by Ronni Davis
My brain went to war. I wanted to run to him, but I stayed rooted in place, watching as Mrs. Edwards went to her son. Brushed his hair from his forehead. Let her tears flow.
His eyes blinked open. Then he stared at her, his expression unreadable.
“I’m so sorry,” she said to him. Then she buried her head in his chest while he sat, unblinking.
I shouldn’t have been seeing this. My instincts screamed for me to step into the hall, let them have their moment. But then she gestured for me to come closer.
“I’ll give you some privacy.” She squeezed Ashton’s hand before leaving and sliding the door shut.
I took his hands into both of mine. He moved over, making room for me in the hospital bed. I climbed in and pulled him into my arms.
“I was so scared,” I whispered.
He let out a shaky breath. “I know. Me too. I—I’m going to get help.”
“Promise? Because I don’t ever want to pick out clothes and flowers for your funeral.” I let out a shaky laugh. “I’m sorry. That was morbid.”
He gave me a weak smile. “I get it.”
“I’d much rather do that for our wedding someday. You know that, don’t you?”
That soft look came over his face. “You still want to be with me? Even after all this?”
I smoothed his hair back. Ran my hands down his cheeks. Over and over and over. He was warm. And breathing. Not cold and stiff. Not dead. “Yes.”
He closed his eyes and leaned against me, his fingers curling into my blazer.
We didn’t talk anymore. We clung to each other like life preservers. And in a way, in that moment, I think we were.
Chapter 40
TWO DAYS AFTER HIS ATTEMPT, ASHTON GOT SWITCHED FROM the ICU to the psychiatric ward. While he was there, I visited him every day after school. He didn’t talk much, but he always moved over and made room for me in the hospital bed. He wrapped himself around me while I did my homework, and I kissed his forehead and played with his silky hair in between subjects. He was always so still, so quiet. What was he thinking about? He never said. Instead, he listened. He listened to me when I babbled on and on about school. He laughed when I told him about Blair’s shenanigans, and grew indignant when I told him about Auden’s latest obnoxious attempts to unsettle me with all her smack talking. And I brought him junk food, which he devoured.
A week later, he transferred to Lucerne Institution and Rehab Center, right outside town. They cut him off from the world so that he could focus intensely on treatment. I counted the days until I’d get to see him again.
April 16. Decision Day. I sat on the couch between my parents and refreshed my email over and over. Mom flipped through a magazine on one side of me and Dad screamed into his headset on the other, and neither of their activities did a thing to calm my jumping, jittering nerves.
I took deep breaths, trying to mentally prepare myself for the denial from McCafferty. Because, frankly, the chances of me getting in regular decision after being denied early action were very slim. The stats were dismal: less than 3 percent. Not even worth hoping for, really.
So I spent a lot of time psyching myself up to send my offer acceptance to DeKinsey, one of my backup schools. DeKinsey had a good science program. Not a specific astrophysics one like McCafferty, but enough core courses to prepare me for graduate studies at a school that did. Also:
1. DeKinsey cost way less than McCafferty, which meant less student loan debt.
2. They’d also offered me a scholarship, which was always a good thing.
3. I’d also gotten a bunch of private scholarships, and one corporate scholarship. My grades were making their way back to pre-Ashton-meltdown levels, and if I kept it up, the Preston senior scholarship was in the bag.
4. Campus was ninety minutes from home, too far to commute but close enough to come home and do laundry on the weekends.
It would be better to go there for so many reasons. So what if Auden was prancing around with her acceptance to her dream school? DeKinsey had a big, beautiful campus with another clock tower for me to fall in love with. Decent food in the cafeteria. Skilled professors. Most important, they wanted me. Things were going to be fine. They were.
No matter what happened.
No matter what happened.
My inbox dinged and
There.
It.
Was.
I grabbed Mom’s arm. She dropped her magazine. “Well?”
I froze. “I can’t do it.”
“I can’t, either.”
We looked at each other.
“So now what?” I asked.
She reached across me and poked Dad. “James.”
“One second… YES. Got you, you mouth turd!”
Mom thrust the laptop at Dad, who stared at her in confusion. “What?”
“It’s Devon’s letter from McCafferty.”
“Oh. Ohhhhhhh!”
He clicked. “It says I need to log in.”
“Just click the link. My password should be saved.”
Dad clicked twice, then, his face giving nothing away, turned the screen toward me.
Dear Miss Kearney,
Congratulations! On behalf of the staff and faculty at McCafferty University, it is with great pleasure…
“I’m in.” I sat stock-still while I waited for it to sink in. “Oh my God, I’m in!”
Mom screamed and threw her arms around me. Dad did two quick fist pumps and yelled out the biggest “YES” I’d ever heard. That broke the tension and we all collapsed in laughter. We laughed and laughed. It felt so good to feel joy again.
“Honey, this is wonderful,” Mom cried. “Cancel all your plans—we’re going to celebrate! Call Blair! Tell her to come with us.”
“I’m so proud of you,” Dad said, squeezing me. “Frankly, I’m not even surprised, but that doesn’t make this moment less special. How are you feeling?”
“I’m in shock,” I said.
