CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
The Second Visitor
In the commotion, no one notices that Liam gets up, shoves his hands in his pockets, and walks after Monica.
He arrives just as she is leaving Liz’s room.
“Oh,” she says, hastily wiping at her eyes. “Hello. You . . . are you . . .”
“May I see her?” he asks quietly.
She hesitates, considers him as she has never considered any of Liz’s boyfriends, and gives a small nod.
Liam has to close his eyes for a moment, because she looks so, so much like Liz.
Then he reaches for the door, his fingers curling around the cold handle, takes a breath, and goes in.
He leaves the door open and feels Monica standing just beyond view, giving him a privacy that he is grateful for beyond words. He doesn’t want to be quite alone with Liz Emerson, but he wants to see her. He wants to see her.
He sits in the chair and looks at her. Carefully. He follows the tubes running up her nose and taped to the insides of her wrists. He observes the infinitesimal rise and fall of her chest. He can see the faint blue of her veins beneath her gray skin.
He says one word.
“Why?”
It’s something that he has wanted to ask her for so long that hearing it aloud is strangely surreal. He wanted to ask her at the end of fifth grade. Why haven’t you noticed me? He wanted to ask her during freshman year. Why did you do it? He wanted to ask her when he watched her staring at the sky. Why are you afraid of being yourself? He wanted to ask her that day in the gym lobby. Why do you want to be unbreakable? He wanted to ask her after the party. Why don’t you remember?
He never asked before because he didn’t think she would answer.
She doesn’t.
“Liz,” he says, and that’s another thing that he’s always wanted to say, her name. Just her name. “Liz, I never thought you’d be the first one to quit.”
He grips the metal bars on the side of the hospital bed until his fingers are nearly as white as her face. “Liz,” he says. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the bars.
“Please,” he whispers. “Remember the sky.”
She doesn’t respond, and after another minute, he leaves.
CHAPTER SIXTY
Two Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car
“Ms. Emerson,” Ms. Greenberg said severely. “Why aren’t you working?”
“Forgot my calculator,” said Liz.
It was a combination of her careless tone and her incomplete homework and the fact that she had forgotten her calculator every day for the past week that led to Ms. Greenberg’s ten-minute lecture on the irresponsibility of today’s youth, and at its conclusion, Liz was sent to her locker to retrieve her calculator.
Liz’s locker, however, was on the second floor and on the opposite side of the school, and she was too lazy to walk that far. Since Julia’s locker was conveniently located down the hall, Liz decided to borrow her calculator instead.
When she spun the lock and opened it, however, it was not the calculator that caught her eye.
There was a ziplock bag sticking out of Julia’s backpack.
Liz swore and grabbed it, looking around to make sure she was alone. She shoved it deep in her purse, slammed Julia’s locker shut, and walked back to class.
She didn’t even realize that she had forgotten the calculator until Ms. Greenberg demanded where it was.
“I couldn’t find it,” Liz snapped, and Ms. Greenberg gave her a detention for Friday afternoon for “blatant disregard for the tools of mathematics.”
Liz threw the detention slip away as soon as she left pre-calc, because she didn’t intend to be alive on Friday afternoon.
She headed straight back to Julia’s locker. As she walked closer, she could see Julia rummaging around frantically, searching.
“Hey,” said Liz. “Here.”
Julia snatched the bag, her gaze flashing around to make sure that their exchange had gone unnoticed. “Why did you—”
“I came to borrow your calculator,” Liz said, “and found that. Are you stupid? God. The drug dogs could have come today. Any fucking teacher could have opened your locker and found it—”
“Seeing as my locker was locked,” Julia said, “I don’t think that would have been a problem. Give me my calculator back.”
“I didn’t take it,” Liz snapped. “Damn it, Julia. Why do you even have it here? You know that you can’t just—”
“I ran out, okay?” Julia said quietly. “I talked to Joshua Willis and he got me some. It isn’t a big deal.”
“It isn’t—the fuck it isn’t a big deal. You told Joshua Wills? Joshua Willis knows?”
“I told him I was getting it for a friend, okay? Chill. He’d never think it was for me.”
But the words shook as they fell; Julia’s entire body shook, and though she looked on the brink of tears, her voice was angry.