She’s Nastya today. The hair, make-up, clothes, everything black like it is for school, except today, it’s for me. I shake my head. Nothing about her is real. I’ve had her sitting in front of me for months and I didn’t see her, I didn’t hear her. I didn’t know her any better than everyone else. I feel like I’ve failed somehow. Failed me, failed her, failed us.

I don’t say anything and she doesn’t say anything. I start wondering if we may never speak again and then my mouth opens.

“Did I lose you?” It’s not what I expected to ask, but I want the answer. Her face doesn’t change and I realize that I had forgotten what that blank expression even looked like on her.

“I lost you.”

“Impossible,” I answer, but the word barely comes out.

“You don’t want me.” Her tone is flat and she has this weird calm about her that makes me want to scream.

I want to tell her that I don’t remember what it’s like not to want her, that maybe there isn’t anything else I do want. I want to ask her who the hell she is to tell me what I do and don’t want. But nothing will come out of my mouth and maybe she thinks that means I’m agreeing with her.

“So this is over?” I ask.

“What’s left?” This is where she finally looks in my eyes and I know it’s because she means it.

“You didn’t tell me,” I say, because I’m not ready to say there’s nothing left.

“Tell you what?” She’s playing dumb and it insults us both.

“You know what.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Ask?” I think my voice goes up an octave because I can’t believe this and I feel a decade’s worth of resolve shatter. “I didn’t ask? Is that what you want? You want me to start asking questions? Now? I’m allowed? Because I don’t think you want that, but hey, let’s go for it. What the f**k happened to your hand?”

She flinches. Maybe because of the question. Maybe because I’m yelling now.

“No? Not that one? No good? Then how about what the hell happened last night?” I want this answer more than I ever wanted the other one.

She doesn’t respond which isn’t even the slightest bit shocking, but I don’t need her to, because I’m on a tear and I have no intention of stopping.

“Tell me! You’re the one who came over here and insinuated yourself into every part of my life and then you wait until I have every last thread of my existence wrapped around you and then you leave. Why? What is that about? Was it a joke? Were you bored? Thought it would be fun to f**k with me?”

“I’m ruined.”

“What?” I don’t even know what that means. “Because you were a virgin?” It sounds stupid and I realize how much I hate that word. Maybe I’m stupid. Actually, I am stupid for ever assuming I knew anything about this girl. But she walks around with this guttermouth spewing innuendos like she’s talking about baking cookies and then I’m the prick for not realizing she’s never done it before. Somehow, I’m to blame for everything here and I don’t even know what I did.

“Why then? Why did you sleep with me?” I hate the desperation in my voice.

“Because I knew you wanted to.” Straight. Cold. Matter-of-fact. Empty. She knows it’s a lie.

“Bullshit, Sunshine.” There’s no controlling my voice now. I am beyond pissed. “You lost your virginity because I wanted you to? Don’t you dare put this on me. I never would have done that to you.”

“You didn’t do anything to me. I did it to you. I used you.” The dead calm in her voice is infuriating.

“For what?” I’m shaking now because I’m so angry.

“It was the last thing about me that wasn’t ruined. I just wanted to finish it.” She’s drawing circles on the floor with her toes.

“What the f**k does that even mean?”

Nothing. That’s what I’m getting. That’s what I’m worth to her.

“You’re telling me that you used me to ruin you?” I’m forcing calm into my voice but I don’t even know where I’m getting it from. Maybe the ice coming off of her is starting to reach me. “That makes a lot of f**king sense.” I laugh and it’s bitter. I walk across the room and my fist is through my bedroom door. The wood splinters into my hand. I see her cringe for a second before she remembers herself. Then the nothing expression returns and all that’s left is Nastya.

“So what, then? Did I? Did I ruin you?”

She nods. And I laugh again because it’s the only sound that will come out.

“Fucking amazing.” I can’t stop the laughing and I think I might be crazy. I throw my hands up because I’m done. “Congratulations, then. You wanted to be ruined? Well, you did yourself one better because you wrecked me, too, Sunshine. Now we’re both worth shit.”

She doesn’t move. Just stares at the ground. Her hands are fists like mine.

I sit down because I think my knees are shaking now, too. I bend over and press my palms against my eyes. I can’t see her, but I know she’s still there.

“Get the f**k out of my house.”

“I told you not to love me,” she whispers, almost like she’s saying it to herself.

“Believe me, Nastya. I don’t.”

She walks out and shuts the door silently behind her. It’s the first time I’ve ever said her name.

Nastya

Nastya. The word sounds like broken glass coming out of his mouth. Sleeping with Josh isn’t what ruins me. This is what ruins me. His voice. His face. His horror at this whole f**ked up situation. He looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was doing this and I can’t blame him because I couldn’t believe it either. But I did it anyway, because that’s what I do.

CHAPTER 47

Nastya

Everything is hell now and I deserve it, but I can handle pain if it’s pain of my own choosing.

