Chapter 18
Eighteen
Midnight. The clink of keys and the shuffle of footsteps tell me my parents have just gotten in.
Where they’ve been all day is anyone’s guess. I’ve been in bed for hours, following Carson’s strict orders to stay off my feet and, aside from distant murmur of Gossip Girl from the flatscreen, the beach-house has been stiller than a paused film.
Thank God.
As fast as I think it, guilt rises. That’s the only reason I don’t feign sleep when the two raps come against wood.
“Yeah?”
The door creaks open and my mother steps through, carrying a smile that’s caught between tentative and something practiced. The glow of the hallway behind turns her into a silhouette until she settles on the edge of the bed.
“You’re still awake?”
I sit up a little. “Yeah. I was about to sleep soon. You and Dad just get in?”
She hums, tracing idle patterns on the bedspread.
“Yes. We were out with some friends. Time got away from us.” Her eyes find mine, only briefly. “They’re hosting next week. A little get-together.”
“Oh.” Is that an invite? I can’t tell, but God, I hope not. “Sounds fun.”
“Certainly. You can bring someone along, if you’d like.”
Yep. There it is. I nod, but dread crawls up. I already know how it’ll go. Their friends, watching me like I’m a live case-study.
A before-and-after photo in real time, followed by that awful head tilt of pity.
My stomach gives a protesting clench.
“Have you been making friends?” Now, her full attention is on me.
I nod, like I need the extra time to layer my voice with something close to normal.
“A couple, actually.”
She blinks, then her head tilts toward some random piece of coastal décor. The silence doesn’t linger for long; she breaks it with an abrupt nod.
“Good.” Her hand finds mine, briefly squeezes, then retreats. “That’s really good. I’m glad.”
“I—”
“We should have them over for dinner sometime. Yes, certainly. Me and your father would love to meet them.”
“Um.” My fingers won’t stay still, and heat climbs up my face. I glance toward the AC, still humming. “Yeah, I mean… sure. I’ll check when they’re free.”
It’s a lie, but what’s one more to save face? Because dinner with my friends and parents… it won’t just be food on the table, it’ll be my secrets too.
“Sounds good. You let us know, then.” She starts to rise but freezes mid-motion. Her eyes catch on my nightstand. “Are you not feeling well, honey?”
Advil. I’ve been dosing every three hours like Carson instructed me to. Reese too, with his punctual text reminders.
“It’s just a migraine. You know, the heat and everything. I’m probably not drinking enough water.”
Another lie, tossed onto the pile. I guess I just don’t want to deal with her spiralling; she’ll turn it into a whole thing, and it’s not a thing anymore. Carson made sure of it, removing most the spines, and soaking the rest away with vinegar.
She frowns, and for the briefest second, I catch it. The trace of her I remember, the care not shaped by grief.
Then she says it.
“Make sure you’re taking care of yourself, Bryce.”
My heart stops, clean.
She goes on, oblivious.
“Do you need me to bring you anything? Some fruit?” With the air knocked out of me, all I can manage is the shake my head. “No worries, sweetie. I’ll leave you be. Make sure you get a good night’s rest.”
She turns for the door, but her pace feels painfully slow, like time’s dragging its heels just to stretch this out. All I can do is sit here, utterly distraught, praying that the ache inside doesn’t devour me whole.
The door creaks open.
Then clicks.
Thirty seconds.
I tell myself I’ll wait thirty seconds. I only make it to seven before I’m lurching off the bed and beelining for the bathroom. All noxious signals fire off, but I hardly register it.
I’m in another place entirely. Another world, where my knees don’t crash against tile and I’m not bent over the toilet with sweat and shock and the heaviness of it all coating my skin.
Bryce.
It echoes in my head, pounds behind my eyes.
Bryce, Bryce, Bryce.
On a loop, louder each time, gutting me inside-out.
How—how can she call me that? Then to carry on, like she didn’t just pull the rug from beneath everything I’ve been holding onto. God. I dry heave into the toilet, clawing at cold porcelain like I can dig my way out of this moment.
