but being apart from him and winter break and everything that happened before this moment seems very far away. I can’t really remember what missing feels like, or any other feelings either.
I went to classes. My brain registered nothing. It mattered even less than it normally did.
It’s right after lunch now. I’m in the bathroom standing at the sink. There are two girls three sinks away, juniors like me. I don’t know them well, but I know their names: Nicole and Laya. Nicole always wears big silver hoop earrings and Laya always wears a ponytail so tight it looks like her face might split. They are passing a stick of eyeliner back and forth.
I’m not really paying attention to them, to anything, until there’s a buzzing sound – Laya’s phone receiving a text. And then a half second later there’s Laya’s highpitched voice shrieking, “No fuh-reaking way.”
I look up. Nicole is lining her bottom lid, pulling at her face so you can see the pink around her eye. “What?”
Even though I don’t know what Laya is going to say, my heart is psychic and decides to start pounding.
“So you heard how Hanna’s older brother is training to be a police officer, right?”
Nicole nods, her head bouncing like it’s too heavy for her neck to hold up.
“And you know how they didn’t say how she died, right? Well, she said he said that’s because” – Laya pauses, getting ready to say something juicy – “it was suicide.”
Through the fog of feeling nothingness, my stomach drops, my heart stops beating. I lean forward, like I’ve been punched.
Nicole turns to Laya. “Whoa.”
“Yeah. On New Year’s Day.”
“Oh my God, that is so sad!” Nicole sounds excited. “How?”
Laya shrugs. “Hanna’s brother didn’t tell her.”
“I read a thing once that women, girls, whatever, are more likely to use pills, but I don’t know, I could sort of see her, like . . .” Nicole puts her two fingers together and sticks them in her mouth. Then she jerks her head to the side and lets her tongue hang out.
The water is pounding down into the sink and splashing onto my shirt. Maybe I am going to throw up.
“She always seemed sort of off the rails . . .” Laya says.
“Totally. Like one of those famous people who do insane things, except not actually famous.”
“Yeah, like, famous only in her own head, though.”
My sink has filled up. Water drizzles out onto the floor.
I face them now, something inside me sparks and catches fire. “Stop talking about her like that,” I say. I try to keep my voice from shaking. They turn toward me, like they’re only now noticing that I’m here at all. “Just fucking stop it.”
“Um, hi?” Nicole says. “Private conversation. Besides, were you even friends?”
She looks at me, lips pursed slightly.
“Yes, we were,” I say.
“Oh,” says Laya. “Sorry.” And for a moment she almost kind of sounds it. Laya and Nicole exchange a quick look and then head toward the door without another word. They are best friends, which means they don’t always need to speak to understand each other. I watch them go. There’s a squeezing in my chest, and my eyes tighten. The tears are starting to come, but I grit my teeth and I blink them back.
The thing is, when I said Delia and I were friends, that wasn’t really true.
If we were still friends, then when I saw Delia’s name flashing on my phone two days ago for the first time in over a year, instead of clicking ignore and not even listening to the message, I would have picked up. I would have picked up and heard Delia’s voice, and would have known something was wrong. And then, no matter what Delia said, no matter what Delia was planning, I would have stopped her.
1 YEAR, 6 MONTHS, 4 DAYS EARLIER
It was a relief to know she didn’t have to explain. Not about the ache in her chest, the pit in her stomach, where it was coming from, and how much she didn’t want to talk about it – Delia would just get it. She always did.
June imagined what Delia was about to say, maybe something along the lines of, “Parents. Fuck ’em,” or “Only boring people have perfect lives.” Delia could make you feel like the things you didn’t have were things you didn’t want anyway. She changed the whole world like that.
So that’s what June was expecting, standing out there in the summer sun, waiting for Delia to fix this.
Delia tipped her head to the side as if she was considering something. She raked her curls behind her ear, hiked up her low-slung cutoff shorts, then reached out and took June’s hand. She squeezed it tight, but still she didn’t say anything at all. She just grinned and waggled her eyebrows.
Then she started to run.
And because she was holding June’s hand so tightly, and June’s hand was attached to June’s arm, which was attached to June’s body, June had no choice but to run with her. She stumbled at first, adrenaline coursing through her veins as she plunged toward the ground, then righted herself. Delia was ahead of her, arm stretched back, racing across the empty field, legs pumping, pulling June right along.
“Wait!” June begged. “Please!” June was in flip-flops. They were flapping against the grass until she accidentally ran right out of one of them. “I lost my shoe!”
But Delia didn’t wait or stop.
“Fuck your shoe!” Delia called out.
So what could she do? June kicked off the other one and pumped her legs. When was the last time she ran as fast as she could?
“But where are we GOING?” June shouted.
“WE’RE JUST RUNNING,” Delia shouted. Trees zipping by them, they were flying through the air.
The pit in June’s stomach dissolved, sweat broke out along her back, her lungs were bursting. But still they ran, giddy and breathless, the pieces of June’s life dropping away bit by bit until she was nothing but legs in motion, arms, a heart, a hand, held. A body, stumbling, tripping, almost falling. Except she wouldn’t fall, that’s the thing. Delia wouldn’t let her.
After school I meet Ryan out front and follow him to his house like it’s any other day. That’s where we always go, even though no one is ever home at my house after school and someone is almost always home at his, and we’re supposed to want to be alone.
Ryan
