“It was. Sometimes the people around us go, and it’s our fault. And we just have to accept it and move on. I’ll move on eventually.”
He smiles, such a peaceful smile. But it’s like a gunshot through my stomach, and I’m the one bleeding now.
I clutch my stomach. He gets into the car, but I stand there and stand there and stand there. Finally, he rolls down the window and says with a sigh, “Get in.”
And then I move as if I’m made of water. I slosh around in the front seat as he drives us to Lake Longshore.
Sometimes the people around us go, and it’s our fault.
Chapter Thirty-One
THE IDEA THAT I pushed Amy, or even just let her go, eats away at my stomach throughout the trip.
Strip of blue sky. I pushed her.
Smell of cow shit. I let go of her.
Tree branches spiraling away into twigs and then leaves. I pushed her.
Stop sign. No way, go back sign. I let go of her.
And the sign’s right. There is no way to go back.
I just need that last little snippet of memory to tell me what I already know.
I want to ask Petal, get her to trigger the memory for me. But if, as I suspect, I’m the one who pushed Amy, then she and Mark have been protecting me all this time. So I kind of owe her for that.
The roads beneath us have grown bumpy. Been nearly two hours since we left now.
They had Amy’s funeral somewhere out here—the one her family wouldn’t let us come to. Maybe this is Mark’s sick way of saying good-bye to the only girl he ever loved.
Amy’s words float back to me. I’ve never really loved Mark. He was always just the next best...I wanted you.
But Mark would never push Amy off a building no matter how angry he was. Would he? Would I?
All I know when I think of Mark’s shallow dimples and his stupid scarves and the way he used to enjoy doing flips on the trampoline in my yard is that I can’t let him go, too. I will never, ever let him or Petal go.
So we drive down the bumpy roads chasing after Mark. And we’ve got five miles to go, and then it’s four miles.
Three. Two. One.
The lake looms. Most lakes are vast and endless. Not this one. It’s nothing more than a play pool—okay, maybe three or four play pools—embedded between craggy rocks and leafy trees. Rocks skid beneath my feet as I get out of the car.
Run. Run. Run.
I lengthen my stride.
Hope to god that Mark’s still here. We have to find him.
Tristan and Petal keep pace, and we round yet another bend together.
And there he is, sitting on a rock. Completely hunched over, body swaying toward the glassy surface of the water.
“Mark!” I call.
Bad move. He whips around and sees me. His eyes are redder than Tristan’s were beside the road.
Shit, he really wants to run away from all this.
I hop-skip-jump over and between the rocks until I’m beside him. “Marcus Antony Hayden, how dare you try and run away?”
God. I’ve turned into such a cry baby lately. The tears taste salty as I reach out and grab Mark’s hand. My fingers find the spaces between his, and I lace them together, stitch us together. This time I will not let go.
He just laughs at me, though. “What makes you think it’s going to work this time, Ella? You held on to Amy; but it didn’t help her, did it?”
His words wind me. I sink onto the rock and let the world, the lake float in little pieces around me. Everything disappears. Everything is engulfed by the hazy, dizzy feeling that takes over. Everything. I held her hand, and it didn’t help her? Because I let go? Because I pushed her?
Because I’m a murderer?
Mark didn’t say it like that. He said it like “You tried your best and you failed.”
“Tell me what happened, goddamn you.” I don’t remove my right hand from his, but I hit him with my left. It’s an awkward blow that glances off his chest. “I just want to know.”
I fight the tears from my voice. I am strong. I’ve got it together.
I’m not falling apart.
Deep breath. Deep breath.
“You want to know. Fuck, Ella. Don’t make me tell you this. It’s not—pretty.”
“I killed her, didn’t I? I killed her. Oh, my god.” Trembling fingers against my lips and sobs and sobs and sobs.
Tristan drops his hand onto my shoulder from behind. “What do you mean? Ella, don’t say that.”
I turn to Petal for support, but she’s leaning forward, over the lake. She decorates it with vomit.
