Because he knew when he made that call, deep down he had to have known at that point, that I wasn’t going to call him back. That I was in that car along with Cody, Phillip, Chris and Megan.
My hands felt damp as I dragged them down my face. Everything inside me felt raw and bruised. One night had irrevocably changed all of our lives. One choice had altered the course of what we all were supposed to become.
What would I have done differently that night if I’d known there was no tomorrow? Everything. I would’ve done everything differently.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Pumpkins were on front porches. The tree in the backyard had turned burnt orange and red, as had the maples lining the streets and surrounding the school. Halloween decorations plastered the windows of the shops in town.
Homecoming banners filled the hallways at school. Excitement buzzed in the classrooms and the cafeteria as talk of dancing and parties and dresses consumed the senior class.
The air had turned chillier. Long sleeves and cardigans replaced tank tops, but I was still wearing my flip-flops. I would until snow kissed the ground.
I was preparing my application for early decision to UVA.
Two weeks ago the cast had come off my arm. There was only a twinge of pain in my ribs every now and then, and I was able to sleep on my side now. I was breathing normally. Only a little over two months since the accident and...
And people were already forgetting.
Life was moving on.
Talking to Dr. Perry about what happened the night of the accident, how I’d suspected Cody had too much to drink but still got in the car, had lessened some of the suffocating weight I carried but not all of it.
When I told him that I had finally listened to the messages and read the texts, he’d told me that was progress. I was making some of the right steps, but there was still no sudden awakening or clarity after rewinding the night of the accident and actually forcing myself to come face-to-face with the decisions I’d made.
I’d had two choices that night.
And I’d made the wrong one.
Dr. Perry had said, in the session on Wednesday, “Some people may try to say or may even believe what happened that night in August cannot be blamed on anyone but Cody because he was behind the wheel. They may even say that all of this has nothing to do with blame, but that’s not the actual case. Do you know why?”
“Why?” I’d asked.
“Blame isn’t about making someone feel terrible about their actions, and it’s not about hurting the person’s feelings. Actions and inactions have consequences. If we did not accept responsibility or blame for them, then we’d be at risk of repeating those actions,” he’d explained. “Everyone who was there, who saw you all leave, who knew that they had been drinking, and even the parents who allowed the drinking to occur. But it is also partially your fault.”
Partially.
Not completely.
But partially.
Partially didn’t feel any different from completely, but what he said at the end of the session, what he’d reiterated the following Friday meeting, was that I was not the only one who was partially responsible. And it stuck with me.
It wasn’t like things changed. Like there was some magic switch thrown and I was suddenly okay with everything. If anything, things were more real, the memories sharper and more clear.
But then, after that Wednesday session, the nightmares started.
I was back in the car again, being thrown side to side. Sometimes I dreamed that I was in the driveway and I hadn’t gotten in the car, but I knew what was going to happen to my friends. It felt like my feet had been cemented to the ground, and I kept telling myself to go get someone, to warn everyone that they were about to die, but I couldn’t move. I was frozen until I woke up, gasping for air. Many nights I came to, throat raw, with Mom clutching my shoulders. Only then would I realize I’d been screaming.
Dr. Perry had been right. I guess those fancy degrees attached to his name had a lot to do with it. I was still traumatized from the accident, from the memories I kept to myself, and talking about them pushed the accident to the forefront of my thoughts.
And I did a lot of talking.
The session on Friday and the following Monday were basically lessons in exposure therapy. Rewind. Relive. Each time it got a little easier to say the words I needed to, but by the next Friday, something finally clicked into place.
My friends were dead.
They really were dead, and no amount of guilt was going to bring them back. Nothing was ever bringing them back or undoing what strangers and friends alike now thought of them. Nothing was stopping the suits being brought against Keith’s family or the pending legal charges. Nothing was stopping the lawyers from contacting me and Mom every other week.
At the end of that session, my face hurt from the tears I’d tried not to let fall but couldn’t stop. I had to hide my face throughout the rest of the afternoon because it was so obvious that I’d spent the morning sobbing.
Dr. Perry had been so right about grieving.
I hadn’t truly begun the process, so blinded by the trauma of the accident and consumed by the burning guilt. I hadn’t let any of them go. Hadn’t even truly begun.
