“You didn’t do anything wrong.”

I can’t even believe that just came out of her mouth. It’s worse than the apology.

“How can you say that? Everything that happened tonight was wrong. Everything! Every single thing!” I don’t plan to raise my voice, but it happens, and maybe that’s a good thing, because it sets her off, too.

“I know, Josh! What do you want me to say? That my heart broke a thousand times when I walked into your house tonight? That I came home and threw up, not because of what happened at that stupid party, but because I can’t stop thinking about what you were doing with that girl? Is that what you want to hear? Because it’s true!”

I know it’s true. I know because the pain is all over her face and in her eyes and in her voice. I know because now it’s making me as sick as she is and I can’t do anything about it. It’s done like everything else.

She gets up from the table and crosses the room and I feel every inch of the space between us. “And you know what the worst part is?” she continues. “The worst part is that I’m not even allowed to be angry about it, because it’s my fault. Is that what you need me to say? That I know it’s all my fault? That none of this would have happened in the first place if I wasn’t determined to destroy myself and everyone around me? Fine. It’s all my fault! Everything is my fault and no one knows it more than me. We’re all in hell and I’m the one who put us here. I know and I’m sorry.”

I stare at her for a minute because it’s the first real feeling I’ve seen in her in forever. She’s been an emotional black hole for weeks, but all of a sudden, the dead, flat calm is gone and she’s as angry and frustrated and heartbroken as I am.

I stand up and take a step towards her. She looks at me like she doesn’t know what the hell I’m doing. There’s a mixture of fear and confusion on her face and her eyes dart past me like those of a cornered animal looking for an opening to run. For just one second, she stops hiding the vulnerability that I always try to pretend doesn’t exist. I should walk away and leave it alone, but I don’t want to be in a room with her and not get to touch her one more time before everything goes back to shit again tomorrow.

“I’m going to walk over to you,” I say, taking one step at a time in her direction like I’m talking down a jumper. “I’m going to put my arms around you and I’m going to hold you,” I pause before taking the last step, “and you’re going to let me.”

“Why?” she asks, like it’s the most insane thing she’s ever heard and maybe, after tonight, it is.

“Because I need to.”

I’m in front of her now and she doesn’t back away, so I do what I said I would and put my arms around her. I feel her body soften, just slightly, against mine, but she doesn’t move her arms or reciprocate. She doesn’t forgive me and that’s okay. I don’t know if I forgive her, either.

When she does move, it’s to bring her hand up to my chest and gently push me away. I lift my hand to her face, wishing I could erase the bruises and the hurt; but I stop just short of letting my fingers graze her skin and drop my hand back to my side. I wish she’d just let it go here, let me walk away without another word, but it never happens that way.

“I’d take it back if I could. I never should have hurt you.” She keeps going back to that, and it’s useless, because we can’t undo anything at this point.

“I never should have let you,” I say. It’s true and I knew it from the beginning. I shouldn’t have let her hurt me. I should never have cared enough to make that possible. I even did what she wanted. I never told her that I loved her; but it didn’t change anything. I loved her every day and I’m the one who suffered for it.

“I had to leave.” There’s pleading in her voice, begging me to understand something I don’t. “I can’t tell you the truth and I know you want it. I would end up disappointing you, being the thing that’s never enough, just like with everyone else.”

“Leaving is the only thing you could have done to disappoint me.” I would have lived every day without the truth, to keep her, even if it was wrong.

“It doesn’t matter now,” she says, and the regret of so much more than the past few weeks is etched on her face. She’s accepting it. We can both be as sorry as we want, but too much has happened that we can’t take back. Some things you just have to learn to live with. We both learned that lesson a long time ago.

“I’m going to beat the shit out of Kevin Leonard,” I say finally, because I can do that one thing, even if it isn’t nearly enough.

“Don’t.” There’s determination in her voice.

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s not a good enough reason.”

“You are the only good reason.” I may not be allowed to love her, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let anyone hurt her. Maybe that’s ironic since I’m the one who hurt her the most tonight.

“I don’t want to be the reason for that. It’s over and I want to forget it.”

“How are you taking this so lightly? He could have raped you and you act like nothing happened.”

“Nothing did happen. Believe me, I’ve seen worse.” She shrugs and it’s maddening.

“Worse than being raped?” I look at her incredulously.

“Worse than almost being raped.”

I drag my hand down my face in frustration.

“Enough with the cryptic, Sunshine! I’m sick of it. I’m sick of this!” I’m losing it all over again. I’ve done more yelling since I’ve known this girl than I have in the past ten years and I can’t seem to stop. “You say things like that all the time that make absolutely no sense! Like you want me to know something, but you won’t tell me, so I’m just supposed to pick up random clues and figure it out. Guess what? I can’t. I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure you out and I’m getting sick of trying.”

