I stared at the stupid poster on the wall. It was a picture of skydivers holding hands and underneath in large print was one word: TEAMWORK.
Only a high school would have a poster of people willingly jumping out of planes as an example of teamwork. That wasn’t the kind of team I’d want to be a part of.
Dr. Perry was waiting. He’d asked me a question. Like he’d done last Wednesday and Friday, and it was now Monday, the start of my second week back, and nothing and everything had changed.
This week’s question was different from last week’s. Then he’d just really focused on how I was adapting to being back at school and when I was planning to start going to volleyball practice even though I couldn’t do anything. I’d dodged that last question, just like I dodged Coach Rogers. He’d asked how I was handling the morbid curiosity from the other students. And how I was in my classes. He’d talked about the accident. Not what was so obviously in my file, but about how hard it was to allow yourself to let go of the guilt of surviving and how important it was to move on.
This week, he asked if I’d decided when I would visit the graves of my friends, stating that doing so was important to begin the process of closure. I didn’t want to answer the question, but I also kind of wanted to, because I wasn’t talking to my friends about any of this, especially Abbi, who apparently thought I was a terrible human being, and I kind of thought the same about myself. I hadn’t opened up to Sebastian. Not even after last Tuesday night—after we spent the time together really getting to know the feel of each other’s mouths.
I ran the palm of my right hand over the edge of the chair’s arm. “I can’t think of them like that,” I said finally, staring at the skydivers over his shoulder. They were all wearing different-colored jumpsuits, so they reminded me of a box of crayons. “When I think of Megan, I still think of her sitting in my room, talking about TV shows. The idea of going to a cemetery, where they are now, I...” I shuddered. “I can’t.”
Dr. Perry nodded slowly as he lifted his mug. The Greatest Dad Ever mug was replaced with one that had an image of Elvis Presley. “You haven’t moved past the trauma of the accident. Until you do so, you won’t be able to grieve.”
My hand stopped moving and I curled my fingers around the arm of the chair.
“I can get you past the trauma. Do you want that?”
I lowered my gaze to him and drew in a deep breath. “I want, more than anything, to go back to the way things were.”
“But you can’t go back to the way things used to be, Lena. We can never go back. You have to accept that, no matter what happens from here on out, your friends are not coming back—”
“I know that,” I cut in, frustrated. “That’s not what I meant.”
“What do you mean?” he asked.
“I...I just want to be who I was,” I forced out, and then it was like something deep inside me was unlocked, and a torrent of words spilled forth. “I don’t want to be this me anymore. I don’t want to think about this every waking moment, and when I do start to think about anything, anything else, I feel horrible because I shouldn’t. I don’t want to look at my mom anymore and see that look on her face. I want to be able to go back to volleyball, because I did...I did love playing, but I can’t even think of doing that, because of Megan. I don’t want to sit with my friends and constantly be worrying about what they really think of me. I don’t want them to think that I don’t understand the accident affected them just as badly. I want to be able to believe that Sebastian loves me and it’ll be okay and I can love him back,” I blurted out, having no idea if he knew what I was talking about, since I wasn’t even sure I did. “I don’t want to feel any of this. And I know it won’t go away. I know when I go to bed later tonight and I wake up tomorrow it will be the same, but I don’t want any of this.”
His gaze sharpened. “Do you see a future for yourself, Lena?”
I fell back in the chair, wincing when I felt the stab of pain in my ribs. It wasn’t often that my ribs still bothered me, but throwing myself around in a chair sure didn’t feel good. “What do you mean?”
“Where do you see yourself a year from now?”
“I don’t know.” What did that even matter? “At college, I guess.”
“Studying history and anthropology?” he clarified. “I talked to your guidance counselor. They filled me in on your interests.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’ll be doing.”
“Where do you see yourself five years from now?”
Annoyance flared. “What does this matter?”
“It matters because if you don’t start working at this, you will still be dealing with this in five years.”
My shoulders slumped. Five years was forever from now.