They laughed again. But I wasn’t kidding. Was this really happening?
The proof was right there. I couldn’t see the stars right now—it was still daytime—but I knew they were out there. And now I was going to be able to catch them.
I turned to the sky and silently said Thank you to the universe.
Meanwhile, Dad was already crunching the numbers. “With your scholarships and what we have put away for you, we won’t need to take out too much in loans to cover the rest of your undergraduate career.”
“And I can always work.”
Dad’s forehead wrinkled. “Mom and I would rather you focus on your studies.”
“In that case, I qualified for some student loans,” I said quietly. “I filled out a FAFSA when I did my Common App.”
Stunned, Mom and Dad looked at each other, then at me.
“Sorry not sorry, but your TurboTax password was super easy to crack.” I pulled up a file, then turned the screen to Dad.
With a slight frown, he nodded and punched more numbers into the calculator on his phone. Then he and Mom looked at each other again. She gave him a slight nod.
“So, here’s the deal, Pumpkin,” Dad said. “Mom and I talked a lot since our chat in the fall, and we’ve already decided we’re going to take out a loan for you. We’ve qualified for a private one with a great rate.”
“You don’t have to—”
“Save your direct loans for graduate school. Let us take care of you for now.”
My breath caught. “So, this is real.”
“This is real, Bun.”
“McCafferty is a go?”
“McCafferty is a go,” Dad confirmed. “Send in that acceptance and make us all proud.”
Chapter 41
LATE APRIL, ASHTON FINALLY REPLIED TO THE THOUSAND letters I’d sent him. My eyes welled up when I saw the letter in the mailbox at the end of a craptastic Monday. I couldn’t get to my room fast enough to read it.
Dear Devon,
How are you doing? I hope okay. I miss you all the
time.
Thank you for writing so many letters. Now I have something good to read every night before I go to sleep.
You asked about my days. They wake us up every morning at six, even on the weekends. I get a ten-minute shower, and I have to use an electric shaver because they don’t trust me with blades. Breakfast is okay on cereal days. Group therapy freaks me out. I sit with a bunch of other kids who are as fucked up as I am, and the leader picks on one of us every day. I had my worst day Thursday. I ended up in the quiet room, where they send us to freak out. For some reason, that moved me up a level, and that’s why they finally gave me your letters.
I have a private therapy session every day. The therapist asks a bunch of really hard questions, and I think he gets off on making me cry. Every time I have a session I think was bad, he tells me to keep up the good work.
I can have visitors on Wednesdays and Sundays. I hope I’ll see you soon.
I love you always,
Ash
Lucerne was a colonial-style brick building with fancy landscaping and lots of trees. The lobby tried to give off a semblance of comfort, with its big green chairs and dozens of plants, but I could taste the unease in the air. My hand shook when I signed in at the front desk. The receptionist led me to the common area where the patients visited with family members or friends. I tapped my foot while I waited for Ashton to appear.
I’d researched how to support someone after a suicide attempt, so I was ready. I was ready to be positive for him. Encourage him. Make plans with him. I was ready to be an ear whenever he needed me. Every single time he needed me.
When Ashton finally appeared, escorted by who I guessed was a social worker, I had to draw in a breath. He looked younger in his polo shirt and jeans. The lines were gone from around his mouth and eyes, and his hair was shaggy.
“Dev!” His face lit up, and I launched myself into his arms. There was no familiar waterfall scent this time, but he smelled clean, like a bar of pure white soap. I held tight because I couldn’t believe I was touching him again, feeling his heart beating against me.
“You’re here,” he murmured into my hair.
“I got your letter Monday. I wanted to come that night.”
“I’m so glad to see you.” Already his fingers were twirling my curls. “Come on, let’s sit over here.”
He took my hand and led me to a quiet corner. We sat together on a squashy green love seat. For a few minutes, we regarded each other. Soaked each other in. It felt so perfect to have his eyes on me.
“You look good,” I said.
He ruffled his soft waves. “I need a haircut.”
“I kinda like the shagginess. Makes you look less intense.”
He frowned thoughtfully. “I didn’t realize my look was intense.”
“Sometimes you didn’t look quite so wound up. Mostly when you were sleeping. You actually look your age today.”
“What, you’re saying I looked old?” He smirked, so I knew he was teasing.
“Well, not exactly old. More like stressed out. Now you remind me of how you looked that summer.” Except maybe more tired. Sadder.
He took a deep breath. “I hate that you saw what happened that day.”
“Ashton, it’s okay.”
“It’s not, really.” He looked down. “I was really sick. I still am.”
“But you’re in here. Getting better.”
“Trying to.”
I wrapped my arms around his waist and snuggled against him. He rested his chin on my head and twirled my curls around and around his fingers.
“I miss you,” I murmured, closing my eyes and sighing. I loved when he played with my hair. When he threaded his fingers through the spirals. Massaged my scalp. He never seemed to mind getting coconut oil all over his fingers if it meant getting to touch me that way.
I glanced around, taking in the families playing card games, the patients eating junk food, the counselors keeping a discreet watch over the whole scene.
“Tell me about some of these people,” I said.
