It’s easier to just let Mom think I’m okay.
My room is dark and the lantern casts strange shadows on the wall. I told Mom I was going to bed because I wanted to listen to music on my phone and draw, but when I flip through my sketchbook, I see one of my sketches of the beach and remember sitting on the picnic table with Jared—he brushed off the top with his hand, fir needles flying through the air. We sat for a while, my hands tucked into his warm pocket. Then he photographed seagulls spiraling in the wind, white frothy waves, and dogs chasing sticks, his camera constantly in motion while I worked on my drawing, but I never finished it. It was more interesting to watch him.
I pick up my phone and check to see if he texted, even though I don’t have cell service. Even though he said he wasn’t going to message me. Even though I tell myself I don’t care.
I still don’t know how the fight started. Well, I guess I started it, but I don’t know why. It was just two days ago that Jared was messing around on his computer—trying to find a song to play for me while I lay on his bed. We’d been at his house for an hour and he hadn’t noticed that I wasn’t talking much. Maybe it was always like that. Maybe it was always him telling me stuff about his friends or photography while I listened. I don’t know anymore. The months are blurred, the days running into each other. After Andrew died I couldn’t sleep, so Jared gave me his dad’s leftover sleeping pills from when he had knee surgery. He told me not to take them every night, so I cut them in half and tried to make them last longer. They helped but gave me a constant hungover feeling. This week I stopped taking them and now I can’t sleep again.
Jared and I spent almost every weekend together since my birthday and it was great at first. When I was with him, I didn’t have to think about my dad or how he died, and having sex was kind of like getting high, but in the last couple of weeks it hasn’t worked the same anymore.
It had been raining heavy all day and I felt restless and bored. All we ever did was hang out in Jared’s bedroom and watch movies or have sex. We’d skip school early and go to his house before his parents got home. Sex had gotten better now. I felt different. More grown up.
“Delaney doesn’t call me anymore,” I blurted out.
“It’s because you have a boyfriend and she’s still single.”
Maybe he was right. She’d been hanging out with some other girls at school and I was glad she made new friends, but I missed going to movies and coffee, or coloring our hair and hanging out. Then I wondered if it was my fault. Maybe I was the one who stopped calling her.
The other day I saw her in the parking lot at school and tried to talk to her, but she was in a rush to meet with her friends. They were going swimming at the pool. We used to love to go swimming. We’d stay in the sauna so long it would feel like our skin was melting off.
It wasn’t just Delaney who was drifting away. I never had time to draw anymore. Last weekend I was going to hang out at home, but Jared needed my help editing the pictures we’d taken down at the harbor. That was fun at first too, helping him on his photo shoots, but then I got tired of spending hours outside in crappy weather just so he could get the perfect shot.
He turned away from the computer. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I’m just tired.”
He climbed into bed with me. “I’ve been looking at apartments online for when we go to UBC. If we find something great now, we can sign a lease before anyone else takes it.”
I looked at him, confused. “You mean for you?”
“For you and me. We’ll get a nice place—maybe something with a view downtown.”
“I told you Delaney and I are getting a place together.” We hadn’t talked about it lately, but that’s always been our plan. I hope it hasn’t changed because I’ve been thinking that it might be good for Jared and me when we go to university. This summer he’ll be traveling with his family, and when we start school, we’ll have even less time to hang out. Then I wondered why I wanted less time for him and added it to the pile of things that I didn’t want to think about.
“Yeah, but that was before,” he said. “I thought you’d want to live with me now.”
“We’re only eighteen.”
“So?”
“Don’t you want to live with your friends?”
“They’re slobs. I want to live with you.”
“Why? Because you think I’ll clean up after you? Can you even cook? Or do you want me to do all the cleaning and cooking and shopping?”
“Whoa. Where is that coming from? I can learn to do all that stuff.” Of course. He had to learn to do something that I’d been doing for years. He’d had everything easy.
“I’m not ready to think about next year. I just want to get through graduation.”
“We can talk about it again in the summer. I’ll put a deposit on something.” He looked unruffled, like he was so sure I’d come around to his way of thinking.
I sat up, crossed my legs, and faced him. “I don’t know if I want to live with you ever. My mom got with my dad when she was only nineteen and she missed out on all kinds of stuff.”
“I’m not like your dad.” Now he was starting to look annoyed, but it didn’t make me want to back away, it made me want to dig a little deeper.
“You’re kind of acting like him.”
“That’s a shitty thing to say.” His face was flushed.
“Every time I want to stay home, you act like you are all bummed out, then I feel bad.”
“You kidding me? You’re always depressed, so I’ve been trying to keep you busy.”
Everything was lurching and scrambling inside me and I just wanted to get up and go home and hide in my bedroom with my earbuds and loud music. I’d stay in there for days. Maybe weeks. I’d never come out again. “Sometimes I want to be alone. I need space.”
We stared at each other. I could feel the truth crumbling inside me, the horrible aching yearning to be on my own, to not have to discuss my feelings, or wonder what he was thinking, or try to make him happy, or be Jared and Sophie. I just wanted to be Sophie again.
