I never even had one nightmare until after my memory returned. Once the vision of what had happened was back in my head, it wouldn’t be ignored. It came at me with a vengeance, night after night, like it was making up for lost time. I would wake up sweating and shaking in a state of remembered terror, and I couldn’t tell anyone why.
So I wrote. I spit every detail out of my head and onto paper so that the memory wouldn’t have any hold over me. I felt like a criminal. Like I was perpetrating some crime by not telling, and every night I was waiting for the nightmares to call me on it, to turn me in. So I took away their leverage. I confessed myself. Every night into the notebooks. The words were the sacrifice I offered up daily in exchange for dreamless sleep. They have never failed me.
It’s the second night this week that Josh and I are headed to the Leightons’ for dinner. We spent Thanksgiving here, also. I think we both would have been happy to have stayed at his house and ordered pizza and worked in the garage like the antisocialites that we are, but you don’t say no to Mrs. Leighton. It wasn’t a request. It was a requirement. And it was nothing like Sunday dinner. It was grandparents and cousins and aunts and uncles and strays like Josh and I. We hid in Drew’s room for the most part, because Josh hates hugging ambushes as much as I do, and these people were huggers. All of them.
When we got to the table, with the china and the centerpiece and the napkin swans, I took a picture with my phone and sent it to my mom so she would know I wasn’t alone. I don’t know if it made her feel better. Seeing a table covered with food and surrounded by somebody else’s family might not have been the type of comfort I was trying to send.
We didn’t have school at all this week, so aside from Thanksgiving, we’ve had the past nine days to do nothing but build. The weather’s been beautiful and the humidity is low, so I’ve been in the driveway finishing. We’ve finally found something I’m better at than Josh, and he doesn’t care, because the only thing he likes less than sanding, is finishing.
Other than Drew’s house, we haven’t gone anywhere except the grocery store and the hardware store. We work on furniture most of the day, come in at three o’clock for Josh’s GH fix, cook dinner, build some more, go running and sleep. It’s been a perfect week. I hate that it’s already Sunday.
“Dad’s turn for music tonight.” Mrs. Leighton has a tray full of twice-baked potatoes balancing on one hand and a water pitcher in the other.
“Isn’t it Drew’s turn?” Sarah asks, putting the last of the silverware on the table.
“Nice try. Drew’s got next week. It’s mine.” Mr. Leighton laughs maniacally to taunt her and I smile because it reminds me of something my dad would do. He opens a cabinet full of CDs and scans through them before pulling one out and turning on the stereo.
It takes me three notes to recognize the Haydn sonata he’s put on. It’s the one I know by heart. The one I practiced a thousand times to play for my audition that day at school. The one that became the theme song for my murder, instead. That’s what we’re listening to over Sunday dinner. The soundtrack to my death.
I haven’t heard it since that day, since the last time I played it before I left my house that afternoon, since I heard myself humming it while I walked to school. I don’t hear it now. I also don’t do anything hopelessly dramatic like drop dishes or freak out and run from the room. I stop breathing instead.
I’m walking and humming and practicing every note in my head. I’m not nervous because it’s just a recording and if I mess up I can re-do it as many times as I want until I’m happy. Nick Kerrigan is recording it for me in the music lab and he likes me and he’ll stay as long as I need. He told me. I like him too so that works for me. I’m checking out my hands because I want them to look good and I don’t want my nails chipped and then there’s a boy in front of me. He smiles but he looks wrong. Wrong in his eyes. But I smile and say hi and walk past him. And then his hand is on my arm so tight that it hurts and I turn but I can’t say anything because he hits me in the face and then I’m face down on the ground and he’s dragging me somewhere. Then I’m not on the ground anymore because he yanks me up by my hair. He says it’s my fault. He calls me a Russian whore and tells me to stand up but I don’t know why because he just knocks me down again. There’s blood and dirt in my mouth and I don’t remember how to scream anymore. I don’t even remember how to breathe. I wonder if I’m Russian but I don’t think so and I don’t know why this boy hates me. He’s pulled my hair so hard so many times that it’s ripped part of my scalp off and the blood runs into one of my eyes and I can’t see out of it anymore. He must be tired of picking me up because he just leaves me on the ground and starts kicking me instead. I don’t know how many times in my stomach and my chest. A couple of times between my legs. I think I hear my ribs cracking. I don’t know how long he kicks me. Maybe forever. I don’t feel any of it anymore. Nothing even hurts. I can still see out of my left eye. On the ground, I can’t tell how far away, is one of my pearl buttons. The sun is hitting it and it looks like it’s changing colors and it’s so beautiful and I want to hold it. If I can reach it everything will be ok. I think he’s still kicking and my hand reaches out for it but I can’t get there. Everything stops except his breathing. I see his boots next to my hand. Then I can’t see anything anymore because everything is black and I can’t feel my body. The last thing I hear is the sound of the bones in my hand being crushed and then there isn’t anything anymore.
“Nastya?”
“Nastya?”
I don’t know that name.