Ashton nodded in the direction of a stocky redhead with glasses. “That guy over there? That’s my roommate, Luke. We don’t talk much, and he’s in a separate group from me, so I have no idea what he’s in for.”
“But you know about the people in your group?”
“What they share. We don’t really get to talk outside of group.”
“Why not?”
“Not allowed. Not allowed to be alone, either, really, especially if you’re a suicide risk.”
Suicide risk. He said it as if it were no big deal. As if it were the flu or something.
“My first week in here, they watched me all the time,” he said. “I couldn’t even go to the bathroom without an escort. I still can’t have floss or mouthwash.”
“You must hate that. Why?”
“I could hurt myself with the floss. And mouthwash has alcohol.”
I sat back, astonished. “People get that desperate?”
“You’d be surprised.” He gestured toward one of the attendants watching the room—a pale, college-aged, brown-haired guy wearing scrubs. “That’s Brett. He was my escort. He’s an intern.”
“He looks nice.”
Ashton grabbed a marker and started flipping it around. “I hate not having my freedom, and I hate being watched all the time. But I’m used to the routine now. It’s good, in a way. They keep us so busy, I don’t have time to think too much.”
“Have your parents come to see you?”
“My mother came this morning. She ate lunch with me and brought me a bag of snacks.” He sighed, his expression tired and sad. “She’s trying.”
“That’s a good thing, right?”
“Yeah. I mean, it’s going to take more than Cheetos and M&M’s for us to be okay. But it’s a start. As for my father… we’re in group therapy. It’s going as well as you’d expect.” His face darkened. “I wish she would divorce him. But she’s so worried about her image, and all that other WASP bullshit.”
“But your family doesn’t do the divorce thing, remember?”
He frowned, tapping his lips with the marker. “My mother can be the first, then. A trailblazer. Shaking things up.”
We were quiet for a while. The chill from the air-conditioning blew right on me, and I wrapped my arms around myself.
“I got into McCafferty,” I said.
He dropped the marker. “What? Holy shit, Dev! That’s awesome.” He sounded excited, but the light didn’t reach his eyes.
“So I guess we’ll see each other on campus next year?”
He shifted. “Maybe.”
“What do you mean ‘maybe’?”
“Dev,” he said with his wry smile, “I’m a mess. Like, truly a mess.”
I brushed his hair from his forehead. “A beautiful mess.”
“Nothing beautiful about this. It’s not romantic at all, Devon.” He shook his head. “You shouldn’t have to put up with it.”
“I’m not putting up with it,” I said, my voice quiet. “I’m here because I love you. This is part of loving you.”
His expression turned serious. “Devon, you’re heading to your dream school. Your life is about to become epic, and you should be focusing on that, not worrying about if I’m going to hurt myself.” He chewed his lip. “A lot of times I feel guilty about dragging you back into my life.”
“But you didn’t drag me. I wanted you like you wanted me. I still do.”
“And you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me. God, I love you so much.”
“So why does it feel like you’re pushing me away?” I asked in a small voice.
Ashton picked his nails—since when did he do that?—then ran his hands through his hair. “I’m going to be in here a long time. My counselor thinks I can get better with a lot of work. He thinks we can make the Dark go away, but I don’t know. I’m on a ton of medication right now, and I’ll be on medication for the rest of my life. I’ll probably have to go
to therapy for the rest of my life, too.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t want to force that on you,” he said. “And I don’t want to make you wait for me.”
“You’re not making me do anything.”
“Aren’t I, though?”
I looked him in the eye. “Sometimes I’m scared that I’m not strong enough to deal with”—I waved my hand around—“this. I don’t know what it’s like to want to take my life. I have no idea how to relate to you in that way. I worry that I’m going to do or say the wrong thing.”
“No! God, no.” He put his hand on my cheek. “You could never.”
“After that day in the ER, I kept wondering how I could’ve kept you from taking all those pills.”
He wiped away the tear racing down my face. “None of this was your fault, okay? It’s my brain. I get so deep inside my head that I don’t remember what’s real. See, this is what I mean. This isn’t the life you’re meant for. I’m not worth it.”
“Don’t ever say that,” I said fiercely. “You’re everything to me.”
He took a deep breath. His hands shook. Something strained came over his face, and the tension was suddenly rope thick. I could barely breathe.
“What if I let you go?” he asked. “You can go to college, date other people. Meet someone who’s not messed up like me. You deserve that, Dev.”
I grabbed his wrists. “There are two of us in this relationship, Ashton. I want to stay with you.”
“But is that the best thing?”
“You can’t go through what we did and throw it away.”
“But that’s just it,” he said, his voice scarily calm. Steady. “You shouldn’t have had to go through it.”
“Yeah, but it happened, and we’re here—”
“Devon, I want you to live a normal life.”
My throat was stinging. “Well, stop it. I want to live our life. Together.”
He shook his head and turned away.
“Don’t,” I said. “Do not shut me out. Don’t you dare.”
He turned back to me, his face flushed. “I look at you sitting here, and all I can think is that you can do so much better. You’re beautiful and incredible. There’s a world out there waiting for you to conquer it, and I’m holding you back.”
