ONE
A year later
MY MUSCLES CONTRACTED, POWERFUL and controlled, pushing me up from the ground and lowering me to the floor again. Over and over, until my arms trembled and my breath exploded from my throat in sharp bursts. And then a few more times after that, just to be sure I could. I finished my push-ups and moved on to sit-ups.
The knock at my door pulled me from my mindless reps. “Baby? You’re awful quiet in there.”
I sank back and tilted my head to the door, brushing away my curly hair, now damp with sweat. Diane, my foster mother, opened the door a crack and peeked in.
I sat up and wiped my face with my sleeve. “I’m just finishing. You can come in.”
She opened the door all the way. “You work yourself hard.”
I grabbed the glass of water from my bedside table. “I thought that’s what I was supposed to be doing.”
She nodded at the books and papers scattered across my desk. “I don’t see how you have so much energy. You stay up so late.” A frown creased her deep brown skin. “I know you don’t get enough sleep.”
Sleep hadn’t actually been restful for the past few years, but I didn’t talk about that. “I’ve had a lot of catching up to do.” In the year I’d lived with Diane, I had managed to pull my GPA out of the two-point-argh range, but just barely.
“You’ve done a lot more than that. Have you checked the mail today?”
“Yup. Nothing.”
She shrugged. “It’s coming, baby. I can feel it.” Sometimes I got the sense that the one college application I’d sent in meant more to Diane than it did to me. As much as I hated to admit it, though, I’d started to let myself hope for a future I’d never thought was possible.
“You have plans with Nadia tonight?” Diane asked.
“I’m going to stay over at her house. Her mom’s in the Seychelles with her new boyfriend.”
“Don’t get up to any trouble.”
We never got up to any trouble. That was why Diane liked Nadia so much. Aside from anxiety about always having to be perfect, Nadia was, well, perfect. I frowned. Or maybe not. She seemed really stressed lately.
After a quick shower, I shoved my stuff into my backpack and headed out the door. The drive to Nadia’s was short, but turning onto her street was like entering a different world. I wondered if her neighbors locked their doors and pulled their blinds when they saw me coming. Or maybe they paid someone else to do it for them.
The old, beat-up Corolla that Diane’s uncle had lent me felt small and shabby as I rolled to a stop in front of the row of garage doors at the head of Nadia’s driveway. I parked next to Tegan’s BMW. Usually Nadia’s other friends cleared out when they knew I was going to be around. Even though we’d been hanging out for almost a year, her friends—especially Tegan—remained pissed and baffled that she was spending time with someone like me. About a week ago, though, Nadia got sick of it and told Tegan I wasn’t going anywhere and that she had to at least talk to me.
I wished Nadia had consulted me first.
Nadia pulled open the front door before I reached it. “I was going to let you two take it slow, but apparently Tegan’s therapist told her she needed to bond with you.”
“That sounds…really unpleasant.”
She bit her lip, half laughing, half cringing. “Don’t be mad.”
I shouldered my pack and walked cautiously up the front steps. I’d long since gotten over my urge to kick Tegan’s ass. “It’s fine. Unless she starts talking extreme makeover, and then the gloves come off.”
Tegan peeked over Nadia’s shoulder. Her short brown hair was stylishly jagged around her face. “Hi, Lela. Glad your probation officer let you come over,” she said as she handed Nadia a bottle of soda.
Tegan sucked at bonding.
Nadia took the bottle and gently bonked Tegan on the head with it. “Cut it out. I want to relax tonight.”
Tegan stuck out her tongue at Nadia, then turned to me. “Hey, I read about some Dominican festival this weekend. Maybe we could go and celebrate your roots.”
I closed my eyes and shook my head, deeply regretting this new, talking-to-me Tegan. “Lela’s not from the Dominican Republic,” Nadia answered for me.
“Close enough, right?” Tegan looked sincerely confused, probably because I was the only person of color she’d ever spoken to. “Where are you from, then?”
“Um, here?”
She rolled her eyes. “No, I mean originally.”
My hand closed over the strap of my backpack, turning my knuckles pale. “Here.”
“Oh, come on, Lela, give us the specifics. Maybe your peeps have a festival, too.”
I sighed. “I think I’m Puerto Rican.”
