I look pallid on the screen and my eyes are red and watery. “It’s been a few weeks since I saw Quinton at the ice cream parlor and I’ve been spending a lot of time feeling adrift. A couple of nights ago, I woke up from this dream, where Landon was still alive and we were married and happy. In the grogginess of exhaustion, I ended up getting out of bed and wandering across the street in the middle of the night to the hill where I last saw Landon alive. For a moment, I swear I could envision us both lying there in the grass together, but then Landon slowly faded and eventually so did I.
“I’m not even sure what compelled me to go there, but I couldn’t seem to find a reason to leave until morning when the new owners of the house came out and yelled at me for trespassing. I think they thought I was high or drunk or something, and that’s kind of how I felt—so detached. I’ve been overanalyzing why I did it… why I just walked over there in the middle of the night, like I was sleepwalking or something, and honestly I have no idea…”
I fight to keep my voice even as I tuck my hair behind my ears. “Anyway, I woke up this morning and forced myself to feel different—less weighted. I randomly decided I needed a change from the lack of purpose and that I needed to do something magical.” I pull a disgusted face at my cheerful choice of word. “Well, maybe magical isn’t the right word—more like out of the ordinary, at least for me, which is a really big deal because I don’t do out-of-the-ordinary very well.” I tip the camera to the side as I pull my knees up and wrap one arm around them. “So I did something completely and utterly difficult for me—I did the first thing that popped into my head and came over here to ask Quinton to go to the concert with us, even though the idea of going to one makes me want to vomit. I think it might be my inner conscience telling me that I need to get to know him. Delilah says he’s been through a lot, but Dylan and Tristan wouldn’t give her the details. They’ll only say that he’s had a lot of death in his life lately and that he’s messed up in the head.”
I pause, picturing the heavy sorrow in his honey-brown eyes, and then I picture Landon’s. They match, at least in my head they do. “I want to help him, though.” I bite at my lip. “I blame it on the dream I had about Quinton last night, which is a complete change from the ones I’ve been having about Landon. Quinton was drowning in the ocean, which is weird because I’ve never been to the ocean, but anyway, he was drowning and I was watching him drown and he was begging me to help him, but all I would do is was stand on the shore and watch him drown.” Guilt clouds my eyes and they look strange on the dim, low-resolution screen. “God, that makes me seem really twisted, doesn’t—”
I hear knocking on the door. “Nova, are you in there?” I flinch as Delilah’s voice carries through from the other side.
“And are you talking to yourself?” she asks. “Or are you making a movie in the bathroom, because that would be weird.”
I quickly shut the camera off, stand up, and hang the towel back on the rack before opening the door. “I was actually going to the bathroom.” I point over my shoulder at the toilet. “That is what those things are known for.”
She sticks out her tongue, then stands on her tiptoes to peek over my shoulder. “Are you sure you weren’t doing anything weird in here? I’m picking up a vibe.”
I shake my head and gesture her out of the door as I shuffle forward. “You’re crossing the lines of our friendship boundaries, Delilah. Seriously.”
“I guess so,” she says, sounding suspicious, but she shrugs and ambles up the hall, tracking her finger along the wall. “So what’d you say to him?”
“Who?” I count the cracks in the paneling on the walls as I follow her.
She tips her head to the side and peers over her shoulder at me. “Quinton. Dylan says he’s been in his room for like three days and he just came out. Plus he suddenly decided he was going to go to the concert.”
“I just asked him,” I say with a casual shrug, but my heart squeezes in my chest a little. He’s been in his room for three days. “And he said okay.”
She eyes me skeptically as she stops at the end of the hall and bends her knee, bringing her foot up to refasten the strap on her sandal. “Just be careful.” She returns her foot to the floor, tugs down the bottom of her leather skirt, and then leans in toward me. “Guys like Dylan and Quinton are not easy to date, if that’s even what they’ll call it.”
“You should take your own advice,” I tell her in a low voice, flicking a piece of ash out of her hair and it lands on her arm.
“I’m a lot different than you, Nova,” she says, dusting the ash off her skin. “Besides, my mom raised me to be a skank, so that’s what I am.”
“Delilah…,” I start, but she scowls at me, so I wrap my arm around her shoulders and pull her in for a hug as we round the corner.
Quinton and Tristan aren’t in the living room, but Dylan is sitting in the torn up recliner near the television. Music flows from the speakers—“Blue” by A Perfect Circle—and two lit joints are balanced on an ashtray on the coffee table. There are blankets hanging over the windows, blocking out the sunlight and reducing the circulation, and it makes the air misty and fortified with smoke.
“Shit, what’d I miss?” Dylan asks. He takes in the closeness of Delilah and me, and his eyes shadow over. He has his boots kicked up on the table and a newspaper piled with green flakes on his lap. “And why was I not back there watching it?”
Delilah picks up a cup on a nearby table and chucks it at Dylan’s head. “Don’t be such a pervert. If you want a show, watch some porn.”