Those days, those weeks, were hard. Focusing on classes became difficult for a whole different reason. I missed them—missed Megan and her hyperactivity, missed Cody and his arrogance, Phillip and his sarcasm, and Chris and his goofiness.
And I missed my friends who were still here. I missed them terribly.
Dary was still desperately trying to make everything normal, and Abbi hardly spoke to me at all.
Seeing my friends start to move on while I was still stuck on the cliff, half dangling off, wore on me. They were racing ahead, while I was still on the first leg. Dary and Abbi talked about the homecoming dresses they’d bought over the weekend, a trip I’d been invited to but had begged off. They were so...normal, so everyday, and I was so not, because I was stuck in the welling grief that I was just now experiencing.
And, oh God, I missed Sebastian so much.
Things were rough between us. He was around, but things weren’t like they had been. He still sat at our table at lunch and talked to me. He didn’t ignore me or pretend that I didn’t exist, but every interaction with him was superficial. His guards were up, walls intact.
Nothing was the same.
I’d hurt him.
I’d hurt myself.
And he didn’t even know the full extent of it.
My heart had felt like it was going to fall out of my chest when Skylar had shown up at our table on Monday. He was sitting with Griffith and Keith, who was, like usual these days, right beside Abbi. I once tried to ask her if they were seeing each other, and she’d just shaken her head at me like I should’ve already known.
But at that moment I wasn’t thinking about it, because I could hear Skylar’s laughter and Sebastian’s deeper chuckles and that drew my attention.
That’s when I fell in love with you.
Sebastian had nodded at something she said, and then slowly his head turned in my direction. Our gazes had met, his shadowed, and then he looked away, his jaw clenching down hard. Skylar laughed again.
He said he loved me, but it appeared he was also moving on. Moving right back to Skylar, and her pretty smiles and clean conscience.
* * *
After school on Tuesday, I was dragging myself across the parking lot out to my car. I’d gotten there late that morning, so I was all the way in the back of the lot, near the football field. The sun was out, warming what would normally be a cooler autumn day, and I was thinking about how this was perfect weather for practices. Coach Rogers liked to have us run on the track at the end, and it was so much easier when you didn’t have the hot summer sun beating down on you.
But I wouldn’t be joining them after school for that run. I didn’t miss those practices, but I did miss the game. Funny how I used to convince myself that the
only reason I played was because of Megan. I knew now that it wasn’t true.
I sighed and picked up my pace. I was about halfway across the parking lot when I heard my name called out, a breeze catching Sebastian’s voice. I turned and saw him jogging toward me. He was dressed early for practice, in tights with nylon shorts over them.
My heart rate kicked up as I squinted up at him. “Hey,” I croaked out.
“Hey.” His arms were at his sides. “So, I had a question. I wanted to ask at lunch but forgot.”
“Okay?”
“Are you going to homecoming?” he asked.
Caught off guard, I knew I was gaping at him. Was he seriously going to ask me to go? After what I’d said to him? After not really talking to me for almost a month? But if he was asking me, no matter how unexpected it was, I couldn’t say no. I wouldn’t, even though I had no business going to a dance when I...
Swallowing the rancid guilt, I shook my head. “No. I don’t have plans to.”
His blue eyes narrowed slightly. “It’s your senior homecoming. Last one.”
“I know.” Really, it just felt like it was my last year to play volleyball and to go to homecoming. But it wasn’t. Not for me. But for Megan and the others, it had been.
“So you’re just going to stay home?” He glanced over his shoulder briefly, and then his gaze settled on me.
I knew right then that he wasn’t asking me to the dance and heat blasted my cheeks. Of course he wasn’t. Why would he? I cleared my throat. “Yeah, I’m staying home.”
Sebastian stared at me.
“Is that all you wanted to ask me?” I asked, glancing away from his eyes and then focusing on his shoulder.
“Yeah.” Sebastian started backing up toward the school. “I was just curious.” He started to turn and then looked over at me. A moment passed before he said, “I’ll see you later, Lena.”
“Bye,” I whispered, watching him turn around and jog off. That had been our longest conversation in weeks.
I’m in love with you.
Standing in the parking lot, I squeezed my eyes shut. A car honked nearby.
He’d loved me, and I’d...I’d damaged our friendship and ended a possible future for us...before it even began.
* * *
Dary leaned against the locker beside me. Her polka-dotted bow tie matched the blue-and-white suspenders she wore. “You have to meet with Dr. Perry today?”