“You think? Don’t people know that kind of thing for sure?”
Nadia skipped forward and offered me the soda. “You can have it if you don’t kill her,” she sang.
“Well, Tegan,” I explained in my painful-death-is-too-good-for-you voice, “I haven’t seen my mother since I was four years old, and I didn’t think to ask her then.”
Tegan nodded like I’d just told her I enjoyed watching The Bachelor or something. “That’s too bad. I was hoping you were Cuban. I really like those sandwiches.”
Nadia closed her eyes and shook her head. “Um, how about you go order the pizza?” She handed Tegan a menu.
Tegan shot us a prettily manicured finger and skipped into the kitchen.
As I set my backpack down on the living-room table, I saw the large, thick envelope from the University of Rhode Island. “Oh my God, is that what I think it is?”
Nadia nodded. “Just arrived today. Did you get one?”
“No. I mean, not yet.” I picked up the envelope and stared at it. “Congratulations, Nadia,” I said, grinning. “Looks like we have something to celebrate tonight.”
She gave me a small smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Thanks.”
She turned and walked toward the kitchen, obviously expecting me to follow. But I just stood there, that envelope in my hands, wondering what had changed. Six months ago, she’d practically forced me to fill out an application. Until then I’d never really thought about the future. I was too busy trying to survive each moment. But meeting Nadia had changed all that. So I’d filled out the application and sent it off. At first Nadia had been absolutely stoked. She’d taken me down to tour the campus with her, talked nonstop about how great it was going to be if we both got in. Lately, though, she’d stopped talking about it so much. I set the envelope back down and headed for the kitchen.
A few hours later, we were lounging in front of the giant flat-screen in the entertainment room. Tegan was pretty much passed out, done in by her third glass of Merlot.
Nadia cradled her own wineglass against her chest like she didn’t trust herself not to drop it. “You’re the first person who’s congratulated me about getting into URI. Tegan wasn’t impressed because she’s headed to Wellesley, and Mom…”
I set my soda on a coaster and muted the volume. “I take it she wasn’t happy?”
Mrs. Vetter wasn’t happy about much—especially that I had become friends with Nadia. I hadn’t known her before Nadia’s dad died, so I’d tried to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Nadia shook her head and took a sip of wine. “She wants me to go to Wellesley with Teg.” She smiled sadly. “I’d rather stay here. URI was good enough for my dad…”
I got up and went to the window, parting the heavy curtains and staring out at the Narragansett Bay. She’d been the one to bring up college, and I’d been picturing going through all of that with her.
When I turned back around, she gave me the I-can-see-straight-through-you look. “I’d miss you, too, Lela. But don’t worry about it. We’re going to go to college together—here. I need you to keep me sane.”
She’d said that to me more than once. That I kept her from going off the deep end. “You have way too much faith in me,” I mumbled.
“You have way too little faith in yourself. Come on. I need you. You can use your fab butt-kicking skills to get me out of bed in time for class every morning.” She folded her hands beneath her chin and batted her eyelashes. “Roomies?”
“Roomies? Have you seen my room?” I laughed, refusing to get my hopes up. I hadn’t even gotten an acceptance.
She shrugged. “It’s a bit cluttered, and you’ve developed a weird obsession with photography. But I can live with that.”
“Hey, you’re the one who gave me the camera.”
She laughed. “I have never regretted anything more. I’ve created a monster.”
I’d spent most of my life trying to forget what had happened to me. Since meeting Nadia, I had moments I wanted to relive, to hold close. When she’d given me that camera for my seventeenth birthday, it was like she’d given me permission to capture it all, like she was saying our friendship was real.
“You weren’t complaining when your birthday came around.”
“No. The photograph you gave me was beautiful.” I’d worked really hard to get the perfect shot of her favorite spot on the Newport shoreline and had sat on those rocks for hours, waiting for the sun to drop into place.
Nadia grinned like she knew what I was thinking. “I just got a new frame—we can hang it in our dorm room!” She threw her arm around me, and I flinched, a reflex I could not control. A year of friendship and a touch still freaked me out—too many people had put their hands on me without permission, and now that instinctive recoil was a part of me, no matter how badly I wanted to get over it. Her arm fell away from me, and she gave me an apologetic smile, which made me feel even worse. She hadn’t really done anything wrong. It wasn’t her fault I was broken.
