CHAPTER SIXTEEN | NEEDY LESNICKI

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          Zach is with me today.

          He's the one to wake me up when the sun has barely risen, way before my alarm is due to ring, and even my room feels warmer in spite of the lack of sun rays. With an arm wrapped around me, safely tucking my waist against him, he stirs in his sleep, while I'm wide awake now.

          When his nose nuzzles the curve of my neck, his face buried in my hair, I let out a stupid, girly giggle, remembering we have to keep quiet. He's only here because I managed to sneak him into the house last night, aware the rules regarding overnight guests are strict when it comes to everyone whose name isn't Emma Chang, so we need to be extra careful so no one suspects a thing. I'll have to sneak him back out before anyone else wakes up, but it was raining last night and there's still leftover rainwater dripping off the roof, which makes it a lot harder than it needs to be.

          "That tickles," I complain, making no move to get him to stop. His stubble scratches the sharp line of my jaw. "Zach."

          He chuckles. "What?"

          "We really need to be quiet. If my dad finds out you're here—"

          The mattress shifts as he props himself up on an elbow, his chin disappearing from where it was resting on my shoulder. "What are you talking about?"

          "What are you talking about? Emma gets a free pass to sleep over, but you don't. Don't test my dad's patience."

          "The only other person in this house right now is Xavier. I'll take my chances."

          "Xavier moved out years ago. Stop messing with me."

          "Um, no. I'm pretty sure I saw him."

          "That's impossible. I'd remember if my own brother was in the house. Remember how he always made pancakes for breakfast if he suspected you'd stayed over?" He hums, though I can't shake off the feeling that there's something not quite right with this situation. There's no reason for Xavier to be in the house, as he moved out ages ago, and nothing gets past his radar; if he acts like he hasn't noticed anything, he's just pretending. "Like, I remember this time when—"

          "You know what I remember?"

          "What?"

          His hand disappears from my waist, trailing up my body until his hooked index finger stops right beneath my chin, raising my head and turning it so I'm looking at him. I jump back with a start over what's in front of me—no matter how many times I think of it, no matter how many times I remember it, it's still horrifying.

          Zach's face and hair are bloody, courtesy of the deep gash on his forehead and the one on his neck, staining his pillow, my sheets, and my clothes, and the wound on his chest, the fatal one, pulsates like a living being. I back away from him, heart thudding in terror, and one would expect me to be able to look away from something that frightening, the subject of several of my nightmares, but that's the thing about him—you can't look away. You just can't.

          It's why your eyes stay glued to the screen when you're watching a horror movie, regardless of how gory it is or of how scared you are. It keeps you on the edge of your seat, part of you thinking about how the special effects team did so well when they crafted the injuries, the makeup, and the fake blood. You almost think you're watching your own life on a screen, realistic enough to crawl under your skin, but unbelievable enough to make you feel at ease and glad that's not you.

          That's not real life. In real life, you don't get nearly as much time to react.

          "Remember when you left me to die?"

          I do, I want to tell him. I do. I think about it every day, dream about it every night.

          Nothing of the sort comes out of my mouth. My first instinct is to run away, like it always is, and I stammer out of bed—or at least try to—only to have him pull me back by an ankle, slamming me back against the mattress. Half of my body is hanging off the side of the bed by this point, and I roll around to support myself on my elbows for extra help and as an attempt to steady myself. I don't have enough time to assess the situation and pull back my leg so hard my muscles cramp when I stumble off the mattress, landing right on my back.

          The room isn't big and there's nowhere to hide, not even under the bed, and I'm no longer running away from Zach—I'm running from Him, machete and all. The transformation is so sudden it throws me off, but that hesitation serves as an opportunity he can use to catch up to me, dragging me away from the door by grabbing a handful of my hair.

          "You left them all to die," He reminds me, as I yelp in pain. When he releases me, he shoves me aside with such force I slam my head against the door handle, blinding pain spreading across my body.

          "Zach told me to go," I argue. "He told me to go and get help—"

          "You should've stayed. You should've stayed and helped them."

          "I—"

          "Instead, you ran off like a coward, didn't get help, and almost died. Do you ever think about how they all died for nothing?"

          I gulp, the wound on my forehead threatening to explode, and I can't tell the difference between my tears and my blood. I quickly realize it doesn't matter. "I got help. The police got there in time."

          He tilts his head to the side, eyeing me with childlike curiosity. "In time for what, exactly? Everyone was dead at that point except for you and me."

