“You made a new family, Lake. You had Penny and Will. After that you didn’t need much else,” Matt says.
The memory of Matt and the movie times and the way I left him hanging to be there for Will sits heavy and undigested in the pit of my stomach, but that doesn’t stop me from attempting to shove it all the way down to where it will never be reachable. “And what about this new family?” I point at the three of them. “What was I supposed to do? Be alone forever?” I scream. “Excuse me for wanting someone to want me. For wanting something just a little bit real.” I tug at the roots of my hair. “Joke’s on me, it’s all just one big freaking fa?ade, it turns out. You guys. Will. Penny. All of it. Even me!” I am shouting into faces that don’t understand me. I am shouting at myself because I don’t understand me. Not anymore. How can I be one of those people, one of those things, like Coyote Blue. How can I have been dead?
No wonder everyone abandons me, hates me, doesn’t care about me.
“But whatever it is I am, it’s because you made me this way!” I shriek. Matt winces. “I wish you’d never resurrected me.” I pull at the collar on my shirt, stretching it out on the neckline. “And you know what I think?” I am seething now. I want to hurt things, and why not? I shouldn’t even exist. “I bet you wish I were dead too, don’t you? Because you only resurrected me so that I would resurrect you. Bet you’re regretting that now, huh? You think I don’t realize now that I was only good for one thing to you people and now I’m not even good for that?”
It’s only when my mom starts crying that I stop yelling at them.
“Matt’s going through with it, Lake.” Dad says, wrapping his arm around Mom’s shoulder. I’d already known this, deep down, that nothing would change my brother’s mind. He’s paralyzed and it’s because of me. “It’ll happen tomorrow night. At a death party.”
A full night earlier than the traditional birthday eve. Are they trying to force my hand? To cover their own tracks by making it less obvious what perverse game they’re playing? They’re asking me to give up on my friends. My friends who lied to me. My parents who lied to me. It’s all too much.
“How—” I stammer in disbelief. “How do you even—how do you know about those? No.” I shake my head. I’d been prepared for something terrible, but nothing like this. The shock hits me like a bullet shot point-blank.
“We didn’t,” Mom admits. “Or rather we didn’t know that they actually happen in real life. Matt explained them to us.”
“Then you should know how disgusting they are,” I spit.
“I don’t want Mom and Dad to be involved or face any repercussions,” Matt says. “They’ve kept their end of the bargain.” I can’t help hearing this part as an accusation. “I don’t want them to make any other sacrifices. Since I can’t do it on my own, this seems like the best option.”
I stare at him. Hate radiates off my skin. I was so stupid to have thought things were changing between us.
“And we agree, actually.” My father’s mouth forms a grim line. This is when I notice the dark circles that bruise the skin underneath both of my parents’ eyes and I wonder how many hours they’ve stayed awake at night thinking about sending their only son off to die without them. “Jeremy’s picking him up tonight.”
“Jeremy?” I repeat. “When the hell did you—when did you talk to Jeremy?”
Matt holds my stare. No. I can’t believe I drove him there, that I helped facilitate this. So that’s why he was so willing to have his play date with Jeremy, so that he could talk him into this stupid charade. Jeremy, who has lived as the black sheep in his cousin’s house for years, who has always marched to the beat of his own drum, who has always had his own ideas as to what is right and fair.
“I’m not doing it.” I cross my arms and jut my jaw out like a little kid. “I don’t know what you have in mind, but the whole point of a death party is that the person with the resurrection choice assists in the…in the…Look, I’m just not participating. In any of it.”
There are tears in Mom’s eyes and her lower lip looks shaky.
Dad nods. “That’s fine, Lake.”
My lips part.
“Cripple exception.” Matt smiles. He actually smiles. “I’ll have help one way or another. Most people feel bad for cripples.”
Each of my family members looks like a stranger to me. I wish they were strangers. I wish I’d never been born or that if I had been, not as a Devereaux. I hug myself, then rake my nails down the backs of my arms. Enough, enough, just enough of this already.
“Lake, your brother is going to be dead tomorrow.”
Tears flood my cheeks. I can hardly breathe. I lift my chin. “Good,” I say, because I want him to hurt the way that I hurt. “Maybe…it’s better that way.”
This is a mistake.
Part of me hoped Jeremy wouldn’t text me the address when I asked. After all, I hid in my room when he came to pick Matt up, borrowing my mom’s van for the occasion.
Last chance to say good-bye. Last chance for good-luck wishes. Last chance for prayers: each of these thoughts crossed my mind when my dad came to knock softly on my locked bedroom door. The words that I said when I last spoke to Matt—shouted at him—ring in my ears. Despite my best efforts, most of the anger and contempt has gradually seeped out of me bit by bit. What’s left over is a sickening sense of dread.
I didn’t answer my dad’s knock. I stayed curled on top of a nest of blankets while my brother left to do the unthinkable.
Except all I could do was think about it. I had to, and after I finished thinking, I wound up here. At Matt Devereaux’s death party. Welcome to the world’s most morbid sideshow act, folks. Now, who brought the popcorn?
The guy controlling crowd flow at the front of the house doesn’t give me a hard time when I give him my full name. Apparently word travels fast here. Everyone expects the sister of the boy in the wheelchair who’s dying to be in attendance. Everyone but me, anyway.
The house is modern, with floor-to-ceiling panes of glass, white walls, and colorful art that looks like a five-year-old painted it. This type of event draws a more dramatic crowd—kids who like to wear all black, outline their lips in maroon, and dye their hair—but this party seems to be even more thick with the goth cliques. They look out of place posing on the sleek concrete floors and congregating around the crystal-blue pool lit up with floodlights.
My nerves feel like a system of sparking wires and I flit in and out of groups of people talking, drinking. There are Jell-O shots in the kitchen, a keg on the outdoor patio, and a couple of boxes of pizza open on a set of lawn chairs.