My lungs burn as my heart beats wildly. It was there—the truth, the whole time.
“We’re project partners,” Veronica whispers to me as if she’s angry, and I’m the reason why. “We stay on track, we do our project, and because you can’t handle keeping emotions out of it, we aren’t together and we won’t kiss again.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why can’t I be with you?”
Her face contorts. “Because you’ll stay with me, that’s why.”
My eyes widen as if she doesn’t get that’s the point. “That’s what people do when they love someone.”
“It’s not what I want you to do—not with me.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t how it was supposed to go. You were never supposed to know I was dying. We were never supposed to fall in love. We were supposed to have fun and enjoy our senior year and make a million memories. And then we were supposed to graduate. You were supposed to go to college and I…”
“Was supposed to die?” I finish for her. “And I was supposed to leave and forget you?”
She nudges the grass with her foot. “It’s what happens when people leave this town.”
“I could never forget you!” I roar.
“I know that now, and I don’t want this for you! I want you to live!”
“Don’t you get it? The only time I live is when I’m with you.”
“Because maybe I’m just another adrenaline high,” she pushes. “Have you thought of that? You don’t want to jump anymore so you hang out with the weird girl who does weird things to get the high so you don’t have to face the fact that your mom is an alcoholic and that you enable her every step of the way.”
My entire head moves as if I was slapped in face. “What did you say?”
Veronica looks down like she’s ashamed, as if she’s sad. “Your mom is sick, and it’s killing you.”
“She’s fine,” I say, but the words feel empty, and I don’t understand the growing anger inside me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right, I probably don’t, but it seems obvious.”
“She’s not a drunk!” I shout. “Alcoholics drink all the time and my mom is sober during the week. Yeah, she drinks a lot, but she’s not a drunk! She’s not!”
Veronica places her hands in the air in a show of retreat. I curse aloud then run a hand through my hair. This isn’t what I wanted—a yelling match with the girl I love.
“You and me,” she whispers. “We’ve run our course.”
My chest feels as if it’s splitting in half. “Please don’t do this.”
“I’m not doing anything. We’re project partners. Friends. That’s more than we were last year.”
“But I love you,” I say doggedly.
She lifts her head and meets my gaze. “And I’m doing this because I love you back. I was selfish to let this start. I was selfish to let it continue. I can’t be selfish anymore. I’m not going to fight the tumor. I’m going to die, and I can’t let you tear yourself apart—not for me.”
“This is tearing me apart.”
“Not like it would if you stay.”
I step toward her, invading her space, and she lowers her head again.
“Please,” I whisper. It’s a prayer; it’s a plea. “Don’t do this.”
She shakes her head, and when she looks up at me with tears in her eyes, my heart shatters. I wrap my arms around her and she falls into me. We hold each other, cling. Desperate to make the most of the last few minutes.
“I love you.” My voice breaks, and I squeeze her tighter.
“I love you, too,” she whispers against my chest.
Veronica lifts her head and allows her fingers to brush along my neck. She edges up, I lean down, and we kiss. She tastes sweet, her tears salty, and I pour myself into her. Begging her to change her mind, letting her know how much I care.
She pulls away, and it kills me to let her go. Veronica stares at me for a heartbeat, as if she might run back into my arms, but then she pivots on her toes and leaves. Into the tree line, away from me and toward where Lachlin and Kravitz have disappeared.
Loving V requires sacrifice. That’s what Kravitz said.
Veronica’s dying. Her tumor is growing and she’s dying. The knife of that truth cuts me so deep that the pain is blinding. It doesn’t feel right. The world is only bright because of Veronica. Without her, it will be as black as midnight.
Joy. Veronica is life and joy.
The world has a hazy sensation, and my stunned brain takes a moment to readjust. I blink to help clear the confusion, to bring back focus. To force the sky to be above me, for the ground to be below me, for everything to become right again. I blink a second time, my vision does clear, but the world doesn’t return to its previous state. Not in the way that it should.
The sky is still blue. My sneakered feet touch solid ground. The grass and trees are still rooted in spot, but it’s all different. Veronica is living, but at any moment could be dying … and she won’t prevent it from happening.
A weird tingling in my veins as there is this driving need to yank her off the railroad tracks as a speeding train approaches, but then my lungs seize. That’s the problem. What she’s been trying to tell me—there’s no way off the track, only a way to slow down the speeding train. Death is inevitable, it’s only a question of how long and painful the collision will be.
A cool fall breeze wafts over my skin. It feels good after standing in the warm sun for so long. I stare down at the hairs on my arm, watch as they rise and fall with the light gust. Funny how I’ve never noticed how those hairs move before or how I never took a moment to realize how the wind feels against my skin … or the sun … or how this moment is specific to fall.
I glance around and the trees are no longer green. A mixture of yellow, reds and oranges are starting to invade the green, and then I spot the dried leaves. The ones that didn’t make it through the brutal heat of summer. The ones that didn’t outlast the others. A withered brown leaf falls from a branch and drifts to the ground. It won’t be green again or have the opportunity to be yellow, orange or red.
