The hole in my chest closed off. It went to shelter where it was safe and protected. “No,” I answered. “I don’t want to remember that year. It was my last year with Ethan.”

“Oh.” Her smile was wiped clean. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think about that.”

I was growing tired of this. “What do you want, Angie?”

“I wanted to see you.”

I continued to stare at her. She was lying.

Her shoulders drooped. “I wanted to see how you were doing.”

There was more. I felt it from her.

Finally, she admitted, “I wanted to apologize for last year.”

There it was. I bit out, “Why?”

She flinched from my tone, it was so cold. “I don’t think I was a good friend to you. I know I wasn’t a good friend to you. I made you break up with Jesse, then that last summer when…” Her words faded. She still couldn’t talk about it.

No one could. No one understood it and even I didn’t, but I knew the cause. “Did Eric ever tell you about that night in my kitchen? When he came in and I was burning something?”

She jerked a shoulder up.

So he had.

This was the moment; this was where everyone became so uneasy because this was the time when people didn’t want to hear about the amount of pain someone might have been going through. Hannah understood it. Beth understood it. I didn’t know how, but I knew they did. I knew something had happened so atrociously in their lives that they were changed. They would always be changed and that’s how it was for me. That letter shattered me and people didn’t want to admit that could happen. Because if they had to accept that it could happen to them as well and no one wanted to admit that fact to themselves.

Angie grew up in a good family. She had good parents who loved her and a family that would be there for her so it made sense why she didn’t want to hear what happened to me. Why would she? Why would a person like that want to experience the pain that I had? Even if it meant being a good friend?

I understood why Eric had been scared. I understood why Angie and Justin had shied away from me. They didn’t want to know the amount of pain that I’d been feeling so I kept to myself. They knew, but when I got that letter from my parents, I couldn’t keep it checked and hidden anymore. The pain was too much. It had started to mingle with rage until it became one and the same. It made me look different. It made me walk different. It made me act different, think different, feel different. It was like an arm had been cut off from me. I kept going, but I couldn’t grow another arm. Except for me, it was feeling loved. It was having a family. It was being supported. But it was gone, that letter just cemented it and I no longer had the ability to keep hiding.

Angie would never understand that. So I couldn’t even start to explain it. Instead, I only murmured, “You’re off the hook.”

“What?”

“You’re off the hook, Ang. I know you tried to be a friend to me last year, but let’s just admit this. It was hard being my friend. I get it.”

Her tears started falling again. She crumpled to the ground and began to rock back and forth. She just kept crying.

I knelt beside her. I didn’t touch her. I wasn’t going to comfort her, but I knew she needed to be released. “I know you tried to be my friend. I think you did a good job, but with the whole mess of my family, I wasn’t a normal person. I’m still not a normal person. Pain and grief, loss and mourning, then being abandoned, a person can only take so much. Eventually, if they don’t get support or love, they’re going to fall under all those strikes, you know?”

She started sobbing, deep gut-wrenching sobs and she buried her head in her knees. Her shoulders jerked forward with each sob.

Frowning at her, she was the one crying while I had been the one hurting. It didn’t make sense to me, but I still said, “You have a good future ahead of you. I know that I was holding you back. I was like an anchor with all my stuff. I get it. I do. Beth and Hannah, they’re like me. They get it and they’re not scared to be around me. Neither’s Jesse. I get him, no one else does.”

She looked up and wiped at her face. “Have you told him?”

“About?” But I knew. It had never been put into words. I was still scared of what would happen.

“Alex, I was at your house. Your parents were never there. I mean, come on. Stop playing dumb. Just say it,” she snapped.

Reeling, not from her tone, but that she really knew. She actually knew. My heart began racing, pounding in my chest, and panic started again. It was rising.

“We live in a small town, Alex.” She kept going. I tried to shut her out, but I couldn’t. “My mom’s cousin works at the law firm you’re parents used. I know about the stipulations on their stipend for you. That you can’t communicate with them? That you can’t even call them or visit them? That if you want to hear how they’re doing, you’re supposed to send an email to your dad stating your reasons for even asking in the first place. Are you kidding me?”

I couldn’t hear anymore. I wanted to box my hands over my ears. My heart was trying to claw its way out of me.

“I know, I know. Blah, blah, your f**king parents blah. They’re horrible people. They’ve been horrible to you. I saw them last weekend and I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to go over and smack your dad. I wanted to shake common sense into your mom and ask why they could do this to you? You haven’t done anything to them!”