And you go inside.
That’s nice, I said to her. Really nice. But that assumes that people miss you. Or that you get to be old.
That assumes that you don’t get called
or decide
to go in
way too soon.
167.
now
“I was there!”I scream. It echoes off the walls of the gorge, the stones sending it back.I was there!My voice breaks.“I was with you!”
Didn’t it mean anything to them?
It had all meant everything to me.
My parents. Jack.
Alex. Syd. Sam. Ella.
They had all meant everything to me.
They still do.
Mistake upon mistake, all of them compounding and stratifying in layers, like the stones in the gorge. Wearing away like water at the people I loved, so that finally something came loose and it all washed away in a flood, in an instant.
It made me boundless, but not in a good way. I didn’t seem to know who I was without the edges of other people to come up against.
A year ago tonight, someone broke at the jump.
168.
once, that night
Ella and Alex were going to jump, together. They didn’t need me anymore. Even though I’d tried to make things right. I’d apologized to Syd for whatever it was I’d done. I’d told Alex I wanted to be with him. I made sure Ella got the manifesto. You can do good things—for the right reasons, even—and still not be good enough.
I wasn’t good enough. I never would be.
Syd had already been mad at me, and what I’d done at the bonfire had sent her over the edge.
Ella was going to jump.
And Alex would be with her.
They had each other. They did not need me.
No one
needed me.
I think I was crying, then.
I stepped back, away. My shoes on the dirt at the edge of the cliff.
