She’s right—I have gained weight. My clothes fit me now instead of falling off me, and my face is fuller. I’m still not as rounded as I used to be, or as strong, but at least I stopped looking like I’m either sick or on drugs.
“Your grades are good too,” she goes on. “Have you been thinking about college? Mr. Lind mentioned something about you wanting to be a police officer. I could help you look into it, if you want.”
“Maybe later,” I say vaguely. “I’m still kind of dealing with the everyday stuff right now.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Dover straightens her skirt over her legs. “I saw you in the hallway the other day. You were walking with another girl, talking to her and smiling. That’s good too, Dara. This is all good stuff.”
I shift a little in my chair. Hearing her say things like that makes me anxious, like I’m going to screw up any progress I’ve made and disappoint her. Disappoint everyone. “That was Noelle,” I tell her. “We’re . . . she’s a new friend. I guess.”
“Wonderful.” She smiles at me. “There are people around here who will accept you for you. I’m glad you found one of them.”
Uncomfortable, I shift again. I don’t know if Noelle accepts me or not. We’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks and for all I know, she could have befriended me out of pity. Or morbid curiosity. Or because she has a death wish.
“Have you connected with anyone else?” Mrs. Dover sets down her mug and moves behind the desk, folding gracefully into her chair. When I don’t answer right away, she starts sifting through a pile of papers, giving me some extra time.
“Ethan,” I say when she looks up at me again.
She slides the papers to the side. “Aubrey’s brother?”
Something occurs to me after she says this. Does she know him? Is she his counselor too? Then I remember she’s only assigned to seniors, not juniors, and I relax somewhat. “He . . . I think he still wants to be friends. We’ve hung out a few times.”
“That must be difficult for you. For both of you.”
I nod. “My parents think I should be giving him some space.”
She pulls out the typical psychoanalysis question: “And what do you think?”
I study my hands, clasped and motionless on my lap, and consider her question. Maybe I should keep my distance. Maybe bringing him back into my life is a huge mistake. Maybe this horrible thing between us is too big to overcome and I’ll end up losing him too. Maybe losing him will be the thing that destroys me completely.
Maybe I deserve to be destroyed.
But I don’t share these thoughts with Mrs. Dover. Instead, I say, “I think they’re wrong. I mean, it would make more sense if he hated me for . . .” I swallow and glance up at her. She’s watching me patiently, listening. “But he doesn’t. He’s glad I’m back—he said so. And I don’t want to avoid him. I want to show him that I came back here to hold myself accountable for what I did. Even if it’s hard.”
Mrs. Dover nods in her calm, understanding way. “Have you talked to Ethan about this? Why you came back?”
I shake my head. Ethan and I have never discussed my year away. We also haven’t talked about Aubrey or Fulham Road and what it all means for our future as friends. It’s easier to talk about the band, or music, or our preferred toppings at Subway . . . topics that aren’t so loaded that simply mentioning them feels like ripping the pin out of a grenade.
“Well, maybe you should,” she says, like it’s a simple thing. And maybe it is.
“Yeah,” I agree, even though just thinking about that conversation makes my palms slick with sweat. “Maybe I should.”
After several days of searching for Ethan around school, I finally spot him on Tuesday afternoon, sitting outside alone on the concrete stairs leading to the gym’s outdoor exit. His hood is up, protecting his face from the brisk October wind, but I can tell it’s him by the way he’s sitting—feet apart, elbows resting on knees, head bent over his phone.
He doesn’t look up until I’m standing right in front of him. When he does, his pensive expression lifts, and he tugs out the earbuds I just now noticed are jammed into his ears. “Hey,” he says, flipping down his hood. His dark hair blows across his forehead. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Yeah.” I gesture vaguely behind me. “Are you waiting for someone or . . . ?”
“Oh. Yeah, I’m waiting for Hunter. He’s got basketball practice in the gym, but he’s probably going to be a while yet.” He slides over a few inches and nods to the space beside him. “Want to sit down?”