When she comes back up, she says, “You didn’t kill Amy, Ella.” She turns to Mark, eyebrows pulling down, tears dripping from her nose. “Don’t make me do this, Mark. You promised. I wanted to tell her immediately when I stopped hiding, because it would hurt too much. And you said...you said, if this happened, you’d tell her. You were the one who decided to hide this.”
Mark’s sneakers scuff against the rock. It’s one of the gestures he’s had since he was a child. He used to do it when confessing to letting his dog poo in his scary neighbor’s yard. He used to pull that face when he’d hacked my e-mail or when he’d alienated some guy I liked. He used to pull that face whenever he wanted a favor, or forgiveness.
I’m not sure which he wants this time. Both, maybe.
His voice is soft, so sad that it scrubs at my skin, wearing me down to the bone. I’m bone weary. We all are. “The reason I didn’t want to tell you about how Amy died,” he says, biting his lip so hard that I’m scared he’s going to bleed, “is because I wanted to save you pain. The reason you can’t remember any of it is because, well, we think you got a concussion, Ella—you passed out and all—not that you were drunk out of your mind.”
“Then why didn’t you take me to the doctor?”
“We...didn’t want to have to tell you what happened. I wanted to spare you.” He manages to sound noble and heroic instead of like the patronizing little nitwit that he is.
It’s all snapping into place now. Why Petal came over to my house again so soon after Amy’s death. Barely hours later she was checking on me. Seeing whether the concussion was getting the better of me.
She stayed over at my house, and we watched movies together and cried together and fell asleep on the couch. I wonder now, how much of that time she spent actually watching the movies versus just watching me.
The first half of the next day, Petal was with me. And then when she went off to her room to become a phantom, Mark took over.
A week later, he invented Pick Me Ups.
When my body was safe, we found a way to make both of our minds safe.
You can’t think when you fall.
Problem is, you can’t fall forever. You’ll always hit the ground eventually.
I let the information sink in. Absorb it. And hell, it does make some sense—I’m fairly sober in all the memories I’ve managed to get back so far. Amy is drunk. Mark and Petal and I are more aware of ourselves from what I’ve managed to piece together.
“Amy pushed me back onto the roof?”
I remember now.
Crack. My head hits a tile. Another one clatters down; and its sharp, triangular edge hits my forehead.
Everything goes black.
And then, cutting through the blackness is the wail of a siren. The red alarm flashes, and Mark’s whispering “Shhh, shhh” in my ear; but he’s sobbing, and I know something is wrong.
I can see stars twinkling above my head. I can feel the grass prickling my back. I don’t know where I am, but I force myself upright. Blood rushes to my head. Dizzy, dizzy, dizzy. I push a hand up against the side of my head and gasp.
Mark and Petal are next to me, quietly listening to the sirens. An ambulance pulls up in front of what I recognize as my front garden. For who? Surely not for me? I’ve done something to my head, but it’s not that bad.
I stand so that I’m shoulder to shoulder with Petal, and I�
�m going to ask her about it; but she turns away from me ever so slightly. Then Mark steps to the side a little, and I see Amy. Twisted. Limbs knotted through my grass, laced through the weeds in front of my gnome. But her hands were laced through mine what seems like seconds ago.
The scream that tears from my throat will never be enough.
It will never be enough.
On the rock, I swallow, gulping down the fear that floats to me from my memories. It’s as tangible as the wreaths of smoke above my head at the party, as tangible as the glasses of punch that slid down my throat earlier that night.
“What happened? How did she get there? How did I get there?”
Mark peers at me from beneath lidded eyes. Checks whether I’m okay before nodding and continuing the story. His words shoot straight for once. “There’s not much to it, Ella.” His sigh shakes the lake, shakes the stars out of the sky. I hadn’t noticed it was this late. “You wouldn’t let go, so Amy decided that you were collateral damage.”
“Huh?” My voice is a sharp knife, but it’s twisting into no one’s heart but my own.
