by Taylor Hale
The funeral. It didn’t even cross my mind.
“I see that look on your face,” Faye utters. “After the way you hurt him, I don’t want you anywhere near his funeral. But—” She looks away, tears streaming down her cheeks. “But as much as I’ve always hated it, Miles did love you. A lot more than you realized.”
My eyes water. “I’m sorry, Faye. I didn’t want any of this to happen.”
She’s quiet for a moment. “I know I have a messed-up way of expressing things sometimes, but I tried to get you to at least notice Miles this summer. I at least wanted you to talk to him. But instead you shunned him. I get he like, tried to kiss you, and did petty stuff, but what changed so much, Liv? When we were kids, nothing could keep you away from him. He tried to apologize to you for the way he acted.”
I don’t know how to explain to her that my negative feelings toward Miles were about so much more than the petty things he did. They were about more than the day he kissed me too. It’s all too confusing; multiple versions of him exist in my head, and I have no idea which ones are real and which ones are a result of my own paranoia and nightmares.
“We just—he wasn’t who I remembered him being,” I say. “And I wasn’t who he remembered me being. I think we both had expectations for each other that we couldn’t live up to. And then—”
“And then you chose West.”
“Yes. I chose West.”
Faye looks at the wall. “I can’t blame you for everything. I mean, Dean was my boyfriend.” Her bottom lip trembles, and she cries harder. “Now my other half is dead because of my shitty choices. Jesus Christ. Have you seen Dean?”
“Did no one tell you? They let him go . . .”
“What? Is he here?”
“I don’t know. We saw him take off.”
“He should be arrested. I—I don’t want him anywhere near me. He killed my brother, Olivia.”
“Okay, we can tell a nurse not to let him in.”
She lets out a breath. “Yes, I want that.”
I glance down at her arms, covered in bandages. What’s beneath is more than the evidence of the crash, but I already poked my nose too deep into her business once before. Faye catches me looking, though.
“You were right,” she says, almost too low for me to hear.
I straighten up. “What?”
“You were right, Olivia. About Dean.”
The air between us grows colder.
“He burned me,” she whispers. “The first time, I thought it was just like—a joke. He told me it was normal to give people ‘smileys,’ and I thought it was okay because Shawn had some, too, but they were older than mine. But then he just never stopped.”
“But Miles said you did them yourself.”
“That’s what I told him. I didn’t want him to worry, and I didn’t want to break up with Dean.”
“Why? Dean was hurting you—why did you stay with him?”
“I don’t know. Somehow, despite everything, I thought we were in love. He never hurt me any other way—it was just the burns. And they always came out of nowhere, even when he was in a good mood. I was so scared of upsetting him, but I can’t forgive him for this. Ever since I found out Miles is dead, it’s like I’ve woken up from some sort of twisted dream. I never want to see Dean Bowman again.”
“Miles knew Dean was hurting you?”
Miles’s voice rings in my ears, the words he told me at the barbeque: “Someone I care about could be in serious danger.”
“Yeah,” Faye says. “He tried to get me to break up with him. He tried to protect me by always being there, but . . .”
My memories before the crash are fragmented, but I do remember Miles saying he knew someone had lied. But I don’t know who he was talking about.
I shake my head. I’m too sedated to digest any of this right now.
“Don’t mistake what I’m saying,” Faye says. “I still hate you for how you made my brother feel, but you noticed something was up with Dean and me, and you tried to help, so thanks.”
“Of course. I was worried about you.”
She looks away. “You can go now. Please.”
“I’ll ask Keely to get a nurse to make sure Dean can’t get in, okay?”
“Thanks.”
Even though Faye and I have never liked each other, I’ve known her for as long as I’ve known Miles and West. She was always mean to me. Attention seeking. Yet I thought she was beautiful, and I envied her more than I cared to admit. And I think I now know, the real reason I crawled along the edge of that cliff five years ago. It wasn’t because I wanted everyone to think I was cool or daring or badass. It was because I cared about Faye Hendricks’s opinion. I never thought seeing her in this much pain would make me realize, for the first time in my life, that I care about her too.