I sit and tuck my backpack next to my feet. “Hunter plays basketball?”
He wraps his earbuds wire around his phone and stuffs both into his pocket. “Not all musicians are stoners, you know. Some of us are also part jock.”
“I know.” I adjust my behind on the hard concrete. “But when you look at Hunter, you don’t think jock. He wears a leather jacket and smokes like a chimney.”
Ethan laughs. “Yeah, the smoking holds him back a little on the court. Sometimes he wheezes even worse than me.”
“How’s your asthma these days?”
“Not as bad as it was.”
I glance over at his angular profile and feel a pang of something close to protectiveness. It’s like Aubrey has somehow possessed me with her mother-hen qualities and is imploring me to inquire about her little brother’s welfare.
“So,” I say, going with it. “Lacey seems nice.”
He gives me an odd look, probably because he knows as well as I do that I’ve only spent two minutes in Lacey’s presence and therefore can’t really comment on her personality. “She’s okay,” he says.
Okay? He’s dating—not to mention kissing and who knows what else—a hot girl and she’s okay? “How long have you guys been together?”
He shrugs and peers straight ahead toward the back parking lot. “A couple of months, I guess. She goes to school with Kel and Corey and Julia. I met her through them. We’re not serious or anything.”
“Do you think—” I clamp my lips together, hesitating. Even though I sought him out today for this very reason—to talk about some of the hard stuff—the words aren’t going to come easy.
Maybe he senses what I want to ask, because he looks at me and says, “Do I think what? Just say it, Dara.”
I let out a breath. Beside us, I can hear the muffled thump-thump-thump of a basketball and several pairs of sneakers squeaking against the gym floor. I concentrate on that until my heart stops racing.
“Do you think Aubrey would’ve liked her?”
To my relief, Ethan laughs again.
“No,” he says firmly and without hesitation. “She’s kind of shallow, and she’s always late. For everything. She also cracks her knuckles.”
I shake my head, a giggle tickling the back of my throat. “Oh, God. She’d hate her.” Nothing annoyed Aubrey more than constant lateness, and nothing grossed her out more than knuckle-cracking. She would’ve loathed Lacey on the spot.
“To be fair, I think she would’ve hated pretty much anyone I dated,” he says, reaching down to scoop a pebble off the bottom stair. “She’d probably think no one was good enough for me, just like I thought no one was good enough for her. Especially that douchebag Justin.”
My breath hitches in my chest, and I have to force myself not to reach out and touch his arm, stop him right there. Justin, like Fulham Road, is a piece of the past I’m not quite ready to confront. “I don’t want to talk about him right now.”
Ethan nods, looking mildly guilty. “Sorry. So, um, what was it like living with your aunt and going to private school?”
Even though he just provided me with an opening to the exact thing I want to discuss, my pulse speeds up again. “How did you know that’s where I was?”
“I asked around.” He bounces the pebble on his palm. “It wasn’t exactly classified information.”
I want to ask him why he’d inquired about me to begin with, but I push the question
aside for now. “It was . . . different. I went because my parents thought I needed a change of scenery.”
“I get that.” He tosses the pebble toward the gravel path below the stairs. It lands a few feet away, blending in with all the others.
“I want to tell you why I came back,” I say, without lifting my gaze from the ground.
“Okay.”
I keep silent for a moment, my thoughts whirling as I work out how to start. Sometimes, when I try to explain my reasoning to Dr. Lemke or even to my parents, it seems like they don’t fully understand. But Ethan might. He’s the closest to the situation, and we’ve always had a bond. We get each other. Or at least we did when Aubrey was still here, linking us together.
I take another breath, block out the incessant thumping on the other side of the gym door, and let the words spill. “My first few months at Somerset Prep, I kept to myself. I was a loner. I didn’t want friends, so I went out of my way not to make any. I was still messed up, obviously, and it was like people could smell it on me. Everyone left me alone. I was the sad, quiet, new girl who never spoke to anyone or did anything. No one there knew about me, about what happened with Aubrey, and I didn’t want them to know. I liked being anonymous.”
