“Eat his face off?” says Troy.
“Yeah,” says Fran. “That.”
“We don’t have time,” says Diana. “It would take us all night to dig a grave with no tools, and we’d all be too exhausted to make up ground in the morning.”
You wait for someone to insist in spite of the effort, but again, nobody does.
“Well, should we at least say something?” says Fran.
“Time is running out, guys,” says Will. “There’s no one who can help us now if we don’t make that drop. What happens when the lighter runs out? Or your meds! If we were smart, we would be moving right now. Silas never cared about us.”
As he says this, the sun proves his point by disappearing behind the water. You have a day and a half, give or take, to make it. And you all know the stakes.
“Nobody is leaving this island in the dark tonight,” says Troy.“We need sleep too, and this is a good place to get it. We have pills and there are no bears here. And look, I know Silas is the reason we’re in this situation, but he tried. I mean he was trying before everything went horribly wrong. And he’s…”
Troy closes his eyes.
“He’s what, Troy?” says Will. “Your best friend?”
“One of us.”
The fire is nearly dead now, and the last of the coals pop. Fran takes a stick and gives them a stir.
“How do you mean?” she says quietly.
“He went on this trip, remember? This same trip! And he had anxiety just like us. What he did was super messed up and dangerous, but he’s not the first of us to self-medicate. I use a vape at home ’cause it keeps me calm. My friend Lenny from group therapy has his weed gummies. Diana, you brought vodka on a hiking trip! We’re all looking for some way to quiet our brains. Silas made a stupid choice, but he was trying to battle like the rest of us.”
The last line is the one that gets you.
And when you look over at Diana, you know she’s thinking the same thing you are: You both know someone else who made choices he could never take back. Choices that ruined other people’s lives along with his own. You stand up, and your body is woozy with exhaustion. The back of your head throbs. Diana stands up too and starts walking into the woods.
“C’mon, guys,” she says. “It’s time to say goodbye.”
THIRTY-TWO
Sean let you stand there for a moment by yourself.
In the living room. In the dark. Rereading the words that mortified you. But in spite of the pain, you read every last sentence in that letter, all over again.I understand nothing can happen—I get that—but I just need you to know about this feeling.And:I’m not sleeping. I barely eat. If it wasn’t for Perkins, I might be dead.Part of you knew you were never going to give this to her, so you wrote exactly what you felt.I’ve never been in love before, so even if this ruins everything, I want to thank you just for giving me that.Your hands were sweating, smudging the blue ink on the page. Sean sat on the stairs all the while, letting you marinate in your own shame.
And, finally, when you were done reading the words you thought you’d never read again, you closed the notebook and set it on a nearby table. You scrambled for something to say. You wanted to explain everything, including the realization you’d come to on the way home. You wanted to take him through the whole thing, starting from that first spark in the corner booth at Perkins and how you came to realize it could never happen. But he stood up on the stairs and looked at you from over the railing, and you felt yourself getting weak.
“I’m sorry,” you said. “I just need to sit down for a minute.”
Which you did, on the floor. Sean kept watching. He didn’t move from his spot. He was not the type to break eye contact, or shy away from a tough moment. That had never been his style.
“It must be so easy for you,” he said finally.
You weren’t sure what he meant, but you found yourself unable to ask.
“To be the one everybody worries about.”
He was looking right at you, but you couldn’t return his gaze. He gripped the railing, and you watched his fingers tighten.
“I know you didn’t ask for your anxiety, Case. And I know you don’t want it. But you have to admit it’s pretty convenient sometimes. You get to stumble through everything, and when it’s all too much for you or you make a mistake, you can get in bed and take a mental-health day. And everyone loves you and babies you and nobody expects anything from you.”
“Sean,” you tried.
“But I expected things,” he said.
