“I don’t mean tired in your body. I mean tired in your heart, your soul.”
It appears as if he’s thinking about it. “I don’t know. I guess I just think about the good things in my life and then it all goes away.”
“What if you didn’t have any good things? What if when you closed your eyes you only saw one thing, felt one thing. Over and over.”
“What do you feel?”
“Guilt.”
“And you think killing yourself will make it better?”
“I won’t feel it anymore.”
“Yeah, but you’ll be gone. You couldn’t feel anything anymore.”
“That’s the point.”
“It’s scary how much you remind me of my brother.” He shudders like he just thought of a memory of him. “He didn’t want to feel anymore either. Well, according to the letter he left me.” He choked out those last few words. “I mean, why? Such a waste.”
I’m sure he feels destroyed. I know Jackson will be so angry at me when I do it. But that’s not something I can change—how someone else feels. I have to do this. This is the only answer. It may demolish everything around me, and I want to do something to stop that. I do. I want to make it easier for everyone. I wish I could just accept life and grasp it in my fingers and play with it, and move it around to a place where I can live with Happy Ellery. Be her. I’ve tried.
I clutch onto the seat belt and squeeze it in my hand. “Nothing I say will make you feel any better.”
He takes a breath in and twists his hands around the wheel again. “You do the same things Ryan did. The strange moody shit, the changes in how he looked at me. The tattoos. The fakeness he tried to hide. I see all that in you. You don’t have to answer me, Ell. I know the answers. I’ve watched them happen.”
We pull up in front of my house and he turns off the car. We sit in silence for a moment, both of us staring at the front windshield.
He turns to look at me and lowers his head to get to my line of sight. “You need help, Ellery, and I can’t just keep something like this inside. Not this time.”
Shit.
“Please. I’m just confused. I need time. If you turn me in, that’s it. I’m stuck in a hospital and no one looks at me the same. My mom. She’ll be destroyed. And Jackson.” He cringes when I say each name. I know I’m being cruel, but I have to convince him.
There’s sincere concern in his eyes. In this moment I want to say whatever I can to get that expression off his face. “I can’t live with myself if something happens to you. I’ve already lived that life, and I almost didn’t make it out.” He pauses and his face displays the scars of the memories he tries to forget. “You should talk to someone. Another perspective can help. It helped me after . . . you saw someone after what happened, right?”
“Yeah. It helped a little. At times. But I think I left there more confused than I started,” I say. “I know you said I remind you of your brother, but I’m not like him. You know me, at least a little by now. I can . . . .” Wait. “I’ll try. Just please don’t say anything.”
He stares above him and shakes his head. I let the air out of my lungs I’ve been holding in. He’s not going to tell.
“Fine. I’ll give you till . . . .” He pauses again and I can see the thought in his expression. He’s thinking of an arbitrary date, so he can feel good for a certain amount of days and not worry. “Halloween. That’s the next big holiday, right? It’s in, what?”
“Twenty days,” I whisper, knowing exactly how many because I think about it every day.
“If you give me twenty days, I promise I won’t push you, or tell. But you have to promise me you’ll try.” I see it in the depth of his eyes, the conviction. The determination for his cause. His gaze is sure and his words are sincere and permanent. He won’t say anything.
I place a hand on his cheek and pull him toward me so I can look him in the eyes. “I promise,” I lie.
He looks slightly relieved, taking a breath like he’s just recovered air for the first time after being deprived of it. I have to look away. He grabs my hand and squeezes it once.
I let him.
20
17 Days
Janie and I have started eating lunch together. She keeps mentioning Colter to me, like she knows something’s up. She’s coming over this Friday to watch Better Off Dead. I keep trying to find excuses to blow her off but she’s persistent.
At the end of the day I’m fumbling with the key fob to my Escape when Colter comes up to my car, smiling like he has a secret. “I have somewhere I want to show you.”
“No, I have a lot of—”
“Homework? Yeah, heard that already. Come on. Indulge me for once.” He’s practically bouncing in place.
“Colter, I can’t.”
“Ha.” He points at me accusingly and I wonder what I said. “You said my real name.”