Chapter 17
Each day runs into the next, like one big, horrible blur, ever since Hayes dropped the news that he’s moving to Greece. It’s as if the ground beneath my feet has been cracked open, and I’ve been free-falling without a net.
And yet, despite his impending departure—or maybe because of it—the last few weeks have been better between us. Hayes has really been making an effort. He’s been calling. Texting. Showing up to French class again.
We’ve even been hanging out in the evenings and on the weekends, like we used to, though it’s never just the two of us anymore. Amber’s always around now too, glued to his side like a barnacle.
Still, I do my best to ignore her. I’m trying to make the most of what time Hayes and I have left. I know the clock’s ticking. Every minute matters now.
Even Argy seems to sense it.
He’s been extra clingy lately, shadowing me everywhere I go, pressing up against my legs when I stand and wedging himself into my side when I lie on the couch. It’s like he’s afraid I might vanish if he blinks. Even he seems to feel the countdown running out.
My mom still needs help. The weight of that hasn’t gone anywhere, but I’ve learned how to set it down for a little while.
To stop carrying it so tightly in my chest. There’ll be time to deal with it soon enough.
Right now, I just want to breathe. To feel something close to normal, while I still can.
I’ve also started thinking beyond NYU, just in case. Belmont in Nashville, maybe, or some tiny art school in LA no one’s ever heard of. Without Hayes here next year, there’s no reason to stay. I’ve spent my whole life dreaming of leaving this place. Now there’s nothing holding me back.
LHU is pretty much a flop anyway, other than Hayes. I haven’t really spoken to Rebecca since the Heaven & Hell party. We finished our project, turned it in, and that was it.
She’s been pretending like I don’t exist ever since. Even though I still don’t know what I did wrong, I’ve accepted that I’m not going to have friends here. Maybe not anywhere.
Maybe I’m just the kind of person destined to go through life alone. Always on the outside looking in. Someone who never really fits in anywhere.
Time seems to fly by as I prepare for the inevitable—saying goodbye to my only friend, the only person in the world who’s ever truly understood me. And my dog, too. My entire life is shifting beneath my feet in ways I can’t stop or fully comprehend yet.
And then, somehow, it’s already Halloween.
It also happens to be my eighteenth birthday—and the anniversary of the day my father disappeared.
Halloween’s always been hard for obvious reasons. Hayes knows that, and every year, he’s done his best to distract me.
We have a tradition.
We always spend the day together, just the two of us.
When we were little, we’d go trick-or-treating, then end up at Hayes’s house, gorging on candy since my mom never allowed sugar in the house.
Afterward, we’d curl up on the couch and spend the rest of the night watching our favorite scary movies.
Once we hit high school, we ditched the costumes and going door to door, but everything else stayed the same.
The ritual never changes: first, we start with a classic slasher like Friday the 13th or Halloween, and then we wind down with a lighter horror-comedy.
It’s usually a toss-up between Gremlins, Hocus Pocus, and Beetlejuice, though Beetlejuice typically wins.
Hayes and I share a long-standing obsession with Lydia Deetz.
I was worried he’d forget this year with everything going on, but he texted me yesterday to confirm, telling me to let myself into his parents’ house and head to the movie room. He’d meet me there after football practice.
Best of all, no Amber.
The fact he’s still showing up for this makes me think maybe we really are okay.
At least… until he leaves town for good.
After my last class of the day ends, I put on my coziest black velour sweatsuit—the one with tiny silver rhinestone skulls embroidered on the cuffs—and drive over to Hayes’s to wait for him.
I fire up the popcorn machine, the thick, buttery scent filling the air, and then curl up in one of the oversized movie room recliners.
Argyros is in full Velcro-dog mode. His massive body is tucked into a warm ball at my feet, pressed up against my legs like he’s trying to fuse us together.
As I flip through the channels, I text Hayes to get an ETA. He doesn’t respond, even though practice let out fifteen minutes ago.
I sigh, sinking deeper into the plush leather and pulling my favorite cashmere blanket up to my chin.
Why can’t Hayes ever be on time for anything?
He knows how important today is.
For one thing, it’s my birthday. I’m officially eighteen. I can vote, get a tattoo, buy tobacco—not that I’d ever want to—and even open a bank account, if I had any money to put in it. I’m an adult in every way one can be.
