by Lindy Zart
“Why should I?” Even as her voice is hard, it wavers. Alexis lifts her chin and glares at me, not backing up even though the space between us has disintegrated. “They picked on me for months. They made me feel like nothing, and then, I wanted to be nothing.”
She blinks, swallowing. Her eyes are shot through with red, luminous with unshed tears. Alexis looks pale and drawn, and on fire with purpose. All at once. “They broke me, Nick. I can’t let them get away with it. And I don’t know what happened to you, because you won’t tell me, but I think someone did the same to you. I thought you would understand.”
I close my eyes, trying to keep the tears from forming, but the stupid things fill my eyes anyway. I rub my face, and then I blindly reach for Alexis. In each other’s arms, we cry. I’m too damaged to care how this makes me look. That other me, he would sneer and mock at this display, but that other me, he hurt people. He broke them. And in the end, he broke me too. Just like Alexis’ bullies broke her. I one-hundred percent understand her need for revenge, and I wish I didn’t.
This is it. This is the end. It’s too soon. I want more time.
The skies open up, obscuring our tears with rain.
“They don’t even remember me. Can you believe it? I almost died because of them, and they don’t even know who I am,” she whispers in the grayness, her voice unusually clear under the torrent of rain soaking us. And then it hardens to steel. “They’re regretting it now, and they’re going to regret it more.”
The tone of Alexis’ soft voice chills me, and now I know what I saw in her eyes weeks before. I saw hunger, satisfaction, but I also saw menace. This has been growing for some time, working at her in the weeks since she’s been back in school. Revenge destroys, and that’s all it does. This darkness, if she lets it, will abolish her as well as her enemies.
“Who?” It twists my stomach to ask the question.
There is no answer.
“Who are they?” I demand, staring at the fence stained dark from the rain.
Her frame stiffens. Her voice is wooden. “Melanie Mathews and Jocelyn Rodriguez were the worst, but Casey Reed was almost as bad, in another way. She knows her friends are awful, and she lets it happen. She doesn’t stick up for herself, or for anyone else. Then there’s Clint Burns. There were others too, but they weren’t as bad.”
I barely hear her words. The names shoot through me, bringing up images and instances I’d rather forget.
“What you’re doing—” I tell her slowly, my lips close to her ear. My hands shake where they touch her, and I drop them, hoping she doesn’t notice. Hoping she doesn’t wonder. “—is dangerous. To you. Please, Alexis, don’t continue this. Stop now, before you can’t.”
“I already can’t. I don’t want to stop.”
“What you’re doing is wrong.”
She shoves me, and I stagger over a dip in the slippery ground, my leg twisting and immediately throbbing with pain. I put my weight on my other leg. Hair plastered to her face, eyes blazing, with her mouth a slash of pale color across her white face, Alexis stares at me. The blue of her shirt is gray under the darkened sky, her jeans black. Rivulets of water make their way down her head and body. The sight of her takes my breath from me—in awe, in shock.
Alexis is fury incarnate.
“I thought you were my friend,” she tells me bitingly. “I thought—I thought you were more than my friend.”
“I am.” I fight to inhale through the crushing pressure of my chest. “I am your friend—and…and more. I care about you, Alexis. A lot. That’s why I’m asking you to not do this. If you keep trying to hurt them, who’s to say you won’t badly injure yourself along with them?”
Her mouth twists with suspicion, and it’s like she’s finally seeing me, all of me, but mostly, it’s like she’s seeing the badness I too carry. She looks at me like I betrayed her, and I guess I have. She despises the fact that I am against her on this. Maybe she despises me as well. Alexis can hate me all she wants, if it means her need for payback ends.
“Who are you? Who are you, really?” Alexis closes the distance she put between us with the force of her hands. The rain comes harder, fiercer. Louder. “Why do you hide who you are? Why don’t you want me to know what you’ve done to get here? Why won’t you leave this place?”
I watch her, helpless and mute. I want to become the rain, and drop to the ground. I want to dissolve.
Her eyes flash dangerously. “Tell me who you are!”
