A plan.
(Get up, Drew. We’re leaving. I’ll tell you why when we get there.) “I didn’t try,” I say again, but I feel myself slipping. Why doesn’t he get it? Why doesn’t he get that that’s the whole point? The whole problem? “I changed my mind.”
Lex continues to stare. The look on his face is not easy for me to recognize. It’s too serious. Too tense. Behind him, Jordan gets up from where we sat looking out at the trees. She comes toward us, wiping dirt from her hands as she walks. My heart jackhammers. I don’t know what they’re trying to do. I don’t know what they’re trying to prove, but I’m uncomfortable. I’m more than uncomfortable.
This is painful.
“You need help,” Lex says, and I shake my head. I mean, who could help me? It’s not like people haven’t tried before.
But what is there to say when what’s inside of me is unspeakable?
“You can’t do anything,” I tell Lex, and it’s true. My own mom gave up on me. She’s the one who sent me away to boarding school. She’s the one who said I needed to be somewhere where people didn’t know who I was or what I’d done. I don’t think she was wrong about that.
“Yes, we can. We’re taking you to a hospital. A psychiatric one. Right now. I know where to go. Okay, Win? Everything will be okay.”
Will it?
I find that very hard to believe.
chapter
thirty-five
to the stars
We leave Eden.
We stumble out of the woods.
The bridge appears in the distance.
My past catches up with me.
Ssssnap!
The three of us trudge along the edge of the river. My legs hurt and I lag behind the others. I watch as her small fingers dart out to grab at the blooming vines of jasmine that cluster along the roadside. She plucks the white flowers, one-two-three, then crumples them, scattering the ruined petals like bread crumbs.
Their conversation floats back.
“Why do we have to walk?” she asks, craning her neck to look up at him. “This is taking forever.”
“Because he can’t ride the bus.”
“He can’t do anything.”
“Shut up,” I call out.
She ignores me. “How much farther is it?”
“You ask too many questions.”
“That’s my job,” she replies brightly. “I ask questions. You answer them. Every question has an answer, you know.” She circles back to me, worming her fingers into mine, tugging at my hand. I shake her off. She laughs, then grabs for me again, this time snaking her thin arm around my waist. I shiver.
“Stop it,” I tell her.
“I love you,” she says sweetly. Too sweetly.
“Leave me alone.”
She pouts. “You’re being mean.”
I’m not mean, I think, but then she skips ahead and takes his hand, and my heart flares with something black, like jealousy or ire, and so maybe I am. Mean.
A bridge appears in the distance. A rusted span stretched high above the glassy water.
“Tell me where we’re going,” she says.
“We’re almost there.”
“But what’ll it be like?”
“It’ll be good,” he says. “Better than good. Where we’re going, we’ll never have to grow up and turn into anything we don’t want to be.”
She thinks about this. “Really?”
“Really. Remember the story of Peter Pan? It’ll be just like that.”
“You mean, like magic?”
“Just like magic.”
She nods solemnly. “I like that.”
“Me too.”
“What is there to do there?”
“Well, what’s your favorite thing in the whole world?”
“Favorite what?”
“Anything?”
“Horses,” she says. “Arabian ones. Like the Black Stallion.”
“Then that’s what’ll be waiting for you. Your very own horse.”
“Huh?”
“What’s your least favorite thing?”
She begins to spin in a circle, slow then fast, long hair streaming out with comet-tail force. Her eyes close, very tight, and her pale face fills with lines, like a tiger’s mask.
“Monsters,” she whispers.
He glances at the bridge, then back at me. “Then that’s what won’t be there. No monsters. Ever.”
The spinning ceases. “You promise?”
“Yes,” he says. “I promise.”
chapter
thirty-six
siobhan
I blink.
My eyes sting.
The dawn is too bright.
I sit up and look around. I’m riding in a borrowed car with Lex and Jordan—Teddy’s BMW. We’re winding down the mountain away from the school. Lex fiddles with the stereo while he drives, and the music that comes on is sort of folksy. Sort of sad. It reminds me that he’s from Seattle. Jordan sits beside him in the front. She picks at the buckle of her leather boot. My knees press against the back of her seat. I’m too tall for a coupe.