He sat up. “You need space?” His face was pale, his eyebrows a dark slash. His lips even seemed pale, as though I’d stabbed him and all the color had bled out.
“Not forever, just a small break.” I couldn’t believe I’d said it, but now the words were out and I watched them fall like bombs onto his face. His eyes widened, then his mouth drooped.
“Seriously?” He sounded winded.
“I’ve been thinking lately that maybe I haven’t really dealt with my dad dying. Maybe I just dove into everything with you because I was avoiding it.”
“I tried to get you to talk about it.”
“That’s the problem. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want to work it out in my own head. I was thinking that maybe we shouldn’t see each other over spring break.”
“I don’t get it. Yesterday you were telling me how much fun we’re going to have.”
“I just want one week alone. Why is that such a problem?”
“You’re making it a problem.”
I got off the bed and grabbed my backpack and coat. “I’m going home.”
He grabbed my arm. “Stop it,” he said. “We need to talk.”
“There’s nothing to talk about. I already told you I wanted a break, but now I think we should make that permanent.” I’m a runaway train, smashing through mountains.
He was gripping my arm hard and he looked desperate. “I won’t let you do this.”
“You won’t let me?” I pulled free, his fingertips digging into my skin.
“Just don’t decide right now.” His voice was hoarse and his eyes black and shiny like pools of ink. I could dip my pen in and draw his heart breaking all over a page in my sketchbook, then I could tear it out, or put it back together again.
“Please?” he said. “I’ll give you space—just don’t end everything.”
I hesitated. Was this really happening? Were we really breaking
up? “I don’t know. I have to go.” I moved through the house, frantic to get outside, to breathe the fresh air.
He followed me out to the front steps, still in his socks even though it was pouring rain. “Wait. I’ll drive you home. Don’t be stupid. You’ll get soaked.”
I looked at him standing there in his T-shirt, his shoulders up near his ears, and the rain falling down around us. I remembered my father pulling up beside me in his truck. Get in.
“I’ll call Delaney,” I shouted through the torrent. Then I was running. My feet plunged through cold puddles that splashed water up my calves. Running, running, running.
* * *
He texted me a bunch of times that night, my phone lighting up in the dark. Why can’t we talk? Why are you doing this? What did I do wrong?
I didn’t have any answers, couldn’t explain the panicked feeling inside of me, and I finally had to turn my phone off. In the morning, I saw his car in the distance when I walked to the bus stop, but I didn’t wave to him and he drove off. I spotted him a few times in between classes and he was always with his friends, staring at me. After school he was waiting by my locker.
“You can’t just ignore me,” he said.
I shoved my books into my backpack. “I told you I needed to be alone.”
“Something changed and I want to know what. Did you meet someone else? Is that it?”
“No,” I hissed at him. “Do you really want to have this conversation right now?” Other kids were giving us curious glances as they walked past.
“Can we go to my house and talk? I want to fix this.”
“There’s nothing to fix.” I thought about how to explain my feelings. “You didn’t do anything wrong. Something inside me just shut off, okay? I don’t know why, but it’s like I can’t get back to my happy feelings. The more you push and push at me, the further it goes away.”
“Just come over to my house for a little while.”
“I have to pack.”
“You can’t leave like this.”
“Well, I’m not going to your house. So what are you going to do? Kidnap me?” I slammed my locker and walked away. When I looked back, he’d disappeared.
Delaney drove me home. I told her I’d had a fight with Jared and we’d broken up.
“Why did you do that?” she said. “I thought you guys were in love.”
“I don’t know.” I was crying because I was sad, but I was confused too. “I can’t explain it,” I said. “It was all too much and I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t breathe.”
She gave me a sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry. Do you want to go for coffee?”
“Okay.” I stared out the window, watching the trees whipping past. I was shaking, my hands and body so cold. I tucked my hands under my legs to hold them still. Coffee would be good. We’d talk and Delaney would help me understand why I just blew up my life.
* * *
An hour later Delaney dropped me off. I watched as she sped up the driveway and turned back onto the road. There was the sound of tires on wet pavement, then silence. I half wished I were still with her so we could talk more, but it wouldn’t have helped. She’d asked me a bunch of questions about my feelings (stuff her therapist asked when her parents divorced), but all I could say was, “I don’t know what happened,” which somehow made everything feel worse.
Angus jumped all over me when I opened the front door and almost knocked me over while I tried to get my shoes off. “Cut it out!” I said, pushing him out of the way when he licked my ear. He needed a walk, but all I could think about was how good it would feel to crawl into my bed. I’d take him later if I got the energy. I just needed to shut everything out.
I stopped at the doorway to my room. A box was in the middle of my bed. I walked over slowly. It was things I’d left at Jared’s house. One of my scarves, a couple of books, a pair of earrings—and the photo he’d taken of me. I glanced at the window, noticed the footprints on the sill. Jared had snuck in a few times to spend the night with me and I guess I never locked it again.
I sat on my bed beside Angus and texted Jared, my fingers hitting the screen so hard that Angus lifted his head and stared at me. You broke into my house????
