“Ms. Emerson, I can’t help you if you don’t want to be helped.”
But she did want to be helped. She just didn’t know how to ask for it, and she was very much afraid that she was beyond any kind of help, regardless.
Mr. Dickson sighed. “You know, Liz, I also went through a dark period during my youth. I’ve always been a bit overweight—”
It took every single ounce of Liz’s self-control to keep her mouth shut.
“—and for a while, I was very conscious of what others thought of me. But I overcame that,” he said, leaning forward. The chair creaked. “I began to see that it simply didn’t matter what others thought, that it was what I thought of myself that mattered most—”
Okay, Liz thought. Screw this seven chances thing. Just kill me now.
“Just remember, Liz,” Mr. Dickson said, “it’s never too late to change. Every day is a blank page, and your story has yet to be written.”
Liz laughed. It was a breathless, desperate sound. “Oh, I think it’s too late, Mr. Dickson.”
He smiled at her kindly. “Well, Liz, you’ll never change if you don’t believe you will.”
His words hit her physically. Liz forced a smile, and then she left. Outside, it was between winter twilight and nighttime, a dusky compromise that was not quite one thing or another. Liz ran across the parking lot, and when she reached her car, she leaned her forehead against the side. Her skin stuck to the metal, and all around her, the sky was darkening.
“Well,” she whispered, “I guess I can’t change, then.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE
The Fourth Visitor
Mr. Eliezer had seen her brightness right away, even though she kept it suppressed and boxed in. She had asked enough intelligent questions between her asinine ones, and even on the first day, he had seen that she could have been a brilliant student if only she would apply herself. That, he had learned, was the worst part of teaching: seeing students give up before they even started.
He had badgered Liz more than any other student, because he had never seen a girl so filled with could-haves.
Mr. Eliezer doesn’t stay for long. Monica is still guarding the door—she’d been reluctant to let him in at all to leave his card. He smiles wanly at Liz, as though she can see, and walks out.
The card reads: DEAR MS. EMERSON, YOU SOLEMNLY SWORE THAT YOU WOULD RAISE YOUR GRADE IN MY CLASS, AND THIS OATH REMAINS YET UNFULFILLED. GET BETTER.
CHAPTER SEVENTY
One Step Forward
Since Liam never really went to parties, he became addicted to caffeine instead of other stuff. The cup of coffee that Monica brought him had tasted like plastic, but he needs a refill or he’ll collapse. The stress has gotten to him, and right now he really wants to sleep, but he wants to wait for Liz Emerson more.
Liam happens to really like hospitals. His mother is a nurse, and a good part of his childhood had been spent in sterilized hallways. This has always been a place of miracles, not death, and he’d like it to stay this way.
A nurse tells him that there’s a café on the fifth floor when he asks, but when he gets in the elevator, he accidentally hits the button for the fourth. He sighs and rubs his face, unreasonably annoyed that the elevator will hesitate on the fourth floor, but there’s nothing he can do about that now. He presses the right button, leans back, and closes his eyes.
He actually falls asleep for a second like that, standing, his arms crossed over his chest. Then the elevator opens on the fourth floor, and sobbing jerks him rudely from his momentary oblivion.
He blinks. By the time he is truly awake, the elevator doors are already closing. He blocks them with his arm and steps toward the girl slumped in a corner of the hall.
Liam looks down at Kennie. He hesitates, but after a moment, he clears his throat.
“Julia?” It’s a hopeless little thing, her voice, and skeptical. Surely she must know he isn’t Julia. Not even she’s that stupid, he thinks as he crouches down by her. “Jules, is she better?”
“She got moved to a room,” Liam says. “So yes.”
Her head snaps up, and Liam really looks at Kennie for the first time. The truth is, Liam has always thought of Kennie as a slutty, stereotypical Barbie with even less intelligence. Because that’s what he’s been told.
Now he looks at the grimy tracks of makeup on her cheeks and the broken girl trapped in her eyes, and he realizes that he’s an asshole.
He realizes, suddenly, that all humans are, well, human.
“You aren’t Julia,” she says.
“No,” he agrees.
She sniffles. “Liam, right?”
There, there it is. Before his eyes, Kennie transforms back into the girl everyone expects her to be, slightly idiotic and slightly above the rest, because that’s what they’ve made her.
Liam decides to let it go. Kennie is lost and terrified. He won’t let her be alone too.
Everyone wears masks, Liam decides. He’s no different.
He offers her a hand. He says, “C’mon. You want to see her?”