Chapter 19
The first thing I do is shove all four Children of Hypnos books into the back corner of my closet and cover them with an old sweatshirt.
My empty desk reminds me of the computer that isn’t there anymore, so I throw my backpack, old track awards, and a few dirty shirts from the floor on top of it.
My phone is still pinging with notifications. I turn it off and lose it in the crack between the bed and the wall.
My heart races like I’ve finished a relay. Silence hangs thick in my room. I crawl under my covers, curl up tight, and talk to myself.
“It was an accident.”
“You didn’t know that would happen.”
“If they don’t forgive you, that’s their problem.”
To each statement, a low voice from the back of my mind replies:
“An accident you caused.”
“You knew you had responsibilities, and you ignored them.”
“Why should they forgive you? Why would you be worthy of forgiveness?”
I’m not. I’m not worthy.
Breathing becomes difficult. Tears well up. What am I going to do now? I can’t get back online. I’ve ruined everything I had at school. I blamed Ash for my mistakes like an absolute asshole, and now he probably hates me too.
A black tide crashes over me. Raw, undiluted fear: I am no good, I destroy everything I touch, no one will be able to be near me.
I’m too strange, too different. I’m too much of an asshole.
I start to cry and I can’t stop, can’t breathe, can’t move.
If I move, something awful will happen, or I will have to deal with the consequences of all I’ve done.
A knock comes at the door. “Evie? You home?”
I can’t let her in. The need to hide trumps the need to cry. I wipe my eyes and clear my throat.
“Yeah, I’m home,” I call. “Tired.”
“Did your game go okay?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” A pause. “Are you hungry for dinner?”
“No.”
Another pause. I know what she’s thinking. If I’m not hungry and I’m not giving a reason why, it’s because something is wrong. She doesn’t ask any more questions, though. She moves away from the door.
I stay in my room for the rest of the night.
I fall asleep at some point because I dream I’m in a terrible car crash.
There’s a fire, a hospital, and a mirror.
I see myself. The soft tissue of my face has been destroyed.
I will never look like myself again. No one I know recognizes me.
My life is irrevocably different, and there is nothing I can do about it.
I wake out of breath, heart thumping, my mind screaming at me to run even though there’s nothing to run from. It takes five minutes to fully convince myself I have not been burned in a fire.
It’s horrifying to realize it’s Sunday and there’s nothing for me to do. I wander around the house, trying to shake this deep sense of dread. I pour some cereal into a bowl and stare at it.
“You feeling okay?” Mom asks later, when she finds me still sitting there, staring at a bowl of dry Reese’s Puffs. “You look pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“You want to go to the nursery with me today? If you’re not playing your game—”
“I’ll go.” I say it too fast. I have to get out of the house. I have to do something to chase this nightmare away.
The sun’s up, the air is fresh, and I feel empty inside.
I stay close to Mom in the aisles of the nursery, laser focused on everything she says, offering suggestions on what plants might look good in the flower beds.
I don’t think any harsh or caustic thoughts.
I try to stay out of the way of the other customers.
Being hyperaware of what’s going on around me and making sure I’m doing everything right staves off the ferocious guilt that I know lurks beyond the curtain of my conscious thought.
On the drive home, Mom is buoyant, happier than I’ve seen her in weeks. “The geraniums are going to look perfect in the railing planters,” she says, smiling. “You always had a great eye for flowers.”
I smile back. I’m glad I can do this for her. It feels like atonement. I carry our seeds and pots to the garage, where we’ll start them for later transplanting in the flower beds. “Mom, I wanted to say I’m sorry.”
She takes the pots from me, setting them on the workbench in the garage. “About what?”
She doesn’t even seem angry. As if everything I’ve said and done over the past month hasn’t damaged her. “For yesterday. Walking out. And the way I talked to you. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Oh. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.”
It would have been worse if she’d tried to deny I’d done anything wrong, but the acknowledgment is still a knife to the gut.
She pulls me into a hug. “I love you, Evie. I know things are hard right now.”