I guess we didn’t have to wait until tomorrow for everything to go to shit again. It’s happening right now.

My hands are in my hair and I can’t stop walking around the room because I have so much pent-up aggression and I don’t know where to put it. Now I understand the running. I think I could run out of this room right now and not stop for miles. I take a breath and start again because I can’t seem to stop talking, either.

“All I know is that something happened, or more likely, someone happened who f**ked up your hand and did a job on the rest of you in the process, and I can’t fix it.”

“No one asked you to.” The words are fierce and bitter. Her eyes turn almost feral. “Everyone wants to fix me. My parents want to fix me. My brother wants to fix me. My therapists want to fix me. You’re supposed to be the person who doesn’t want to fix me.”

We’re both exasperated now. We’re both angry, and for some reason, it’s a relief. It makes me feel like, maybe, I’m not the only one in the room.

“I don’t want to fix you. I want to fix this.” I throw my arms out but I don’t even know what I’m referring to. Her? Me? The whole f**ked-up world?

“What’s the difference?”

What is the difference? I don’t know. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe I do want to fix her. If I do, is that wrong? Does that make me the ass**le in this scenario?

“I don’t know,” I answer, because it’s the only thing I do know. I sit back down at the table and drop my head into my hands.

The emotions in this room are bouncing all over the place and I can’t keep up. It’s after four o’clock in the morning and I feel like my entire body has been wrung out and I’m just done.

“I thought there was something wrong with you, too.” Her voice is calmer and she sounds apologetic, like she thinks she’s insulting me. But she isn’t. “I thought you wouldn’t care that I was wrong, because you just understood what it was like. I figured if I didn’t ask you, you wouldn’t ask me, and we could just pretend not to care what happened before. I guess it doesn’t work that way.” She half shrugs like she’s known this all along, but she’s finally coming to terms with it. “I just wanted one person who would look at me and not want to see someone else.”

“Who looks at you like that?” I lift my head up and lower my hands so I can see her face, and I can’t imagine anyone looking at this girl and wanting to see anything but her.

“Everyone who loves me.”

“Who is it they want to see?

“A dead girl.”

CHAPTER 51

Nastya

On Tuesday during fifth hour, Ms. McAllister continues the poetry unit. We covered the same lesson earlier in my class and now I just get to listen in and try not to stare too much at the beautiful, priceless boy in the back row whose heart I stomped all over. I don’t even know how long we ended up talking on Saturday morning. I know that we didn’t resolve anything. There wasn’t anything left to resolve. We had already put everything through the shredder and it was just gone.

I walk through the aisles, passing out a list of discussion questions on the poem Renascence by Edna St. Vincent Millay. I pass Ethan Hall’s desk and he checks out my face again. I’ve been able to do a good job covering it, but you can still make out the bruise.

“So you’re beating your girlfriends now?” he directs at Drew. A hint of smug satisfaction crosses his face like he’s telling me I got what I deserved for rejecting him. Maybe I did get what I deserved, but it wasn’t for anything I did to him.

“No, that’s your thing,” Drew replies, unfazed.

“She did it in kickboxing.”

I turn to catch Tierney Lowell glaring at Ethan. She’s the only other person aside from Drew, Josh and I who knows what happened with Kevin. I’m not surprised to hear her chime in. It’s Drew she’s defending, even if she won’t admit it. I nod almost imperceptibly in thanks to her, because if he won’t acknowledge it, I will.

When I pass Kevin Leonard’s desk, he reaches out to grab my hand and say something. He looks embarrassed, but before he can touch me or open his mouth, Josh kicks the back of his chair. Hard. Kevin drops his hand and looks down at the paper in front of him, muttering sorry under his breath, which I get the feeling is directed at Josh, not me.

Josh slides the handout across his desk when I place it there, but he makes no move to acknowledge me at all. I don’t even exist. I’d trade my hand all over again to take back everything I did and hear him call me Sunshine.

“Who can explain what the poem is about?” Ms. McAllister asks to get started. She places the leftover handouts on top of a beautiful handmade oak podium that magically appeared in her room a week ago. It’s a mystery where it came from.

“Trees,” someone calls out.

“There are trees in the poem. That’s not what it’s about,” she says.

“Aren’t poems supposed to be short?” Trevor Mason asks. “Because this one was like a hundred pages long.”

“Hyperbole, Mr. Mason,” Ms. McAllister replies.

“Hyperbo-what?”

“Exaggeration, you tool,” Tierney shoots at him and then rolls her eyes, looking up to the ceiling before exhaling in defeat. “I’ll just take the detention.”

Ms. McAllister walks to her desk and fills out a detention slip.

“Who’s the tool now?” Drew says, smirking at Tierney. He lifts his head to catch the glare of Ms. McAllister who’s still at her desk, pad of detention slips in hand. Then he glances back to Tierney. “Yeah, I know. Just give me one, too.”