’s Monday. My first full week back since . . . since the funeral. I was sitting in math, and Patrick walked in, right before the bell rang.

Just sauntered into class like he hadn’t been missing for the past week.

I knew he was back in town. Boyd told me. And Mel tried to as well. I had been hoping to see him yesterday but instead just had a big Tessa-related meltdown in the woods and went home to sob it out.

A few minutes into class, he tapped my back while Mrs. Gluckman was writing on the board and passed me a note. All it said was, I’m so sorry about everything. Can we talk after school?

After school we went to the art room to talk, because the door was unlocked and no one was in there.

It was weird. We kind of just wandered around the studio, looking at the papier-mâché masks the art kids are making for the spring play, and the line sketches—practices in shadow—and the nudes. I seriously did not know nudes were a thing high schoolers were allowed to draw, and I would think it would be embarrassing to be standing next to Patrick looking at nudes, but it wasn’t. I feel like we’re adults now, sorta. Maybe so much has happened that we’ve both matured into different people than we were a week ago.

Even though I wasn’t looking straight at him, I was noticing every single thing. His blue soccer shirt and ripped jeans and gray sweatshirt, two-thirds unzipped. The fading bruise. The way he kept putting his hands in his hoodie pockets and then pulling them out again.

Maybe we weren’t mature at all. Maybe we were just looking at the student art so we didn’t have to say anything real.

“Look at this one,” he finally said, and his voice sounded rusty. He was pointing at a drawing of a girl (clothed) who was hugging her own legs.

“So where did you go?” I asked.

He let out a heavy breath. “It was stupid. I was trying to get to Vermont. I have a cousin out there and I just thought . . . I don’t know what I thought. Basically, I spent a lot of time sleeping on busses. When I found out what was going on here, I turned around and came back. I don’t really want to talk about it.”

“So what do you want to talk about then?” I asked him.

I was afraid he was going to bring up something about Kit. Or Tessa. And how we have his sympathies. Which would have just felt extra shitty. Talking about it is somehow more awful than not talking about it.

But instead he said, “Quadrilaterals.”

I laughed, and it wasn’t much, but it was the first time I laughed since . . . before.

“I miss quadrilaterals. That’s why I came back. No one teaches them quite like Mrs. Gluckman.”

And maybe I was reading into it, but I think what he was really saying was something else.

“I missed quadrilaterals too,” I said quietly.

Then he reached out and took my hand and I knew for sure he was not really talking about geometry but about us.

I tugged his hand a little and he turned to face me and his face looked like such a mix of emotions then. “I’m sorry. Not just about everything. I mean yes, about everything. I guess this is just hard. Between us.”

“But why? Why does it have to be hard?” I asked.

“Because I generally fuck things up,” he said with a shrug.

“You’re not that bad, though,” I said.

And he smiled. “You think so?”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s just—we’re all a work in progress, right?” Maybe I said it because it sounded good, because we were surrounded by crappy student art. But it felt true in that moment.

“A work in progress. Okay. I like that.”

“Come here,” I said. And we hugged for a long time, and the smell of his deodorant and detergent got into my nose and made me calm, but then I started crying like an idiot. Because my life has fallen apart and I can’t really deal, and no amount of starting over is ever going to feel the same as getting my sister back.

And he just stood there and held me while I cried, in the stupid art room, with winter sunlight streaming in through the high windows, and the drying watercolors dancing against the wall, and the hideous papier-mâché masks staring back at us, and tears messing up my whole face.

And then I finally got myself together and realized that I needed to go home and see my family. I needed to be home.