It doesn’t make sense that she’s being so nice to me. I don’t deserve it. I pull back, avert my eyes so she can’t see the fear creeping up inside me again, and say, “I’ll be right back. I need some water.”
Inside, alone, I spent seven minutes crouching in the laundry room, forcing myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth while the world narrows to a two-foot square at my feet.
When the moment passes, I go back to the garage and help Mom plant seeds.
It keeps my thoughts at bay, but it isn’t enough.
That night I help her make ham-and-cheese sandwiches, and I force myself to eat.
It tastes like sawdust. Before I go to bed, she gives me another hug and says, “I enjoyed today, you know? We should do it more often.”
She only enjoyed it because she doesn’t know what kind of person I really am. The real me is hiding because something evil is hunting it; this helpful, easygoing version of Evie Leigh is a paper-thin facade. It fooled Mom today, but it won’t work for long.
I’m exhausted by the time my head hits the pillow.
I surprise myself by being calm enough to sleep, but I wake because of the worst nightmare I’ve had since I was a kid.
I don’t even remember what it was about, all I know is that I was dying, the world was dying, and it was my fault that it happened, and it was my fault it wasn’t stopping.
I lie in bed for the rest of the night with dread washing over me like the tide, in and out.
It’s Monday. I have to go to school.
I get up. Get dressed. Put my stuff in my backpack. Get breakfast and find myself once again staring at my cereal bowl. I can’t eat. I’m not even hungry. Do I even deserve to eat? Why should I? Alissa doesn’t get to anymore.
Mom comes in, grabs her coffee and her protein bar, kisses me on top of my head. “You’re going to be okay at school today?” she asks. “You have that assembly.”
Oh god, the assembly. I forgot. How am I going to get through standing on a stage in front of the entire school, much less an entire school day?
It was hard enough before, in the beginning, when Alissa was gone.
Now I’m the wild girl who claws up boys’ faces, who yells at teachers, leaves track practice early, doesn’t do her homework. I am a failure. A liar. A pretender.
Mom starts putting on her shoes, and a jolt of terror rocks through me. I won’t get to see her until later tonight. I never think about this, worry about this, so why am I now? Why does it feel like she’s going to die if she’s not in my sight?
Letting her walk out the door feels like the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I watch her car disappear down the street. She could get in an accident. Or someone could shoot up the dealership. Or she could choke on her lunch. The possibilities are endless.
Any of those things could happen to me too, I guess. That might be a relief.
School felt like a colorless dream after Alissa died, but now it’s a minefield.
The other students are no longer ghosts; now they are enemy combatants.
I keep careful track of what everyone around me says and does so that I can react in exactly the right way.
I must minimize the damage I cause. I don’t offer answers in class, but when the teachers call on me, I answer as best I can, in the lightest, happiest tone of voice.
I don’t work on homework in class unless the teacher explicitly says we can.
I stay so aware of everything around me that nothing will surprise me, I will miss no alarms, I will not succumb to the overwhelming guilt.
Before the end of second period, I’m called to the office. One of the office aides instructs me to sit by the organized bin of college flyers until Mrs. Maddox appears. She says hi, smiles at me, doesn’t seem to realize I’m a nightmare inside.
“Ready to do this?” she asks.
The answer will always be no.
I follow her to the gymnasium. The bleachers have been pulled out on both levels, and folding chairs fill the court.
A stage has been erected at one end with a podium emblazoned with the school’s logo.
Mr. Tyler, the principal, stands there talking to an IT guy.
One of the school security officers stands by the stage, the other by the doors.
The school guidance counselor, Mr. Olshank, already sits on the stage, along with Ms. Reeder, the nurse.
Beside the stage is a five-foot-tall photo of Alissa on an easel, bigger even than any of the photos at her funeral.
One of her school pictures. The ones she hated.
Mrs. Maddox sits me in a chair next to Ms. Reeder. No one speaks or even looks at me. Ms. Reeder and Mr. Olshank don’t even acknowledge my presence.
“. . . half of them take ADHD medication these days,” Ms. Reeder says quietly to Mr. Olshank. “Some of them actually need it, but I’m convinced some of their parents just didn’t want to deal with their behaviors anymore.”
