“You’re against me! Both of you—you’re against me.”
“Don’t you wonder why she doesn’t want to see you?”
“That’s not it,” I said. “That’s not it at all.” But I wasn’t sure you could hear me over your crying.
“Don’t you wonder why she hates you?”
“They’ll be here soon,” Jack said. “It’s for the best.”
I was glad he sounded so confident. Because I was starting to wonder whether we’d done the right thing.
“I’ll kill myself. I swear, I’ll kill myself,” you threatened.
“We’re not going to leave you alone,” I said.
“Don’t you feel guilty about what you’ve done?”
But then I did leave. I had to leave. Because I couldn’t find your phone. I didn’t know how to reach your mother. So I ran. I ran to your house. I pounded on the door. And when your mother answered, I told her that she had to come with me now. She didn’t understand. I made her.
“Because you should feel guilty. You might as well have tied the straitjacket yourself.”
We got there. Your mother screamed. It looked like Jack was doing something wrong. He’d tackled you. He was pinning you down. You were biting at him, screaming at him to get off.
But when you saw your mother, you stopped fighting. You stopped living. You gave up on all of us.
Someone was grabbing me. Katie.
“Evan, stop it. Please, stop it.”
And then I realized—I’d been screaming. The same scream. Your scream. That loud, inarticulate howl at the unfairness of the world.
It had stopped Dana. Stopped Jack.
Dana, who had been there. Dana, your avenger.
I remembered your last words to me.
“So it’s all come full circle.”
I didn’t know what you meant.
Only that, in your head, it made sense.
My response had been, “I love you so much.”
But the circle had already closed.
“I don’t understand,” I said.
“You destroyed her,” Dana said. “You’re the reason they took her away.”
That was undeniable. But the question was whether it had been necessary.
It had been necessary.
I had to believe it had been necessary.
Betrayal or rescue?
Harm or help?
I was living in the space between the options. The uncertainty.
I looked at Dana. Which Ariel had she known? Which me did she think she knew?
They packed you away. They told us we couldn’t see you. They said you had to forget.
They wouldn’t tell us where you were.
“Have you seen her?” I whispered.
I could see: Dana wanted to lie. She wanted desperately to give me a convincing yes. But instead she shook her head.
Now it was Jack next to me. Jack putting his hand on my shoulder. Jack saying, “I’m sorry, Evan. I’m so sorry.”
Sorry. Sad. Mad. Sorry. Every day it’s this cycle. Every hour it’s this cycle. Sometimes every minute.
Don’t you understand, Ariel? I knew the right answer, but I didn’t feel it. I knew we were supposed to stop you, but I didn’t feel it. Because it wasn’t what you wanted. You wanted to die, and I wouldn’t let you. The only thing I wouldn’t let you do. And it felt selfish. Ridiculously selfish.
Why couldn’t you have felt like this? I had wanted to fall right into the earth, but now I was grabbing hold of the nearest person who cared. I was holding tight. I was finding strength in that.
And Jack. Jack held on, too. Jack was sorry, too.
Dana was starting to throw her things back in her bag.
“You’ll always have Ariel on your conscience,” she said. “Anything I did was just to make you feel her there. My birthday present. You have no idea how much I think about her. I can’t go a minute without thinking about her. And what you did to her. If it weren’t for you, she’d still be here now. She was drifting away from you. She was drifting toward me. I know that. And I know she wouldn’t have wanted you to get away with it.”
“No,” Katie said. She reached down and took back the photograph of Ariel. “You can’t speak for her any longer. Nobody can. That’s her job.”
“Give that back to me,” Dana demanded.
“You have to answer a simple question first.”
“What?”
“Did you want her dead? That’s the choice. Alive or dead.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Oh, yes it is. Dead is dead. For whatever reason. And in a choice between life and death, there is no other choice. It’s life or death, period. These guys chose life. Are you saying you’d have chosen death?”
“I’m telling you, it’s not that simple. You’re ignoring what she wanted.”
“She wanted help. Not death.”
You were always changing your mind. I wanted you to have the opportunity to change your mind.
“She didn’t want help. She wanted freedom.”
But death is not freedom. For a moment, it can look like freedom. But then it’s death.
Anything.
Something.
Nothing.
I moved forward. It almost felt like you were with me now.
“We did the right thing,” I told Dana. I needed to say it out loud. “We knew her. Yes, she wanted freedom from her pain. But she didn’t want to die. There’s a difference.”
Now I saw you nodding. All the moments you were happy. All the things you wouldn’t have wanted to lose.
Maybe Dana loved you for your pain.
I loved you for everything.
“What do you know?” Dana asked.
I shook my head.
“I know you can’t hurt us anymore. I know it doesn’t matter what you think. At least now I have more photos of her. Thank you for that. We don’t need you to remind us of what happened, or when her birthday is. We remember just fine.”
It was then that I felt you there. Not in the way you’d been that day—pleading, yelling, angry, full of doubt. But in the other way. The person I’d loved. I could feel you watching us, taking the snapshot of what we’d become. Four people in the woods, arguing over you. Clutching on to our versions. Yelling uncertainties. And I laughed, seeing it. Because I knew you would’ve laughed.
“What’s so funny?” Jack asked.
“Look at us,” I said. “Just look at us.”
He didn’t start laughing. Neither did Katie or Dana. But that was okay. It was fine if I was the only one who understood it.
23
After Dana was gone, Katie told us she knew where you were.
She’d written. You hadn’t written back. But your parents had told her that you’d gotten the letters. That you’d read them. That you were doing better—some days more than others.
We all decided to write. I don’t know what Katie said, or Jack. And I know it will be up to the doctors whether to share the letters or not. We talked to your parents about it. I had honestly been afraid that they would forbid us from doing it. I thought they blamed us. But it was pretty clear that they blamed themselves. It hadn’t even occurred to them to blame us.
Dana still has her version. She will still hate us. But there isn’t anything we can do about that.
I still have the photos, though. Even though they are as unreliable as memories. Even though I will only know my story behind them, not yours.
At least, not until you tell me yourself.
24
Every You, Every Me
I miss you.
Every You, Every Me
I love you.
Every You, Every Me
I will never know every you.
Every You, Every Me
I hope you’re okay.
I used to think I would never see you again.
But now I think I will.
Every You, Every Me
I’m glad you’re alive.
I’m glad I’m alive, too.
Every You, Every Me
I’m not sorry.