“Yeah.” I pulled out my History text. “I only meet with him Monday and Friday this week and next. Then I think I’m done with him in November.”
“That’s good news, then?”
I nodded and closed my locker door.
I guessed it was good news. I mean, either Dr. Perry thought I’d be in a better headspace by then, or his time he could dedicate on me was simply up. I knew in one of his follow-up calls with my mom he’d mentioned that I might benefit from outside, continuing therapy, but I was pretty sure Mom’s insurance didn’t cover that and we really didn’t have the money to spend on it.
Hopefully, I would be better by then.
But that was a bridge I wasn’t crossing yet.
“Can I ask you something?” When I nodded, she said, “What’s going on with you and Sebastian? I’ve been wondering for weeks now, but you always get all weird when he’s brought up, so I haven’t said anything.”
I hitched the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “Nothing is going on.”
“Really? Because he was all Lena, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and then all the sudden he’s not sitting next to you and I haven’t seen you guys really talking.”
“He’s just busy. So am I,” I lied as I turned.
Dary walked beside me as I made my way to the front of the school. “So, I’ve heard a rumor,” she said, speaking each word carefully. “I debated on telling you, because I didn’t want to upset you, but I also didn’t want you to be blindsided if it’s true.”
The muscles in my back tensed. She could be referencing so many things. “What?” We stopped at the end of the hall, by the wall of really terrible art projects that I had no idea why anyone would showcase. “What rumor?”
Dary bit down on her lip as she shifted her weight from one foot to the next. “I heard... Well, Abbi heard this and then told me, so—”
“Wait. Abbi heard a rumor and told you but not me?” Exasperation raised my voice.
“Yeah.” Dary sighed.
“She couldn’t have just told me?”
“She could’ve, but you two aren’t exactly best friends forever right now, and I think she knew I’d tell you,” Dary reasoned, and then pointed out, “And you also aren’t really making much of an effort to repair that broken bridge.”
I opened my mouth to disagree, but Dary was right. I wasn’t doing much of anything. “Okay. What did she hear?”
“She was hanging out with Keith after practice—”
“Are those two together?” I asked.
Dary raised a shoulder. “Who knows? I think they are, but Abbi doesn’t want anyone to know, because, well, you know how Abbi is, but they are going to the dance as dates even though she’s driving with me. You’re being a loser who’s not going at all, but I know Keith asked her.” She took a breath and rushed on. “She was hanging out with Keith after practice and Sebastian was with them. Skylar was there, too. Not with them with them, but she was there.”
My heart splattered.
“Abbi overheard Skylar and Sebastian talking about homecoming. She said it sounded like they were going together.” Dary looked uncomfortable. “Abbi said she couldn’t be certain from the bits and pieces she heard, but that’s what it sounded like. And the last you opened up about him, you said he’d told you he loved you. So I thought you just needed to know.”
My mouth opened, but I didn’t have any words, because this shouldn’t be a surprise to me. Even though it felt like my chest had just been stomped on by a combat boot, I was the one who’d pushed Sebastian out and away.
No wonder he’d asked me if I was going. Now he could go with Skylar and not worry about me seeing them, all dressed up and perfect together.
“That’s nice,” I murmured, blinking rapidly.
“Seriously? That’s all you have to say?”
I nodded numbly. “Yeah, I think it’s good for him—for them,” I lied. That was the best I could do right then.
It was all I could do.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“How did it feel going back to work this weekend?” Dr. Perry asked Monday morning, like he did every Monday morning.
It was the last week of October. Homecoming was this weekend. The big game. The big dance. Normally I wouldn’t have started at Joanna’s until middle or late November, but since I wasn’t playing volleyball, I’d decided that at least I could go start making money again.
“It was okay.” My arms were wrapped around my knees. “A little weird, being back. Felicia, one of the other waitresses, had made a cake for me. It was nice.”
“Chocolate cake, I hope,” he said, and smiled when I nodded. Today there was no mug. Only a silver thermos. “Did you do what I asked you to over the weekend?”
Pressing my lips together, I shook my head.
Infinite patience filled his expression. I didn’t understand how he did it. “How have things been with your friends?”
He’d asked the question every Monday, because every Friday one of my “assignments” was to open up to my friends, and every weekend I couldn’t work up the nerve.