Our Chemical Hearts Page 58

The fishpond.

I sat bolt upright then, because I was such. A. Fucking. Idiot. “I know where she is,” I said out loud. Dead or alive, I knew she would be there.

There was no time, no reason to wake my parents—I shrugged on a jacket, snatched the keys off the dining room table, and sprinted out to the car. I drove into the city. Climbed the cast-iron fence. Sprained my goddamn ankle rolling off the hedge. Hobbled down to the abandoned train station. Picked the lock to get inside. Ran down the spiral staircase that twisted into the basement.

And there she was, in the dark, waist deep in the still water. Alive. Gloriously, miraculously alive. My insides melted away in relief until I was a shell spun from glass. My legs almost gave way beneath me.

“Grace!” I yelled as I half sprinted, half slid down the stairs. “Grace!”

Grace turned to face me. Although there was no light except from the moon, I could see trails of tears falling down her face. Her palms were resting flat against the surface of the water and she was breathing these short, sharp breaths that sent plumes of white in front of her lips. I slowed for a moment, sure that I was dreaming, because she looked like something out of a myth. There was a wreath of pale flowers woven into her hair, and she was dressed in white, all in white, like a wedding dress.

Here was Ophelia, in the flesh.

I ran into the water until I couldn’t run any more, then I waded out to where she was and took off my coat and draped it around her shoulders, because she was shaking.

“C’mon, we have to get you out of the water,” I said, but she didn’t move, wouldn’t move. Grace looked at me, tears in her eyes. And then the world imploded. It was like she split open, finally, and let the pain pour out. She was crying, bawling, these huge, violent sobs rolling over and over her, almost too much for her body to handle. She collapsed against me, her full weight in my arms, and I swear I could feel her grief radiating outward. I breathed it in with each breath until the pressure of it leaked out of her.

“Why’d he have to die, Henry?” she said over and over again through her sobs. “Why’d he have to die? Why couldn’t it have been me?”

“I’m so sorry.” I crushed her against me and held her tight because I didn’t know what else to say or do. “I’m so, so sorry.”

And it went on and on like this until my teeth were chattering and I couldn’t really feel my legs.

Then, just like that, Grace stopped crying, as though she’d had a certain amount of tears in her inventory and they’d been exhausted. She pulled herself out of my arms and waded back toward the stairs without looking at me, my coat trailing in the water behind her. When she reached the first rung, she climbed and sat, shuddering, with her feet still in the icy water. I followed her, of course, because I’d have followed her anywhere. That night, if she’d walked the other way, into the cold depths of the basement, I’d have followed her there too.

I sat next to her, cross-legged, and tried not to show how cold I was, because I wanted to be with her, just us, alone, before I had to take her back. I leaned over and fished my phone out of my coat’s breast pocket and called Martin. He answered after one ring.

“Please, God, tell me she’s alive,” he said.

“I found her. She’s fine. I’m bringing her home.”

“Oh, thank God, thank God, thank God. Bring her back to us.”

“I will. We’ll see you soon. She’s fine. She’s safe. Can you please let my parents know she’s safe and I’m okay and I’ll be home soon?”

“Yes, of course. Thank you. Thank you so much.”

I hung up.

“Everyone was pretty worried about you,” I said quietly.

“You know I was on suicide watch the first month after he died? Everyone assumed I’d try and off myself once he was gone. Like, I couldn’t even mourn in peace without people banging on the bathroom door to make sure I hadn’t slit my wrists. Dom would never think that of me. Dom was the only one who knew me.”

I couldn’t look at her. A few hours ago, I’d been sure Grace was dead. That she’d killed herself. I was one of them. The people who didn’t know her soul. Not like him.

“I wasn’t depressed. I’m still not depressed. I’m fucking angry.

“I want to tell you about him,” she said through softly chattering teeth.

“Grace . . . you don’t have to.” I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say. Please don’t. Dear God, please don’t tell me about him. Haven’t you broken me enough?

“I know. But I’ve been unfair to you. You deserve to know the truth.”

“The truth?”

“I met him when I was nine years old. God, there are so many things from your childhood that melt away into a haze, but the day I met him . . . It was early fall, so it was cool, but everything was still green. My dad was already dead and my mom hadn’t been home for three days and there was no food left in the house. I called my uncle and he picked me up but he wasn’t much better with kids than his sister, so he dumped me with this woman he worked with. Mary. I remember on the car ride over there that he told me she had a son around my age, but I hated boys. They were always mean to me at school, when I went. These weird, foreign creatures, you know?

“Anyway, when we got there, Dom was jumping on a trampoline in the backyard. I remember thinking that he was the most beautiful boy I’d ever seen, which was strange, because I’d never thought of boys that way before. I was this incredibly shy kid, but he wasn’t. He jumped straight off the trampoline when he saw me and asked me to come and play Mario Kart with him. I’d never played before—I’d never even seen a gaming console before—so he had to teach me, but he was super patient and he let me win. It was one of the best days of my childhood. We played video games and then, once the sun had set, we held hands while we watched cartoons on a laptop in his tree house. I loved him. I loved his family. I hadn’t known, before them, that people like that even existed. I’d decided, by the end of the night, that I was going to marry him.”

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