Die for You

by Amy Fellner Dominy

  Sweat shines on his face. “You’ll save me, won’t you, Emma?”

  “Always. Don’t I always?” I force a smile. “Pull over, Dillon. I need to hold you. Don’t you need to hold me?”

  There’s no exit in sight, but up ahead the shoulder is wide and flat. Dillon eases the truck into the dirt and pulls to a stop. When he shifts into park, I finally let out my breath.

  I sag weakly against my seat. To my right is a wide field of desert scrub and low rocky hills. Behind us a car whizzes by, and then it gets still. Quiet.

  I unsnap my seat belt and shift my knee to the seat so I can reach closer to him. I have to pull the dress up to free my legs as I wrap my arms around his neck. I press Dillon back and slide far enough over so that I’m straddling his legs.

  “You scared me, Dillon.” With one hand I draw circles on his neck. With the other, I reach for my purse and clutch it in my fingers.

  “I didn’t mean to,” he says. “I only want us to be together.”

  I grip him tightly for a second, fighting tears. Then I climb off his lap and take the truck keys in one quick motion.

  His eyes flash in surprise.

  “I’m going to get you help.”

  “What? No!” He reaches for me, but his seat belt is still attached and yanks him back.

  I shake my head as I reach for the door. “You’re not okay, Dillon. You don’t see it because you’re not thinking straight right now, but I’m going to do everything I can.”

  The door clicks open and warm desert air rushes in. Desperation flashes in his eyes. “Don’t leave me, Emma. You can’t leave me.” He lifts the console and pulls out his father’s knife. Oh God, I should have looked for the knife! With a quick motion, the sheath flies onto the dash and the blade gleams.

  I hold up my hands. “Dillon, no. Just be calm. I’m going to call for help. Okay?” I let the tears run down my face unchecked as I fumble to open my purse.

  “I’ll be dead before anyone can get here.”

  “No. Don’t say that. You don’t mean that.” I struggle to draw breath, panting for air like someone with asthma. My gaze blurs and some part of my brain recognizes that I’m hyperventilating. I feel around my purse until my shaking fingers find my cell phone. “No knife. Please. I can’t breathe.”

  “It’s whatever you want, Emma. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “I want the knife.”

  “We’re connected, you and me. My blood is your blood. Your blood is mine. As long as we go together.”

  Oh God.

  He’s smiling. His skin is stretched tight over his cheekbones. His eyes sunken, dark-rimmed, and mad.

  I turn away and stumble out, my dress tearing loudly under my heels. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I cry. He’s staring at me. A stranger. And the only boy I’ve ever loved.

  As he presses the knife to his forearm, I stagger away and dial 911.

  Saturday night is still a blur. Flashes of it come to me when I close my eyes, which is probably why I haven’t slept much in two nights. The strange thing is what I remember—odd details as if even my unconscious mind is afraid to go back inside the truck.

  I remember the first faint glimmer of red and then the growing sound of the siren a heartbeat later. The shock of the wind grabbing hold of my dress as the paramedics raced past. I remember suddenly feeling my feet and the sting of asphalt on my bare soles. Were my shoes still on the side of that highway? What about my hair clip? Did I lose it then—or sometime later?

  I don’t remember passing out. I woke in a police car and I remember seeing the wrist corsage and not knowing what it was for one blissful second. I remember Mom and Dad at the hospital and Robin, our police liaison.

  The doctor wanted to give me an IV. I was dehydrated, which was why I’d fainted. I wanted to go home, and Mom said I could. I’d forgotten that the home inside my head wasn’t mine anymore.

  I remember Mrs. Hobbs rushing in, crying for her son, and I will never forget the hatred in her eyes when she spotted me in a corner of the reception area. I’ve never felt that cold before. I wonder if that’s when my heart froze. Or maybe it turned to ice when I climbed out of Dillon’s truck and left him.

  “This is not your fault,” Mom said. “This is not your responsibility. You did the only thing you could.”