“Do you want to get past the trauma and the grief? Do you want to feel better than you feel right now?” he repeated.
Closing my eyes, I nodded even though I felt terrible about it, even though it felt so wrong to want to feel better.
“Then we have to get past the trauma to get to the grief, and I promise you, once we do that, you will feel better.” He paused. “But you have to work with me and you have to be honest, no matter how uncomfortable the truth makes you.”
I opened my eyes and his face blurred. “I don’t...don’t know if I can.”
“This is a safe place for you, Lena. No judgment,” he insisted quietly. “And getting better starts with rewinding time back to the party. It starts with you talking about what you remember and what you know happened.”
* * *
“You’re not hungry?”
Blinking, I slowly lifted my head and looked at Sebastian. He was sitting sideways in the seat beside me. One arm was resting on the table, the other hanging in his lap. Just the tips of his fingers touched my thigh. My body immediately reacted to his touch. A rush of warmth flowed over my skin, but my brain recoiled from the want and the need and the anticipation soaring through my veins. We hadn’t kissed since last Tuesday, but he’d been at my house every night and drove me to school every morning even though I could drive myself. He sat with me at lunch and he touched me more, a little here and there. A brush of his hand on my arm or waist, a soft touch to my lower back or the nape of my neck.
And I thrived on those little moments even though I knew I shouldn’t.
“What?” I said, having no idea what he’d just asked.
“You haven’t touched your food.” He glanced pointedly at my tray. “Well, if you consider salad food.”
Salad? I checked out my plate with a frown. Yep. The plate of leafy greens was definitely a salad. I didn’t even remember grabbing it when I was in the lunch line. That wasn’t exactly surprising, though. After meeting with Dr. Perry this morning, knowing that on Wednesday I was going to have to rewind everything, my head was not where it needed to be. The morning had been a blur of going through the motions.
I was going to have to really, really talk about it, and I didn’t know if I could. But Dr. Perry knew. Abbi suspected as much. It was all I could think about when I looked at my friends. It was all I heard in my head when Sebastian showed up at night and did his homework alongside me. It was what I saw when I spotted Jessica in the hallways between classes—the girl who was back together with Cody. She never saw me, but I saw her.
Dary laughed now, snapping my attention back to the present. “I was wondering what was up with the salad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you eat one without a ton of fried stuff on it.”
“I don’t know.” I looked across the table at Abbi. She, like Dary, had a slice of pizza and what appeared to be coleslaw on her plate.
Abbi’s pizza was half-eaten. She was sketching a rose in bloom on the cover of her notebook. She’d barely said anything to me in our Chem class and at the start of lunch. She wasn’t ignoring me or anything like that. I wasn’t even present enough to be ignored, to be honest.
I glanced around the table. It was a weird mixture now. Normally it would just be us—Abbi, Dary, me and...and Megan. There’d be other students we didn’t know, but it was just us, really. Now it was us and Sebastian and several ball players.
And Keith.
He was sitting next to Abbi, as quiet as I’d ever seen him. He’d changed, too. He wasn’t loud and in everyone’s faces like he used to be. He still played ball, and I heard Abbi telling Dary during lunch this week, before Keith sat down, that he’d gotten reprimanded during the game last week for getting too rough on the field.
Right now his dark head was bowed, and every so often, he leaned toward her and whispered something to her and she’d respond.
Were they together?
I didn’t know.
I hadn’t asked.
Sebastian shifted closer, his knee pressing into mine. His voice was low as he asked, “Are you all right?”
“Yeah.” I cleared my throat and forced a smile. “Just tired.”
His eyes searched mine, and I knew he didn’t believe me, and I knew I would probably hear about it later.
“Are you going to work at Joanna’s this weekend, since you’re not going to have a game or anything?” Dary asked.
I shook my head. “Um, no. Normally I wouldn’t, because of volleyball.”
“So you’re going to go to the away game this weekend?”
