No. Not true.
Someone else is here. I’m doing it. I’m getting them back. Like the sign said.
Aren’t I?
104.
now
“This is going to sting,” I tell Yolo. Our eyes meet in my parents’ bathroom mirror. “You might want to avert your eyes if you don’t want to see me suffer.”
He stares at me the entire time I clean the wound and slather on the Neosporin and careful, careful put on a bandage.
“We don’t want to run the risk of infection,” I say to Yolo. “That could be fatal.”
And then I laugh.
Because, really, what could be worse than this?
Even dying
might
be better
than being so
alone.
105.
now
I climb back under the vanity in my parents’ bathroom.
I’ve gathered a few things in with me over the past couple of days. The blankets and pillows, which make sleeping okay, if not exactly comfortable. I brought the clues. The apple sticker. The baseball, the berry bucket, the napkin. My old running shoes. Everything that led me all over town and back again. I’m still wearing Sam’s hoodie because it feels like I can’t quite get warm.
I don’t like going into my room. It’s too big, too full of who I used to be and then wasn’t anymore.
Yolo wads himself up next to me. I’m so freaking glad he’s here. I put my hand on his head and he leans into it. “Okay,” I say. “We need to get some rest. And then, we’ll go see what they said.”
Yolo’s got nothing.
“That’s okay,” I say. “Me either, buddy.”
106.
once
Ella had texted, asking me to come over. We were sitting on her bed. Her room still seemed like a tween’s room—pink and purple and posters of cute boys in small bands.
It was the second-to-last Fall Creek Friday of the summer. Everyone else had jumped. Everyone else was wearing the hair ties. Everyone else was in.
Ella was the fastest girl on the team, next to Syd. But she was out. Because she hadn’t jumped.
Was that why Syd had done it? I wondered. When she saw Ella getting faster and faster, did she decide to make the jump more of a thing? So that Ella still wouldn’t belong in some important way?
It was strange that, with all the time we’d spent together, that was the first time I’d been in Ella’s room. Syd had already been there. Which was strange, too.
