“Why do you hate me?” I ask after a moment. I don’t know why I want to know. Maybe I’m taking advantage of the opportunity to finally talk to her. “Why do you act like you hate me, I mean?”

She looks at me, holding my eyes, but when her mouth opens, nothing comes out. Her lids fall, her gaze drops, and I can see the tears pool again.

But she blinks them away, clearing her throat. “You don’t have to come back to school.”

She changes the subject, and I let her. “I know.”

“But I’ll miss you,” she adds, and her voice is as small as a needle, and seeps right into my skin just as easily.

I’m dying for air. She’s fixated on me, right? Because she has nothing else? That’s all this is, right? She couldn’t control me anymore, because I’d started to react. She’s starved for attention, and if that means going to bed with me, she’ll do it. That’s what she’s doing, right?

You weren’t supposed to leave.

“No one has left you, Clay,” I tell her. “Your brother was taken. He didn’t make a choice.”

She’s not alone.

“And your parents…” I go on. “They may be going through stuff, but they’re there. They love you.”

Demand their attention like you do mine. Why not?

“Did you feel like your mom loved you?” she asks. “Do you remember her?”

I stuff a bite of pizza into my mouth, hating how she’s so savvy at deflecting. “I remember her. And no, I don’t think she loved her kids.”

My mom had mental problems her whole life, but my dad was gifted in helping her handle it. After he was gone, she just couldn’t hold on.

“You don’t miss her?” she presses.

“No.”

She raises her eyebrows, a challenging look in her eyes that says I’m a liar.

“I wish she was different,” I clarify. “But I don’t want her back the way she was. No mother is better than a bad mother.”

Guilt curls its way through me. Maybe that was harsh. My mother’s problems weren’t her fault. I know that, it’s just hard to truly believe it. It’s hard to feel that neglecting us wasn’t something she had control of. Everywhere else in life, we’re taught our behavior is one-hundred percent up to us.

“‘If I could go back and do it again, I’m not sure I would’ve had any kids,’” I recite to Clay. “That’s what she said in her letter.”

I toss the pizza back into the box and dust off my hands before hugging my knees to my chest.

“It sounds awful now, but at the time it didn’t really hurt.” I look at her. “Everything was shit all the time anyway, I didn’t expect more. My brothers were in trouble, causing my father stress during his illness like they didn’t have a brain in their heads, but I was actually a lot happier than I am now. Behind my closed door, with my music and my books and my room, it was a perfect world. I didn’t have to deal with anyone. They just let me be.”

“Life is small when you’re a kid.” She stares at her pizza. “We get attached to what we can control and resist what we can’t.”

“Yeah.” Exactly. I’m kind of surprised she put it into words so easily.

My little room was my domain, and I sought refuge there. From my father’s failing health, my mother’s…failing health, how no one in my house understood me, and the money we always seemed to need and never had. I shut myself away from it, resisting everything I couldn’t control, just like my mother with her dark bedroom and the movies she watched all day taking her to any world but her own.

Macon won’t let me do that anymore. He doesn’t let me hide, because he doesn’t want any of us to end up like her. In our heads too much.

Unfortunately for him, it’s too late. Our mother had already taught me how to leave.

I run my hands up and down my face, so confused about what I’m doing, what I want, and what’s right. What am I searching for?

“I don’t want to be like her,” I whisper.

“I don’t think she wanted to be like her either.”

I close my eyes. I know. I know children weren’t her problem. Her husband dying wasn’t her problem. Her problems were always there.

And she hated it as much as we did.

Maybe killing herself was mercy for our family. To not put us through more. To not give my brother another mouth to feed.

Or maybe she did what she’d wanted to do all along. She left.

I want to leave. But I don’t want to leave them behind. I want the people who love me to miss me when I’m gone.

“I don’t hate you.” Her murmur is barely audible.

I look up, listening.

“I think about you all the time,” she almost mouths.

I swallow the lump in my throat.

She holds the pizza, all of her hair loose and spilling over her shoulder, and she’s so still, her gaze fixed on the food in her hands. “Was there ever anything you liked about me?”

The tips of my fingers hum, and I can’t help my eyes trailing over her mouth. She was warm when I kissed her. Like how good coffee tastes on a rainy morning.

I’d like to pull her into the bathroom and into my arms, and kiss her in the shower. I’d like to see her smile.

Her eyes meet mine, her fingers move, and I stop breathing, wanting to hold her hand.

I inch closer, she rises to her knees and leans over, her hand snaking inside my thigh and her mouth coming in.

But then the door bursts open and someone sing-songs, “Hey!”

Clay rears back, looking away as Krisjen and Amy saunter into the room, and I ball my fists, slamming my back into the wall.

Goddammit.

“You’re alive!” Amy giggles, carrying containers of food Coach probably got for us, not thinking we’d order room service. “That’s a relief.” Then she looks around, frowning. “Only one broken lamp? Y’all are disappointing.”

“I thought you guys were gone all night,” Clay questions.

I hold back my smile at the annoyance in her voice. Just get them out of here, Clay. Please.

But the door falls shut, and Amy and Krisjen set down their stuff and take off their shoes. “We weren’t going to leave you alone,” Amy tells her.

Her eyes dart to me and then back to Clay, and I tense at what she’s leaving unsaid. We weren’t going to leave you alone with her, she meant.

Krisjen presses something icy to my arm, and I look, seeing her hand me a soda. “Thanks for coming to the game, by the way.”

“Yeah, fat lotta good it did us,” Amy grumbles.

Krisjen rolls her eyes, throwing her friend a look, and I yank the can out of her hand, giving her a tight smile as thanks.

Yeah, like they would’ve won without me anyway. And definitely not without Clay and me.

“I’ll take you home in the morning, okay?” Krisjen says.

I nod.

“Jaeger, you take that bed.” Amy points to the one on the left. “We’ll take the other one.”

I raise my eyes and my chin, glaring at her. The three of them. In one bed. So the lesbian doesn’t molest one of them in their sleep, right? Jesus Christ.

“Amy!” Krisjen barks. “What, did you suck down some bitch juice before we walked in? Shut up.”