He still held her hand. It felt natural to pull her close until her face rested against his chest. Her arms encircled his waist, and they stood hugging each other in a perfectly awkward embrace. His sister, he thought, in another, better world.
“I’m only eating with you because you’re my friend,” she mumbled into his chest.
“That’s good enough for me,” he replied.
***
Regan stole glances at the cafeteria door. She’d given Jeremy space all morning. She thought he’d, at least, eat lunch with her.
The heat built to a small fire of shame that played about her cheeks. She was embarrassed to eat alone. She was embarrassed to be alone. She searched the lunchroom. Not there. Neither was Hannah.
The realization didn’t slap her in the face. It was a quiet kind of truth that rose up slowly in her heart like the water level in a pool after a slow, steady rainstorm—soft and full. Too full. She wasn’t even angry about it—that he preferred to be with Hannah over her. She just accepted it, letting her heart drown in too-deep water. It was salty from her tears. She watched them plop one by one onto her sandwich, turning it mushy and inedible.
“Oh, well,” she mouthed because she didn’t know what else to say.
She left the table and disposed of her uneaten lunch. She walked the halls alone, jumping into restrooms when she spotted someone. Her current hideout housed another student—someone she used to know.
“I don’t feel like going back out there yet,” Casey said softly. “This is the tenth time I’ve put on lip gloss. I may go for eleven unless the bell rings.”
Regan nodded.
“How are you?” Casey asked.
Regan shrugged.
Casey shrugged back. “Me, too.”
Regan closed herself in the far stall. She allowed the tears to pour all they’d like, but she silenced any sound that threatened to escape her lips. She finally released the sob once she heard the bathroom door open and Casey leave. It wasn’t the solitude that compelled her to cry so unabashedly. It was Casey’s faint words as she left:
“I miss you.”
~
There’s a big difference between fantasizing about taking a life and actually doing it.
~
Closing time.
Ski patrol meandered down the mountain, clearing the last of the skiers and snowboarders. She knew he was hiding, waiting for solitude, waiting to be alone with only the snowy slope as his companion.
She hid, too. She wasn’t as good as he was—being a rule follower and all—but she found a bit of brush that camouflaged her quite well, and pushed down the urge to give herself up: “I’m here! I didn’t mean it, guys! Was just messin’ around!”
The lights of the snowcats faded into the distance, far down the steep mountain, and she rejoiced. Now to find Jeremy and force a healing. It was absurd; she couldn’t demand he feel better. But she couldn’t stand the awkwardness between them, his blatant avoidance of her. If she couldn’t heal him, she, at least, wanted to share in his grief. But he wouldn’t let her do that. He hid away on the mountain, spending countless hours going up then down, up then down, up then down. Searching for his own healing, perhaps. An answer to why his life had to be so dramatic. A wish for something better.
Heart pang. She didn’t like that last thought: a wish for something better. Maybe he wished she would be better. Or different. Maybe more like Hannah—the girl whose company he so clearly preferred over hers.
“Jeremy!” she yelled into the white evening.
Nothing.
“JEREMY!”
He slid to a stop behind her, kicking up powdery snow on her pants.
They stared at each other.
“I’m out here, okay?” she said. “I almost peed myself trying to hide from ski patrol.”
He smirked.
“You know I’m a rule follower,” she reminded him.
He nodded.
“So, I’m out here,” she said again. “I’m trying my best. But I can’t keep crying over you in the bathroom. I don’t know what you want me to do. I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m so cut off from everything about you, and I know I’m not Hannah—”
“Huh?”
“I know I can’t make you feel the way she does. You guys have some sort of connection, or whatever. I don’t know. But I know you prefer to hang out with her. I get it. I do. But you’ve gotta understand how that makes me feel. I mean, just break up with me if you don’t wanna be with me anymore. That’s all you’ve gotta do. Yeah, I’ll cry about it. I’m a girl after all. But at least it’d be something other than you avoiding me all the time.” She paused. “I . . . I’m freezing up here.”
“I don’t wanna break up with you,” he said quietly.
“Then why are you treating me like this?”
“You want me to talk about my feelings, and I don’t want to.”
Silence.
“Seriously?” she asked after a moment.
He nodded.
“You’re avoiding me because you think I want you to talk about your dad?”
“Yes. Right after everything happened, you grilled me to death. You kept wanting to know how I felt. You kept asking me if I was okay. You smothered me.”
She blinked.
“Hannah doesn’t smother me. Hannah makes jokes and tells me to get over myself, that it’s just a killing. No big deal, right?”
Regan scowled.
“That’s what I need to hear. I need someone to not treat me like a fragile, little boy. I don’t want to be coddled. I don’t want to be wrapped up in hugs. I want someone to make fun of me and punch my arm.”
Regan clenched her jaw.
“Hannah does that for me. That’s just the type of person she is. You’re not like that, and I’m not saying she’s better than you. I’m just saying I needed her kind of compassion—”
“What compassion?” Regan snapped. “Jokes about your dead father? That’s compassion?”
Jeremy sighed. “See? I knew you wouldn’t get it.”
“Oh, that’s right. I’m just on the outside. I don’t fit in with yours and Hannah’s little clique—your clever, we’re-smarter-than-everyone-else club.”
“Regan . . .”
“I don’t know how to make inappropriate comments and act like a sarcastic bitch and share inside jokes with you!”
“Regan, please . . .”
“Why don’t you just go date her!”
“Because she’s gay!”
Regan’s mouth dropped open.