“What?” I say.
“What are you wearing?”
I groan at being caught off-guard again with his lame joke. “I’m hanging up now.”
“No, no. Okay. Listen, Janie is giving me shit. She wants me to tell you that she really wants to be your friend.” He pauses. “Shit, this is stupid. I sound like I’m ten years old. Just be her damn friend, Ell.”
“I’m not sure how to answer that. Okay?”
“Good. Okay. Well. Have fun with Dean, weirdo.”
“Bye,” I say.
Dean looks over at me. “He’s confused, isn’t he? He doesn’t know why you’re here with me.”
“It doesn’t take much to confuse Jackson Gray.” We’re silent for a moment, the squeak of the chains on the swings the only sound. “I got a tattoo yesterday,” I say. The squeaking stops. “Actually it’s four. Wanna see?” I start to pull up my shirt in the back.
“What the hell are you doing?”
I finish pulling up my shirt in the back and try to point to my back.
He sways closer and is silent for thirty seconds. I count it in my mind. “It’s beautiful.”
“I thought it would be cool to make my suicide note permanent.” He swings away from me while I pull my shirt back down. He doesn’t say anything. “Have you written yours yet?”
“I keep tweaking it over and over. I just can’t seem to get it—”
“Perfect,” I finish for him.
“Yeah,” he says with a sigh. “You never struck me as someone who’d want to kill herself.”
I look at the horizon. The burden of this guilt is killing me, eating me up, and he’s the only one who would understand. “I killed her.”
He leans in closer to me. “What?”
“You know what I’m talking about.”
His eyebrows crease like he’s trying to remember it.
“Last year?”
Recognition appears on his face. He nods somberly.
I take in a breath and let it out slowly, letting my words glide on the air. “My sister was almost seven.”
“Oh, man.”
“Sometimes I talk to her. I know that’s morbid, but . . . I don’t know. I can’t let her go.”
He moves closer, appearing intent on my words.
“I always wondered what she would have grown up to be. If she would have made it to the moon like she dreamed.”
“That would be really hard to live with.”
I nod. “I tried to kill myself after the accident. I couldn’t take it anymore. The pain, fighting my own life for breath.” I grip the chains tighter. “I was just so tired. I just wanted to sleep forever. I mean, that’s what you do. You sleep. You don’t even know. When you die. That’s it. You don’t even know that you’re dead. It just . . . happens. And then you’re gone. And all the pain has disappeared. All the memories that are trapped in your mind, all the almosts and too closes, and pressure to be perfect.”
He doesn’t say anything but there’s understanding painted all over his face along with another emotion—sympathy.
“I mean, we didn’t choose to be born. I didn’t go out in the world and say, ‘I choose to be born to these parents.’ I sure as hell wouldn’t have picked to have a dad like mine.”
“I hear ya,” he says.
“You know the last words he said to me before he left us?”
He shakes his head.
“He said he’d never forgive me for taking away his little girl. Not ‘goodbye.’ Not ‘I love you.’ Not ‘I’m sorry about what happened.’”
I look over at Dean to make sure he’s still there. The sun’s oranges and reds are reflected in his eyes as he stares into the horizon.
“Why do they do that? Put us down and make us feel like shit?”
I shrug.
“I wouldn’t have picked my dad either,” he says with a distant tone. “He said if I don’t get into Harvard he would send me into the military.” He sighs. “I asked him why it mattered so much. What the hell he wanted from me.”
“What did he say?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “He said he wants for me what he didn’t have and that I would understand when I had a son someday.” He chuckles, but it’s empty, void of any humor. “He just doesn’t get it. I don’t care about that. About Harvard or homework, or scooping fucking ice cream.”
“What do you care about?”
He shrugs. “Maybe that’s the problem—nothing.”
I don’t say anything back.
He shifts on the swing and makes the chains squeak. “When I do it, then he’ll know. Maybe he’ll finally listen to me for once. Too bad I won’t be around to say ‘I told you so.’”
Something burrows into the pit of my stomach at his words, and I realize I don’t want him to die just to show up his dad. But I can’t say anything. Who am I to judge him? He’s accepted that I want to die too. We have an understanding. A silent pact he probably never meant to enter into.
Dean stands up from his swing and glances over me, his expression melancholy. “I should get home. I have to work tonight.”
“Thanks.”
“For what?” he says.