Kissing Midnight (16 page)

She’s watching me so intently. “Who did you lose?”

“The girl I was dating. Her name was Kayla. We hadn’t been together long, but…” I lower my eyes to my hands, still holding hers.

“You cared about her.”

I nod.

“Oh, Dev.” The tears are back in her eyes. “What…How did she…”

“Car accident.” I clear my throat. “She went off a bridge. The roads were slick, and I had offered to drive her home, but…” I shrug, helpless. This is a gamble, I know. There’s a chance this will make her question whether our relationship is a rebound, a reaction to the tragedy. There’s a chance it will drive her away from me, or keep her close out of pity rather than love. This could backfire.

But if life has taught me anything, it’s
trust your instincts
, and when I steal a glance at Saintly’s face, I can tell I’m dead on. Her eyes are full of compassion and, more than that, relief. Gratitude.

Encouraged, I push on. “I thought I could handle starting school in September. I thought it would be good for me to get away from the places we had been together, the people we knew. I thought I was ready—it had been almost a year.” (Okay, a lie, but it’s not like I can tell her the truth: that poor Kayla’s body has barely begun to rot when Saintly and I met.) I give her a sad smile. “Turns out I wasn’t ready.”

“Dev.” Saintly squeezes my hands tighter. “I get it. I really do. I lost someone, too.”

“You did?” I try to look surprised, although I already guessed as much. “Who?”

“My twin brother Enrique. I wanted to say something about it when we were talking about our families that first night in the planetarium, but…”

“Why didn’t you?” I ask gently.

She sighs. “The same reasons you didn’t tell me, I guess. It’s awkward, you know? No one knows what to say, and nothing they say will change anything anyway. I’m tired of being the one who stops the conversation. Tired of people feeling sorry for me. Sometimes I just want to forget and not have to talk about it, not feel obligated to feel sad. And other times, I feel like all I am is sad, and if I talk about it at all, there’s no way I’m going to stop. I’m just going to infect everyone else with it. I feel like sadness is all I have and, if I let it out, I won’t have anything left, I’ll just be empty. Then other times it’s all I want to talk about, but I don’t know if anyone else wants to hear it.”

“I do,” I say quietly. “I’ll listen.”

She studies me for a long moment before she makes up her mind. “Okay,” she says, “then I’ll tell you.”

Saintly

I take a deep breath. This isn’t going to be easy, but Dev just trusted me with his pain, and I feel like I should trust him with mine. “You know how I told you about my dad?”

Dev’s eyebrows narrow. “The cheating bastard? Yes.”

“Well, when he left, my mom and I—I guess we saw it coming. I suspected he was cheating, and my mom really
knew
, and I think by the time they actually broke it off, we had both done all the mourning for their marriage that we were going to do. I didn’t have any illusions about my dad. We were used to him being away for a week at a time for work, and I always felt like things were calmer and smoother without him. He would come home and want to be in charge of things the way he was at the construction site, but we were really my mother’s show, you know? They were always in a power struggle. He would get angry, totally irrational.” I look at Dev. He’s watching me intently. Funny how that “listening” expression that looks so fake on Dr. Sterling looks so natural on Dev. “But my brother still really looked up to him. When my father left, he felt dumped, abandoned.”

Dev nods. “It’s hard to lose the only other guy in the family, I’m sure.”

“And because my dad’s new girl had two sons, Enrique felt replaced. I mean,” I add, “I think he did. It’s not like he told me that. He didn’t tell anyone anything. He just…disconnected. He spent all his time out with friends, and when he was home, it was always a fight. He’d push my mom and push her until she yelled at him, and then he’d storm out. He was just looking for an excuse to leave.” An image of Enrique comes into my mind, the thick black shag of his hair hanging in his dark eyes like the forelock of a wild horse, his mouth set in an angry line. “It was like he was becoming my dad—like, to bring him back, he would
be
him, be all the least likeable things about him.”

“Filling the gap,” Dev says.

