“I need—my boyfriend—he’s been in an accident—”
The receptionist nods, calm.
“What’s his name, sweetheart?”
“Gavin. Gavin Davis.”
She does something to the computer while I stand there, breathless and terrified.
“Fourth floor—room 407. Visiting hours are almost over—”
“Thank you,” I say as I run to the bank of elevators on the other side of the lobby.
The other people in the elevator give me a wide berth. It’s one of the few days that it’s rained in our region and I’m soaked, my ratty old pajama bottoms and tank sticking to me. I forgot to put on a bra and it’s freezing in here, why are hospitals so cold? I don’t know how you are. I only know what your mom’s text said when I woke up this morning: you were in an accident last night, you were in the hospital, come immediately.
Right now there is no anger. That will come later. All I know is that I love you and you’re maybe very badly hurt. I will do anything to make sure you’re okay. I never should have written that letter.
The elevator doors slide open and I rush through. The nurse at the main desk hands me a visitor’s badge and points down the hallway. I’m running, my wet flip-flops smacking against the linoleum, but when I get to your room I stop, scared. Your mother must hate me for that letter, for ending us on paper. You deserved a conversation at least, but I’m a spineless coward.
Please be okay.
I just need to know you’re okay.
I stop in front of the closed door, hesitating. Who am I kidding? If I go in there, we’ll get back together. That letter, all the courage it took to write it, will mean nothing. And we’ll both be right back where we started. I listen hard, but I don’t hear anything. I know your mom is probably in there with you. Your dad, too. I know I should go in right now because you need me and you’re hurt, but I don’t.
I turn around and hurry back to the elevator and when that doesn’t come right away, I bolt down the stairs, as if you could somehow chase after me. I’m halfway across the lobby when my mom walks in.
“What happened?” she asks. “They won’t let you see him?”
How can I explain? She knows about the letter and already told me that had been a terrible way to break up with you, that it was wrong of me. I’m so disappointed in you, she said. That poor boy. And then the accident happened and it felt like it was my fault, like my hands had been on the wheel, my foot on the accelerator.
“I can’t go in there, Mom,” I say. “If I do…” I break down, crying. “We’ll get back together and—”
“Grace Marie Carter. I raised you better than this. Now you get your butt into that elevator and go see if Gavin is okay.”
“But—”
“Now.”
She’s right. I’m a horrible person. Selfish beyond belief. I can’t imagine a scenario in which you wouldn’t come to make sure I was okay. Just because we’re broken up doesn’t mean I don’t care if you live or die.
A few minutes later, I’m knocking softly on the door.
“Come in”—your mother’s voice.
I push open the door and the first thing I see is you in a hospital bed with bruises and scratches all over your beautiful face and I lose it.
Your mom stands between me and the bed, your dad slumped in an armchair in the corner, and all I want to do is throw my arms around you and make it all go away, the accident and the pain you’re in and that letter. Because I did this. It’s my fault. How could I have been so stupid?
“Maybe now isn’t the best time—” your mom starts, but you reach out a hand for me with the arm that doesn’t have an IV hooked up to it.
“It’s okay,” you say quietly. To her, to me. Your eyes never leave my face.
She looks from me to you, frowning, uncertain.
“Mom, it’s okay,” you say. “I want her here.”
Your dad stands up, but he doesn’t say anything to me. They walk out of the room together, but not before your mom throws me an accusatory you-almost-killed-my-son glare. I deserve that, but it hurts. They’ve both been so good to me, so good. And I realize, too late, that I haven’t just hurt you: I’ve hurt your whole family. They’ll never forgive me, and I don’t blame them.
When she shuts the door behind her I run to you. The right side of your face is one big bruise and when you try to sit up more, you wince.
“Gav—Gav—”
“Shhhh,” you say, wrapping your bandaged arms around me.
“I’m sorry, baby,” I sob, “I’m so sorry.”
I had underestimated just how freaked the hell out I’d feel seeing you like this.
“Are you completely broken?” I ask.
You shake your head. “Just banged up. No internal bleeding or anything. They said I can probably leave tomorrow. The car’s totaled, but whatever. Guess I have a guardian angel or something.” You pause and your voice goes soft. “I should be dead.”
I press my lips to your neck and breathe you in. You smell like hospital and it’s wrong, so wrong. You tell me what happened: you read my letter and then got wasted. Around one in the morning you stumbled into your car.
“I was out of my mind,” you say. “I just … saw the streetlight and decided, Fuck it. I don’t remember what happened after that.”
The doctor says you’re the luckiest kid in town. That hitting a streetlight at ninety miles an hour should have killed you. A miracle.
“That’s what I wanted it to do,” you say, soft.
My heart stops. I go cold all over. I think of the look on Summer’s face when she came into the drama room last year and told us what you’d done.
“Let’s make a deal,” you say. “We stay together until the end of the summer. If you still want to break up when you start school, okay. But give me the summer—without your parents and rules—to prove that we’re right for each other.”
“Gav, you said you hated me.”
You shake your head. “I didn’t mean it. Come on, you know I didn’t mean it. I was angry—”
“You’re angry all the time,” I say gently. I reach out and brush your hair out of your face. You catch my hand in yours.