I shook my head no again. Coach had given me space last week, but I knew that wouldn’t last much longer. He expected me to show up today.
“Wow.” Dary pushed her glasses up as she looked across the table. “I cannot think of a weekend when you didn’t have a game and weren’t working at Joanna’s.”
“Yeah.” I watched Sebastian cut his roasted or baked chicken in half. He cut it up into slivers. “They’ve all been really understanding. They’ve been really good.”
“Who?” Dary asked.
I cleared my throat. “Coach—Coach has been really understanding.”
Sebastian took the pieces he cut up and unloaded them onto my salad. My eyes widened. Did he seriously just cut up my food like I was a two-year-old? “There,” he said. “Now your salad appears to be almost edible.”
“Still not fried,” commented Dary, grinning. “But that is possibly the sweetest thing I’ve witnessed in a very long time.”
It was so ridiculous.
But it was sweet, because I knew it came from a good place.
The corners of my lips turned up as I reached for the fork.
“Are we having to hand-feed Lena now?” Abbi asked.
My head shot up as heat burned my cheeks. Abbi was staring at me, one eyebrow raised.
“Come again?” Sebastian said.
Abbi shrugged a shoulder as her gaze flickered to Sebastian. “I mean, she has to be driven to school. Can’t go anywhere by herself. We have to watch what we say around her. So, I’m just wondering if we have to hand-feed her, too?”
I froze. Heart. Lungs. Brain. Everything.
“What the hell, Abbi?” Sebastian’s voice sharpened.
Across from me, the hard look on Abbi’s face cracked a little, only a fissure. Her voice was hoarse. “I just think it’s a valid question and I can’t be the only one wondering it.”
“Abbi,” Keith said, speaking loud enough for me to hear for the first time at lunch. “Come on.”
Dary stiffened beside me.
“What? She’s an adult, right?” Abbi swallowed. Her lower lip trembled as her gaze met mine again. “She can’t speak up for herself? Can’t step in and stop this?”
Flinching as if I’d taken a gut punch, I knew exactly what she was referencing. She wasn’t talking about this conversation. She was talking about that night.
And I was done.
Standing, I reached down and grabbed my bag off the floor. I heard Sebastian say my name, but I didn’t stop. Straightening, I stepped back from the table and turned without saying all the words burning through my skin.
I hurried out of the cafeteria, mouth clamped shut so I didn’t lose it. I had no idea if losing it meant screaming in rage or having a complete meltdown.
I made it halfway down the hall before Dary caught up to me, grabbing my good arm. “Hey, hold up,” she said, forcing me to stop. “Are you okay?”
My gaze flipped to the ceiling. “I’m fine and I’m pretty sure Abbi’s head would spin right off her shoulders if she heard you ask me that.”
“Abbi is just being—”
“A bitch?” I finished for her, and then immediately felt bad. Closing my eyes, I shook my head. “No. That’s not right. She’s just...”
“She’s just having a hard time dealing with everything.” Dary squeezed my arm. “But she wasn’t being nice in there.”
I knocked the hair off my face as I glanced back at the mouth of the cafeteria. “Has she told you anything?”
“About what?”
“About me and that night—Keith’s party.”
Dary dropped her hand. “She told me about you and Sebastian kind of arguing and some stuff about her and Keith.” She paused. “Why?”
Obviously Abbi hadn’t talked to her about me. “I was just wondering.”
“Is there something I should know about that night?” she asked.
Now. Now I could tell her what Abbi knew and she would know why Abbi was so upset. But when I opened my mouth, I couldn’t find the words.
A moment passed and Dary dropped her arm around my shoulders. “Everything is going to be okay again. I know it doesn’t seem that way right now, but it will. It has to be.”
I didn’t answer, because I knew just because you wanted something so badly to be okay didn’t mean it would be that way.
Dary rested her forehead against the side of my head. “I just want things to go back to the way they were before,” she whispered. “We can’t get Megan back—we’ll never get her back—but we’ll get ourselves back. I believe that. I really do.”