Except… nothing actually feels different.
I always imagined adulthood would arrive with some kind of magical shift. Like something big would happen the moment I turned eighteen. At least, that’s how it goes in the fairytales.
You come of age, transform from ugly duckling to princess, and your long-lost prince appears to whisk you away to a glittering kingdom where you rule together, happily ever after. Or… something like that.
But nothing’s changed for me.
Well, except that Hayes is leaving. And Argy too. Both of them headed somewhere thousands of miles away, across an entire ocean I can’t cross.
I swallow past the tightness in my throat and scroll through the streaming options until I finally land on the original A Nightmare on Elm Street movie.
My stomach flips with a familiar thrill.
I’ve always had a thing for Wes Craven. As far as I’m concerned, he was the undisputed master of horror.
Nightmare is one of his best—second only to Scream—and Freddy Krueger, with his burned face and bladed glove, is pure nightmare fuel even all these years later.
Of course, the sequels were trash, except for Dream Warriors and New Nightmare, obviously. Those still hold up.
The movie starts, and I turn off the lights.
The screen’s eerie glow spills across the room, stretching shadows along the walls.
I watch eagerly as doomed teens are hunted down and hacked to pieces, punished for a crime their parents committed long ago by killing Freddy.
It’s a timeless theme: sins of the parents, visited upon the innocent children and passed down like an inheritance.
Today of all days, the lesson about paying for your parents’ mistakes isn’t lost on me—even if my father’s mistake is more abandonment than murder.
It’s hard not to think about him every now and then, but especially on Halloween. The night he disappeared. The night everything fractured. I still have so many questions about my father, even after all these years.
Where is he now?
Does he ever think about us?
I shift in my seat, tugging the blanket tighter around me.
These are dangerous questions. The kind of thoughts that can drive a person crazy, if you let them.
Crazy—just like my mother.
My throat tightens and I crank the volume higher, trying to drown out the intrusive thoughts with a soundtrack of eerie music and cinematic violence.
How much like my mother am I?
Is my brain a ticking time bomb too, just waiting to explode?
And if so, how long until something—or someone—pulls the trigger?
I clutch the armrests, willing the spiral in my head to stop.
Where the hell is Hayes?
On-screen, a pretty blonde girl shrieks as Freddy tears her apart with his knife-tipped fingers. My stomach grumbles, hungry as blood splatters across the walls in pulsing bursts. I should probably be disturbed by all the death and gore, but I’m starving.
I pause the movie and head upstairs to raid the Vassilios’ freezer, pushing aside endless stacks of frozen orzo and spanakopita Kora has Dimitra stock in bulk. I make a face when I spot a big container of Greek pagoto kaimaki.
Hard pass.
I’ve never gotten used to the piney flavor. Hayes loves pagoto, but to me it’s too chewy, like eating a pine tree wrapped in rubber bands.
Reaching deeper, I finally find my old, reliable friend: Double Fudge Brownie ice cream.
Jackpot!
Spoon in hand and bowl loaded up, I march back toward the theater. As I pass the family gallery wall, my gaze snags on the familiar photographs lining the hallway. I’ve walked past these portraits thousands of times, but they still make me smile.
There’s Hayes’s father, grinning beside one of his treasured horses, the big dapple-gray, Phaethon.
A pang tightens in my chest.
God, I miss Phaethon. And the other horses, too. I wonder if I’ll ever see them again.
Farther down the wall is what I like to call the Shrine of Hayes: toddler Hayes, wild dark curls and baby teeth.
Little kid Hayes, grinning with a missing front tooth.
Preteen Hayes, all long limbs and awkward angles in too-big jeans.
And, of course, high school Hayes—breathtakingly, impossibly handsome.
Then come the family photos: Hayes and his parents.
Always polished, always gorgeous and glowing.
His parents look eerily the same in every shot, no matter the year.
It’s as if they don’t age. Like vampires.
It’s a little unsettling when you really think about it, but there’s no denying Hayes won the genetic lottery—either that or his parents have excellent plastic surgeons.
I even make a few appearances on the wall.
Candid, goofy photos from birthday parties and school dances Hayes dragged me to.
Senior prom. High school graduation. I grin when I spot my favorite: the picture of us at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, waving the overpriced magic wands Kora bought for us.