I pause to glance at him. His face is tilted down and he’s staring at the space between his feet, but I can tell he’s listening carefully.
“There was this girl,” I continue. “Molly Slater. The teachers at Somerset always arranged us in alphabetical order, so she and I were always grouped together. We shared a table in bio. She was this nice, bubbly, outgoing type . . . sort of like Noelle. She was always trying to break me out of my shell, make me laugh. I was lonely, I guess, so I let my guard down after a while. I started hanging around with her and her friends, just doing stuff like going to the movies and the mall. And it was . . . nice. I felt kind of normal again. My aunt and uncle were happy. My parents were thrilled. They assumed I’d want to stay and do my senior year there too.”
Ethan nods, still with me. I wrap my arms around my knees and keep talking.
“One day last summer I was sitting in a coffee shop with Molly and a few other girls, and we were laughing about something. I don’t remember what. And all of a sudden, while I was laughing, someone walked by who wore the same perfume Aubrey used to wear. Did you know smell is the most powerful memory trigger? One second I was there, drinking iced lattes with these girls, and the next second it was like every memory I had of Aubrey went flooding into my brain all at once. And I realized I’d barely thought about her at all that day. I’d started going minutes, even hours, almost forgetting what happened. The guilt I felt over that almost knocked me over right there. How dare I forget, even for one second, what I did to her, what I did to your family . . .”
Ethan’s fingertips brush my wrist. “Dara.”
“No.” I shake him off. “Let me finish.”
He drops his hand and sighs, clearly wanting to speak but willing to let me get this out of my system first.
“I left two weeks later,” I go on, my voice quivering. “I knew I couldn’t stay there. No one knew about me at Somerset. Aubrey had never been there, so there weren’t a thousand reminders of her. You weren’t there, or your parents. I could drive through town with my aunt without worrying about driving past a spot where I’d done something horrible. Living there made it too easy to move on and I shouldn’t get to move on. If I do, it’s like I’m forgiving myself, and I can’t do that. So I came back to where I can never escape it.”
Ethan is silent for a few moments, either waiting to make sure I’m finished or arranging his own whirling thoughts. When he finally speaks, it’s with an edge of exasperation.
“You’re not the only one with guilt,” he says. “I feel it too. Even my stupid parents feel it, even though they’d never admit it. And the guy who hit her? He definitely feels it, probably even more than us. We all played a part in it. None of us can forgive ourselves. It’s not all on you.”
“But if I hadn’t pushed her, she’d still be alive.”
“If she hadn’t tripped, you mean.”
I swallow hard. “I’m the reason she tripped, Ethan.”
“Well, I convinced her to go talk to you, so I’m the reason she was there in the first place.”
“None of it would have happened if it weren’t for me.”
“It wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been walking in that exact spot, right at that exact moment,” he countered. “Or if I hadn’t encouraged her to go after you. Or if the driver had been paying closer attention. There’s no point thinking about what might have been. It happened. It was a stupid, random accident, and we can’t go back and change it.”
A gust of wind slams into me, making my legs tremble. I hug them closer to my chest and peer over at Ethan. He’s staring straight ahead, his jaw clenched tight and twitching. For the first time since I got back, I’ve pissed him off. This wasn’t what I had in mind when I sat down.
“I still don’t understand how you can treat me like nothing’s happened,” I say softly.
“What do you want me to do, stone you to death?” His jaw relaxes and he drops one foot to the bottom step. “I was mad at you for a while, right after it happened. Does that make you feel any better?”
It does, actually. And it explains why he didn’t contact me or answer my apology letter.
“I was mad at everyone. I got over it, though. Then I just missed you.” He gives me a sideways glance, like he can’t believe he said that out loud. “I missed both of you,” he amends quickly.
