“Yeah, that.”
Something twisted in the pit of my stomach, and my instinct was telling me to run. Leave. Cover my ears. Maybe recite the Declaration of Independence in my head. Because I didn’t really want to hear it. Decker sighed. “My parents couldn’t get me to come home from the hospital. I just sat there for six days. I missed that week of school, too, you know. Even your parents tried to send me away. I think I was upsetting them. Truth is, I kept crying. Really embarrassing. So Tara shows up one day . . .”
My mouth must’ve dropped open because he smirked. “She’s not such a terrible person, see?” I raised an eyebrow at him. He stopped smiling.
“Anyway, she shows up to see you, and there can only be a few people in the room at a time, so the nurses kick me out. Then Tara comes back out and takes one look at me and says she’s getting me out of there. And I said no, I didn’t want to go. But the nurses said they had to bathe you and the doctors were coming on rounds, so I left.
“But we didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. I just sat there, crying, because I felt like if I left you, you’d die. And she’s Tara, so, you know, she climbs across the seat and hugs me and I kissed her. I thought of you and I kissed her. I have no idea why. That’s where I was when you woke up. Can you believe it? The one time I left. . . . I should’ve been there when you woke up. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have left.”
He left me for her. He left me for her at the hospital. He left me for her at the party. And last night, instead of coming to me, he left me for her again.
“You’re still with her.”
“I’m not with her, with her. She’s just . . . there.”
“Is that your explanation? Really?”
“Well, there was Carson—”
“There wasn’t, not really.”
“And then that guy Troy.”
“There . . .” I wasn’t about to start lying to him.
“Truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know . . . what I’m doing. Or why I’m doing it,” he said. Which was the worst excuse in the history of excuses. “I don’t know what’s up or down anymore. I feel like I’m . . .” He stopped speaking and winced.
“Drowning,” I said. “You were going to say you feel like you’re drowning.”
He nodded. I wondered how many people I took with me when I fell into the lake. How many sunk with me. I thought I had been alone under the water, but maybe I wasn’t.
“This is all my fault.” He held his arms out, indicating that I was the error. That I was somehow scarred and damaged and he could see every mark on my body. “I’m in love with you, and I did this to you.”
I wanted to tell him that he saved me, but I wasn’t so sure anymore.
And in case I didn’t hear him the first time, he said, “I love you.” Like that should just cancel out everything that came before.
He reached an arm out for me, but I stepped away, toward the door. I walked away from him. “Delaney?” he called after me. His eyes were pleading with me, so I looked away.
I held my hand out before he could say anything more. There was just too much. Carson was dead. Mom was disappearing. Troy was killing people. I was useless. And Decker was trying to tell me that he loved me, like it actually mattered now. “I heard you,” I said. “But it’s too late.” Didn’t he see? I wasn’t really alive anymore. He opened his mouth to speak again, but I cut him off. “What’s the point, Decker? Really, what’s the goddamn point of anything anymore?”
I left.
I walked straight for Falcon Lake, like I had something to say to it. But I stopped at the ledge on the side of the road, completely unsure of why I was there. The lake looked bigger than it used to—like the far shore was some impossible distance away.
I took a step backward and squeezed my eyes shut. I wanted to rewind. Go back. Tell Decker to take the long way around. Go back even farther. Ask Decker to stay inside with me, in the warmth of my house, just me and him. I would’ve told him something important, and it would’ve mattered. Before all this, it would’ve mattered.
I took another step back and heard the blare of a horn and the skid of tires. My eyelids shot open and I saw the brake lights of a car fishtailing past me.
I walked back home with my heart in my throat and an ache in my chest.
Mom was missing again. But her car was in the garage and her coat was hanging in the closet. So she was somewhere in the house, probably barricaded in her room, trying to resurrect the old Delaney. Without Mom, the house was turning stale. It wasn’t my absence that made the house turn sour, it was Mom’s. She was the life of it and she was disappearing.
I pulled out some prepackaged frozen cookies that Mom kept on hand in case of last-minute visitors, broke them onto a cookie tray, and put them in the oven. Even though I wasn’t supposed to touch the oven because it wasn’t safe. I figured an oven emergency was the least damaging thing I could accomplish this week.
I sat in a stiff wooden kitchen chair and breathed in the scent of melting chocolate. I’d read that scent is the most powerful sense for triggering memories. So I tried. I breathed deeply, trying to transport myself back to the kitchen when Mom baked cookies and I studied at the table and Decker hovered around the oven, grabbing cookies off the cooling rack when they were still hot.
For a moment, I was there again. The oven timer went off, and I threw on Mom’s red oven mitts and pulled the cookies out to cool. And then the doorbell rang. I pressed my oven-mitted hands flat on the door and peered through the peephole. Troy was on the other side, his hands pressed against the door in the mirror image of me.
“What do you want?” I called through the door between us.
“I want to see you. I want to make sure you’re okay.”
I cracked the door open but stayed inside. “Peachy,” I said.
His fists were clenched at his sides. “Can I come in?”
As an answer, I slid through the opening and pulled the door shut behind me. Then I folded my arms across my chest, protecting myself from the cold.
“Where’s your mom?” he asked.
“Inside,” I said in a way that indicated she might be out any second, though she wouldn’t.
He looked down at my hands and said, “What are you doing?”
I smoothed my hands down my pant legs like Mom would do and plastered a smile on my face and said, “Baking cookies.”
Troy frowned at me. “What’s wrong with you?”
I laughed. “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with me? You’re kidding. What’s right about me?” I felt lightheaded, like I was watching the scene unfold from far away. But all I could see was Troy. Nothing else mattered.
Troy dropped his forehead into his hands and rubbed his temples. He spoke to the ground. “You need to pull yourself together, Delaney.” He looked up at me, and his eyes took on a new look, not his usual one of confidence and self-righteousness, but one of panic and confusion. “I’m worried about you.”
I put my hands on my hips and rocked back on my heels. “Well, that’s sweet, Troy. Really sweet. Kind of like how you were worried when I was in the hospital? Or how you were worried when you set that man’s house on fire?” Troy whipped his head from side to side, making sure nobody was nearby. “Or how you were so worried about Carson that you just stood there and watched him die? If you cared about anyone, me included, you would’ve done something. You would’ve tried to help me.”