“What did it feel like?” I asked.
She glanced at me, chewing on her bottom lip. A guilty expression took over and she drew nervous circles on her belly. “That’s actually why I wanted to meet you here. I wanted to talk to you about that night.” She took a breath, readying herself for what I anticipated was something I really didn’t want to hear. If it dealt with Snake, it would be too much for me. I would care, and I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself. She spoke anyway. “I kissed Snake after prom.”
She looked away instantly, watching the catfish fight over a piece of food. A sensation of jealousy rushed over me, but I forced myself to repress it. Dr. Rachelle wouldn’t have advised the burial of emotion, but it seemed like the right thing to do. And though I was hardly in the business of doing the right thing, Carla’s guilt made me want to try. It made me want to try, because she shouldn’t have felt guilt for wanting to be happy. Hurting others to survive was a Flashburn epidemic. God knew we were all infected.
“Did it change the way you feel about him?” I asked. The second I said it, I realized that I had been so caught up in Snake, so caught up in me, that I had never stopped to ask Carla how she felt about any of it. My depression-centered selfishness had struck again.
“Yes.” She said it boldly, as if discovering her voice for the first time. “He didn’t kiss me back the way he used to. He just kind of looked at me like I was an obligation, or something. And it hurt my feelings at the time, but looking back, I get it. We’ve been forcing something that’s just . . . not there. I’ve been trying to love him for Little Man, but I don’t. And he doesn’t. It’s not that consuming, passionate, can’t-breathe-without-each-other intensity that love is supposed to be. I’d rather us be apart and okay than together and not. Except that, right now, he’s not okay. And I think you might have something to do with that.”
“Me?” I asked, wondering how much Snake had told her. There was an air of freedom to being known, but it was a staggering freedom. Being known made me vulnerable, and I didn’t want the shame that came with it. But if anyone besides Snake were to know me, I was starting to be glad it was Carla.
“He’s depressed,” she whispered, as if it were a scandalous revelation.
“Really?”
I played it cool, but deep down was in sidesplitting laughter at the notion of Snake’s depression being news.
“He won’t leave his room for anything other than school. He even called out of work this week. When he came over to my house to pick up his paycheck, he said all of two words the entire time he was there.” She shook her head. “I went to his house and demanded that he tell me what was going on, and he said you guys aren’t talking anymore. That he doesn’t feel like himself. I thought it was pathetic at first, but now I think it’s sad. He’s so blatantly in love with you, Reggie. He’s miserable.”
I could picture Snake buried beneath his covers, countless packages of Twizzlers emptied on his floor. I bet he drew the blinds. I bet he lay in darkness and listened to the disturbing lameness of the Renegade Dystopia until his body got too heavy to bother keeping him awake. If Carla was right, he was in full Disconnect mode. He was frozen. Unreachable. He was broken because I was scared. I thought I had mastered the art of hating, but knowing that I was the reason for Snake’s Disconnect was an entirely new kind.
“He’ll get over it,” I muttered, brushing away the image.
“I don’t think he will. I’ve never seen him this upset.”
“I can’t be with him, Carla,” I snapped. “We would never work. He’s having a hard time seeing it, but the sooner he realizes it, the better. If you want, I’ll text him and tell him to stop acting like a wimp and start paying more attention to you.”
“I don’t want him paying more attention to me. That’s not the point I’m trying to make. What I’m trying to say is, he’s better when you’re around. He’s happy. Believe it or not, as mean as you are, you can change someone for the better. That’s no small feat, especially when that someone is Snake.” She rubbed her stomach, a calmness in her hands. In her eyes. She was at peace about the way things had turned out. The girl with the most to fear, and she wasn’t scared. Unfortunately for me, it was an admirable bravery. “I don’t know what’s holding you back. I don’t know if it’s me, or Little Man, or your dad, or yourself. What I do know is, our lives are messy and weird and won’t work out perfectly for any of us. We’re all entirely screwed no matter what, so we might as well do what makes us happy. Snake loves you. It’s as simple as that. And if you love him, then love him. You two are miserable enough together. Without each other, you’re nightmares.”
I laughed, and she laughed, and amid the madness of being us, it didn’t feel so out of place. The catfish bumped the dock underneath our feet, water splashing onto our skin as we soaked in the insanity of being young. And terrified. And depressed and pregnant and erratic and alive.
“Is this your official blessing?” I joked, tossing a pebble into the water.
“No. You still stole my boyfriend, whore,” she quipped, smiling while she attempted to fake a glare. “This is my ‘I won’t write dirty things about you on bathroom mirrors’ speech.”
“If that courtesy is expected to go both ways, I’m going to need a washcloth and some cleaning solution.”
She smiled, her golden eyes fixated on me like she was glad I was there. Like she was glad our messes collided. “Are we friends now?”
“No.”
“How about now?”
“No. We can be friendly acquaintances, but that’s all you get.”
“I’ll take it.”
We sat side by side, and no one said a word. It was frustratingly pleasant.
“By the way,” she said, the sun striking gold in her eyes, “if you do end up dating Snake, don’t have sex. You’ll get pregnant and die.”
“Mean Girls?”
“That movie is remarkably educational.”
I didn’t know if I would open up to Snake again. I wasn’t sure if I would take the hurt and the love and wait for the impact to kill me. But it didn’t matter. What mattered was that the sun was still the sun. What mattered was that I was breathing swampy, humid air that smelled like nature and piss, and I hated Carla in the good way, and I wasn’t alone.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“REGGIE?” CARLA SHOUTED INTO THE PHONE, her voice nervous and panicked. I could hear low rumblings in the background. “I need to ask you a huge favor!”