I seriously considered quitting. The last thing I want is another handout from the Richardsons, but this job isn’t charity. I work hard for Dr. R. Maybe I didn’t deserve it at first, but I’ve earned it since. My paycheck may be the only thing I’ve ever deserved from them.
Besides, I keep thinking about another saying—“When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Well, when your body is the only tool you have, you either get hammered or nailed.
So I didn’t give up my job. Dr. R.’s one condition was that I see the therapist in the office next door, which felt insulting until he told me Matt has to go too—not to the same one, thankfully. I’ve been once so far. I don’t feel amazingly better or anything, but it helped to talk to someone with an outsider’s perspective. My nightmares are as strong as ever, but the therapist reassured me they’re a perfectly normal response to trauma—and always have been. She also convinced me to apply to some of my long-shot schools, because you never know until you try. That’s all she wants me to do right now. Just try. One step at a time.
Which, right now, means covering the front desk until the receptionist is back from a break. I wave the next patient forward. “Why so blue, darlin’?” he asks.
I try not to scowl at the old man. I’m not blue. I am gray. Black. The complete absence of color. “Your co-pay is twenty dollars,” I say brusquely.
He doesn’t take the hint. “It can’t be that bad,” he says. “Smile!” He gets bitch face instead and it sours him immediately. “Jeez, that time of the month?”
“Yeah, actually,” I snap. “And it’s a gusher.”
His horrified expression earns that smile.
MATT
The weekend before Thanksgiving, I’m brushing my teeth, feeling as close to normal as I ever feel these days, and I realize Andrew’s toothbrush is still in the holder, right next to his disgusting razor. The next thing I know, I’ve emptied the cabinet and dumped all his stuff in the trash.
A moment later, I pull it all back out and wrap it in a towel. He doesn’t—didn’t—have much. He always used mine. I stalk down the hall to his room and throw open his door for the first time since the day after he died, when I found his stash and gave it to The Nuge. I was afraid Mom would find it.
It made sense at the time.
Our rooms are almost identical, his green where mine is blue, but it’s still like being punched in the gut. Everything remains untouched. It’s where we’ve been dumping all the Andrew artifacts, all the things we stumble across in the house and need to move behind a closed door because it hurts too much to look at them. But it hurts to look at what’s not here too. He’s not sprawled across his bed eating Oreos, or sitting at his desk, working on the models we loved making as kids, the ones that still hang in a corner. He’s everywhere and nowhere and it makes me so angry that I throw the bundle across the room. It falls to the floor with an unsatisfying clatter.
I close the door and slide to the floor, head between my pulled-up knees. The guilt has made it hard to really feel the loss, and when I do, the loss makes me feel guilty for treating even his smallest possessions like trash. For always treating him like trash. It just circles, around and around, like a drain that can’t be bothered to suck me down.
Crying makes me angrier, so I stand and walk around the room, taking in his lasts: the last shoes he took off, still lying untied in the corner. The last pillow he slept on. The last gum wrapper he left on his dresser.
I stare in his mirror, trying to see him in me, trying to see myself in him. I stare into my own eyes until they’re blurred with tears, and I tell myself over and over: Your brother is dead. Your brother is dead. Your brother is forever and truly dead.
I wonder if I’ll ever really believe it.
RAYCHEL
My estrangement from Matt has had one unexpected perk: it gave Carson the perfect opportunity to weasel out of the spotlight as new rumors replaced the old ones. Andrew’s death and its aftermath are proof that Carson was right: I’m crazy, or a drama queen, or your run-of-the-mill slut. But he’s not stupid enough to flaunt it and risk dredging shit up again. He laughs if his teammates taunt me, but otherwise, he pretends I’m invisible. Just like old times. Except now it seems unbelievable that I ever wanted anything but his indifference.
Now I have it back—and Matt’s to go with it. But Matt’s not as good at looking through me, and sometimes I think he’s going to crack. We’ve been friends too long. Old habits die hard. I keep finding myself looking forward to the day after Thanksgiving, when we always camp out on his couch for a leftovers-and-football coma.
But then he looks away, and I’m forced to remember that this year’s holidays will be nothing like any before. Still, when I’m at my locker on the last day before break, my heart leaps to hear someone behind me. Until he speaks. “Hey, Sanders.”
I stand up slowly, hoping someone will interrupt. But no one is staying at school one minute more than they have to. Carson stands well away from me. “I just want to talk,” he says, glancing around.
I bang my locker shut with my foot. “I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Listen,” he says, pulling his hat lower over his eyes. “I just want to apologize, okay?”
I’ve heard this before. I’m sure not going to help him along.
“I just want to say…” He clears his throat. “I’m really sorry. Andrew was a good guy,” he says, shaking his head in sympathy. “I would have backed off if I’d known y’all were together.”
I should argue. At least pretend he’s wrong. But that ship has sailed since Matt stopped speaking to me—half the school knows, or thinks they know, about me and Andrew. Instead, I stare at the bill of Carson’s cap. “Wow,” I say finally. “So nice of you to respect his wishes.” Without giving any thought to mine, I’m about to add.
But Carson has no idea I’m being sarcastic. He gives me a cautious smile. “I mean, don’t you think he would have wanted us to call a truce?”
I can’t even laugh. “You’re serious.”
“Yeah,” he says, his smile sliding away.
I never let myself picture what it might be like if Andrew were here to be my actual boyfriend. It just hurts too damn much. But for a moment, I imagine him coming around the corner. Spotting Carson here and grinning at the chance to cause trouble. His memory slips an arm around my waist and tightens until I can’t breathe. “He would have told you to fuck off,” I say, hoisting my backpack to shake off the pain.
Carson’s jaw drops. “We had a little misunderstanding,” he says, dumbfounded, “but Richardson was my friend too.”
If getting punched in the face didn’t prove he’s wrong, nothing will, and giving Carson’s ego this tiny bruise offers little satisfaction. But I say it anyway. “He wasn’t your friend,” I tell him, wrapping my own arms around my waist as I turn away. “And neither am I.”
MATT