Does she even see me anymore? It’s been so long since my name crossed her lips—my name. Brielle. For weeks it’s been sugar-coated substitutes: honey, sweetie. Darling.
And now… Bryce.
I’ve been dead inside all these fucking weeks but—a guttural sob rips out—never once did I consider I might’ve been the one she buried that day.
Despair. I feel so much of it, bleeding from a wound that won’t clot, draining the nothing I have left to give. I want to curl into a ball, to close my eyes, and to disappear. This feeling, this awful, awful feeling is too much.
But I can’t run from it. Not tonight.
I wasn’t prepared for the all the grief to come to a head, and now I’ve got nothing to chase it away with.
No drugs. No alcohol on hand.
Just cold, hard truth.
Bryce is dead.
And I’m the one she left behind.
Fuck the fact we were supposed to go through life together, right? Fate saw to desecrating that in some sick, twisted turn.
Fate. No. No, not fate. We have free will, don’t we?
Acid surges up and spills out in a rush. I gasp, the acrid tang of bile mixing with the bitter taste of grief.
“Why?” It rips out on a sob, carrying everything with it. “Why…”
It hangs there, unanswered. I can’t take it. I shove myself up and stagger to the sink on weak legs and a weaker heart.
Trembling hands find the edge of it. One breath. Two.
Then I look.
What I see cleaves me in half.
Bloodshot eyes, tear-streaked skin, but also her.
It’s Bryce gazing back at me. She’s there in the slant of my brows, the curve of my lips.
It doesn’t matter that she had a small mole above her right lip, doesn’t matter that her jawline was a fraction sharper than mine—none of the subtle distinctions matter because on the first, second, fifth glance we appeared the same.
Mirror images. Identical.
A new wave of tears blurs my vision, and maybe that’s why the memory plays.
“I can’t even look at her, Jack.” My mother’s voice, splintered by anguish. “It’s too hard. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to look at her and not break inside. I just see who I’ve lost.”
I remember leaning closer, straining past the rush in my ears.
For a moment there was only silence, long enough that I almost thought maybe—just maybe—
But then came my father’s reply. “Yeah.” Ragged. Stripped bare. “I understand what you mean.”
That was our first night here.
A summer of healing.
My laugh is thin and breaks apart halfway out.
Of course I sniffed a line after hearing that.
Because what do you do when your own mother says she can’t stand the sight of you?
Worse—what do you do when you feel the exact. Same. Way.
I white-knuckle the sink, but the rim only grounds me in a reality I can’t escape.
I’m unraveling. Running hard, hiding harder.
Which is it?
I can’t do both.
Something lodges, immovable, in me.
It takes three failed attempts before I can steady my hand enough to free my hair from its top knot, but I do it.
I do it, watching as strands cascade like a waterfall of memories I’m not ready to drown in. It makes me sick, this gut-punch reaction I now have to what used to be my favourite thing about me. About us.
Hair holds memories. People say that, but I never really got it until she died.
Now, nothing drags me back to her more than this. Than me.
Every strand is a thread to her. To how she wore it loose and beautiful and free. Long.
Always long.
It’s out-of-body, the way my hand reaches into the cabinet and grasps stainless steel.
Cold against clammy. Final, too.
The first snip, I’m still in that in-and-out place. Not really here. Not really seeing it.
The strands fall like snow. Blonde against white, soft and surreal.
The second cut, something in me twitches awake. This time I hear it. The slice. The whisper of blades through strands. It does something strange to me.
By the third, I know what. It’s my heart, breaking.
I look down, almost expecting to see it pouring red and ruined out of me.
By the fourth snip…
Sobs. Wrenching things that rip out too fast too deep, until I’m stuttering, hyperventilating, gasping.
I can’t breathe.
I can’t—
I can’t—
The walls close in like jaws and I stumble, grasping for space that isn’t there.
Nothing’s working.
It’s only by some invisible thread of instinct that I manage to crash through the balcony doors.
Air slams into me but it’s not enough. I grasp the railing, throat raw, eyes wild, and then, I see it—the North Star. Sparkling like a single bright map in the dark.
And even though I’m coming apart piece by piece, I can finally breathe.