  So many words. All of them meaningless while we waited for the ones that would matter. The ones about Dillon. I thought the hardest part was not knowing, until I finally learned the truth. That was almost worse.

  Dillon was going to pull through. He was going to be okay. He should have died—he would have. But before he’d cut open his vein, he’d taken the time to unbutton his dress shirt and roll up his sleeve. He’d taken the time to carve the name EMMA on his arm.

  I’m floating on a pink raft. The sun is bright overhead and the waves ripple beneath me. Dillon is beside me, floating on a white raft. His face peaceful, his hand relaxed as it trails through the pool and droplets of water trickle off his fingers with a soft drip, drip, drip.

  Not water.

  Blood.

  Ruby red in sapphire blue. Blue like his eyes. Open eyes that are staring but not seeing.

  I jerk myself awake from the nightmare. It’s the same one I have every time I drift into sleep now.

  Lauren stirs beside me on my bed. “It’s okay, Em. You’re okay.” I hear rustling and she hovers above me with a glass of water. “A sip? Or can I get you to eat some soup?”

  I shake my head. I’m still not hungry, but I’ve given up fighting over liquids. Lauren’s been pressing me to drink every half hour for two days and won’t budge until I do. She drove up from Tucson yesterday and slept with me last night like when we were little kids.

  I take a mouthful of water and hand her back the glass. I don’t know what she sees in my eyes because she quickly says, “You’re okay. Dillon is okay.”

  I picture his arm marked forever with my name.

  “You want to talk about it?” she asks for the hundredth time. “It’s not good—keeping it all inside.”

  My mind keeps tripping up on the words. What exactly am I keeping inside? Disgust? Horror? Guilt? I don’t feel any of it, though I know it must be there, caught beneath the cold numbness.

  It’s Monday afternoon and we’ve moved from the bed to the couch and back to the bed. The blinds are closed, so my room is dim. I want to escape into sleep, but I’ll only dream again. I sigh. Maybe Lauren is right. She usually is.

  “You know how I got him to stop the truck?” I say. “By telling him I’d take care of him. I promised to save him and then I saved myself.”

  “You didn’t do this to him, Em. You’re not the bad guy.”

  “Neither is he,” I cry. “He didn’t mean to hurt me—that’s not what he wanted.”

  “But he did.”

  I shake my head.

  “He did, Emma.”

  Her voice is so low it slides in under my guard. With it comes images. I squeeze my eyes shut but I can’t stop them: The wax. The blood on my legs. The truck bumping wildly over the highway. The knife pressed against his skin. My breath trembles; my body begins to shake. How could he do those things?

  “Emma?” Lauren asks. The bed creaks and shifts and then she’s up on her knees, wrapping her arms around my shoulders. “I’m here.”

  “It wasn’t fair to make me be the one.” I shudder. “To expect me to save him. To force me…to force me…” I think of that night in the back of his truck and I hate him. I hate that he put me in that position, that I had to give him that, accept that.

  And then the sobs begin, because I hate myself, too. I hate myself for going along with it, for letting him do what he did. For not saying no.

  I never said no.

  Lauren’s arms tighten around me, a heavy weight as she rocks with me, holding me together, her words sure and steady. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.”

  But how much happened because I let it happen?

&nb
sp; What could I have stopped by saying stop?

  “I thought it was love,” I say through my tears. “I thought, how could it be bad—it’s love and love is good. Love is supposed to be good, isn’t it?”

  “That wasn’t love,” she says.

  She hands me a tissue and then another and I press them to my eyes to make the tears stop. “Love screws everything up. It makes us idiots—you’ve said that before.”

  “You can’t go by anything I say.” She holds out the tissue box again and I shake my head. “I watch Divorce Court for fun.” She sets down the box and adjusts the pillow behind me as I lean back. “I want you to listen to me, Em. Are you listening?”