I was giving you back your stuff.
That’s so immature.
Right, and you’re being so grown up.
I just wanted to think. You’re smothering me.
You wanted to be with me all the time!
I did, but then it was like I stopped being ME.
He didn’t answer for a few moments. I stared down at my phone and waited for the bubble to pop up. Finally I saw that he was typing.
You’re just scared. We were really happy and that freaked you out. You think I’m going to leave you like your dad did so you pushed me away, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done.
He never wrote anything else. I even woke up in the middle of the night and checked my phone, then first thing this morning before we left town, but there was nothing. When we were on the ferry, Delaney texted that she heard Jared was going camping on the island with his friends for spring break. He’s only about an hour away.
I pull my phone out of my pocket now and read the message again. The last two words roll around in my head like sticks of dynamite, blowing up every time they touch something.
Done. Done. Done.
It’s what I wanted, right? So why does everything inside me feel like it’s ripping apart in different directions? Why can’t I stop thinking about how empty everything feels now?
I hear a scratching sound near the window. I look up, waiting for the sound again. When Jared used to sneak into my bedroom at night, he’d tap softly on the glass to get my attention. I hold my breath, until I realize it’s just branches. Of course it’s not Jared. Even if he did remember the address and came out to the lake to find me, he doesn’t know which room is mine.
I roll into a ball under the thick quilt and tuck my legs tight against my chest. The sheets are cold against my skin. I think about my dad walking through our old house. Did he sit on Mom’s bed? I wonder if he went into my room. Everyone thinks he fell by accident, but I worry sometimes that he did it on purpose. He wanted us to find him like that.
I get out of bed, rummage through my makeup bag, where I’ve hidden the sleeping pills Jared gave me. I take one, rinse away the bitter taste with a handful of water from the tap. Then I stare in the mirror. Mom said everything would feel different by spring break. She was wrong.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
LINDSEY
Marcus and I have been hiking in the woods for an hour. It’s stopped raining, but the trees are still wet and cold drops of water land on my head or drip down the back of my neck. The damp brush slaps at me as we push our way through the trail. We haven’t seen anybody else, not even a deer or a rabbit, and the forest is quiet. I’m careful where I put my feet, but I still slip a couple of times and have to reach out to Marcus or grab a branch to steady myself. We’ve been climbing uphill for the last few miles. Marcus wants to show me the view from the lookout.
“Trust me, it’s worth it. You can see all the way to the ocean.”
It better be amazing. My leg muscles are aching, and I’m so hot from the exertion I’ve had to take off my coat and wrap it around my waist. Angus is running ahead, his tongue lolling, and his fur gathering bits of twigs and leaves. There’s mud all the way up to his shoulders.
This morning the power was back and Marcus cheerfully made eggs, bacon, and pancakes while I showered. When I came into the kitchen, he already had a pitcher of orange juice, plates, cutlery, and a bundle of napkins set out on the table.
“Where’s Sophie?” I said.
“Still sleeping.”
“I’ll wake her.”
“Let her sleep. This house is meant for relaxing.”
I sat down at the table, pulled the plate closer, and inhaled the scent of bacon. “Yum.” I took a crunchy bite—he’d cooked it exactly how I like it. ??
?Do you think she’s sleeping too much?”
He sat down across from me and shook pepper over his eggs. “Teens always sleep.”
“I worry that she’s depressed.”
“Would you like me to talk with her?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. That might make her resent you.” They seemed to get along well, at least she was always polite and friendly to him and said she was happy for me, but she’d pulled away so much now that she was dating Jared, it was hard to be sure.
“How about we give it some time? It’s only been a couple of months since Andrew died, and grief can come and go for many years. Trust me, I’ve been there. Sometimes sleep is the only peace you can get, the only time where you don’t hurt. It’s okay for a little while.”
I reached across and held his hand. “Thank you for always saying the right thing.”
“Oh, I say the wrong thing lots of times, but I feel pretty confident about this. Sophie’s going to come through just fine. Now eat your breakfast, I’m taking you for a hike.”
* * *
We finally reach the summit, and I flop down on a rock, not caring that the seat of my jeans gets wet. I wipe at my forehead and blow my breath out. “Wow. That was steep.”
Marcus is standing in front of me, almost at the cliff’s edge, and surveying the view. He spreads his arms out wide. “Isn’t this incredible?” he says. “Nature at its finest.”
The view is stunning, stretching for miles, with sleepy mountains bathed in misty clouds. Nestled in the middle I can see the lake, and far into the distance the long dark blue stretch of ocean. He turns to look back at me, beckons with his hand. “Come see.”
“I can see just fine from here.”
He laughs. “Get up, lazy bones. You need to feel the breeze on your face.”
I stand beside him, resting my cheek on his shoulder, enjoying the scent of rain and forest on him. “You’re right. That breeze is lovely.” I notice a pretty fern on the edge of the cliff, lean over to take a look, and feel my shoes slip on the rock. Marcus grabs my hand, yanks me back.