I hold up one finger because I can tell what he’s thinking: What siblings don’t argue? But that is so not the case with Matt and me. “I hate my brother. I think he’s a jerk and…he’s in a wheelchair. Yep, everything’s paralyzed from the neck down.” I eye Ringo sideways. I see the corner of his mouth tug. “I know. You’re not allowed to hate people in wheelchairs, especially not your brother, but I swear,” I continue, clenching my fingers into a tight fist, “sometimes I don’t even believe that we’re related. Now who’s the jerk?”
Ringo plays with the laces of his shoes. I’m waiting for him to tell me what a heartless, insensitive little girl I am, but instead he says, “I tried to remove my birthmark. I mean, not personally. I had surgery.” He shakes his head and throws a pebble that he found on the roof off the edge. “All this talk of how I’m so okay with it. The birthmark is part of me. I’m Ringo, for God’s sake. And here I tried to get it removed. I wanted to be normal. Just to know what it’s like. Now I just have these stupid scars.” He turns and points to a spot near his temple. I see them now—three raised and jagged lines, kind of like a burn, branded on the skin. It looks painful. “Guess who just moved to the top of the leader board.”
I don’t know what to say. The confession is sad—heart wrenching—but his face feels like a puzzle that I can’t figure out. Maybe his face feels that way to him too.
Sadness stretches out between the two of us. I notice that it’s less heavy when we’re here sharing it together. It makes me want to stay with him forever, perched on the top of my best friend’s roof. So I do what I have to in order to stay. I add to the sorrow with another offering of my own. “What if it’s not just Penny and Will?” I blurt out.
“What if what’s not just Penny and Will?” Ringo blinks as though coming out of a daze.
“My decision. Who I’ll use my resurrection choice on. It may not only be…between two people.”
Ringo sits up a little straighter. A warning dings quietly inside my head. “Who?” he asks.
Am I really ready to betray my family like this? Just this small piece of information places another crack in the foundation of our family’s pact, our code. But does it matter anymore? I’m not resurrecting Matt. It won’t happen. They’ll be responsible for nothing. Jitters crawl up my arms and around the back of my neck.
“You first,” I say to buy time, and it’s like placing a quarter into a slot machine. “You owe me another confession, and hold on, hold on—I know what I want it to be.” His mouth closes. “Tell me why you visit Dr. McKenna.” I clasp my hands under my chin to wait eagerly for the answer.
Ringo presses his lips together, starts to speak, thinks better of it, then finally begins. “Let’s just say I have Mommy issues.”
“Come on. That’s way too vague.”
“So was yours.”
“Touché.”
Mommy issues. His mother seemed to be a special brand of awful. I hate her on his behalf, the way she leaves him at his appointment for hours at a time and won’t look at him or get off the couch. All I know is that at least in some ways, Ringo’s just as messed up as I am, if not more, and again I get the sensation that I’m sharing the weight of my sadness with someone, and I like that.
From the roof, we watch birds flying home to their nests for the night. The breeze picks up and it’s as though the wind, like an invisible paintbrush, is gently sweeping the sunset colors across the sky. The warmth of Ringo’s body next to mine feels comforting, the way warm sand does after a swim in the ocean.
After the accident, I felt like I’d been stripped bare and left alone to weather the elements, but here Ringo is and I have to admit—even though I don’t want to—that life, in this minute, feels tolerable.
I find the back of his hand resting on the shingles and place mine over it before knitting my fingers between his. “So, do all moments have Beatles songs?” I ask. “Or just certain ones?”
“The memorable ones do.”
“And what if there’s no perfect song? For that moment.”
“The Beatles always have the perfect song. For every moment. Trust me.”
“Then tell me this one.”
“You already had your question.”
“What song is it?” I insist.
This time he tilts his chin like he’s listening to a melody. He doesn’t move his hand. “Too cheesy if I go with ‘Penny Lane’?”
My face lights up. “Penny has her own song?”
“One of the best,” he says.
And I’m about to ask him to sing the Beatles for me, when a clang at the window behind us makes me jump. Logan Bryan has grabbed the back of Ringo’s shirt and is yanking him back through the window. I have to acknowledge that for a split second I saw Will latching onto Ringo and it took the breath clean out of my lungs. Maybe that’s why it takes me a second to react.
“Let go of him!” I screech, grabbing onto Ringo’s ankle.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Logan’s face is red and splotchy, but he releases his grip on Ringo, whose shirt is now stretched out around the collar. Logan is huffing and puffing and his hands are on his hips, like he’s recovering from running a mile.
Ringo rubs his neck and looks at Mr. Bryan. “Who are you? What is your problem?”
“I’m her boyfriend’s father, pal.” He thumbs his chest. “You do remember him, right, Lake? Your boyfriend, Will?”
My mouth falls open at the accusation in his tone. “Of course I remember Will. What are you talking about?” Logan hasn’t cooled down from the confrontation downstairs, or if he has, the sight of my fingers entwined with Ringo’s must’ve got him heated right back up again.
“Really? Because you look pretty comfortable up here with—” It’s then that I see Will’s dad take in Ringo’s face for the first time. “Him.” The last word lands with a dull thud, his anger tempered slightly, replaced with something uglier and a little meaner. “Is he that easy to replace, Lake?” There’s a special emphasis on the word that, which I’m sure isn’t lost on Ringo. “He loved you.”
Shame burns through me like a fever, but there’s anger there too, ripe and ugly. “How…dare you,” I say to my surprise—and clearly to Ringo’s. “What do you know about love?”
Logan looks like I’ve smacked him. I might as well have. I rise to my feet on the roof and stand staring down at Logan, the small man on the other side of the window. “He”—I point to Ringo—“is the only person who will even listen to me. You guys are down there acting like monsters and…and…” My foot slips. The sole of my shoe skids on a shingle. My kneecap cracks onto the roof. I grab for something solid, but it’s my plastered arm that reaches out and I’m skidding. My shin launches into thin air.
I scream. Images of the car crash sneak in. A river of blood. Two legs and pale white bone.
The skin on my inside forearm peels up like an orange rind and I jerk to a stop. Ringo is scrambling from the windowsill, skidding butt to heel down after me. His hand closes over my wrist. I’m panting. I rest my forehead against the rough surface. Shaking, shaking, shaking.