“I like your story,” Claire says after reading through the final draft of my short story for Renner’s class. She and my mom have been at my apartment since I left the hospital last weekend. I calledmy mom in tears and told her everything. But it’s now Wednesday and they are packing up to leave.
“Thanks,” I say. “But I’m changing the ending.”
“Why?”
“Because she doesn’t deserve the medic, and I’m not sure the soldier deserves her. So who does she choose?” I say, more so to myself.
“Maybe she chooses herself,” Claire says.
“Maybe she does.”
“We’ll be back in two weeks for graduation,” my mom says, coming into my room with her bags slung over her shoulder. “And I will be calling to check in every night.”
“Okay,” I say.
“And don’t forget about your appointment with the therapist: It’s Friday morning.”
“Okay,” I say again.
“And if you want to come home at any point, you can. I already spoke with the dean about you finishing your coursework from home.”
“I’m going to finish out here, but okay.”
The moment they leave, Dani texts in the group and says we should all get together, for a small memorial for Annica. The school wouldn’t have a vigil for her like they did for Bryce. They wouldn’t mourn a murderer. I wouldn’t either. So I don’t reply to the text.
Hours later I get a text from Charlie.
Please come over.
I know he’s only asking on behalf of Dani. I leave in my pajama pants and a hoodie.
When I open the door to the house, everyone is in the living room. Sam, Charlie, Jake, and Dani. The group seems so much smaller without Wes, Asher, and Annica in the room. I stop in the frame and debate turning around. Dani gets up and walks to the door, wraps her arms around me, and cries. I hug her back, and I cry too.
We all sit in near silence in the living room, with the windows open, listening to the rain. But there’s something about being together as a group that feels good. Even if no one talks, at least we aren’t alone.
“I made a small memorial for her in the backyard, if you want to add anything to it,” Dani whispers. “But don’t feel like you have to.”
I lift my head to look at her. “You think Wes is going to come back and want a memorial for someone who stabbed him in his backyard?” It comes out harsher than I meant it to.
“I know that what she did was wrong,” Dani starts. “But she was obviously mentally unwell, and we didn’t catch on soon enough to help her. She needed our help.”
I stand to leave. “I will never forgive her, and I will never mourn her. I knew I shouldn’t have even come over here.”
“There were good memories too,” she says quietly. And while that may be true, no amount of them could ever take away the bad from this year alone. “Just stay here with us for a while longer, please? You can sleep in Wesley’s room.”
Her pleading tone has me sitting back down, for another roundof friendly silence. When everyone heads to their rooms for bed, I trudge up the stairs and stop between Wesley’s door and Asher’s. I go up the attic stairs to Asher’s room to find it’s exactly the way he left it. I climb into his bed and fall asleep.
Half of Pembroke still thinks I’m the Pembroke Psycho; the other half thinks I killed the Pembroke Psycho. Neither of these things is true. Though I guess the latter could be. It was me who drove Annica to this point, so it kind of was me who killed her.
I feel all the stares from my peers as I pick up my cap and gown for graduation. The whispers that accompany them. I can only grit my teeth as I scurry from the student center feeling robbed of the excitement that comes with graduation. I feel robbed of the entire year. And it makes me angry. The more I think about it, the angrier I become. How could she do this to me? Any normal person would just decide to no longer be friends after graduation. She could’ve just called off our whole friendship that very first weekend when she saw his name in my journal. Sure, I wouldn’t have had friends for my entire senior year, but even that would’ve been better than this. My therapist says it’s natural to be angry with her, that it’s okay to let that anger out. I don’t have to bottle it up.
Before I know where I’m heading, I’m on the front porch of the boys’ house. I let myself in, past the empty living room, the kitchen, straight to the back door. And in the far end of the yard, propped up against the wooden fence, is the small memorial Dani made. It is a wooden cross, with a stuffed giraffe, a candle, flowers, and a bunch of photos of all of us.
So I let my anger out.
I pick up the cross and snap it over my knee, throwing thepieces in the bonfire pit. I kick the giraffe over their fence and pop the heads off the flowers, rip apart the petals, and start to tear up the photos.
“I thought about doing that too.”