Drew tiptoes around me now and I avoid him. I won’t put him in the middle of this. He belongs to Josh. I spend most of my time with Clay. Or alone. Being alone would be easier if I liked myself. But, right now, I don’t. Not even a little.

Fourth and fifth periods are the worst, because that’s when I have to see him and I can’t pretend that he never existed, like I try to every other moment of the day. As if that might help. As if anything might help. I could pretend that I don’t watch him, that I have enough resolve and self-respect not to let him catch me staring, but I don’t have the discipline. Every day I say I won’t look, but I do. The only good thing about it is that he never catches me looking. Because he’s never looking at me. And he shouldn’t. I don’t deserve him.

The world should be full of Josh Bennetts. But it’s not. I had the only one.

And I threw him away.

One day Margot sits down at the kitchen table with me while I pretend to concentrate on reading a poem I haven’t comprehended a word of. My homework is getting done more these days. I can’t even tell you how many miles I run.

“It hasn’t escaped me that apparently you live here again,” she says.

I keep staring at the poem like the words will suddenly swim up from the paper and make their way into my brain.

“I’d ask you if you wanted to talk about it.” She just barely smiles and she’s trying, but it’s pointless. Because everything is pointless right now. I’m pointless.

I even start going home on the weekends so no one will expect me at Sunday dinner. And maybe that’s the only thing I do that’s worth a damn.

No one asks me why I keep coming back all of a sudden. They just let me come.

I get another birthday present one weekend when I get home. Since I didn’t take the phone, my mother gives me a camera. It’s simpler, not as crazy as hers, but I don’t think it’s the camera she’s giving me, anyway. She’s giving me part of her. Trying to replace part of me. I don’t know if it’s a good idea or a bad idea but I’m starting to get tired of judging and second guessing everyone’s motives, because I’m starting to grasp the real problem and I know that it’s me. I don’t have Josh anymore. I’ve kind of lost Drew. I need my mother. I want the warmth of that unconditional love so much that I’m willing to ignore the price, and for the first time in almost three years, maybe I can admit that, even if it’s only in my head.

We don’t talk yet, but maybe.

My mother shows me how to use the camera and we wander around taking pictures of nothing and everything. She doesn’t even drill me about format and composition. Sometimes my hand will stutter and ruin one but we ignore it.

On Sundays, I work on teaching my dad how to make pancakes from scratch instead of a mix, because it’s really just baking in a pan and it’s something I can do.

Nothing is perfect. It’s not even good yet, but maybe.

I miss him today. I miss him every day. I went to Home Depot tonight just to walk through the lumber aisle and try to breathe.

I’m back to hiding in the bathrooms at lunch. Clay props the door open for me again, but we pretend it doesn’t mean anything.

My hands are turning soft again.

Josh will be eighteen next week.

Josh

“Who’s it from?” I ask when Mrs. Leighton hands me the last present on the table. We’ve eaten dinner and done the whole cake thing. I skipped the wishing. Nothing in me wants to be here.

“It was on the porch this afternoon. It had a piece of paper taped on it, but all it said was your name. No card.”

I rip open the paper and now I want to disappear so I can be alone in this moment. I want to be allowed to see this without anyone seeing me.

The frame I’m holding in my hands is a simple black gallery frame. It’s nothing special. The picture in the frame is what throws me, knocks me on the ground and kicks me around a little bit.

When I pull off the rest of the wrapping paper a photograph that had been stuck in the front of the frame falls to the floor. Drew picks it up and looks at it before handing it to me and I can tell he wants to keep holding it.

I recognize the picture. It was in a photo album on the bookshelf in my living room. It’s my mother with Amanda on her lap and they aren’t looking at the camera. They’re smiling at each other, but you can still see their faces. They’re both beautiful and I realize that I forgot that they were; like everything else I’ve lost to forgetting, because there’s nobody left to remind me.

There are photographs all over my house. Everywhere. I didn’t put all of the people I loved away. They all still hang on the walls, mostly because they always have. I didn’t put them there, but I didn’t take them down, either. I left them where they were like nothing happened. But not this picture. This one has been tucked away in an album for years. I love this picture. I forgot that I did. And I can see this one. Not like the ones on the walls that I’ve walked by every day, so many times that they stopped registering a long time ago.

The picture in the frame is a perfectly rendered charcoal drawing, just like the photograph, only bigger. Even though it’s black and white, I watch my mother’s eyes crinkle with her smile and I see my sister breathe, and for a moment, I think they’re alive. It’s Clay’s work. There isn’t a question. And there’s only one person who could have given him that photograph. But she isn’t here, either, because she left me, too.

She has no right to do this. To make it harder for me to hate her, because I need to hate her right now more than I need anything.

“I forgot how hot your mom was,” Drew says, because he detests uncomfortable situations and his way of dissolving the tension is to remind us that he’s an ass. And I love him for it.