The answer seems obvious now: because of me.
Competing emotions war in my head, swaying me, pulsing against my temples until I have to reach up and press my thumbs into the sides of my skull. “Ringo,” I tell him, ripping myself from my own problems to deal with the ones that have just been laid bare in front of me. “You’re the kindest, least selfish person I think I’ve ever met. Aside from Penny, but don’t feel bad.” I let out a sad laugh. “Because you’re basically competing with a saint there.”
Me. My resurrection. Mine. Matt can never allow himself to get better because I exist and so does my choice. I push the thought back hard with every ounce of strength that I have. I cannot feel guilty about this. I have to be strong.
His mouth quirks. “I’ll try not to be too offended.”
I close my eyes, open them, and take a deep breath. “I don’t think you could have done anything differently.” I want to tell him the reasons for my own family’s dysfunction too, because I want to make him feel connected. But I can’t.
He stares at me seriously. “I could have chosen not to resurrect her.” Then he breaks and looks down to readjust his position on the couch. “I just want you to know what you’re dealing with.”
“But…it’s different, right?” I say, not wanting to sound dismissive but wanting him to see. “Your mom didn’t want to be resurrected.” I pick up my mug and find that my hands are shaking and I don’t even know why. The liquid in the cup is tepid and I swallow it down while pulling a face.
“How do you know what your friends want, though?” he says.
I pick at the side of one nail absently. “I think that’s why I have to find the wishes,” I reply. “So I know.”
He doesn’t look away from me. Not for a second. Not to blink. His demeanor reminds me of a more human version of Matt, and I wonder briefly if it’s their shared familiarity with being stared at that gives each the ability to look into other people long enough to make their insides turn into writhing earthworms. “I think you know you’re placing too much faith in them,” he says.
But he doesn’t know what he’s talking about because he doesn’t know Will and he doesn’t know Penny and neither of those things is his fault. It just sucks that he was stuck with a sorry excuse for a mother instead of a best friend and a boyfriend who could create a family out of fossilized bones and a few drops of blood and the light of a full moon.
I could list all the things that I love about Penny Hightower:
The jangle of her bracelets that lets me know whenever she’s near
Her capacity to love
The way she cries when she thinks of dolphins getting caught in tuna nets
The hemp necklace she spent a week making and which I managed to lose less than two days later (she didn’t get mad)
How she’s not embarrassed to be scared of little things like spiders and heights, but not afraid of big things like what’s going to happen after high school
Her advice
But right now what I love most about Penny is sitting on her roof and the sparkly twinkle in her eye when she turns on her side and tells me she has a crush on Noah Ramsey.
Her pale hair fans out from underneath the elbow crooked to support her head. We’re both in bikinis and her skin is turning red around the triangles of fabric covering her chest.
I turn on my side to face her. “Noah Ramsey? You’re sure?”
“I know. Weird, right? I mean, I’d never really noticed him before. But he’s heading up this food drive for the middle school, which is really admirable, don’t you think? And I don’t know.” She smirks. “He has nice eyes.”
I try to picture Noah Ramsey’s eyes. They’ve certainly never stood out to me as noteworthy, but I want very badly to believe that they’re nice. Really nice. Nice enough to make someone forget about another boy’s completely, no-second-guesses-about-it nice eyes.
Come to think of it, Noah’s eyes may be blue. With dark, full eyelashes. Yes, I think that’s right. I bet those are nice eyes.
“So I asked him to go to the beach with me tomorrow,” Penny says all casually, like she has ever asked a guy on a date. Ever.
“You asked him out?” I push myself up on my elbow and gawk at her, because even though I want this to be true, a real friend can’t let this pass by unexamined. And I’m a real friend, I remind myself.
“You could act a little less surprised.” She shuts her eyes and points her face up to the sun. Her mouth quirks.
I lower my shoulder back to the spread-out towel. Boys at St. Theresa’s have been invisible to Penny and me since I first started school there, except for Will. Noah Ramsey.
“He said ‘yes,’” adds Penny.
“Obviously.” I snort. Every guy at St. Theresa’s would sell a kidney to go out with Penny.
“So…” Penny doesn’t open her eyes, but continues to bask. “How are you and Will?”
My abs tighten. It’s been a week since the death party and Penny and I haven’t discussed the demise of Matilda Thorne or the fact that Will and I were holding hands.
“Is he a good kisser?” Her voice is classic Penny. Light. Floaty. Sweetly optimistic.
I bite my lip. Relief is already washing over me. “I wouldn’t know,” I confess.
Penny reaches over and pinches my side. “Well, you’d better get on that, Dirty Devereaux. Because I’m going to need details. Stat.”
I just nod, smile, and let my heart fill up like a hot-air balloon.
This, I tell myself. I have to remember this. I reach my pinky over and hook it into Penny’s. No matter what, I will never let myself forget that just because I don’t make out with Penny—assuming Will and I ever make out, which I’m pretty certain we will, and soon—doesn’t mean our relationship is any less important.
I want to cut through my skin and hand her a piece of my beating heart so she knows that everything is going to be fine between us. Always.
“Penny?” I say, knowing that what I’m about to tell her will amount to the same thing. “If I tell you something, can you promise not to tell anyone, not even Will?”
“No secrets,” she says with a smile.
“Secrets,” I say to the sky. If I stare at it long enough I can forget a world exists below us at all. “Just this once. Will couldn’t keep it and it’s too important.”
I turn my head to watch her. She shimmies, adjusting for comfort on the roof shingles. “Okay, yeah, anything.” She squeezes my pinky.
“I’m going to resurrect Matt, Penny.”
She abruptly lurches upright, gives me a confused look, then flips onto her belly. She props her chin up on her crisscrossed forearms. “Matt’s not dead.” Her voice is low.
“Yeah, exactly.” I’ve finally done it, I’ve betrayed my family. I’ve told the big, hulking secret that has been pulsating like a fever blister inside the walls of my home. And I don’t feel bad about it. “My parents promised him. So that he would stop trying to kill himself.”
She bites into her forearm, holding in a yelp. “Matt’s tried to kill himself?”
“Only if you count every chance he gets.”