“I love you, Grace. I love you with all my heart.” Your eyes plead with me, eyes I’ve gotten lost in so many times. Glaciers and Popsicles and the sea, a blue so particular to you that I haven’t seen the color anywhere else.
“Okay,” I say. “Until the end of the summer.”
You draw me down onto the bed beside you and in minutes you’re asleep, exhausted. I stay there until the nurse tells me I have to go. I slip out of your arms, brush my lips against your forehead, then quietly shut the door behind me. Your mom is sitting by herself in the empty waiting room. When she sees me, she stands.
“I read the letter,” she said. “It was … in his pocket. They gave me his clothes after … There was so much blood.”
Tears slide down her face and I wrap my arms around her like she’s done so many times for me. Losing you would mean losing your parents, too. I hadn’t thought about that. I wait for her to push me away, but she doesn’t.
“I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t know what to do.”
She pulls away. “Grace, why didn’t you tell me what was going on? You know how fragile he is. I could have kept an eye on him.”
I hang my head, ashamed. I’d been so caught up in myself that it had never occurred to me to talk to your parents. Or maybe I was just afraid to.
“I’m sorry,” I say again. “It’s just been so hard and…” I start crying and she takes my hands in hers and squeezes them.
“Honey, we love you both so much. And Gavin loves you more than anything in the world.”
“I know. I love you guys, too.”
“How … how did you leave things?” she asks quietly.
“We’re staying together. We’re going to work it out.”
Middle fingers up, put them hands high, wave it in his face, tell ’em boy
bye …
I was so close.
She frowns. “I can’t say that makes me feel better. You really hurt him. That Gideon boy…”
“I didn’t cheat on him,” I say. “I would never.”
She sighs. “I won’t get in the middle of it. But … you’re part of this family now, Grace. You’re like a daughter to us. When you do stuff like this, it’s not just Gavin you’re affecting.”
I nod, chastened. “I understand.”
“We’re going to take him back to Birch Grove for a week or so. I want him to come home after that, but he said he wants to stay in that apartment. I need your help keeping an eye on him, make sure he’s taking his meds. And I need you to tell me if anything is the matter. You can talk to me, about anything. Okay?”
I nod. “Okay.”
“I’m going downstairs to find Mark and get some coffee. Do you want any?”
I shake my head. “I have to go, actually. My mom’s waiting for me.”
“Okay. You’ll come by later, after school?”
I nod. She gives me another hug and is gone. I open the door to your room and watch you for a minute. You could have died, Gav. I would have had to stand by your grave and know it was because of me, that there would be no more songs because of me. But you didn’t. We have another chance. Your chest is moving and your eyes slide beneath your eyelids and I wonder what you’re dreaming about. The heart monitor beats steadily. Medicine drips into your veins and you are alive.
I quietly close the door and head toward the elevators.
THIRTY-EIGHT
I am sitting on the floor of my kitchen holding a knife.
You don’t know this. You’re practicing being a rock star while your girlfriend crouches against the dishwasher wondering if she has the guts to do herself in.
I can barely breathe, sobs crashing through my throat, an avalanche of tears. I will bury myself alive. I will cut my skin to shreds. I swear I will, I will. And I’ll burn this fucking house down if it means I can cut you loose, be free, be without Gavin Davis. It’s been a week since your accident and already I’m falling into this dark pit and I can’t crawl out of it and pretend to be okay anymore, I can’t. Why do you have to make this so hard for me? Why does your life have to be in my hands? They’re not big enough to hold you.
My phone is pressed hard against my ear as I wait for my best friend to pick up. Nat answers: bright, cheerful.
“Hello, dahling!”
“I can’t do it anymore,” I say. My breath hitches and another sob breaks free.
They say that slitting your wrists is the best way to go. They say it doesn’t hurt too bad. It’s like falling asleep, only messier. But you know all about that already.
Nat immediately changes her tone. “Grace? What’s wrong?” She’s mama bear angry. “What did he do?”
So many things. What didn’t you do—today, every day?
I ignore her question. “I’m so tired. I can’t. I can’t.”
“Grace. Break up with him. This has to stop.”
My entire body shudders, this darkness inside pulling me down in the muck. “It’s not that simple.”
“It is. And if he fucking dies, who the fuck cares.”
“Holy shit, Nat.”
“I’m sorry,” she growls.
You play on a constant track in my head, the volume too high. Bitch. Whore. Slut. I love you, don’t you understand? One more chance, just one more chance. I hate you.
I can’t stay with you until the end of the summer like we agreed, I know that. But you’ll say I want forever with you, we’ll be better this time, you promised you’d give us a fair chance and I will chicken out because I can’t see you in a hospital bed again.
“Should I come over?” she says. “I can come over.”
This house is a prison, a suburban Alcatraz. Nat would make it better. She’d make the bars disappear. But my mother would never allow it. Not on a school night.
“Grace?”
I look at the knife. Sharp blade, dark black handle. It scares me. It’s real. It can do some damage if it wants to.
“I’m holding a knife,” I whisper. I say it again so I can hear the words, take the next step. “I’m holding a knife.”
