I took off my boots and lay in bed, feeling as if someone were torturing me with electric shocks. But the only person torturing me was myself, and I had been that whole evening, replaying every second of my encounter with Trey in my head.
I’d deceived myself with the ridiculous belief that with time my feelings for him would lessen. I was wrong. Five months hadn’t been enough for the wounds to heal. And deep down, I knew five years wouldn’t be, either. Not five years, not five decades.
He was a part of me, and he always would be. Next to him, I’d learned who I was and all the things I was capable of. I’d learned what a strange, beautiful place the world could be. That magic existed and wishes come true. That dreams can become reality.
I had broken up with him to try to forget the beauty of being with him and find meaning in the life I had chosen. And it hadn’t worked. My father mutely tolerated me at best, and a little voice stillwhispered to me that even with a hundred lifetimes, I could never make up to him what he’d lost.
I had sacrificed everything for a debt I could never repay.
I walked over to the window and opened it. The cold outside was glacial, but in my room it was stifling. I hit the windowsill as hard as I could. From rage. From stupidity. From cowardice. From despair. Because I hadn’t thought about myself.
Because I’d thrown out of my life the one person who gave it meaning.
Because he had turned the page and now he was sharing his world with someone else.
I realized then that errors have consequences and every action causes a reaction.
“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people—to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it’s the effect or vice versa.”
—Lauren Oliver,Before I Fall
30
Time Passes. Then One Day You Wake Up.
I felt like a lit candle just about to go out, when the flame loses intensity, shrinks, and writhes, trying to avoid the inevitable end.
For days, I’d been moving in the shadows, with no light, no color. My routine had become a series of mechanical acts, my voice a whisper I barely used.
One by one, I picked up my thoughts and memories and locked them in a little box in the most secret part of myself. I ran from the chaos into the arms of self-control.
And like that, without light, without color, spring came.
The first Sunday in April was a clear day after weeks of rain. The sun was bright and warm through the windows. I got out of bed and pressed my nose to the glass and saw birds flitting around and boats on the lake drifting away from the coast.
It was a beautiful day for an occasion as sweet as it was sad.
There was a knock at my door, and my brother slipped in before I could even say hi. He gave me a tight hug, then examined me with a worried look.
“Is it just me, or are you skinnier?”
“I’m the same as I’ve always been.”
I sat back on the bed and Hoyt sat down beside me.
“Don’t do this to me,” I said.
“What?”
“Stare at me. It makes me nervous.”
“I see someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed.”
I forced a smile and lay back on the mattress. He was right. I was in a bad mood. I had been for a long time.
Out of nowhere, he started tickling me like a crazy person until I shook and rolled back and forth, trying to get away from him. Since we were kids, he’d always known how to get under my skin.
“Come on, Pumpkin, give your Uncle Gilbert some sugar. Just a teeny tiny kiss.” Again with theAnne of Green Gablesreferences.