A faint rattling pulled me from sleep, which was a relief because I’d been caught in yet another nightmare. After what Rick, my now-former foster father, had done to me, one would think he’d be the one haunting my dreams. And he had something to do with it—he’d revived me the night I’d tried to kill myself. In the moments before he had, I was certain I’d been standing at the gates of hell, about to be sucked in. Unfortunately, when Rick revived me, I’d brought a piece of hell back with me. That was what I dreamed about. Every night. A dark, walled city. Wandering, lost, trapped. A voice whispering to me, You’re perfect. Come back.
Stay.
I shuddered and sat up, shaking off the dream, listening hard. Tegan’s soft snores came from the couch across the room. And Nadia wasn’t in her bed.
With a sick feeling in my stomach, I got up and padded over to the bathroom, staring at the strip of yellow light coming from beneath the closed door. A quiet whimper made me grit my teeth and knock. “Nadia?”
“I’ll be right out.”
My hand was already on the doorknob. “Coming in.”
She was sitting on the bathroom floor, and she swiped a tear from her face with the backs of her fingers as I walked in and shut the door behind me. The bottle of pills was still clutched in her hand.
I sank to the tiles in front of her. “What’s up?”
She closed her eyes. “Couldn’t sleep.”
I tugged the little brown pill bottle from her limp fingers. The label had been peeled off. I pressed the lid and twisted, then peeked inside. Little green pills, OC stamped into their round faces. Goddammit. “You told me you were done with this stuff.” She’d told me that a few times, actually. And each time, I’d hoped it was true.
Her smile was ghostly. “I was. And I will be. It’s just been so stressful lately.”
“I get that. But all these do is make you stupid and sleepy.” She was never herself when she was on it, and it pissed me off. Without it, she was my best friend, the girl who had poked her way through my defenses, who had made me trust her, who had made me believe things would get better. On it, she was…gone.
She sniffled. “It’s just an escape, Lela. Don’t you ever need to escape?”
I let out a humorless snort. “Yeah. I tried that once. It’s highly overrated.”
“Sometimes I’m so tired. I just want to sleep.” She pulled her knees to her chest and gave me a cautious look. “And sometimes I don’t want to wake up.”
A cold sweat prickled on my palms and the back of my neck as I drew in a sharp breath, willing my voice to stay quiet and calm. “You don’t know what you’re saying. Seriously.”
She frowned. I squeezed my eyes shut, forcing the words from my mouth. “Did you know I tried to kill myself a few years ago?”
“What?”
“Yeah. It was…a really rough time. And I wanted to escape. So I wrapped a belt around my neck and pulled it tight.”
I heard her shift, and her hand closed over my wrist. “God, Lela. What happened?”
I opened my eyes and stared at her pale fingers wrapped over my skin, warm and clammy. Her hand fell away. “At first I really thought I’d done it. It felt amazing. Like flying.” I looked up at her. “That was the lack of oxygen in my brain.”
She flinched.
“But then I was falling. And I hit the ground. Hard.” I pressed my lips together as the sensations tumbled through my head, dragging me back there, to the moment I died. My scrabbling fingers curled around cobblestone, the grit digging up under my fingernails. I raised my head, and I saw the Gates. They swung wide, like the pincers of a giant insect, their spires rising into a black-and-purple sky, their hinges shrieking, shrieking, shrieking.
Beyond them lay a city bathed in darkness.
My new home.
Like a hook buried in my stomach, it reached for me. My bare feet moved automatically, slapping against rough stone. Shoulders jostled me. Someone stumbled against me and grabbed a fistful of my nightgown, and I ripped myself away. I was in the middle of an endless, faceless crowd, all of us lurching like zombies toward the Gates.
I blinked. Nadia’s eyes were wide as she watched me. “You hit…what do you mean?” she whispered.
“I don’t know. Maybe that’s just what dying feels like. Hitting bottom.” I spoke slowly, choosing each word. I wanted to tell her so badly. If you kill yourself, you go where the monsters are. But I had enough experience to know that people who talked about stuff like this honestly usually ended up in psych wards. Sometimes I wondered if that was where I belonged. I shuddered.
