Chapter 21 #2
Cary’s fingers still on my skin. His lips curve up again. “You are mine, Auggie.”
Questions burn inside my throat. How long will I have to wait? When will Death bring me back to you? I swallow them all down.
He’d never tell me, anyway.
“Get in the water,” Cary instructs. “Trust her. And remember to breathe.”
Reluctantly, I start to pull away.
Cary drags me back. He kisses me. Feverish and slow and with promises I can’t hear but take with my tongue.
“Do not look back, Auggie. Whatever you need will be with you.”
In the shallow waters, my feet are heavy. The coolness rises around my knees, my thighs. Lethe sighs happily the farther I wade.
I do exactly what Cary said: I trust her.
When the water’s up to my shoulders, I breathe. It’s like the first time. Like every time. She welcomes me back. One final time.
An anxious need surges through my nerves. Coils around my bones, pulsing into my muscles. Despite his demands, I look back at the shore. I can’t help myself.
Cary’s gone.
Before I can take my next breath, I sink.
And sink.
And sink.
I jolt awake.
A scream claws at my throat. It’s too dry for anything more than a weak gasp. Sweat dampens my face. My muscles ache like I’ve been running. Or trying not to drown.
It takes a moment before my eyes adjust. Silvered light streams across my sheets. I’m in my bedroom. But I can’t remember how I got here. My head is fuzzy, falling in and out of focus.
When I was eleven, I had my tonsils removed. My mom thought it was a just bad sore throat. A virus I caught at school. But my dad knew better. This is how I felt after the procedure and the anesthesia wore off.
Foggy. Like the world wasn’t real. Walking through a thick haze and unsure of where I was going.
I blink again. My gaze snags on something. A navy blue hoodie at the end of my bed. In the night’s half light, yellow letters spell out UCSB.
London’s hoodie.
Quietly, I wait for the ache to come. Spread through my chest. Leave me curled in a ball for hours. But the feeling never arrives. Instead, a sensation I haven’t felt in years blossoms bright and wild inside my veins.
Gratitude.
I hug the cottony soft material to my chest. He’s not gone. I still have a piece of him here with me. In my arms. In my heart.
The door creaks open. I half expect it to be Diana.
Max’s head peeks in. “Are you up?”
Weary, I nod. On the fringes of my memory, I remember fighting with her. Our harsh words in the pizzeria. Max walking away. Me storming out.
She sucks in her cheeks, also uncertain of where we stand. Her eyes fix on the hoodie. “Is that…London’s?”
Again, I nod.
Max sits next to me. Shoulder to shoulder.
We hover in silence. I tug at a loose thread in the hoodie’s hem. She glances at my naked bedroom walls. The lack of real furniture. It looks like no one lives here. Like I made myself disappear from this home Max made for me.
The corners of her mouth lift a little. “You need a dresser. And a hamper.”
Diana has happily flopped onto my pile of discarded clothes on the hardwood floor.
Max taps her chin. “While we’re at it, hang some photos on these boring-ass walls.”
“Of you and me?” I suggest.
“No. Just me. Everyone should have a framed image of this beautiful face.”
I laugh. It feels good in my chest. Missed, needed.
“Some plants too?” I propose.
Max reels back. “Plants? You?”
I give a half-hearted shrug. “Yeah. I’m not saying I’m good at it.” Light warms my skin as I daydream about my mom’s greenhouse. My favorite place in the city. In the world. “But I want to keep trying.”
That makes Max chew on her lip.
“Auggie—” Her voice isn’t as confident as it was a second ago. “I’ll never know what you lost that night.” She skims fingers up the sleeve of London’s hoodie. “But I lost him too. We were friends. The three of us. Because of you.”
She goes quiet again.
I breathe deeply. She smells of those spicy samosas from the Indian kitchen on State Street she loves. Salty from a breeze I associate with the Santa Barbara State campus.
Her hand is faintly sweaty as it closes around mine.
I turn my head to study her frown.
“What’s even worse is”—she pauses to sigh—“I lost my best friend that night. Instead of grieving over someone I’ll never get back, I’ve had to watch you stop existing right in front of me.”
I swallow a lump. “I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want an apology!”
The hoodie’s sleeve is twisted in her fingers. The second Max realizes it, she lets go, cheeks pink.
“I know,” I say. “But I need to say it anyway.”
Max has never pushed me. From the moment she showed up at the hospital, letting me sob on her shoulder, to the day of the funeral, to now. She wasn’t like everyone else.
That’s why I owe her this.
“I kept thinking one day I’d wake up and feel better,” I admit. “I’d be normal again.”
“You were never normal,” she teases.
My shoulder bumps hers.
“Everyone moved on.” The lump swells again. I push through. “And I thought I was taking too long. That I needed to figure it out by myself.”
Because everyone else did. No one else needed two years to grieve. Not London’s friends from school. His parents. My parents. Only me.
Tears shine in Max’s eyes. “You know that’s not how grief works, right? There’s no time limit.”
I shrug. “It feels that way.”
“Why didn’t you say anything?”
Anger wrinkles my face. “Because I don’t want anyone’s pity.”
“It’s not pity,” she says firmly. “It’s love.”
My head rests against the wall. I stare up at the ceiling. When you’re drowning, it’s hard to tell love from pity. Someone reaching a hand to you from someone waiting for you to save yourself. I guess I could never tell which it was.
“If you need more space,” she starts, “I’ll give it to you.”
I try to imagine a world where I see Max less. Where she’s not always right there, cracking a joke or talking about a girl she likes or complaining about a lack of coffee. Where our friendship is a flicker instead of a flame.
Exhaling through my nose, I say, “I don’t want space.”
Max leans against my shoulder.
“I don’t want you to go away either,” I continue. What she said a minute ago hangs on my thoughts like smoke. “I didn’t mean to get like this. To…disappear.”
“I know,” she echoes my words from earlier.
I see her hesitation. Afraid to say what she’s thinking. I give her permission with a gentle nudge.
“My mom says when someone’s grieving, they just check out. It’s not on purpose. They can’t control it.” Her finger taps the back of my hand. “You can’t control it, Auggie.”
A beat slips by as I stare at my ceiling.
“Your mom sounds like a smart woman.”
An indignant laugh rattles through Max. “Never, ever tell her that.”
I gaze down at my wrist. London’s bracelet is gone. I can’t remember where I lost it. When it fell off. But I don’t think I need it the way I used to.
It was a symbol of the hold his love had on me.
Of the past I couldn’t let go of.
London never lived in the past. He wanted a future. He planned for it. He planned for both of us. I owe it to him—to me—to do a little planning of my own.
I clear my throat. “Can you ask your mom to help me find someone? To talk to about…all of this?”
Moonlight accentuates the surprise around Max’s eyes. “Of course. If you’re ready?”
“I am,” I say, confidently.
I’m done shutting the people I love out. Putting my life on pause. I trace the letters on London’s hoodie. My hoodie now.
“He wouldn’t want me to give up,” I add.
Max loops her arms around me. Her face presses against my shoulder. “It’s not what I want either.”
Smiling, I rest my head against hers. The world isn’t in full focus yet. Parts of my head are still blurred. But, for now, it’s enough.
The August I am in this very moment is enough to fight the tide.