Someday I will remember this. This cry for help. Even now some part of me knows I just want to feel the heft of that knife in my hand, to know there is a way out, if I need it. To know I can control this one thing. This is my life, I want to growl. To you, my psychotic boyfriend, to my family that only speaks in yells and punishments. I can end it if I want. It feels like the only decision that’s all mine and no one else’s.
It feels like power.
Nat and I talk for an hour. She guides me off the ledge with her soft voice, her warmth, her assurance that it won’t always be this way. We will get the heck out of here, she says. And I believe her, at least a little. Because, Jesus Christ, what if we don’t?
When the sun finally slips below the horizon, I realize I have to stop crying, have to pick myself up. Mom and Roy will be home soon. I’m supposed to make dinner. To make sure every little thing is perfect: spines of books lined up just so, every blade of grass in the yard watered, the edge of place mats flush with the edge of the table. All of this so when my mom and Roy wheel through the door, they might not lay into me right away. I need to be Perfect Daughter. Perfect Stepdaughter. Or else.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Nat asks, unconvinced.
“Yeah. I’m fine. Really. Promise. I’m sorry I’m being a drama queen.”
“Break up with him.”
A whisper: “I can’t.”
I have a million reasons why. I have none. It doesn’t matter. This feeling of can’t is stronger than anything else, like you’re some dark lord who’s put a spell over me. (Are you? Because that would explain so much. Tell me you’re magic, Gavin. I’ll believe you.)
I hang up. I stand and put the knife back where it belongs. The blade winks at me as it slides into the block. I wish I could stab it into your heart, put us both out of our misery. Instead, I dry my eyes and set the table for dinner.
* * *
I ROLL THE window down all the way, then stick my head out the car and yell into the wind because I am two hundred miles from you and it feels So. Fucking. Good.
“Yesssssssssssssssssss!!!!!!!”
I slip back in and Natalie grins. “Hell yes.”
I never thought my mom would let me take a road trip to LA with my friends but when my sister said she’d put us up for the weekend and introduce us to the college life, my mom said, and I quote, You’re eighteen now. The choice is up to you.
An alien attack would have surprised me less.
This is all Nat’s doing. After I called her holding that knife, she insisted we get out of town immediately. Then she called Beth for reinforcements. And Lys, obviously. Three days later: here I am, speeding away from everything that keeps me up at night.
You, of course, are pissed that I’m going. You don’t like the idea of Nat and Lys spending so much time alone with me. You’re scared they’ll come between us. News flash, Gavin: they already have. It doesn’t help that you’ve been a broken record about them. You want me to stop hanging out with them. You don’t trust them and you shouldn’t. They are not Team Gavin. Not by a long shot.
I can’t get your newest song out of my head. You played it for me the day after you got out of Birch Grove, where your parents made you go for therapy after you were discharged from the hospital. Our date ended in a screaming match because you found out I’d been to a party that Gideon was also at. Doesn’t matter that he and I barely exchanged three words and that he has a girlfriend now. It was still Fucking whore, I hate you. You’re so smart, Gav. You knew that if you survived that accident, there’s no way I could ever leave you again. Not unless I want your blood on my hands. You’re lucky your gamble paid off. Now you can do or say whatever you want, can’t you? You’ve got me right where you’ve always wanted me.
&
nbsp; You win.
This was your song:
I watch you sleep at night
Wonder what you dream
Put my hand against the glass
Want you here with me
There’s a window between us
Thick glass all the time
Can’t seem to remember
The days when you were mine
“Okay, so I need specifics,” Nat says as we sit down at a roadside taco stand. “Exactly how many times has he watched you sleep?”
“A lot, it sounds like,” I say. “I think he’s trying to be romantic, but…”
“Nu-uh,” Lys says. She grabs a chip and scoops up some salsa. “That is so creeptastic. Like, beyond creeptastic.”
I don’t admit this, but I agree. The thought of you standing outside my window at night didn’t fill me with butterflies and rainbows, as I think you assumed it would. I mean, you weren’t trying to hide that you were doing it—you played the song for me, proud of the guitar solo halfway through.
“Let’s talk about something else,” I say.
“No, dude, I think we should role-play this,” Lys says.
“Let’s not and say we did,” I grumble. Lys and her psychoanalysis.
“Hey, in a few years, you’re gonna have to pay me, like, a hundred and fifty bucks an hour to untangle your shit. Get my expertise free while you can,” she says.
I imagine her sitting behind a desk, wearing the same outfit she has on now: a tank top that says I Slay, dangly pineapple earrings, and neon pink jeans with white stars printed on them.
“I really don’t—”
But Nat cuts me off. “I actually think Lys is right—this could really help.”
I roll my eyes. “Fine.”
Lys grins. “Okay, I’ll be Gavin, obviously.” She lowers her voice and slouches—it’s a pretty good impression. “Hey, baby.”
Natalie snorts.
“Hey … Gavin.”
“So…” She motions for me to start talking.
“I, uh, really love your song, but … maybe you shouldn’t watch me sleep. I mean, my parents will be pissed if they find you—”