He held on to the doorframe as he rounded the corner into his room, head down, hair falling into his eyes. He stopped in the entryway, looked at me, looked at the window behind me, and rested the side of his head against the wall.

“I came to check on you,” I said, looking at his desk drawer, making sure I had left everything the way I found it.

“I meant to call. I wanted to call. My mom said you were with him.” His voice cracked and he closed his eyes.

“I tried to help.” I bit my bottom lip hard. Decker looked like crap. I wanted to take him in my arms and rock him back and forth like Mom did for me and shush him and tell him everything was going to be okay. I wanted to, but I didn’t. Kind of like how Decker said he wanted to call me, but didn’t. Besides, someone had probably already comforted him. I looked out the window, and when I looked back at him, he was watching me.

“I was at Kevin’s,” he said. “All night. We all were.” I thought he was trying to say he wasn’t alone with Tara, but the only thing that registered was the “we all” part. They were all together, mourning. Everyone except me. He was with his other friends—our friends—where I hadn’t been invited.

“Not my business.”

“Yes it is,” he said, walking toward the window. Toward me. “I need to tell you something.”

There wasn’t much more I could take hearing. But really, could it get any worse?

“So the thing is, I’m kind of a mess about Carson.”

I gave him my no shit look, mixed with you’re not the only one.

He got it. “Yeah, but look at me now. Now imagine me before. With you.” He stared out the window again, in the direction of the lake.

He was holding his breath beside me, and I remembered the Decker who sobbed over my bed, fingernails missing, face hollow. “I thought you were dead.”

I was.

“And I lost it. I slept at the hospital. Actually, I didn’t sleep at all. I couldn’t eat. I just waited. And I made all kinds of bargains with God. Anyone but you. Anyone at all.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “Everyone but you.”

Something clicked. “You think this—Carson—is your fault?”

He lifted his shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “I don’t know. But it’s a trade. And I know it makes me all sorts of horrible, but I’d make it again.”

I tried to figure out what he was saying, and I shifted uncomfortably. “That’s probably a thought you should keep in your head.”

He grinned, but it wasn’t a happy one. “I know, I told you I’m horrible, but I want to be honest with you. And that’s the way I feel.” He felt guilty, but he shouldn’t have. I was the only one there with Carson. I was right there, and even I couldn’t save him.

Or maybe Decker was trying to explain how he felt about me. Except I was fairly certain I hadn’t hallucinated the red car in his driveway.

“How do you feel about Tara?” I asked.

“Yeah, that.”

Something twisted in the pit of my stomach, and my instinct was telling me to run. Leave. Cover my ears. Maybe recite the Declaration of Independence in my head. Because I didn’t really want to hear it. Decker sighed. “My parents couldn’t get me to come home from the hospital. I just sat there for six days. I missed that week of school, too, you know. Even your parents tried to send me away. I think I was upsetting them. Truth is, I kept crying. Really embarrassing. So Tara shows up one day . . .”

My mouth must’ve dropped open because he smirked. “She’s not such a terrible person, see?” I raised an eyebrow at him. He stopped smiling.

“Anyway, she shows up to see you, and there can only be a few people in the room at a time, so the nurses kick me out. Then Tara comes back out and takes one look at me and says she’s getting me out of there. And I said no, I didn’t want to go. But the nurses said they had to bathe you and the doctors were coming on rounds, so I left.

“But we didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. I just sat there, crying, because I felt like if I left you, you’d die. And she’s Tara, so, you know, she climbs across the seat and hugs me and I kissed her. I thought of you and I kissed her. I have no idea why. That’s where I was when you woke up. Can you believe it? The one time I left. . . . I should’ve been there when you woke up. I should’ve been there. I shouldn’t have left.”

He left me for her. He left me for her at the hospital. He left me for her at the party. And last night, instead of coming to me, he left me for her again.