“Not funny.” But I smile anyway because she’s here, lying on my bed, eyes still puffy from her crying jag, but other than that looking healthy as can be.
Puffy eyes is a vast improvement over bone-white and bloody and dead.
“Do you tell him absolutely everything?” she asks. “Like, did you tell him about the time you pooped in the bathtub and it floated and you called it a boat?”
“I was three!”
“But did you tell him?”
“No.”
“What about the time you barfed all over Allen’s lap on the bus on the class trip to the zoo? Did you tell him that?”
“Those are disgusting and ridiculous examples. Is there a particular reason you’re choosing to be as gross as possible?”
“I guess I just feel like it.”
“Well, unfeel.”
“Unfeel? Is that a word?” She laughs at the look I shoot her and says, “Okay. Answer this. Did you tell him all about the nightmares and the panic attacks?” Her voice gentles. “Did you tell him about your mom? Or about how worried you’ve been about your dad and his drinking?”
I take in a breath, ready to answer, and then I stop. Carly knows all that. Some, because she lived through it with me. Some, because she knows me so well I don’t need to tell her. The stuff about Dad’s drinking, because I confided in her. In the beginning, she even helped me count the bottles on the counter and the ones in the fridge.
But Jackson doesn’t know—at least, not everything. Parts of it we’ve talked about. And parts of it, like the anxiety stuff, I think he pretty much figured out. But some of it, I just didn’t talk about because . . . I just didn’t. “Not all of it, no.”
“Why not?” Carly asks. “Shouldn’t you tell him everything?”
“I . . .”
“Double standard much? He’s supposed to bare all for you”—she pauses and looks at me and grins—“which I’d like to be present for if it’s all the same to you. Anyway, he’s supposed to bare his soul for you, but you get to keep secrets?”
“They’re not secrets. It’s just, I can’t tell him everything. I don’t always think about explaining stuff like that. It’s just part of . . . I don’t know . . . part of me. And other stuff, I guess I don’t think he really needs to know. Or maybe I don’t think he’d want to know.”
“And you don’t think maybe it’s the same for him?”
“No, it isn’t the same. The stuff he doesn’t tell me is different. It’s important. It’s—” About the game.
And I can’t tell Carly that.
So I’m doing exactly what Jackson does. Keeping secrets. Or, at least, avoiding certain topics. Because sometimes that’s just the way it is.
I sigh, thinking about our argument and about Jackson, the way he was there for me, the way he came to me when I needed him, when Carly needed him, instead of going after the girl with the green eyes.
“I made it all about me,” I say, covering my face with my hands. “I knew he had a rough evening, too, and I just focused on my stuff.”
Rough doesn’t begin to describe it. On top of everything we all went through on that mission, Jackson had to deal with being responsible for all our lives and facing down a shell wearing his dead sister’s face.
I could have cut him some slack.
I could have started the argument another day.
I just didn’t think. No wonder he said he wanted some time to himself. Why did I do that?
“What’s wrong with me?” I ask.
Carly rolls facedown and slides off the bed headfirst so she ends up half-on, half-off, supporting her torso on her straight arms, her face above mine.
“Nothing’s wrong with you. Actually, you’re the least wrong that you’ve been in two years. Couples argue sometimes. No biggie.” She slides the rest of the way off the bed, so we’re lying side by side. “It’s not like he broke up with you. I mean, he didn’t, did he?”
“No.”
She rolls on her side and stares at me. “Do you love him?”
I study the ceiling, trying to decide how to answer. Do I want to say it out loud? I’ve told Jackson that I love him, but that was under duress while he was dying in a deserted building in Detroit after he took a Drau hit meant for me. And I qualified that declaration by telling him I didn’t forgive him, that he had to live so he could beg forgiveness. On the romance scale, that’d have to score a negative ten.
And maybe I’ve said it once or twice since then in a joking way—I can’t even remember if I have or not. But I haven’t actually said it said it. Maybe I’m afraid to love him. Or maybe I’m just afraid to admit it out loud.
Bad things seem to happen to people I love.
I haven’t told anyone else how I feel about him. Not even Carly.
“It’s okay,” she says. “You don’t have to answer. Not out loud. But you have to answer it in your own head. In your heart.” She pauses, then says in a slow, sonorous tone, dragging out each word, forcing a huffing exhalation into each vowel, “Love . . . means never . . . having . . . to say . . . you’re sorry.”
“Did you seriously just say that to me?” I surge up and grab a pillow off my bed and whack her with it. She grabs another and whacks me. “Did you really just tell me that love means never having to say you’re sorry?”
She’s laughing so hard, she’s gasping for air as her pillow smacks me upside the head. I get her on the arm. She gets me flat across the back.
In the end, we’re both gasping and snorting as we let the pillows drop.
“I love you,” she says. “There, I said it.”
Everyone leaves.
She almost left me tonight, almost died. I never would have had these moments with her, never would have had the chance to tell her. Just like I’ll never again have the chance to tell Mom. But I have the memories of a thousand times I did tell her, and the thousand times she told me. Those memories matter. “I love you, too, Carly,” I say.
She puckers up and makes kissy-face noises. “I really do forgive you for killing my fish,” she says.
“I really do forgive you for bringing that up yet again,” I say.
She shrugs. “You deserve it.”
“You plan to milk it for eternity.”
“Pretty much.”
“Okay.”
She grabs me and hugs me, and I hug her back, holding tighter than I probably should, the memory of her lying on the floor covered in blood too fresh, too raw.
There’s a tapping at my door. “Miki? Carly?”
We both flop on the bed. “Come on in, Dad.”
He looks at the pillows on the floor, then at us. If I look anywhere near as bad as Carly, whose hair is standing out in all directions from static electricity, then Dad’ll have no trouble figuring out what we’ve been doing.
“I’m heading out to get milk,” Dad says. “Do you want a ride home, Carly?”
“Yeah, thanks, Mr. Jones. My mom’s not speaking to me. Again. So calling her for a ride probably isn’t my best plan.”
“Right. Okay.” Dad holds up his index finger, punctuating each word. “Ready to go when you are.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I STAND AT MY BEDROOM WINDOW AND WATCH THE EXPLORER pull out of the drive. Carly opens the window and hangs her arm out to wave wildly. I wave back, feeling like the whole night was surreal, but it isn’t until the car disappears around the corner that I slump against the wall.
It’s like Carly took all my energy with her when she left.
Between the Drau, and Carly almost dying, and the fight with Jackson, there just isn’t much left of me. I should take a hot shower or flop in front of the TV and watch a show or maybe just crawl into bed and sleep for a week.