He closes his eyes. “You wouldn’t let go, so she decided it would be okay to drag you down with her. She jumped off the rooftop with your hand still in hers, and didn’t give a shit if you came tumbling after. Because she wanted what she wanted, and you were collateral damage.”
I gag, but nothing comes up. I slam my palm into my windpipe and wheeze out a “Fuck.”
Tristan sits next to me, slips his arms around my waist.
I distract myself for as long as possible by looking at my friends, the sky, the lake. I even examine just how gray the rock is. In the end I have to face up to the cold, hard truth: I didn’t kill my best friend; she tried to kill me.
I almost wish it were the other way around. I don’t want to hate Amy now that she’s in the grave. I miss her like crazy, and I don’t want to know this.
“It’s not true,” I wheeze. I’ve fucked up my throat. I’m not particularly worried about it, though, to be honest. Pain is my painkiller. “It can’t be, or I’d be dead.”
“You would be. But I nearly broke your fucking wrist pulling you back. She made her choice, but she shouldn’t have dragged—”
What Mark’s saying gets lost as the last piece of the jigsaw puzzle slips into place and the last memory surfaces.
She stands up, drags me to my feet with her. “Amy, Ames, what are you doing?”
She just laughs and spins like a ballerina, and I’m forced to jog around her in a circle to avoid falling down. I’m not letting go of her.
“You want to do this with me, don’t you, Ella?” She’s looking off the roof again, slurring her words. She leans forward to plant a kiss on my cheek. “You do love me, don’t you? You want to come with me.”
I feel sick. Sick to my stomach, sick to my soul. I want to throw up over the edge of this roof, not jump.
“No, you want to come with me. Back inside,” I say. “I’ll get you some water.”
Mark’s standing behind Amy. He moves forward, ready to grab her. But she’s too fast for him, too fast for me.
“You’re just frightened, Ella. You’ll thank me in the afterlife.”
With that she jumps. No, she doesn’t just jump. In typical, melodramatic Amy style, she scissors kicks her way off the roof. Terror beats through me as I feel her weight dragging me with her as she goes down.
I try to untangle my fingers from hers, but her grip is so fucking firm. I don’t want to die. I don’t, I don’t, I don’t, no matter how much I’ve thought I wanted to in certain moments. This is not what I want.
But I’m going down, and there’s nothing I can do to stop it. The tiles flake away like they’re feathers beneath my feet, and there’s no way to dig in on a roof.
And then something closes around my wrist. Fingers, anchoring me to the rooftop. “Petal! Petal!” Mark’s shouting.
Pet’s out of it, not particularly lucid; but something in her finally wakes up. She runs, tiles falling from the roof, and grabs Mark’s hand with one arm and wraps the other around the chimney.
Amy’s hanging off the roof, suspended in the air.
“Let go of her, Amy,” Mark calls. “Let go of her.”
And Amy’s voice floats back to us. “I can’t,” she says. “I’m so afraid—I can’t do this on my own. I need Ella.”
“I fucking need Ella,” Mark retorts. “Let go, Amy. Maybe Pet and I can save you, too, you shithead. Remember to try and land on all fours.”
She doesn’t say anything for a second. Then, “I don’t want to be saved!”
Her fingers slip from mine, and I’m aware that I’m whispering, “No, no, no.” My tears are practically hosing the roof. And then she’s falling, and the strength with which Mark’s pulling on my arm tosses me across the roof.
I slide onto the tiles as I watch Amy fall. The world goes black.
I get up as the memory fades away. I don’t know what I’m doing, but I leave the others and head back to the car. It takes god knows how long for me to slip over and around the rocks. I make sure to turn back and wave before I disappear from their sight. Just so they know everything’s okay. That I’m fine, fine, fine.
Like a fourteen-year-old who’s gotten drunk for the first time, I stumble to the car. I’m crying so badly that I barely manage to make out its door, and it takes me at least three minutes to find the handle. When I do, I pull it open and haul myself into the car.
