He blinked.
“I told them you drank too much. That it was an accident. You didn’t know your limit.”
He wheezed.
I hunched forward in my chair. “Look, I haven’t been honest with you, Lex. What I said earlier, about being a bad person, it’s true. There’s a reason I don’t talk about my family and it doesn’t have anything to do with my parents’ divorce or me not getting along with my mom. It has to do with me. Who I really am. My real name. It’s not Winston.…”
I kept talking. The two words I intended to say, I’m sorry, wouldn’t come. But other words did, ones I’d never given voice to. I struggled to say them. Lex struggled to listen. As I continued talking, he looked away. Maybe he didn’t believe me. Maybe he didn’t want to hear what I had to say. My wretched guilt. But sitting in that room, in the weak light of morning, for the first time since their deaths, I couldn’t stop talking. I told him everything.
About Keith and Siobhan.
About how they’d died and who I was and what I’d done.
About what it all meant.
About what I would become.
What I had to become.
My destiny.
chapter
thirty
antimatter
I heard voices on the front porch.
Whispers. What sounded like crying. Or laughter.
My body refused to move.
“Just shut up!” a female voice rang out.
More mumbling.
“No. Just go, okay? Go!”
I finally sat up. Looked around. I was on the couch in the living room of my grandfather’s cabin, and I was in shock.
Some part of me hurt. Badly. A type of pain and a type of place I didn’t have words for. My head lolled, heavy with a funny residue that reminded me of Phenergan or worse. Only I hadn’t traveled anywhere. Had I? I tried to remember. I’d gone upstairs with my dad. I had seen a wolf. So why was I down here, all alone, in the living room, with just a— Sssnap!
I whimpered.
No. That didn’t happen. No one hurt you. Not like that. Push it away. Remember the wolves instead.
The door slammed shut. Footsteps approached.
I waited. Anna appeared in the threshold. Her head turned and she saw me. Her legs buckled and she almost fell. Then she laughed, a wild, out-of-control sound, and put a finger to her lips.
“Shhh,” she said. “You’re not supposed to be up. It’s too late for you.”
I bit the inside of my cheek.
Anna came closer, crossing the floor with a looping twist of her feet. Her hair was very messy and she smelled different, pungent, almost smoky. I couldn’t place it. I had a large fleece blanket wrapped around me but still couldn’t remember how I had gotten here. I didn’t think I wanted to remember. A part of me wanted to cry. Or scream.
Anna leaned against the back of the couch, then swung her long legs over to sit beside me. She peeled off her jacket. She had nothing on beneath it.
I blinked. I had to still be dreaming. I had to be. None of this, my confusion, my fear, my bubbling well of insanity, the half-naked girl in front of me, it couldn’t be real.
The roar of a car engine filled the room. Headlights flashed through the window, cutting across Anna’s face.
“Shh,” she said again. “This is our secret, little Drew. Okay? Don’t be scared.”
Sssnap!
Another flash. This one too vivid. Too real.
I gagged.
Anna’s dark eyes narrowed. “What’s wrong?”
I couldn’t answer.
“Could you hear what Ricky and I were saying outside?”
I still couldn’t answer.
Anna leaned forward to grab on to me, filling my head with her bad smoke-smell. I reared back with a tiny growl and my heart beat hummingbird fast. I didn’t want to be touched.
I didn’t want to be touched.
She babbled, “Look, it was an accident. I swear. Please, Drew, just don’t freak out, all right? You can’t tell anyone, you just can’t. Ricky was drinking, well, I was, too, and it just happened so fast. I mean, he came out of nowhere! But it was a total accident, I swear, Drew. I swear. We tried to help him, we both did, but we couldn’t do anything. I told Ricky that we’re both leaving soon, we need to forget this ever happened. He’s back at Colgate in the fall and I’m going to be a senior this year. We can’t just, like, ruin everything over an accident, right? You get that? You understand?”
I had no idea what she was talking about, I didn’t want to know, but she reached for me again, pleading and desperate.
I hit her.
Anna gave a yelp and her whole arm tensed. Like she meant to hit me back.
I kicked her in the stomach.
She froze, her face sliding into a mask of pain and disbelief. Then she fell back against the couch cushions and began to cry, coarse, jagged sobs. I stared. Anna’s tears evoked nothing in me. I did not care.