“And filling the empty place in himself, too, with anything he could think of. He had never been a hard kid, you know? He was an artist, he was into music. He was always designing some friend’s album cover or T-shirt or tattoo. But after my dad left, he started hanging with a harder crowd. Mom couldn’t keep alcohol in the house anymore because he’d take it. He got busted at school for buying some other kid’s ADD meds. My mom caught him on the old couch in our garage, having sex with some girl we’d never even seen before.” I sigh. This is just the tip of the iceberg, but I’m too tired to tell it all. Even reliving it this much makes me feel weary. “We were raised very straight and narrow.” I smile at him. “I’m sure that comes as a shock.”

He smiles back. “What? Saintly? A good girl?”

“Well, my family is Catholic, and we went to a school where there weren’t a lot of Mexican kids, so my mom always wanted us to represent. She was always afraid people were going to judge us. ‘They’re looking for a reason to think less of you,’ she’d say, ‘don’t give them an excuse.’ It’s like we were always fighting this undertow. It was exhausting, and after my father left, Enrique just…stopped fighting. Maybe he was trying to punish my mom for letting my dad leave us, or maybe he thought if things got bad enough, she’d have to call dad to help her deal with him or send him away to dad’s or something. Or maybe he was just trying to make himself feel better, I don’t know, but in the process he became all the things my mom didn’t want him to be.”

I’ve slumped forward as I talk, my head bent, elbows on my knees. Dev lays his palm between my shoulder blades and rubs in slow circles. “And you?”

“I did what I always did: tried to distance myself from trouble. Except this time, it meant distancing myself from my brother, abandoning him like he thought my dad did.”

“It’s not your fault,” Dev says quietly. “You didn’t make him do what he did.”

I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I know I didn’t kill him, Dev, but I didn’t save him, either. I was his twin. We were supposed to have this connection, this psychic link—and we did! Or, we always had. I should have seen it coming.”

“No one knows what’s going to happen, Saint.” Dev’s voice is gentle. “Death always takes us by surprise.”

“But we were
twins
.” I know there’s no way to make Dev understand what this means. If you aren’t a twin, you can’t get it. “We shared a womb. We came into the world together. We should have gone out together, too.”

I mean Enrique should have lived. At least, I think that’s what I mean. But I know how it sounds: like I think I should have died, too.

Maybe Dr. Sterling is right. Maybe I do have survivor’s guilt.

I wipe at my nose with the back of my hand. I’m not crying. It’s like I’m too tired to cry. “And in the end, he killed himself. He cut up his arms and then swallowed a bunch of painkillers in the bathtub while my mother was at work and I was at school. He left the water running, and when I came home there was water dripping through the kitchen ceiling and when I went upstairs…” I draw in a deep breath, like it’s me who’s drowning. “You don’t need to hear this.”

We’re quiet for a long minute. I want to tell him the rest: about seeing visions of Enrique and being sent to the hospital and all the rest of it. I feel like I owe Dev the whole truth, after he trusted me and listened to me.

My voice comes out very small. “I saw him again after that.”

Dev nods. His hand keeps tracing circles on my spine. “At the funeral. That must have been brutal.”

“No.” I’m almost whispering now. “I mean I saw him in the halls at school.”

Dev looks at me sharply. His jaw hardens. His words come out carefully. “What do you mean?”

His look tells me all I need to know. Dev isn’t up for this. He won’t understand. “I mean, I saw him everywhere. I looked for him in everything. Everything reminded me of him.”

The muscle in Dev’s jaw relaxes. “They say the dead never really leave us.” There’s a touch of irony in his voice, and I wonder why. I can’t help glancing over my shoulder as he says it, the memory of Jesse still on my mind.

“Did you feel that way about Kayla?” I ask, eager to shift the subject away from me.

“Yes,” he nods distractedly, “I saw her everywhere.”

“Even in me?” I hate to ask, but I have to know. “Is that why you asked me out, Dev? Do I remind you of her?”

I hold my breath and pray he says no. My life is already haunted enough, without him overlaying the memory of a dead girl on me.

Dev shakes his head slowly. “It wasn’t her I saw in you.”

I watch him curiously. This is what I’ve wanted to know since the moment we met. “What was it you saw?”

He pauses and rumples his hair thoughtfully. “I think it was me. I think, even without knowing what you’d been through…”

I nod. “It marks you, doesn’t it?”

“And sometimes you see that mark on someone else, and you know they’ve had the same brush with darkness.”