It smells of gunpowder, of Tristan and the nightly wakes he holds for his brother.
I knock my head into the steering wheel and listen to the horn go off every time my body is wracked by a violent sob. The moon smiles down at me, and I want to flip it off. But I know it would make no difference. Not one little bit.
Amy would still be dead.
She would still have tried to kill me.
God, I don’t know if I can forgive her. I know I should, because she wasn’t herself and she wasn’t thinking rationally. But didn’t she hear the note of terror in my voice? Didn’t she freaking hear how terrified I was?
And if she did, did she just not care?
She wanted me to follow her into the dark.
I run my fingers through my hair and then beneath my eyes to get rid of the tears.
I guess this is why Pick Me Ups triggered my memories. Because Amy pulled me off the roof, and I was free-falling with her. I was falling, hanging over the edge of the roof. I can remember now: the knot of sick-angry-tired-scared rolling around in my stomach just waiting to be puked out.
That’s how you feel right before you’re about to die. None of that life-flashing-before-your-eyes shit. Thought flees. You’re reduced to three things: skin, bone, feeling.
And that’s what Pick Me Ups did, too. Well, that plus the exhilaration.
And shit, maybe I didn’t lose my memories because I was concussed or drunk. Maybe I chose to forget them. It feels ridiculously possible. Like all I wanted was to paint over what actually happened so I could be in control. So I could write a new story on that blank space.
A story where Amy made sense.
Where the world made fucking sense.
But there is no story where the world makes sense. Especially not the true story.
Amy repulses me.
Someone knocks on the window. I roll it down, still sobbing, still shivering, but trying to get myself under control. It’s Tristan. “Can I come in?” he asks as if his car is some kind of sacred place for me.
I guess it is right now.
“Yeah,” I say. And he’s kind of a sacred person for me right now.
I want to be saved.
Tristan gets into the car, and he’s quiet for a moment, fists stuffed into the pockets of his jeans. Finally, he says, “You have to forgive her.”
I keep on crying and don’t say anything.
“Ella, listen to me. Sometimes people do stupid things.” He laughs a little. “I’m a case in point there. Look, when I tried
to help my brother—”
“That was different,” I interrupt. “He asked you to do that. I fucking begged her to let go of me.”
The sobs stop. It’s like speaking is a magic cure for the tears. I feel deathly calm now.
“Regardless. She was drunk out of her mind from what you’ve told me. She was in a crazy place. And I don’t know what else she was; but I do know that she was your best friend, and she probably couldn’t think through the consequences of what she was doing.”
The words are so rational. They sink into my skin, into my pores. I twist in my seat so that I’m facing Tristan and give him a salty kiss on the lips.
“What was that for?”
I shrug. “I couldn’t resist your multitudes.”
But really, it’s so much more than that.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
My stomach twists with guilt, anger, rage. It’s like a mixed drink in there, and the only thing this punch hasn’t been spiked with is forgiveness. “Tomorrow you will make so much sense. Tomorrow I’ll be able to listen,” I say. “But right now I just want to be angry.”
I’ll forgive her tomorrow. I hope.
Chapter Thirty-Two
WE DECIDE TO spend the night at the lake and drive back in the morning. Tristan sleeps in the car, but Mark and Petal and I stay outside. Under the stars. None of us has words for one another; but Petal finger-combs my hair, and occasionally Mark skips stones across the lake, and it feels like a few things, just a few things, are right with the world.
They’re not lying to me anymore.
In the morning when we reach Sherwood, all I want to do is head home, fall down on my couch or my bed or the floor. Never get up again. But that’s not what I do.
Tristan drops off Mark and Petal first, and somehow it feels right that we’re the only ones remaining, even though I’ve known them for years and him for days. He’s driving toward my house; but when he gets to a red traffic light, I unglue my chapped lips and say, “Take me to the child care center, please.”
“But Heather doesn’t want you to come back—”
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