  She waits until I nod. “You can’t give up on love. What happened with Dillon wasn’t love. That wasn’t even Dillon. He’s sick right now—suffering from depression or some kind of mental illness. I’m no expert, but what he did—the way he hurt himself—it’s not the way a healthy person acts.” She presses the heel of her hand over her temple. “I’ve read so much in the past couple days. There are mood disorders and thought disorders and reactive disorders. I don’t know what Dillon has, but the thing is, a lot of it can be treated, you know? He can come out of this and be okay. But he needs professional help. It’s not something you could have fixed.”

  “But he’ll always be scarred.”

  “And so will you,” she says bluntly. “But you have to remember that you tried, and because of you he has a chance to be okay. Both of you do.” Her voice rises, every word full of fire. “What you did in that truck was an act of love—for yourself. You’re allowed to love yourself.”

  “Then why does it feel like it’s all my fault?”

  “Because you’ve watched too many bullshit movies that romanticize sacrifice. You were turning yourself into a stump.”

  “A what?” I shift, sitting up higher.

  “You remember that book we read when we were kids? The tree that loved the boy so much that it gave him food and shelter and when the boy needed wood for a house, it gave its limbs and on and on. Until finally the boy had everything and the tree was just a stump.”

  “Is that the message you took from that book?”

  “Yes,” she snaps. “It’s a classic dysfunctional relationship. The boy takes and takes and never even thanks the tree until the tree is a dried-up stump, too stupid to realize that it just sacrificed its life for an ingrate. I tell you what, if that tree were a human, it would have been a woman.”

  I laugh. I can’t help it. “It is a woman in the book.”

  “See!” she cries. “I’m right again.” Her voice softens. “You are not a stump, Emma. You are a smart, caring, beautiful, generous human being and, yes, you have a lot to give, but don’t sacrifice who you are. Not for anyone or anything. Not even for love.”

  I can’t say anything or I’ll cry, but I think of the Twilight poster on her old ceiling and that makes me smile. “It was much simpler when love meant a werewolf with nice abs.”

  She twists so she’s facing me, her legs crossed under her. “I think you should talk to someone.”

  “I’m talking to you.”

  “A therapist, I mean. Someone objective who can help you through this. Mom agrees. She’s going to arrange it.”

  “You talked about it with Mom?”

  “And Dad. All at the same time and in the same room. So see, just talking about therapy has already resulted in a breakthrough.”

  I smile even as I’m shaking my head.

  “I’m being trained to argue for a living,” she says. “You won’t win.” Then she reaches over and squeezes my hand in hers. “Please?”

  I worry my teeth over my bottom lip. “Once,” I say.

  “Once,” she agrees. Then she smiles. “To start.” She squeezes my hand again and I squeeze back.

  “And one other thing.” Her chin tilts with determination. “I want you to come and live with me. You only have another month of high school to finish up, and then you can move to Tucson for the summer and go to U of A in the fall. I can help you get registered and choose classes—whatever you need. It’ll be good for you to get away. Think about it,” she adds.

  I let my eyes drift shut. “I will.”

  The appointment is Wednesday morning with a therapist named Barbara Caye. I don’t want to go. I don’t want to relive all of it again, and especially not with a stranger. But I go because Lauren wants me to and because I want someone to tell me what to do—how to live with what’s happened.

  An hour later, I feel like all I got was some really bad green tea.

  Barbara says she’s there to listen, as if that isn’t the least she can do but the most. And she does listen, gathering up my words as they spill out, defusing them with her nods and knowing eyes.

  But she can’t give me answers. Not even at the end when I stand up and ask her to please tell me where I go from here. What do I do now? I think maybe that’s the moment. She goes to her desk and writes something out on a pad and hands me the slip of paper.

  Four words.

  WHAT DO YOU WANT?

  A question, not even an answer. And not exactly earthshaking. It’s not the kind of thing you expect from someone with umpteen years of education and experience. But I smile and thank her and then I throw the note in the trash outside her office building. I mean, it’s the kind of question they ask you in the drive-thru of the taco shop.

  But as I drive home, the words keep circling around my mind.

  What do I want?

