My heart was pounding, and my jaw was heavy. Another flash: Me, seventeen, dressed in black, exhausted from three days of weeping. I was waiting in our little spot—our little stretch of sand, where Tyler would smoke Marlboro Reds and listen to me talk about clothes and school and my plays and my books and my future. I was going to go to Tisch, I was going to study theater, I was going to write musicals. Never mind, I was going to be a screenwriter, I was going to live in Los Angeles. I was going to write love stories; I was going to be a novelist. I was going to do all of it—I was going to find a way, even in Mikey’s shadow, even if nobody else cheered me on. And I’d wave the smoke out of my face, burrowing my hands into his sweatshirt, and he would pull my head into his chest and twist his fingers into my hair and listen to me. He would just lie there and hold me and listen, and I would think,Youare not what you pretend to be, Tyler McNally, are you? You’re one of the good ones.
But I was wrong.
He was not.
“Katie,” he said. “I never stopped thinking about you. I never stopped.”
I nodded. He reached for my hand. But this time, in broad daylight, I couldn’t do it. Something closed around my rib cage. Something cold, thick, and metal. It was harsh and sudden and noisy. Like the doors to a panic room, clanking shut.
Tyler was still holding my hand.
“I want you to stop,” I said. “Please stop.”
42
Katie
August, Eleven Years Ago
Long Island
The beach was dark and empty. It was mid-August now, and I was sitting in the sand, scribbling in my notebook. Tyler was right next to me, doing the exact same thing. My body was angled toward his, and his knee, as usual, was brushing ever so slightly against mine.
I tore out the page I’d just written.
And then, a minute later, I tore out another.
“What’s wrong?” he said. For nearly seven weeks, we’d been writing like this. Our sun-bleached afternoon sessions were not enough, and so, after sitting across from each other at the dinner table every evening, we’d do it all over again. Tyler, around ten or eleven, throwing a sock at my window, grinning, coming to get me. Me, grabbing my bag, laughing, taking his hand. The two of us, letting midnight turn to one turn to two.
I twisted away from him. “It’s nothing. Just struggling with this scene. I’ll—”
“Oh, come on.” He turned to me a little more. The glow of our lanterns—two flashlights stolen from my mom’s emergency preparedness kit—beamed across his face. “What are you hiding? What could possibly be in there that you won’t show me? I’ve basically read every word twice.”
I clutched the notebook to my chest. “It’s stupid, okay? Let’s just workshop your graveyard scene again. Let’s just—”
“Hand it over.”
“No! It’s private! It’s really bad! It’s...” But it didn’t matter what I said or how tightly I held on to that notebook. Because Tyler had already pried it out of my hands.
“Give it back right now!” I said as he reclined onto a single elbow and began to read each ridiculous word I’d written aloud. As he fought back every last one of my grabs, clutches, and claws.
“This is really bad, Katherine. This is really, really bad.”
“I know!” I climbed on top of him, screaming, attempting to snatch it out of his grip. “Give it back!”
“You’re so technical. Like, is this a kissing scene, or did you plagiarize a Wikipedia article about tongues?”
“Screw you!” I was still climbing. Still clawing. “It’s not finished yet! I didn’t want your opinion for a reason!”
“You know what? Let me write it for you. Give me your glitteriest pen, and I’ll...”
I was really screaming now. I was burning up and kicking hard and cursing his name, and he was still laughing, still clutching on to that notebook, still reciting choice lines of my prose, still doing everything he could to keep my hands at bay—shaking me, tickling me, tangling my arms, flipping me over, pinning me down...
Hovering over me.
Covering my mouth.
And then, all of a sudden, there was this pause.