          "I stopped you. I stopped you before you could hurt anyone else. They got me out and—"

          "—killed me when I tried to pull you back inside. I remember. They would never let anything happen to Daddy's little girl." I close my hands into fists, wishing there was anything I can reach out for, but I don't keep any baseball bats in my room simply because I never thought I'd need one. "Everyone died, but at least you got out and got to tell the world the story of the night that changed your life forever. So glad you managed to get your fifteen minutes of fame. Did you tell all those reporters the only reason you even got out was because Daddy pulled all the strings and got the sheriff to deploy plenty more agents than necessary? Did you tell the press about all the people that didn't get the help they needed that night because the sheriff was helping you?"

          That's a point I've never devoted time to obsessing over, but it's not something I thought I'd ever have to consider. I would never deny anyone the kind of help I needed that night, not even myself, regardless of how guilty I felt about every single event, and I've never been ashamed of asking for external help. In fact, I'd always been thankful for the opportunity to do so, knowing I would have never gotten out on my own, and I don't feel weak for having depended on other people.

          I knew I would have never killed Him, regardless of everything he'd done. I've never wanted to have anyone's blood on my hands, and even the mere memory of slamming that baseball bat against Him to incapacitate Him just enough to allow me to escape is a bitter one. My guilt has never extended that far, with me firmly believing I would never stoop that low.

          I could have. Had I done it myself, no extra help would have been needed.

          "You killed Emma," I whisper, just as his fingers tighten the hold on the machete. The trail of blood it has left behind, from the bed to the door, shines scarlet with the first morning light. "You killed Zach. You killed your friends. What makes you think you have the right to even question my decisions or my morality?"

          He quirks an eyebrow. Standing in front of the window, with the light shining behind Him, green eyes are all I can see. "Were you trying to kill me, too?"

          "I did what I had to do."

          He sighs. "See, that's the problem. I, too, did what I had to do."

          "Jake, you—"

          He swings the machete. 

          Right before the blade hits the arm I raise to protect my face, a strident sound echoes around us and the room is sucked into a whirlpool. The details blur together, day fades into night and then the sun rises once more before being swallowed into an eclipse. I'm falling into the emptiness of space, suspended in time, and all the air escapes from my lungs when I land, the softness of my mattress underneath me being of little comfort.

          I jump up, gasping for oxygen, and sweat pools in my hair, drenching it just like the blood did. My heart beats so fast I fear it will explode if I don't find a way of calming down, but even the sound of my alarm is triggering this reaction. I rush to silence it before it stresses Sidney out or wakes Xavier up, but, even when the noise stops and the only thing I can hear is my ragged breathing, the room is still spinning.

          I let my head fall back to my pillow, groaning. I really should start making a list of everything I have to tell Doctor Albott.

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          "Tea?"

          "Huh?"

          Doctor Albott holds up a teacup and a wooden box. I've been so preoccupied with my own thoughts that this is the first time I'm noticing the electric kettle resting on the desk behind her. "Would you like a cup of tea? I have ginger and lemon, apple and cinnamon, and regular black."

          I'm not sure why I'm so embarrassed to admit to my licensed therapist that yes, I do need tea, and yes, I do need her help, but I stay glued to my chair. Normally, one wouldn't assume I'm accepting the cup of tea by how I don't even nod or say anything positive, but I suspect she, at this point, knows me better than most people in my life and can tell I need something just by taking one good look at me.

          Then again, I've never been that good of a liar and I doubt I'm successful at hiding my emotions. The only time I ever managed to remain blank-faced when someone asked me if I was okay, it was immediately after the rescue at Camp Comet, when I sat there with a shock blanket wrapped around my shoulders, unable to feel a thing.

          "Thank you," I say, when she hands me a steaming cup. The spicy, powerful scent of cinnamon fills the room as I bring the cup to my lips, being extra careful not to burn my tongue and embarrass myself any further. Feeling stupid in a therapist's office is a whole new low, but I don't have the nerve to admit it to her.

          "What do you want to talk about today?" Doctor Albott asks, returning to her usual seat. Her eyes are locked on mine. "You said you had a stressful week."

          "I guess there's been a lot going on." I settle into my chair, trying to find a comfortable position that also allows me to keep both my legs crossed over it, lotus style. My old therapist used to recommend yoga and, for a while, I did give it a try and have even learned a few poses, but ultimately abandoned it when it failed to properly relax me. Instead, it just made me worry about having to untwist myself from an awkward pose and losing precious time if I ever needed to run away from something. "I'm not sure where to begin."

          "We can start with the basics." She crosses her right leg over the left one. "How have you been sleeping? You mentioned you have difficult nights."

          That's not basic. It's not simple.

          I haven't been able to stop thinking about that nightmare ever since it happened, even if not much time has passed—it's been two days—and it's still so fresh in my mind it feels like I'm reliving it even while I'm awake. It doesn't take an expert to figure out why that is, or a psychoanalyst to interpret it.