Suddenly I’m extremely aware of my body, his body, our proximity, and the strange, charged air between us. Being around him still hurts, but opening up to him about why I came back has helped a little. The more time I spend with him, the easier it gets.
If easy even exists between us anymore.
“You coming over to Hunter’s this weekend?” Ethan asks, switching topics again. His face is red and I don’t think it’s from the wind. “We’re booked to play an all-ages showcase at the community center in a few weeks and we need to start nailing down a set list.”
The thumping and squeaking noises from inside have stopped. Hunter will be out soon and Ethan will go back to his other life, where he’s the cute, guitar-playing boy who dates hot girls instead of the poor, tragic boy who lost his sister.
I grab my backpack and stand up. “Maybe,” I tell him. Even though Noelle’s invited me more than once, I haven’t gone back there since the day I witnessed Ethan making out with Lacey. Since then, every time I picture his hands on her waist, or his mouth moving against hers, I get that odd fluttering in my stomach again. Like I’m hungry or anxious, even when I’m neither. Seeing him with a girl revealed a whole new side to him that I’m not sure how to process.
“What?” Ethan says, and I realize I’m still standing in front of him, staring. “Why do you keep looking at me like that?”
I busy myself with my jacket zipper. “Like what?”
“Like you haven’t known me for six and a half years. Like you’re not sure who I am.”
“I’m not.” My face heats and I start edging away, toward the parking lot and the road beyond. “It’s just weird sometimes, seeing you like this. All grown up, I mean.”
“Still think of me as the annoying little brother, huh?”
No, I don’t think I do. Not anymore. “I need some time to get used to it, I guess.”
“Okay.” He flips his hood back up. “But don’t take too long.”
sixteen
Sophomore Year
AUBREY’S MONTH-LONG GROUNDING WAS HARD on both of us. While she stayed chained to her house, banned from technology and interaction with the outside world, I kept myself as busy as possible with my other friends and volleyball practice. When I didn’t have plans, I’d mope around the house, bored and lonely. One Saturday about three weeks into Aubrey’s grounding, I started getting on my mother’s nerves so much that she forced me to go with my fat
her to Home Depot just to get me out of the house.
Tobias came too, and the two of us trailed behind Dad as he strolled down each aisle, his face the picture of relaxed bliss. I didn’t know if he even intended to buy anything; Dad just liked being there, among the tools and flooring, breathing in the scent of fresh-cut lumber. I didn’t mind it myself, but I wished I was still back home, wearing sweatpants and watching YouTube.
“Dad, I need to pee,” Tobias said after we’d been browsing aimlessly for a while.
Our father glanced up from the paint swatches he was comparing and said, “Can it wait a second, bud? I need to find someone who can tell me where this paint is, because I don’t see it anywhere on the shelf.”
Tobias crossed his legs and hopped up and down. “No.”
It never changed. We could be anywhere in public—a store, the park, the beach—and Tobias would need to pee. His bladder was the size of a walnut.
“I’ll take him,” I said. I was getting bored, anyway. Picking out paint was about as exciting as watching it dry.
Tobias and I headed for the front of the store, where we assumed the bathrooms were located. In the kitchen fixtures aisle, he darted ahead of me, making a beeline for the assembly of display kitchens set up a few feet away. Full bladder forgotten, he tossed me an evil grin and disappeared behind a partition. I quickened my pace and swung around the corner, ready to grab him, but he wasn’t there. I passed through two more sample kitchens and finally found him in the third one, playing with the knobs on the (thankfully-not-hooked-up) stove.
“What’s for dinner?” I said as I sneaked up behind him.
He let out a yelp and took off again. Laughing, we chased each other through the kitchens and then spilled out into the main aisle, where I almost collided with a man pushing a shopping cart. Tobias took advantage of the diversion and zipped around a corner. I apologized to the man and took off in the same direction.
“Kids! No running in here!” called a woman in an orange Home Depot apron as we ran past.
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