“Does it matter so much to you?”
“You’re a coward.” She trembles under the cold wetness trying to drown us from above. Alexis turns from me. “That’s what matters to me.”
Seventeen
Alexis
I AM A SOGGY MESS when I step into Live. One minute, Nick and I were laughing, and the next, I couldn’t stand the sight of him. He was supposed to understand, not tell me I’m wrong. And it hurts—my heart throbs with it. Gladys takes one look at me and shakes her head, her eyes going back to the magazine in her hands. Water drips from my face, pooling around my squishy shoes on the nice floor. I open my mouth to ask for a towel just as Dr. Larson opens her door, as if she’s been waiting for our return.
She looks behind me, a faint furrow between her eyebrows. “Where’s Nick?”
Hell if I care, is probably not the best response.
“Still outside.” I sound numb. I feel numb. I don’t know him. I thought I did, and I don’t. I was wrong about Nick, and I wonder if my feelings were wrong too. If he can’t tell me about himself, then I’ll never really know him. If he can’t be brave enough to trust me, then I can’t trust him either.
I almost gave it up. I woke up the day after my dad and I talked, and I looked at the answering response to my message on the chalkboard. And then there was seeing Melanie at the school, vulnerable and human. It was almost enough to make me decide to move on. Almost.
Before I went to bed, I wrote:
I used to wonder if you ever think of me, but now I know that it doesn’t matter. Because I’m choosing to not think of you anymore.
Sometime over the night, the chalkboard exploded in letters. Words lined the black backdrop. Small words, large words, slanted words, almost unreadable words. So many words. I stood before it, staring. My eyes stung with tears as I read.
You forgot her sixteenth birthday. In fact, you forgot her fourteenth, and fifteenth too.
I blamed myself for you leaving me, but for you leaving Lexie? I blame you.
I failed as a husband, but I won’t as a father.
I’ll be the dad she needs, and I’ll try to be the dad she wants.
Lexie is beautiful, and smart, and brave, and you’re missing it all.
But I’m not.
And now I know why I didn’t stop. Even as I ran to him and opened up to him in a way I hadn’t previously, I guess, somewhere inside me, I knew Nick was a mirage. I knew his secrets would destroy us. I just thought knowing them would do it, not the fact that he won’t let me know them.
“Where?” I’ve never heard anything less than friendliness in the doctor’s tone, but it’s gone. “Lexie. Where is Nick?”
“He was near the path when I left him.” My body quivers with chills.
Giving me a slanted look, the doctor says to Gladys, “Have Jensen and Zamora find me. I’m going to look for Nick Alderson. Page me if anyone sees him before I report that I have.” She pauses. “Get Lexie some towels to dry off with too.”
The woman already has the phone to her ear when Dr. Larson looks at me. Thunder shakes the walls. It’s in her eyes too. “I don’t know what’s going on between you two, but I don’t want to see it here anymore. From now on, you come to your sessions, and you don’t go anywhere else inside these walls. If you want to see each other, it happens outside of Live.”
“Nothing,” I croak. My throat burns, and feeling left out, my eyeballs decide to join in. “Nothing is going on between us.” Not anymore. He can’t even tell me about himself
. I told him everything, and he told me nothing. I can’t care about someone I don’t really know. And he doesn’t know me either, not like he should.
Tight-lipped, she regards me for a moment. “Go into my office and wait for me, please. You still have a session.”
Tossing on a neon orange rain poncho, the doctor’s departure is as icy as the storm outside. Guilt coats my throat as I swallow; quickly followed by hurt at the harsh way Dr. Larson spoke to me, and the fact that she wasn’t out of line. I shouldn’t have left Nick. He was unstable when I came here, and I got angry, and whatever happened with us, I shouldn’t have left him.
Lightning cracks the world outside, and with the towels from one of the laundry personnel in hand, I dry off as best as I can, and stumble into Dr. Larson’s office.