There’s rustling to the left and Kravitz leans his shoulder against a tree, watching me.
“That’s why she speeds up holidays,” I say, and my own voice sounds foreign. “She’s trying to live as many of them as she can before she dies.”
He nods then looks away. I rub the back of my head and doing so doesn’t help undo my new sight, but I’m not sure that I’d want it to.
Loving V requires sacrifice.
Those words are a ghost whispering in my brain. Nazareth was right in that I didn’t understand before, but now, with these new eyes, I do.
VERONICA
Sawyer: I’m not letting you push me away.
Me: I’m not pushing you away. We’re staying friends. It’s better that way.
Sawyer: Not for me. I’m not scared.
Standing on my front porch, my spine straightens. He’s not scared. Saying it as if I am. Me: Neither am I.
I expect a rapid-fire response, but there’s nothing. Silence. As if he said all that there is to be said. That his statement was the final word in an argument I was just gearing up to fight.
He’s not scared.
Like he even understands what there is to be scared of.
Me: I’m not scared.
It needed to be definitively declared, but somehow the second text causes some of my confidence in myself to drift away. Doubt whispers in my mind—am I scared?… But of what? Losing him? Losing Mom? Of death? Of dying?
Not wanting to think too much more about it, I walk through the front door to the foyer and find Glory sitting on the steps, blocking my way. Just the sight of her exhausts me, and I lean back against the door as I shut it. “I am seriously not in the mood.”
“Hello, V. I smell sage.”
“That would be because I burned it. Are all the
evil things lurking in the house gone?”
“No,” she answers, and I feel like banging my head against the wall. “They’re muted, but not gone, which is why I’ve been able to sit here. They’re still talking, attacking, but it only feels like a tickle on the inside of my skull.”
I don’t know if I should feel bothered or relieved. I push off the door and Glory stands. I climb the stairs, let us into my apartment and Glory chooses to sit in the middle of the couch. She pats the space next to her. I join her and wish for the thousandth time that it was my mom I was sitting next to and I could physically feel her. I broke up with Sawyer and every part of me aches. I want my mom’s hug. I want her touch. I want her caring words.
I glance around the living room, specifically at the window seat, and my stomach churns that she’s missing.
“How do you feel the cleansing went?” Glory asks.
“I had a massive headache and then I broke up with my boyfriend. So I guess it depends on where you fall on your feelings for Sawyer and me together.” Mine were the good feelings and now I feel empty.
Glory slowly assesses me. “Why did you break up with Sawyer?”
I shrug.
“Is it because of your tumor?”
I meet her eyes yet shrug again.
“You have a bad habit of this,” Glory says.
That catches my attention. “Of what?”
“Pushing people away.”
“I think you have that wrong. People push me away.”
“What about Leo?”
“He’s the one who left.”
Like my mom used to, Glory tucks a curl behind my ear. Missing Mom’s affection, I lean into the touch. It’s not Mom, it’s not the same, but it’s more than what I have now.
“I’m curious,” Glory says. “When are you going to stop making decisions based on your mother’s death?”
I flinch away from her. “I don’t do that.”
“I believe you just implied that you broke up with Sawyer because of your tumor.”
“You don’t understand Sawyer, and you don’t understand what it’s like to watch someone die like Mom did. I don’t want that for him.”
“So to save the people you love from heartache, you’re choosing what you think is a fast death?”
“Yes,” I say then feel confused. “I’m not choosing to die.”
“God knows what’s in your heart, V. There’s no point of hiding what He’s already seen. He’s been sending angels to talk to me about you.” Glory looks me over in that way she does with clients when she claims to be reading their auras. “What do you believe your mom chose?”
“A slow death,” I say.
Glory surveys the living room, and my skin prickles with how her gaze lingers over the window seat. Mom’s not there. At least I don’t see her, yet guilt rushes through me.
“Why are you letting your mother haunt you?”
My mouth dries out and my head swivels as I desperately try to find Mom in the room, but she’s nowhere to be found. Oh, God, what if by burning the sage I have muted the other spirits enough that Glory now senses my mother? If she does, she’ll force Mom to move on. I know this to the depths of my soul.
Glory places both of her hands on my cheeks and forces me to focus. “You have to learn to let go of the dead or they will drag you to death with them. You know this. You cannot permit death to have a foothold in your life.”
This is why I refuse to go into a house without gaining anyone’s permission. A story I heard once, as a child, and it stuck with me. Vampires have to be given permission or they can’t enter the house. Vampires are death and death can’t enter unless you allow it. For years I wondered, had my mother too easily welcomed death in? Or maybe somehow I had without knowing. It made me wary of how I let people into my life—what effect they could have on me without my being aware. It also made me wary of letting myself be cared for by others.
I shake my head with the thought. It’s stupid, I know, but it’s a childhood fear that manifested and grew as my mother’s condition worsened.
“As long as you continue to let your mother linger she’ll haunt your every move, your every decision, your every action.”
Wetness burns my eyes. “But I love her.”
“I know you do, but keeping her this close is stopping you from living.”