          The first time I ever acknowledged Jake as the villain represented an entire paradigm shift. Up until then, He and Jake were two completely different people, as Jake Horton, my friend Jake Horton, would never be capable of such violence, of such a terrible act, but the thing about betrayal is that it never comes from an enemy or someone you suspected would double-cross you.

          Accepting the two of them being the same person doesn't help with closure, at least for me. It has left me with even more questions than before, doubts about whether I could have done something to prevent him from spiraling out of control or if he was long gone by that point, way beyond saving. It makes me wonder if I should have seen it coming or if I'm equally as bad as him by having ever associated myself with him. It makes me wonder when a monster stops being a monster and turns into my friend.

          It's easier to hate Jake when I keep those two people separate. As long as they're separate, the one who committed all those heinous acts has nothing to do with me, and I don't have hundreds of memories attached to him. That way, it doesn't matter if I had known him since we were twelve or if we knew almost everything about each other. It doesn't matter how many afternoons we spent at each other's houses or how he was the only one who ever got my coffee order right. The second he decided he was going to kill Emma, everything changed.

          To this day, I have yet to figure out if it was premeditated or not, if Emma was the only target and everyone else was just collateral damage. My dad wasn't too involved with the investigation due to bias, so the answers may very well still be out there, and no one has ever told me anything. Sometimes, it's best not knowing the full truth, and maybe getting those answers won't change a thing and bring me any semblance of closure, but I've been chasing after ghosts for far too long to give up now.

          I tell Doctor Albott, "I don't know how much longer I can keep them separate. I want to—I need to—but I'm scared of what will happen the moment I see them as the same person. That was my friend, and he did all those terrible things, and I know my friend would never do something like that."

         "And yet he did."

          I sigh, drinking what's left of my tea. "Yeah. He did. He did all those things, and I never saw it coming. There were never any signs. Like, things between him and Emma had been a bit shaky on the days before we left for Camp Comet, but I never thought . . ." I shake my head, staring out of the large window. A fox sparrow sits right outside, perched up on the windowsill. "I never thought things would end that way. I thought it was just one of their little fights and didn't really take it seriously, even though Emma seemed a bit . . . on edge then. I assumed she was just nervous about being a counselor, but I'd never seen her look nervous before, so why should that be the case? Why didn't I talk to her? Why didn't I do something?"

          "It wasn't your job to do something. You couldn't have known."

          "She was my best friend." I set the cup aside, accidentally using far too much strength and nearly shattering the small plate underneath it. Doctor Albott winces with the shrill sound of porcelain scratching against itself. "Is it not my job to know when something's not right? We didn't even have to go to the campsite that early, but I wanted to go to set the mood. I was the reason we were all there that night, so it's my fault Jake—"

          "Wendy."

          "What?"

          She looks straight into my eyes, face filled with sympathy, and I force myself to relax my hands. My nails were digging into the soft flesh of my palms so hard they nearly drew blood. "What happened to your friends wasn't your fault. What happened to you wasn't your fault, either. You couldn't have seen it coming, regardless of it having been premeditated or not. You didn't push Jake into doing what he did. You didn't hand him a machete. You didn't wield the machete yourself. Whatever responsibility you think you had in those events is just misplaced anger. You have to allow yourself to be angry at Jake as a whole, not just as the person he was that night. Maybe doing one bad thing in your life doesn't make you a bad person, but he killed five people that night. Almost six." I shudder. "It was no accident. Even if that's not the person you knew, even if that's not the person you thought it was, it's still the person he ended up becoming. Years and years of good memories don't erase what he did, and you're allowed to grieve him, too. You also lost him that night, and there's no need to be ashamed of that."

          I lean forward, elbows set on my knees, and hide my face behind my hands before brushing back my hair. She has seen me cry countless times, but every breakthrough makes every breakdown feel more insignificant, like I'm spewing out nonsense.

          "When does it stop, then?" I ask her, almost pleadingly. If she's not supposed to hold all the answers, if she's not supposed to be able to come up with a magical cure, then has all of this been for nothing? What do I do with all this suffering? How long should I have to carry it? "When does the grieving stop?"

          She flashes me a sad smile. "It doesn't. It stays with you until you process it properly, but it's something that never truly leaves you."

          "So it's a ghost, then."

          "In a way, yes." It's her turn to look out of the window. When she does so, the fox sparrow flies away, out of reach, out of sight. Just like Emma. "These ghosts, though, we create them ourselves. We're the only ones who can make them go away."

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yes, you are allowed to grieve the people you've lost, even if the only thing you lost was the person you thought they were. you're allowed to grieve the version of you that you've left behind.

this is also a quick reminder to PLEASE not skip chapters. even if this is a character-focused book, that doesn't mean you won't miss out on important information if you skip chapters. thank you!