I study the dimly lit room with its citrus scent and flower paintings, thinking it’s too warm, too cozy, for my present mood. I want to be outside with the storm. I feel as volatile as it. My skin blisters when I think of Nick telling me to back off. I told him what they did to me, and he just thinks I should be able to move on. Like it’s so easy. Like he can’t possibly know how I feel, because he’s never felt it. Anger takes over the hurt, and I allow it, better able to handle that emotion than the other. I thought we were alike. I thought he, of all people, would comprehend. I thought I meant as much to him as he does to me.
I thought a lot of things.
Fuming as I sit on the edge of the seat, my eyes land on the desk across the room, and linger there. I’ve seen Dr. Larson take files out of a drawer. My file is in there. Nick’s file is in there. My pulse stutters. I glance to the closed office door. Even as a voice tells me to not do it, and my heartrate escalates to a dangerous thrum, I stand and walk toward the desk.
My hand reaches for the bottom right drawer. It’ll be locked. I tighten my fingers around the handle, and pull. It opens without a sound. I let out a deep breath I didn’t know I was holding, and suck in quick gasps of air to make up for the lack of oxygen. My fingers are close to useless, spasms going through them and the rest of me as I crouch on the soft carpet and search for Nick’s folder.
This is wrong. Dr. Larson will be back at any moment. I wonder if I can be arrested for this, or at least charged with something. Thunder roars overhead, and I jump. My gaze flitters to the door and back. I pause on my own file, and keep going. I already know every messed up piece of my life. Nick’s isn’t in here, I realize with disappointment, and a small dose of relief.
I close the door with a small click, and go to the drawer above it before I can change my mind. His is one of the first folders I see. Waves of unease crash over me, and I blink to focus as my eyesight blurs. I feel sick. Once I see what’s inside, I can’t pretend I haven’t. Once I know, I know. I shouldn’t be doing this. This is a violation of his privacy.
That vicious part of me tells me this is Nick’s fault for not telling me himself. That it isn’t fair of him to want to know me, and not let me know him. It pushes that I am owed this. After all, didn’t I tell Nick all the miserable details of what happened to me? Knowing I shouldn’t, still, I listen to that voice. It’s the voice that tells me it’s okay to hurt my bullies, and that I haven’t hurt them enough, not yet. It’s the voice that I find myself listening to, more and more.
With silent movements, I pull the file from the drawer, opening it before my conscience is allowed to state its opinion. Heart beating in my ears, and all the blood in my veins turning to ice, I read. I see words like “bully” and “suicide” and “Enid High School”, and for one instant, I think I must be looking at my own file. But although the words are similar, they’re lined up in a foreign manner. Saying something entirely different than my own file would. And there is another name other than Nick’s that I recognize. I’ve seen it before, at my school. It lives among the words “In Memory Of”, and it is etched onto a bench beneath a tree, along with a birth, and a death, date.
Jackson Hodgson.
The ice is burned away, leaving havoc behind as my eyes drink in the letters, and their meaning becomes clear. I realize what I’m reading, and Nick’s secret is unveiled. I know why he kept it. I wish I didn’t know it. My heart sputters, stops, and careens into some wild beat to which the rest of my body cannot adjust. My limbs go limp, and I stare unseeingly at the wall on the other side of the room. I am in shock, and that’s good, because I don’t want to feel.
As if my fingers belong to someone else, they pick up the file, close it, and put it back in the drawer. They are ghost actions, noiseless and invisible. My feet move without any command from me. They take me from the room, past the narrow-eyed woman behind the desk, and into the restroom, where I throw up everything I’ve consumed today.
The hurt I carry for Nick evaporates as I sit on the cold linoleum floor with my back against the stall. Any good feeling I ever had for him is no longer there. Like I vomited it all out of me. My heart is empty, and then, it fills.
With something else.
It’s cold.
Deadly.
Final.
Eighteen
Nick
I DON’T KNOW HOW I know Alexis knows about me, but as soon as our eyes meet as she steps from Dr. Larson’s office, I feel it in my soul. That clear, undeniable truth of my dark heritage, staring back at me from cold blue eyes. Eyes I love, look at me with loathing. I shift my attention around her to Dr. Larson, knowing it couldn’t have been her who gave away my secrets. Every word, every confession that passes between us, is confidential.
