“You mentioned donuts.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did. Donuts and coffee and wandering? I don’t really feel like sitting still.”
“Perfect.”
With the shudder of his engine, we rolled out of the parking lot and onto the street. I glanced out the window at the raven watching from the roof of the cafeteria. It watched us the entire way.
? ? ?
“This isn’t how I expected to spend my last few months of Islington,” Ethan muttered. We walked slowly through downtown. It was like the entire world had picked up on the mood from school—only a handful of people were out, and those that were huddled under heavy coats and hoods and didn’t bother to say hello or pause to window shop. Ethan and I clutched our donuts and mochas and did much the same.
“I don’t think anyone expected it,” I said. “Especially since neither of them said anything.”
He paused, and when he spoke again, there was a tentative note to his voice.
“I saw your thesis,” he said.
Fear rolled in my gut.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. This morning. After breakfast. You never showed me the Ten of Swords before.”
He stopped walking when he said it. We stood outside a yarn shop with a cheery display of a knit squid and I nearly laughed. Not exactly where I thought I’d tell him about my life before Islington.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked. He sounded more than a little hurt.
I looked down at my boots.
“It didn’t seem necessary,” I said. “That was the old me.”
“When?” he asked.
“Sophomore year,” I said. “After . . . well, after homecoming.”
The pieces clicked for him.
“Jesus Kaira. I’m sorry.”
“It’s the past.”
“But it’s still relevant. Especially with . . . you know.”
I nodded.
“I just wish you would have let me be there for you, is all.” He reached out and put a hand on my arm. Unlike when Chris did it, there wasn’t a hallucination. Just the warmth of his touch and the words that spilled from his lips in a slow stream.
“Before I came out, I tried to kill myself,” he admitted. I jerked my gaze back to him. He continued before I could ask. “Never got very far, you know. But I was scared—I couldn’t tell anyone and all I saw at school were kids getting beaten up or called faggots even if they had girlfriends. This was in middle school. And one day I was home alone and I’d just watched some gay porn and I felt so shitty about myself. So trapped, because I was doing this thing and I didn’t want to do it or like it but I couldn’t stop. So I went to the kitchen and got a garbage bag and went back to my room. Wrote out a note and everything. But I couldn’t do it.” He laughed, which sounded more like a sob, and looked at the squid in the window. “I never told anyone that. Not even Oliver. After I started choking I ripped off the bag and threw it away and burned the note. The next day I applied to come here because it was the only escape I could manage. It felt like my only way out.” When he looked back at me, there were tears in his eyes. “The last two weeks I’ve woken up every morning feeling like I’m suffocating on that fucking bag. And I hate myself because I want to feel worse for Jane and Mandy, but all I can think of is how glad I am that I chickened out last minute.”
He started to cry then, and I pulled him close and let my own tears fall unchecked.
“I love you, Kaira,” he whispered. “You mean the world to me.”
“I love you too, Ethan.”
“No more secrets, okay?” he asked. “I don’t want to lose you.”
“I promise,” I lied.
Because even though I felt his pain, even though this only cemented our bond, there were parts of my life I couldn’t tell him. If I did, I’d lose him.
He couldn’t know that I hadn’t chickened out at the last minute. That I died the night I cut myself.
He couldn’t know that it was the raven that brought me back.
We went back to campus a few hours later, a bag of art supplies and silly gifts from the dollar store in hand. Shopping therapy wasn’t my usual balm, but it worked as well as anything else. Especially because most of this was for other people.
Ethan dropped me off in front of my dorm, leaned over in his seat to hug me good-bye and make me promise we’d have a pizza party in the Writers’ House later tonight. Of course I agreed, and he said he’d invite Oliver and I should invite Elisa and maybe Chris, which was the first time he’d said the C word all day. The look I gave him must have been answer enough.
“Just Elisa then,” he replied, and I nodded and left.