  —

  When I get home, Dad is waiting. Sun streams through the kitchen window, painting a long stripe of bright light across the oval table and onto the floor. In another month we’ll have to close the curtains during the heat of the day or the kitchen will feel like an oven. Another month. I can’t imagine another month anymore. I can’t imagine it without Dillon.

  Dad has taken the day off and his face is rough with gray stubble, but he’s tapping his fingers on the counter and I can tell he has some news.

  “How was it?” he asks as I set down my purse.

  “It was good.”

  “Good?” He looks anxious, so I add, “I’m okay, Dad.”

  Lauren went back to Tucson yesterday morning, so it’s just the two of us. As if he can make up for lost time, he’s gone into Super-Dad mode, stocking the house with my favorite food and going out to buy a VHS player last night so we could watch the collection of old movies I loved when I was little.

  “October Sky,” Dad said last night, pulling out a title from the stack.

  “We can watch it online,” I said, but he wouldn’t hear of it and we had a daddy-daughter movie night with popcorn made on the cooktop and the whir of the VHS tape and a grainy picture.

  “Buried treasure,” he said as we sat on the couch, the same quilt pulled over our legs. It was pretty much perfect.

  But it’s Wednesday now and I should be back at school. I would have gone back today, but the appointment with Barbara seemed like a good reason to put it off. I don’t want to face school. I don’t want to face everyone there or feel the absence of the one person who won’t be.

  “Is everything okay?” I ask Dad now. “You’re tapping the counter like you’re ready to explode.”

  He smiles. “I have something to tell you. Come sit?”

  I settle myself on a barstool and he sits on the one beside me.

  “I checked in with Mrs. Lyght,” he begins. “I thought that maybe…” He pauses. “The internship is no longer available. Dr. Abella awarded it to another applicant just as soon as Mrs. Lyght gave him your answer last Friday. But,” he adds, “I’ve spoken to a colleague who’s leading an excavation project at the Land of Enchantment this summer. He has a spot for you, beginning at the end of May. You’ll be close enough to home that you can come back whenever you want and Mom and I can come up for visits. I’ve even looked into apartments.”

  “Dad—”

  “Please,” he says. “Let me do this much. I want
to.”

  I smile, not sure what to say.

  What do I want?

  The question is still echoing in my head when I head out for an afternoon run. Usually I run to escape my thoughts, but today I need to face them.

  I check my watch as I turn onto the trail. It’s 2:30 and school will be out soon. Right now I would be packing up in chemistry so I’d be ready when the bell rang. So I could be the first one out of class and hurrying toward the gym to meet Dillon for a quick kiss before baseball practice. I’d see Spence and Jace. They’d all joke about something while Dillon laced his fingers in mine and sighed as if it had been too long since we’d last touched, as if he’d missed me in the two hours since lunch. “Later,” Dillon would say, and I’d nod because there was always a later with us.

  Always.

  What do I want?

  I’m beginning to think Barbara Caye is smarter than I suspected.

  I jog past the trees and listen for the mourning doves, but even they’re silent, probably hiding from the heat. Only the lizards are out, quick slashes of tails like blips in my peripheral vision. I feel tired and slow, but it’s still good to be out here. I don’t think I’ve taken a full breath since prom…since before that. Since the night he dripped hot wax on his skin. I tense at the thought, waiting for the sickening rush of memory…but when it comes it’s more like a soft wave, rolling over me and then receding.

  I was worried that retelling it all this morning would only make it fresher in my mind. But I suddenly think of Dad and a lecture I once heard him give. He told a hall full of students that the archaeologist bears witness to history. The archaeologist records it and validates it so that the world may move forward. I wonder if that’s what Barbara did for me today. If she bore witness to my history.

  Will I be able to move forward now?

  What do I want?

  Barbara’s words repeat with every thump of my shoe on the trail. Jace would say it’s like a Jedi mind trick.

  But I don’t want to think about Jace.

  I speed up, wanting to leave him behind, but he’s already everywhere on this trail, his footsteps an echo in my memory, his laugh, his solidness. He and I talked about this on the hill that day. About what we wanted—for ourselves. He understood me.