The doctor watches back, impassive. It wasn’t her.
How, then? How does Alexis know?
After I dried off and changed into dry clothes, with the ankle I sprained giving me trouble the whole way, I limped my way down here to wait until she was done with her weekly counseling. She’s right. I have been a coward. I hid myself inside these walls; I hid from myself. I blocked out the world because I never wanted to see it again. None of it. I wanted to pretend that other Nick Alderson didn’t exist. I wanted to forget. I was fading away in here, and I didn’t care. It was what I wanted.
Until I met someone who managed to shine around the cracks of her being.
As I made my slow trek through the hallway, I told myself I owed her the truth, however she responded to it. Alexis Hennessy, the broken girl who somehow made me feel closer to whole. Rightness hums along my skin, even as an ache grows inside me. I know what I have to do. I told myself I couldn’t keep hiding my sins, not if I wanted us to be anything. But we won’t be, not ever. I feel the inevitability of it in my bones. I see it in her frozen gaze.
We’re over.
“Can I talk to you?” Hesitation muddles my words. Why? I ask myself. Why even try to explain? She’s judged already. It would be different if she was wrong, if she unjustly loathed me. But everything Alexis is thinking and feeling toward me—it’s all legitimate.
“Outside,” Dr. Larson states, looking pointedly between the two of us. “And don’t go past the sidewalk.” Her gaze sears me. “You’re still a patient here, Nick. Keep close to the building.”
The warning is clear: Pull another stunt like earlier and you know what happens.
They found me sitting in the middle of the muddy walkway, head bowed, arms crossed over my wet hair, rocking. I was rocking like a crazy person. The ghost was there—Jackson Hodgson was there—watching me. He didn’t speak. He just looked. What dropped me to the ground was the expression on his face. It was as if he pitied me. He pitied me. I started laughing, and then I started crying. Or maybe I never stopped. I don’t know.
I give a sharp jerk of my head in affirmation.
Alexis glares at me as she passes, her steps careful and stiff.
It’s interesting how different the elements are this time compared to the first time we came outside. No longer blue skies; there is no sunshine. The thunder and lightning have dissipated, but the rain is still at it. We stand under the lip of the roof, directly in view of anyone who happens
to walk by the front door. I feel eyes on us, and glance up at the blinking red light of a camera recording everything. I wonder if there’s sound for the spectators to get a real feel for the devastation of this scene.
“You’re one of them,” she spits out, turning on me. Hatred lines her face, morphing the pretty features into an unrecognizable mask.
“I’m—”
“You’re a bully.” Alexis’ voice is a whip across my heart.
I can’t protect myself from the verbal attack. I don’t have time, or resources. All I can offer is the truth, however damning it is. I stand straight, even as I lower my head to keep our eyes connected. I force myself to gaze at her, to see the emptiness where softness once was. Maybe this is how it is supposed to end, maybe this is the ultimate payback for every shitty thing I did: me loving a girl who hates me.
“I was.”
A broken sound leaves her, like a cry of denial and acceptance. Alexis shakes her head, arms wrapped around herself. The world pauses in the face of her pain, and I feel it pierce my chest like a bullet. I don’t want to lose her. She was never yours, an answering voice tells me.
“I knew what you were going to say, but I still hoped.”
“Alexis, please.” Looking at her hurts, but walking away would hurt more. I can’t sever our bond. She has to do that.
“Someone died because of you.” Even though she whispers, she might as well have shouted, so deeply do I hear her words.
My body shudders. “Now you understand why I didn’t want you to know.”
“Tell me,” she commands. “Tell me everything.”
Jackson Hodgson stands behind Alexis, his form translucent. Still waiting. Waiting for me to acknowledge him, and what I did. He wears the same green and brown shirt he had on when I found him in his bedroom over a year ago, drained of life and blood. I glance down at his wrists, watch the blood drip to nothing. It’s harder than it should be to look away, to look up at his face. His pale brown eyes look like pits of endless, horrible truth. I blink and the ghost is gone.