I jerk and Glory drops her hands. There are heavy footsteps on the stairs and the sound of Dad whistling one of his favorite songs. As soon as Dad opens the door, Glory and I will pretend we were never having this conversation, which equal parts thrills me and terrifies me. “I’m living.”
“Whether you understand it or not—you have made the same decisions your mother has—you’re choosing a slow death. All I’ve seen for years is a girl preparing to die. That’s not living, V. That’s dying. I don’t see a girl who’s living. I see a girl terrified of her future.”
SAWYER
Friday November 8: Same old everything. Cure and cure and then some more cure.
Ida, Tillie and I took a walk this afternoon. That is, we took a ride to the Ray Brook house. We went in to see Harry Brown. Jiminy, Diary, he looks simply dreadful.
How many people did Evelyn know at the hospital who died? And how did she handle it?
A thump, the sound of something heavy in the living room. My eyes flash open and I jerk up with the sight of a figure in front of me.
“Sawyer,” comes a small voice with a light tremble and a light tap on my arm. A much-needed adrenaline rush courses through me and the high is almost as good as jumping. “Sawyer, wake up. You need to find Mommy.”
My sister holds her mermaid doll to her chest and she’s stroking it so quickly I’m afraid she’ll make it bald. I take the earbud out of my right ear as the left one must have fallen out at some point, then place my hand over hers to stop the frantic petting. In a swift motion, I pick Lucy up to have her sit beside me on the mattress I still haven’t placed in a frame.
“I told you, Mom’s hanging out with friends.” Truth is, I don’t know where Mom is. She hid away from us in her room last night, and she hadn’t bothered coming home when it was time for Lucy to go to bed or when I finally gave in to sleep.
She never answered my texts, never answered my call, and didn’t seem to give a damn I skipped school today. Between my grief over Veronica and my worry and anger involving my mom, I’m a bottle rocket ready to explode, but I’ve been able to stay home and away from jumping because of my sister. She needs me and I’m holding on to that for dear life.
“Did you have another nightmare?” My voice is cracked, groggy. I don’t need to check my cell for the time. Lucy’s become a clock herself and she strikes me awake right at midnight. At least she’s not screaming like a maniac. She might not be stage-five uncontrollable, but I don’t like how she’s shaking like a damn bunny facing a wolf.
“The monster’s back and he was huge.” Her lower lip trembles, and she wipes at her eyes as they fill. “He hovered near the door of my room. He walked in, and he was like a shadow. Then he left, checked your room and then went down the hallway toward Mommy’s room. You need to go check on her. He knocked over the lamp.”
The monster. In the house. I push off the mattress. Lucy has nightmares, but I don’t like hearing about shadows and I sure as hell don’t want to hear about shadows knocking over lamps. I grab my baseball bat. “Stay here.”
I flick on the light to my room so I don’t leave her quaking in the dark and toss her my cell. “If I yell, you run upstairs to Veronica, okay? Her daddy is there, and he’ll take care of you. You tell them to call the police. You tell him to stay there and protect you and Veronica. Do you understand?”
Lucy strangles her doll and nods too quickly.
The bat hangs from my fingertips as I walk into the dark living room. I flip the switch, but there’s no light. I flip it down then back up. Nothing. The hair on the back of my neck rises and my eyes narrow. Something’s wrong.
If there’s s
omeone in this house, I’m going to beat the hell out of them and then drag them upstairs to Ulysses. With the way that guy threatened me with his eyes for just the possibility of hurting his daughter, I’m sure he’ll happily take care of any bastard that’s stupid enough to break into this house. Bet the man owns swampland where he dumps the bodies of people who look at his daughter the wrong way.
Remembering our first night here, I raise the bat to my ear and slowly maneuver through the living room. As I place my foot on the floor, stinging pain. I lurch back and spot pieces of the broken lamp. My heart thuds in my ears. I didn’t hear it break and that causes my blood to course faster. My headphones were in. Music was playing. How much haven’t I heard while living here?
“Lucy,” I say in a low tone, a steady tone, as I’m trying real hard not to show emotion. “I changed my mind. Call Veronica now. While you’re on the phone with her, circle behind me and go up the stairs to Veronica’s.”
“What about Mommy?” Her voice trembles.
“I’ll get her, but I want you safe first.”
Lucy does what I ask, my cell to her ear, Veronica’s face on the screen as it rings. Her feet pad across the room at a run, the front door flings open, so hard that it bounces against the wall, and I maneuver along with her to spot her sprinting along the foyer and then up the stairs.
I’m slow as I make my way toward the kitchen, eye the empty room, and then creep along the hallway for Mom. Music plays from behind her closed door. It’s a slow song with a mixed-up beat and a creepy deep voice. I lean forward, place my hand on the knob and it vibrates under my skin from the bass. “Mom.”
I listen for a few beats and I hear something. Her voice—a grunt like she’s in pain—then a man speaks. It’s rough, it’s demanding and something dangerous pops in my chest. I barrel though the door, bat by my ear, ready to swing. A man has her pinned on the bed, his hands holding her down. “Get off her!”
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