I leave Faye’s room feeling hollow. I have all the reasons in the world to feel guilty about loving West, but all I want is to make sure he’s okay.
When I get outside, I find myself in the afterglow of sunset, on a concrete path lined with blue and pink hydrangeas. The late-August air is warm, but a cool breeze breathes through my cotton hospital gown. A distant memory unearths itself, blooms like a flower I had long forgotten about. Miles and I were seven, and he had fallen and scraped his knee, so I’d put leaves on his cut to work as a bandage because I didn’t know any better. He thanked me anyway, even though he knew they weren’t helping.
West is sitting on the ledge of one of the gardens and hides his face in his hands. It shatters me; I never thought I would see him cry.
“West?”
He wipes his tears with his wrists. “Olive. Fuck, sorry.” I sit next to him, no words on my tongue. After several moments of sniffling, West says, “I’m sorry I didn’t visit you sooner. I was going to after I talked to Faye.”
“Don’t apologize, it’s okay. I talked to her too.”
“She has every right to hate my guts. The last time I ever saw Miles, I hurt him.”
“I’m so sorry, West.”
Now we’re both crying. He smooths his hands over his face and takes a deep breath. “I haven’t been able to sleep at all. I can’t stop thinking about him. All I can think about is how horribly I treated him, and then I feel even more fuckin’ guilty because it isn’t fair to suddenly feel bad now that he’s dead. But I do. I just thought we had more time to change things.”
“I’m sorry, West.” It’s so robotic, but I don’t know what to say. We’re on the same page, though. After all the things I thought about Miles this summer, it isn’t fair to suddenly care about him now that he’s gone.
But now everything is so final. When Miles was alive, there was drama, but somewhere in my mind, that drama had an end. Not like this. Not with death.
“When we were kids,” West says, “my dad used to yell at me when I acted up, and it made me feel powerless. I hated it. More than that, I hated the fact that Miles didn’t get any of it. I didn’t understand, you know? Why’d my dad hate me so much, but loved Miles and Faye? But I get it now. It’s because he didn’t give a shit about my mom, and he loves Beatrice. My dad never even wanted to have me, was just pushed into the role when my real mom died. And I guess the only way I could ever feel like I had any power in that house was to beat on Miles. Even just the other day, when I hit him—God, I never changed.”
His words give me chills. “You took it out on him because it made you feel powerful?”
“Yeah. But once we got a little older, Miles started to realize he could outsmart me. He could manipulate my dad to get me into trouble. If I beat on Miles or pissed him off, it wouldn’t be long before my dad would beat on me. But—can I blame him? He wanted me to pay for hurting him, and fuck.” He crams his palms into his eyes and cries. “Fuck, Olivia, my little brother hated me, and he had every right to. For a while, I wanted to make things bet
ter with Miles, but my relationship with him was so fucked up, and he always had his guard up around me, so I never got anywhere with him. And I guess I gave up. So when you came back to town and we hit it off, I didn’t care if he liked you. I went for you anyway, Olive. I can only imagine how much he hated me for that.”
This conversation was bound to happen, but it still makes me nauseated with guilt. “Same here, but—” My voice breaks. “But I love you, West. And I never led Miles on. I didn’t feel like we owed him anything.”
He puts his hand on the back of my neck and gently squeezes. “We didn’t. And I love you too.” He pulls away. “But I’m going to need some time.”
“I know. Me too.”
“I’m going to take some anger management classes or something. Therapy. I think I need it.”
“That could be good for you, West.”
“Yeah.” West collects himself and takes a deep breath. “What happened to you in the woods, anyway?”
I stiffen. In my head, Miles’s phantom voice shouts my name.
“Olive?” West nudges me, and I snap out of it. “Your parents told me you ran off, and”—he points to my arms—“you’re all scratched up.”
