Chapter 13
SPENCER
EIGHT YEARS AGO
There are defining moments in every person’s life. Sometimes you don’t realize it until months later how something changed you, other times it’s obvious right away.
When my mom opens my bedroom door around ten o’ clock that night, the look on her face tells me whatever she’s about to say is going to be one of those moments that changes everything.
“Spencer?” Her voice cracks.
“Yeah?” I set my laptop aside, standing up from my bed. “What’s wrong?” It’s obvious from her watery eyes and the tone of her voice that something bad has happened. I feel my stomach drop and have trouble finding more words. “Is everything okay? Is it dad?”
He’s on a work trip out of state. Anything could’ve happened.
She shakes her head no, sniffling. She presses a tissue beneath her nose and chokes out and strangled, “It’s T.J.”
“T.J.?” My brow furrows. What could she be so upset about this time of night when it comes to my best friend?
“What about him? Did he eat all your macaroni salad again? I told him not to do that.”
“Spencer…” She looks away, pressing her shaking lips together as she tries to regain control. Slowly, reluctantly, she brings her gaze back to mine. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?” I repeat. “Gone where?”
I know she doesn’t mean gone to the store, but fuck I want to believe that more than anything. My throat feels tight, like the walls are collapsing in on themselves.
Tears escape her eyes, making tracks down her cheeks. “He’s dead, Spencer. His mom just called me in hysterics. It was a drunk driver and—”
One minute I’m standing and the next I’m on the floor like my legs refuse to hold me up any longer. The room spins around me. The green of my bedroom wall turns into a blur and the rug beneath me feels too hard, too scratchy, too—everything.
My mom joins me on the floor, wrapping her arms around me like she used to when I was little and got hurt or upset by something. I’m definitely upset now. More like devastated.
I have to be dreaming, right?
T.J. is too young to die. We’re graduating this year. He can’t just be gone. That’s not … that’s not right. It doesn’t make sense.
But she used the word dead. Definitive. No second guessing. Not hurt, not in critical condition, she said dead.
She’s telling me my best friend is dead? That he no longer exists in this life?
“I’m so sorry.” She rests her chin on top of my head, rocking us back and forth. “I’m so sorry.” Her fingers glide through my hair, trying to provide a miniscule amount of comfort.
I know she’s hurting too—T.J. is like a second son to her.
Our moms are best friends so naturally we grew up together.
“How can he be gone?” I ask her. “You’re lying.” She has to be. I push her away so I can see her face. “I just talked to him a few hours ago.”
But she doesn’t tell me she’s wrong, that this is some elaborate and gross joke, because why would it be joke?
It’s real.
T.J. my best friend, the guy who’s more like a brother, is dead at eighteen.
He’ll never go to college to play baseball like he planned. He’ll never have a chance at playing professionally. Of starting a family. He’ll never live all the tiny imperfect moments in between the big ones that are what really make life worth living.
Hours ago, I spoke to him. He was alive, laughing on his way to visit his grandma, and now…
Now, he’s dead.
I keep repeating that word in my head, like finally it’ll sink in that my best friend of my whole life is gone.
“You’re lying,” I accuse brokenly. My body feels leaden, weighed down with the reality I don’t want to face. She tightens her hold on me. “You’re wrong. You have to be wrong. They have the wrong person.”
“I'm sorry,” she says, embracing me again.
“Mom.” I push at her shoulders gently. “It’s someone else, right? It’s not him. It can’t be him.”
“Spence.” Her voice cracks. “It’s him.”
My heart feels like it’s been beaten and I don’t know what to do. Maybe it’s na?ve, but I never imagined anything like this ever happening to one of my friends or me. It was something that happened to other people. Sad, sure, but it wouldn’t happen to us.
But it did.
It. Did.
A painful realization settles over me that everything is going to be different now.
One minute.
One second.
One moment.
That’s all it takes to change everything.