Yes. No. I didn’t, but I wanted to. I needed to. I clung to the doctor’s words. I saved him. I saved him.

I squeezed Dr. Logan’s hands back. “I need to see him.”

Dr. Logan paused and pulled his hands back. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.” He stood and looked around the room for nothing in particular. “Let’s go talk to your mother.”

I remained seated and leaned forward. “Is he still at the hospital?” I had to see him. I had to talk to him. I had to show Troy what I’d done. There was always a chance.

“No, he’s been moved. I shouldn’t have said anything, Delaney. I’m not at liberty to discuss this further.”

I clenched my fist and brought it down on his desk. A picture frame toppled over backward, and two freckle-faced children smiled up at me. “Moved where?”

Dr. Logan desperately shuffled papers, reeling in the life preserver, but I had already caught hold. It was all I had. “He’s in a long-term care facility, Delaney. He still had the stroke. Even if we’d known he was going to have one, we couldn’t have stopped it. But he’s alive because of you.”

I sunk backward. “Is he conscious?”

“Look, I already broke doctor-patient confidentiality.” Which was his way of saying no.

“Will he recover?”

“I’m not the one to ask. I didn’t think you’d recover, and look at you now.” He smiled, but I didn’t. “There’s always hope, Delaney.”

It was all so pointless. I hadn’t saved that boy. He lived, yes, but I hadn’t saved him. He was a vegetable. Like I was supposed to be. Frozen. I had trapped him in hell. The line Dr. Logan threw me wasn’t a life preserver. It was an anchor. And I was sinking fast.

In the waiting room, Dr. Logan spoke to Mom. “The help she needs”—he handed her a business card—“is not from me.”

Pills. Hands tied to the bed. Trapped. Like the last time I was underwater, all I could think was, No, no, no, no, no.

Chapter 16

Mom looked even smaller when we got back home. She stood in the entrance of the immaculate kitchen with her hands on her hips. She nodded to herself, took out a dishrag and disinfectant, and started scrubbing. She scrubbed vigorously, fist clenching the towel, other hand gripping the end of the counter. And then she shifted over and scrubbed the spot where her hand had left an imaginary print.

“I’m going to see Decker,” I said. She didn’t stop scrubbing.

His car was in the driveway, but nobody answered the door. I huddled against the door frame and glanced around. Then I jogged to the side of the house and brushed the snow off the base of the tallest evergreen. I dug out the gray-and-black speckled rock and pried the spare key from the hard-packed dirt.

I let myself in the house and called, “Decker?” His name echoed back from the hardwood floors and bare walls. His room was the same as mine, up the stairs, second door on the left. I knocked but got no answer. His door creaked as I pushed it open. I stuck my face in and said, “Decker?”

Nothing. I swung the door wide open until it banged against the blue wall, another echo shattering the quiet of an empty house. He wasn’t here. The curtains were open. His bed was made. Decker didn’t make his bed. So unless he got up before his mom left for work (which was highly unlikely), Decker hadn’t been home all night.

I walked to his desk and looked at the papers on top. His grades, all Bs, probably his best semester yet. He hadn’t told me. His new class schedule. I wondered if mine had arrived. I didn’t even care. I slid the top drawer open, where he used to keep memorabilia, like old concert stubs and newspaper clippings from his races. It was all still there. And sitting on top of it all was my picture. Not just a picture of me. My picture. The one of me and Decker that I kept above my desk.

He’d taken it from me, which might have been sweet except he stuck it in his drawer full of the past. He didn’t keep it out. I was hidden away with the things he could look through to remember fun things he used to do. I stuffed it in the back pocket of my jeans, then thought better of it and slid it back into his drawer of memories.

A sleek red car pulled into his driveway. The passenger door opened, and Decker came spilling out with the pulsating music. And then Tara Spano sped away in her godawful, desperate-for-attention car. I thought of leaving his room, but there was really no good place for him to find me. So I just stood there, next to the window, and listened to him fidget with the lock on the front door, chuck his boots across the floor, and trudge up the steps.