“Yeah, I . . . I lost my phone, then I wanted to get help and . . .”
“Did something happen?”
Lying isn’t an option, but I can’t tell him the whole truth either. “Yeah. It was like that night again, when I went to the hospital after seeing the dead deer. I saw things again, but I can’t tell you what, okay?”
“Okay, I get it. But are you good now?”
“For now. I need to get home to the city and see my psychologist, but not until the funeral.” I pause. “Is it maybe okay if I come with you? Not as a couple, just—”
“Of course. You don’t have to ask.”
With a nod, I weakly smile. I don’t know what we are now, but I’ll need him with me. This thing that lives inside me wears Miles’s skin like a cloak—it looks like him, talks like him, sounds like him. But it isn’t him. It’s me. And I’m terrified to go to his funeral and stand around the people who loved him and know that, even with his flaws, I didn’t deserve to be friends with Miles Hendricks. He wasn’t perfect, but he was far from evil. Maybe someday I can tell West exactly what I saw, but it’s my secret. I’ll spend a lot of time living with it.
I want to keep listening to West’s voice, even if we just talk about nothing, but everything is different now. I check the time. “I have to get back to my room soon,” I say.
We stand, looking at anything but each other. I try to keep it together, but when West pulls me to his chest, my knees go weak. I collapse in his arms and clutch at his black T-shirt, breathing in his achingly familiar smell. West kisses me on the side of the head.
“I’ll see you soon, Olive.”
And then he’s gone.
24
The hospital discharges me the next day. Before I know it, I’m back at the cottage as if nothing ever happened, but instead of wallowing in bed, I sit with Mom in the living room and watch the VHS cassettes left behind. A sad collection of movies previous cottagers must have watched during their holiday—a few horror films mixed in with animated classics. Mom twirls my hair as I’m curled up on her lap, and The Little Mermaid plays on the old box television.
I try to focus on the movie, but my mind wanders. Dad had to drive home to check on the shop—seven hours to New York, seven hours back—but I know he won’t miss Miles’s funeral. I’ve never even been to one. All of my grandparents are alive and well, and I’ve never seen death firsthand, except my own near-death experience. I have to admit, it feels exactly how I imagined it would: empty.
The sky outside is dark, and a salty breeze leaks through the open window and sways the pale-blue curtains. The waves crash against the shore. Mom scrolls through her phone behind my head.
“Livvie?”
“Yeah?”
Mom picks up the remote and pauses the movie. “Maybe now isn’t the best time, but . . . I thought you might want to look at some pictures. To prepare you for tomorrow.”
When I sit up, Mom hands me the phone. An album she’d uploaded to Facebook years ago shows a reel of my childhood memories from before the accident. I barely use Facebook, so I didn’t even know these were up.
My voice becomes lodged. With a somber smile, Mom taps on one of the photos, and it opens to a picture of Miles and me as kids on the beach—the same beach that roars outside of the window now. The ocean is alive, and even though it’s night now, I know the sun blazes on the other side of the Earth. I’m alive, too, but one thing in this photo is gone forever. I still can’t swallow that.
“I remember this day,” Mom says.
“Me too.” I can’t help but laugh, even though tears drip down my cheeks. “Look, he’s covered in sand. I buried him all the way to his neck, remember?”
“Like it was yesterday.”
After this, we ran into the water, and I still remember the feeling of cold, crystal blue splashing up my bare legs. I feared nothing. Not the turbulence of the sea, not my own mind. Definitely not Miles. I’ve spent this whole summer trying to be that girl again, but instead, I descended into something I never imagined.
Overwhelmed, I say, “I need some air.”
“Wait on the porch,” Mom says. “I’ll be there in a minute.”
Outside, the sky is completely clear. I lean my elbows against the rickety wooden banister of the porch, and the chipped white paint digs into my skin.
I breathe in deeply. It wasn’t the ocean that hurt me this summer; it was my own mind.