In front of the Gates stood massive creatures, like men but not men. They wore armor, like medieval knights, and curved swords hung from their belts. They shoved people through the open Gates, jeering and laughing, their eyes glowing like lanterns.
“Welcome to the Suicide Gates!” one of them bellowed over and over again until his chant echoed in my head like a pulse.
I shot to my feet and grabbed a cup from the side of the sink. With trembling hands, I turned on the faucet, still trapped in my memories.
No matter which way I twisted, the Gates were in front of me, sucking me in, hungry for me.
Rick’s voice closed around me like a net. “Wake up, you little bitch.”
My head jerked to the side with his slap. Beneath my cheek I felt the grubby nubs of my yellow bedroom rug. The belt was no longer around my neck. It hung from the broad hand of my foster father, who was waving it in front of my face as he crouched over me.
“What the fuck were you trying to do? Get a little attention? Don’t I give you enough?” He pinched my hip and lowered himself on top of me, crushing my body with his, huffing his beer-soaked breath into my face. I was too stunned and disoriented to even try to get away this time.
I reached for my throat and winced as my fingers hit raw, swollen welts. My eyes darted to Rick’s face. It was twisted with rage and fear—but also lit up with a glint of excitement that turned my stomach and told me exactly what was coming next.
The voices of those monster Guards still rang in the buzzing space between my ears as Rick tossed me onto my bed. His thick fingers closed around the back of my neck, pulling at my sweaty, tangled hair, pressing my face into the sheets. “I won’t let anything happen to you, baby.” His voice was gentler now, which filled me with dread.
As his throaty words hit my ears, telling me how lucky I was that he’d found me in time, that he wouldn’t let me end up in the psych ward or on the streets, that he wouldn’t tell if I wouldn’t, that no one would believe me anyway, that I’d never had it so good…I stared at the wall. But all I saw was the Suicide Gates opening for me, calling me back. It hurt more than he did. Because now I knew death was no escape.
I blinked as my mind finally brought me back to the now. The faucet was still running, the cup in my hands overflowing. “Trust me,” I said to Nadia as I turned off the water. “There’s no better, happy place you go to. Running away from it doesn’t fix anything. Turning yourself into a zombie doesn’t either. Deal with your shit here, Nadia. And do it sober.”
“It’s easy for you to say, since you never drink or take anything. You’re strong. And I can’t even stand up to my own mother.” Her voice was raspy, like she was trying not to cry.
I looked down at her. I wasn’t strong. The only reason I didn’t take drugs was because I was scared of losing control, of not being able to protect myself. And my mind was a scary enough place as it was. If I were strong, I would have been able to get over all of it and move on. It had been two years since I tried to die. My life had gotten so much better. But every night that dark city sucked me in, like it hadn’t quite let me go when I’d returned to the land of the living. Other times, too, that horrible place appeared around me, like it was waiting for me to come back. That dark, deep voice whispered to me, urging me to stay there. Perfect, the unseen monster always said, his rank breath hot on the back of my neck. You’re perfect. Each time, I gasped myself awake or rubbed my eyes until the real world appeared again, and wondered why it wouldn’t leave me alone. I had things to live for now. I was never going back.
I put the cup back and leaned against the sink. “You’re stronger than you think. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have been able to tolerate being my friend.” I was reaching for humor, anything to chase away the memories clamoring in my skull.
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “You don’t make it easy.” Her playful tone lowered my heart rate. She almost sounded like herself.
It made me brave. I scooped the pill bottle from the floor and handed it to her. “And I never will. Flush them.”
She took the bottle from me and examined it. I could tell she wanted to argue, but then she looked up at me and nodded. With slow, heavy movements that told me she’d already taken enough to make her dizzy and loose, Nadia dumped the pills into the toilet and flushed, blinking as the green tablets swirled and disappeared. I sighed with relief. “If you feel like this again, will you talk to me? Before you talk to a dealer?”
Her cheeks got pink. “Sure. I’m fine, though. Really.” Her pale blue eyes met mine. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? It’s just stress.” Seeing my uncertain look, she laughed. “Come on, Lela. A cheesy old movie is all the escape I need. Van Wilder is calling our names.”
I shook my head and chuckled, my mood rising quickly as a heavy weight lifted from my shoulders. “The things I do for friendship.”