When I open my eyes, I can see again. I’m on Drew Leighton’s white brocade sofa and there’s no blood anywhere and nothing hurts except my soul. I can see the coffee table Josh Bennett made. I can see Josh Bennett, sitting on the floor next to the couch, holding my hand and staring at me. I can see all of the questions he isn’t asking. Everyone here looks scared, even Sarah, and I wonder if I look scared, too. Because I have no idea what just happened.
Mrs. Leighton makes me drink water, even though I try to refuse, because I’m freaked out, not dehydrated. Apparently I stopped breathing long enough that I passed out and she wants to call my aunt. I shake my head and look at Josh, imploring him with every please I can force into my eyes. He says he’ll take me home and I hope he’s talking about his home because that’s where I want to be, even if I don’t like the look on his face. The look people give you when they’re afraid that one wrong word will cause you to break. But if I didn’t break before, I’m sure as hell not doing it on the white brocade sofa at Drew Leighton’s house.
I have remembered what happened to me every day for nearly two years. I’ve seen it in nightmares. I’ve written it in notebooks every night for hundreds of days. But I have never relived it until now. I know that I’m safe here. But I know what dirt and blood taste like, too.
I’m sleeping at Josh’s again, because somewhere along the line, that became the norm. The more time I spend here, the more I hate being at Margot’s by myself. I make sure she always knows where I am, and even if she doesn’t like it, I think she understands, or maybe I just need to believe that she does. I feel more at home at Josh’s than anywhere else in the world, and right now, I need a home.
I have to hide in the bathroom to write my three and a half pages, even though tonight I feel like I already did. I write them anyway and then slip the composition book into my backpack, behind my trig book, like it’s homework.
“Don’t,” I say, when I climb into bed in the dark, because even in pitch black silence, I can see and hear and feel the question all around me.
“You have to tell me sometime,” he says softly as if someone in the house might hear us.
“But I don’t have to tell you tonight,” I whisper back.
He takes my left hand like he knows it holds all my secrets and he thinks maybe he can learn them just by holding it.
“You were awake, but it was like you weren’t even there.” He pulls me against him and kisses the scar on my forehead, keeping his arm wrapped tightly around me, pulling my head onto his chest and pressing my body to his. “It scared the hell out of me and you won’t tell me why it happened.”
I have to tell him something, so I tell him what I know is true.
“Sometimes I just forget how to breathe.”
CHAPTER 39
Josh
“Damn, your girlfriend can bake.” Drew shoves yet another cookie in his mouth. He’s eating them as fast as Sunshine can pull them out of the oven.
“Not my girlfriend,” I say, because, according to her, she’s not, and that’s fine because I hate the term anyway. Saying girlfriend, somehow puts us in an official relationship, and if she is an official part of my life, she will probably officially be gone very soon. So if she doesn’t want to be called my girlfriend, I’m fine with that.
“Fine,” Drew counters, “your wife.” He walks up to her and pulls a cookie off the tray, burning his fingers in the process. “No wonder you always smell like brown sugar and,” he stops, picking up a bottle off of the counter and reading the label, “pure vanilla extract.”
He’s right. She does smell like brown sugar and vanilla, but I thought I was the only one who noticed.
He flips the cap open on the bottle and inhales it. “Seriously, they should sell this as perfume.” Sunshine is just staring at him with a slightly disgusted look on her face.
“You smell me?”
“You don’t have to make it sound so creepy. It’s not like I sneak into your room and watch you sleep.” He walks over and slaps me on the back. “Josh does that.”
Sunshine throws an oven mitt at him and he pretends to be wounded. “Watch it woman. Since you’re not taken, I can throw you down on the floor and make love to you right now.”
She gags loudly and Drew looks mock offended. “The idea of ha**ng s*x with me is that distasteful?”
“No, the idea of ha**ng s*x with you is, as always, the pinnacle of dreams. It’s the make love part that’s repulsive. I hate that expression. I could be sixty years old, and I’d still rather say f**k, than make love. Ichth,” she shudders.
“Good,” he says, confidence restored. “Then since you’re not taken, I can throw you down on the floor and f**k you right now.”
“Do me a favor,” I say. “Either screw each other and get it over with or quit acting like you’re going to.” I turn the TV off because I can’t hear it anyway and toss the remote on the couch. I sound like a jealous bastard. I am a jealous bastard. Just because I know there’s nothing going on between them, doesn’t mean it doesn’t piss me off.
“Are those our only two options?” Drew asks. “Because I know which one I’m going with.”
Sunshine shoves another cookie in Drew’s mouth and tells him to quit while he’s ahead.
“You know I’ve gained like ten pounds since I met you. How do you eat all this shit and not get fat?” he asks, wiping crumbs off of his hands.
“I run,” she says. “A lot.”
Drew looks repulsed. “Well I’m not doing that.”
“Don’t worry,” she smiles. “You have enough testosterone to keep your metabolism going for a while.”
“True story,” he says cockily.
“Speaking of true stories and testosterone, is anyone ever going to tell me what the deal is with Tierney Lowell?” Sunshine asks.
Drew stiffens. “No.”
She arches one eyebrow at him and he groans exaggeratedly like a kid who just had his video games taken away.