There’s still one thing I haven’t done yet. I don’t want to be scared anymore. No, I won’t be scared anymore.
Peeling off my shirt, I run toward the shore, just as Mom comes outside.
“Olivia, stop!” she screeches, but I’ve already kicked off my shorts. I walk into the icy water until my ankles are wet. Pebbly sand seeps between my toes. The waves push against my body, but I shut my eyes and listen. The whoosh is something I’ve known my whole life, the natural soundtrack to my existence.
It doesn’t scare me anymore.
“Livvie, please,” Mom begs. I look over my shoulder to see her crying, and she holds her arms out to grab me.
“Mom, it’s okay. I have to do this.”
Before she can protest, I reach into a part of my mind that had been buried under layers of sand for all these years. A sense of freedom surges through me as I point my arms into the air and dive under water. The dark blue, along with a freezing numbness, submerses me. When I kick, my body rockets forward, and so many memories flow into my mind.
There are things to be scared of in this world, but this isn’t one of them. Because when the waves pull me under, all I have to do is kick. When the water gets too deep, I can swim to shore and stand again.
Air sweeps into my lungs when I emerge and smooth down my soaking wet hair. My breath catches, because a meteor shower slices through the night sky. There are so many shooting stars, I almost can’t believe it. They pierce the darkness in a needle of light before they vanish.
“Mom, look!”
“I see them, sweetie,” she says, laughing with me. Mom is already half in the water, her pajamas drenched. “Now come on back here, please!”
She’s going to have a heart attack if I don’t stop. I’ve done what I needed to do—I swam on my own, without West, without anyone. Smiling, I run back to the shore, into my mom’s arms. We go back to the cottage together, but I take one more glance at the endless black and blue on the horizon.
I need to stop trying to fix the girl who fell, and focus on being the girl who survived.
25
When I pictured how Miles’s funeral would go, I saw rain. A sky blanketed in gray and the odd flicker of lightning over the mourners’ faces, because funerals are al
ways gloomy on TV. But not today; the sun shines the same way it does on any other summer day, and blue jays caw as they swoop over the graveyard. Church bells chime and overpower the quiet sobs of Miles’s family and friends.
West and I arrived together but haven’t touched out of respect for Miles. He cries beside me now as the casket sinks into the earth. A priest in a black vestment with maroon accents watches it solemnly, along with a crowd composed of Caldwell citizens and Miles’s family. I resist the urge to reach out and take West’s hand.
Miles’s body is in that cherrywood box, and it sends ripples of dread through me. It was closed for the viewing, because what was left of Miles was not how his family wanted him to be remembered.
The air is saturated with grief, bitter like saltwater on my tongue. Across the circle, Faye wears a black dress that covers every inch of her skin. Beatrice keeps her composure, but tears stream through her makeup. Brian remains a statue, holding his hands firmly behind his back, but pain cracks the stoic veneer on his face. It feels wrong, like the natural order of the world has been flipped. I’ve heard the most difficult thing for a parent to do is to bury their child—it’s supposed to go the other way around.
“He was only seventeen.”
I’ve heard that a lot today.
Once Miles is buried, the walk back to the funeral home is quiet. We pass fields of graves, some with wilted flowers adorning the headstones, others barren. I imagine Miles’s will always have flowers on it. There are hundreds of people here, so many that I’m lost in a sea of solemn faces. Then I look back in the direction of the graves and see him.
Miles.
He stands in the parking lot, the wind blowing through his blood-soaked curls. His gaze is frozen on me, as if to say you did this. I clench my eyes shut, and when I open them, it’s Dean Bowman who stands in Miles’s place. I don’t know which is worse.
Dean leans against a van eerily similar to the one Miles died in. When he catches me looking, he flicks his cigarette, gets into his new vehicle, and drives away. Part of me wants to tell West, but he’s still wiping tears from his eyes with the sleeve of his black shirt. This day has been hard enough on him.