I know what he means. I felt that same kinship when Jesse said she killed herself. That’s why I told her to meet me.

But that’s ridiculous. Jesse is in my mind. It’s Dev who is sitting here, real. He’s the one who understands me. I savor that thought. He understands, part of it at least. Up until now, I’ve only experienced how death separated me from everyone else, made me different from all the carefree girls who had never suffered a loss. This is the first time I’ve felt that same dark power binding me to someone else, both of us members in an elite and terrible club. For the first time in a long time, I feel understood—and I feel a rush of understanding for Dev, too. This was why he seemed so guarded sometimes, why he dodged questions, why he faked being the carefree rebel while closing himself off like he was shutting an enormous door. His “dark secret” he called it. Well, I am still keeping secrets—I feel bad about that—but Dev has come clean.

And clearly he feels better about it. He smiles and I see some of the usual spark in his eyes. “Listen, Saint, I have an idea.”

“What is it?”

“No…” He looks away. “You’re going to think I’m insane.”

I can’t help laughing.
I’m
going to think
he’s
insane? I lean my head against his shoulder. Dev feels solid and warm beside me, reassuring and safe and real. “Just say it.”

“Come away with me for the night.”

“What?” I sit upright again and turn to stare at him. “Where would we go?”

Dev’s smile widens. Clearly he’s glad I didn’t just say no. “I actually know the perfect place, but I want it to be a surprise.”

“I’ve told you, I—”

“Hate surprises. I know. But I promise you’ll like this one.” He gives me puppy-dog eyes. “You liked the last one, didn’t you?”

I remember kissing Dev on the floor of the planetarium while the stars streaked by above us. I can’t help smiling. “It grew on me.”

“Well, no breaking and entering involved in this plan. Just you and me getting the hell out of Dodge, taking a well-deserved break. What do you say?”

“Well…” I don’t know what to say. On the one hand, going away with Dev is a big deal. We haven’t slept together yet, but we’ve come close, and there’s no doubt in my mind he assumes we would if we went away overnight. I know Dev’s had sex plenty of times and, although we’ve never really talked about it, I’m sure he knows I haven’t. Because I’m waiting for someone I love.

Do I love Dev?

“Hey.” Dev’s breath is warm against my ear. “Or not. No pressure.”

“I’m just thinking.” This really is the closest I’ve ever felt to Dev. It was hard for him to tell me about Kayla, and it was a risk for him to ask me this now, knowing I might say no. It’s a risk for him to love me at all—a bigger risk than he knows, considering the fact that I’m crazy.

No,
I think,
I shouldn’t take such a big step when there’s so much about me he doesn’t know.

And the truth is, there’s another reason I’m hesitating. I told Jesse I would meet her and, even though I know I shouldn’t, even though I’m afraid to, part of me still wants to. I can’t explain it. It doesn’t make sense. But I’m having trouble just letting her go.

“It’s just, there’s so much to do for the ball. It’s just two days away…”

“Deals has got this. And we’ll be back by tomorrow evening, I promise. That will give us a whole day to help with the last-minute stuff.”

It’s hard to concentrate with Dev’s leg pressed against mine. I stand and walk to the window. “Let me think about it.”

“Yeah. Sure.” There’s disappointment in his voice. “I shouldn’t lay this on you. It has been a tough day. I shouldn’t push you. It’s just…” He lets his voice trail off, but I can hear what he doesn’t say. He felt the connection, too. The trust between us. “But we have forever to do this stuff, right? We can always go in the future.”

Forever. The future. Something about the casual way he says it makes me believe it’s true. But is that a reason for me to go with him now? Or a reason to wait?

I stare out at the cold and silent campus. A light snow is falling now. It swirls on the sidewalks and coats the branches of the trees, like long white gloves on a spindly hand. There are other reasons to leave campus, of course. Reasons I can’t tell Dev.

If Jesse is right, I’m in danger. No, correction:
we’re
in danger. Didn’t Jesse say the ghost knew Dev’s name, too? How do I know whatever is after me isn’t a threat to him, too? Getting off campus is probably the smartest thing I could do right now for Dev.

And for me, too. I want to talk to Jesse, but I shouldn’t. I can’t let myself get sucked into the madness again. I just can’t.