CHAPTER

24

Kate took my phone away. She says I need quiet time to think and get some rest. Well, I say she’s turned into some kind of demon from the deep, complete with red-rimmed eyes and horns. And now Dave’s here and he and Kate are talking, talking, talking out in the living room, probably about all the ways they can make my life miserable.

I lie on my bed and write. I write so much my hand cramps and I have to take a bunch of breaks. Then I scour Lena’s journal, looking for anything to get rid of this knot in the middle of my chest, like my heart’s arteries and veins and vessels are all tangled up.

She gave you up.

I shake my head and flip through the journal, landing on a black-inked entry toward the beginning of the book.

Sometimes I look at J and can’t believe I’ve gotten this chance. I get to love again. I get to be loved again. Two years ago, I never thought this would happen. I had some chances, maybe, but I pushed them all away. Getting sober was so hard—it’s still so hard—I wasn’t going to risk a broken heart again. But now everything’s different. And he wasn’t the one who made me feel like I could do it. It was me. It was me working the program, me going to meetings, me calling D in the middle of the night if I had to. It was me believing that I had something to give someone else, finally, instead of just taking, taking, taking.

I frown down at the page, my heart thumping all over the place. Because… because it sounds like this J person is her boyfriend or something. Maybe he’s just a best friend, but it sounds super-romantic. I tuck this question away and keep on reading.

And now there’s S. For the past few weeks, I cry myself to sleep almost every night, thinking about her. Thinking about how she’s my life and I’m hers. Thinking about how I can’t mess this up. I can’t. Sometimes I look at S’s face and I can’t breathe, I love her so much. It’s the scariest, best kind of pain, right in the middle of my chest.

I reread that part a couple of times, then I check the date on the entry. Lena wrote it in February. Way before she came to Port Hope for me. Way before she even called Kate.

So, if S is me, then…

I read it again. She must have had a picture of me. Maybe Kate sent her some over the past eight years, school photos and stuff like that. But… Kate said she could never get in touch with Lena, whenever she tried. The last number she’d had was disconnected. It had been years since Kate and Lena had talked. That’s what she told me, that day in my hospital room.

But surely Lena had baby pictures of me. That’s one thing I’ve been thinking about, actually. Kate doesn’t have any of my baby stuff because our life together started when I was four. So Lena has to have something. She wouldn’t throw it away, would she?

I sit up and run my hand over the crinkly journal page, imagining Lena looking at a baby picture of me and getting up the courage to call Kate, to come see me, to get her second chance. I try to settle the image in my heart and it almost fits, but it keeps popping out, like a puzzle piece that’s just a hair too big for the only gap left in the whole puzzle.

I close the journal and stick it under my pillow. I feel itchy and bouncy and there’s no way I can sleep after reading all that. They were supposed to calm me down, Lena’s words, but all they did was stir me all up and stick all these questions in my brain.

I slide off my bed and tiptoe down the hallway, peering around the corner and into the living room. Dave’s here and he and Kate are on the couch, their heads super-close. He has his arm around her shoulders, and his hand is playing with her hair.

I stand there for a few seconds, wondering if I should try to talk to Kate about Lena again. Maybe she knows who J is. Maybe she knows… something. I don’t know, anything. But just as I’m about to step all the way into the living room, I realize Dave and Kate aren’t talking.

They’re… kissing.

Finally, they’re kissing.

I wait to feel super-happy, because I’m always teasing them and I know that Dave loves Kate more than anything in the whole wide world. They think I don’t know that he quit music to come be with her, to help her with the bookstore and me, but there’s no other possible reason. His is the kind of love I read about in books and sing along with in songs. Especially his super-whiny songs. That kind of love is the whole reason I want to kiss someone so bad.

But I don’t feel happy. I don’t know what I feel, exactly, but it’s not happy. My chest feels hollow, like I’m missing some super-important part of myself and I don’t know where to find it. Everyone’s got their life, their love stories that make them feel happy and grateful and all soft inside, and here I am with someone else’s heart in my chest while Kate makes all the decisions and then goes and has all this fun smooching Dave.

I sneak back to my room and get into bed. I pull the covers over my head and squeeze my eyes shut so tight, colors explode under my eyelids. It’s all bubbling up, too many thoughts all bumping into each other in my head. My heart pounds like it’s about to bust right out of my chest, and I think it might. I think it really might.

I’m just about to cry or scream or pull out my blue hair, which I really do like a whole lot, when I hear a tiny tap on my window.

I peek out of my quilt and glance toward the glass. It’s covered with sheer white curtains, so I can’t see much. Plus, it’s totally dark outside, almost eleven o’clock. But then I hear it again.

Tap.

Tap-tap.

I throw off my covers and run to the window, shoving the curtains out of the way. I start to kneel on the cushioned bench under the glass, but I guess I’m a little too excited—or scared or nervous that it’s an axe murderer tapping on my window or something—because my foot gets tangled in the bottom of the thin curtain fabric. I pull and tug, but it’s like there’s a tentacle wrapped around my ankle. I bend down to unwrap it, lose my balance, and go down hard. Even better, I bring the whole curtain rod and curtains down with me.

“Sunny, are you okay?”

I yank the curtains off my head and look around my room for the voice. It sounded like… Quinn. But a faraway Quinn.

“Sunny?”

Tap-tap-tap.

I peer at the window and see a hand pressed against the glass, fingernail tapping away. Her face appears a second later, purple curls everywhere, and I swear, I almost cry. I really, really do. But before I can get up and open the window, my bedroom door flies open.