“It’s not the kids’ fault,” Mr. Olshank says. “Most parents are just trying to help. It might be all the social media, might have been the pandemic, might be all kinds of things. There’s no way to tell anymore. . . .”
The empty bleachers and folding chairs fish-eye out from me, multiplying into the hundreds of thousands.
After several minutes, classes begin to arrive.
Students and teachers file in. The gym swells with noise.
I look at my knees, pick at my cuticles.
Count the bounces of my leg. One two three four five .
. . I look up when Mrs. Maddox stops in front of me again.
She holds a small wooden plaque with an engraving.
IN MEMORY OF ALISSA WHITAKER, CLASS OF 2026
NATURE’S FIRST GREEN IS GOLD,
HER HARDEST HUE TO HOLD.
HER EARLY LEAF’S A FLOWER;
BUT ONLY SO AN HOUR.
THEN LEAF SUBSIDES TO LEAF.
SO EDEN SANK TO GRIEF,
SO DAWN GOES DOWN TO DAY.
NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY.
ROBERT FROST, “NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY”
I stare at it. The poem seems to deafen the noise around me. Robert Frost? They’re commemorating Alissa’s suicide with a Robert Frost poem?
I look again at my classmates. We kill ourselves and the world remembers us with images of lost beauty. They ignore our pain when we’re alive and erase it when we’re dead.
We’re all so hopelessly fucked.
Mr. Tyler takes the podium when everyone is seated. The teachers have tried hushing their classes, but a low rumble persists.
“Hello, everyone,” Mr. Tyler says, drowning the last of the noise. “I want to thank all of you for being here.”
We had no choice, I think.
“As most of you know, one of our juniors, Alissa Whitaker, took her own life in March. This is a tragedy that happens every day, everywhere in the world. It is far from the first time that it has happened to a student at this school. But that doesn’t mean that it should go unmarked.
Many of you may struggle with similar issues.
Today, we’re here to remember Alissa, and to give you all some tools and resources to find help.
“First, Mr. Olshank is going to share words from family and friends about the kind of girl Alissa was. I hope from this you realize that there is no stereotypical victim of suicide.”
Mr. Olshank takes Mr. Tyler’s place at the podium.
He reads off statements from Alissa’s mom, some of the girls from track, a few people from Alissa’s church.
I scan the crowd. Many students aren’t paying attention.
They’re talking to their friends or looking at their phones.
A few are even reading books instead of listening.
This is not news to us. No one is even morbidly interested.
The only reason we’re having a school assembly is because the adults feel guilty.
The school has to do this so they look like they did anything at all.
None of the people in charge had a close relationship with Alissa.
They’ll go home and tomorrow will be a normal day. Next week it’ll be some other kid.
When Mr. Olshank finishes, Ms. Reeder takes his place.
She mechanically reads off signs and symptoms of depression.
Halfway through her list, the noise level in the room rises again and I have to look down, block it all out.
My heart pounds. My throat constricts. Alissa’s name on the plaque in my lap glints in the bright lights of the gym.
“Evie? The plaque?”
Mr. Tyler is back at the podium, looking at me, his hand out expectantly. Everyone looks at me. Ms. Reeder. Mr. Olshank. The security officers. The IT guy. Every teacher. Every student.
Several weeks ago, Alissa asked me a question that I had forgotten about, but it comes back to me now.
“Do you think any of this matters?”
We were sitting on the porch swing at her house, still bundled in winter coats and boots.
It was weird that she wanted to sit outside, but I didn’t complain.
I didn’t understand what she meant. I asked her why she was being weird and existential, if she’d read something in one of her nightmare books that made her think too hard. She laughed and called me a jerk.
I get it now. I look at the plaque, at the principal’s outstretched hand, at the school gathered before me, the adults who are trying to hold it together and the kids who have been told that this world has nothing for them but hatred and pain.
I stand. Hand the principal the plaque. And then I walk off the stage and out one of the side doors without a backward look.
No one stops me.