Authors: Kelly Braffet
Her hair was much shorter than it had been, and appeared to have been dyed an unremarkable medium brown. There was no sign of the silver-streaked burgundy that he remembered. She wore jeans and a plain T-shirt. She looked older. It was as if the terrified goth teenager in his memory had been wiped off the face of the earth, replaced by this new girl whose demeanor spoke not so much of any desire to stand out or blend in as it did a complete refusal to take part. As if the only statement she wanted to make was
You expect clothes; here are clothes. Now leave me alone
.
It made him sad. She’d given up. He didn’t even think she could legally drive yet. Then he saw a tattoo on her wrist, a thin bracelet of vines or something, and felt a little better.
“My dad’s assistant drove me. He’s waiting.” She gestured, and
Patrick saw a truck idling across the lot, a figure inside it. “When I asked him to help me find you he promised not to tell my dad about it, but I think he will. If he does, you can probably expect a call.”
“Your dad probably has good reasons for not wanting you here,” Patrick said.
“My dad has good reasons for everything he does.” Her voice was oddly affectless. “He sent me away, you know. I just got back.”
Patrick wanted to speak, but something was blocking his throat.
“It wasn’t so bad. There were horses. It turns out that I like horses. I didn’t know that before. My dad can barely look at me. My mom is better. They moved to a new house.”
“Layla,” he said. The word came out choked and strangled. It was the thing that had been blocking his speech, and it hung in the air between them for a long moment, during which neither of them said anything. Layla was dead. The psycho was dead. The bald kid and the blue-haired girl were dead, too, shot by state police outside of Harrisburg. Of the five kids who had set off that night to kill Patrick, only one had lived. One kid, and him.
“Did you care about her?” she said.
He hesitated, and then told the truth. “Not the way she wanted me to.”
“Then why did you have sex with her?”
“Because people don’t always do the right thing.” It was a cop-out, and she knew it, and he knew she knew it. Her eyes closed briefly, and then opened again, full of dispirited hopelessness. Suddenly he wanted very much to do better by this girl, to be better than all of the well-intentioned people who had left her like this. One of whom, when you thought about it, was probably him. “Because I was angry,” he said. “I was angry and sad, I thought it might make me feel better, and I knew she would go along with it. I knew it was the wrong thing to do and I decided I didn’t care. I decided the world didn’t care about me, so why should I care about it?” Now that he’d started the
words flooded out of him, a deluge that he couldn’t stop. “She came to me for help. I didn’t help her. I was ashamed of what I’d done and I wanted her gone. If I could change it—”
“Why did you and your brother wait so long to call the police?” she said.
He stared at her, surprised. “He was our father. He was all we had. We did the best we could.”
She nodded. “I had the gun. I had the gun and I’m the only one who didn’t get hit. My dad says—everyone says—that was God’s hand at work. But I think that if God were merciful, He would have let me die.”
She said it calmly, emotionlessly. For the first time, she reminded him of Layla. It was hard to see her that way. “He didn’t. You’re alive.”
“I know,” she said. There was another pause, and then she asked him if his arm hurt him much, and he said that it did but that he was dealing with it. She nodded and told him she had to go. He wished her well.
That night, when Caro came back to the apartment and saw how upset he was, she made him tell her about it. Then she said, “You know, Patrick, you’re alive, too.”
Because it had been her, that night in the store. That night, and all the nights since. He said, “Well, I’m trying,” and put his arm around her.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book, like all books, would not exist in its current form without the help, influence, and support of more people than I can possibly count. Here’s my attempt to count them anyway.
Julie Barer, as always, proved herself stalwart, patient, and wise throughout the five years it took me to write this book, and Zack Wagman’s insight and enthusiasm carried it the rest of the way. The support of everyone at Crown was truly enheartening, and I owe great thanks to each and every last one of you, even those of you I haven’t met yet.
Elisa Albert and Amanda Eyre Ward both read this book in its nascent form, Lauren Grodstein read it twice, and Owen King read it about seventy times. All were smart, loving, and totally badass readers, and their assistance was invaluable. Robert Johnston of Belden Law in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, spent several hours with me explaining the subtleties of DUI law in Pennsylvania, and Rosemary Fretz, Brian White, Heather Mock, and Nate Hensley (among others) helped with the guns. Any errors are mine, not theirs.
More intangible thanks go to Brittany Statlend, Elizabeth Horwitz,
and Steve and Tabby King, all of whom gave me the help I most needed at the times when I most needed it, sometimes with very little notice. But the most intangible and all-encompassing thanks of all go to Owen King, who already got a nod but who deserves about sixty million more. He is possibly the most patient and goodhearted and generous person in the entire universe. Without him, nothing would be possible—particularly not that most infinitely sweet thing, that thing that is by far the best thing we’ve ever done.