I touched my mouth to his because I wanted to. I kissed him, and this time I didn’t run away.
Patrick smells like fall leaves, the orange-brown ones that blow around your feet when you walk and swing into your face smelling of sunshine and earth. His skin is cool and pale, and I’ve traced his back, mapping the play of muscles under skin. I’ve felt his mouth against mine. I’ve felt his hands on my skin. There is a scar on his stomach, round and white, tucked up against the side of one rib. It is smooth to the touch.
I know all these things, and now they will not leave me.
I lay there afterward, eyes closed, feeling his mouth ghost across mine, and felt . . . I don’t know. I just know I felt okay.
I felt okay, and that wasn’t how I was supposed to feel. I got up, tucked my body back into my clothes, and shook my head so my hair slid over and around my face, covering me. It’s long now, almost to my shoulders. It hasn’t been cut since before Julia died.
Patrick was dressed when I finally looked over at him, his head emerging from his T-shirt and a red fl ush along his cheekbones. He saw me looking and the 229
red deepened, blossomed across his face. I opened my mouth, then closed it. He did the same.
I left his room, shut his door behind me. I didn’t look back, not once, but I walked home feeling strange, like I’d somehow lost part of myself, like somehow part of me was still with him.
Was this how it was for Julia with Kevin? Did it feel like this? Did she see him when she closed her eyes? Did she see him even when he wasn’t there? How could she stand it? Why would she want it?
I wish she was here. I wish. I wish. I wish.
I wish I didn’t hate her so much for leaving me.
230
150 days
J—
I thought some stuff about you the other day, but I didn’t mean it. I should have said so sooner, but it’s just—
after everything that happened with Patrick two days ago, I haven’t been . . .
I wasn’t myself then.
I wasn’t.
Look, I know sex was a big deal to you, that you liked being with someone you thought you’d connected with, but I don’t want that. I don’t want a connection. It’s a stupid word.
What does it mean, really? Connection.
Nothing. That’s what it means, and I didn’t connect with him. What happened didn’t mean anything. It didn’t, it doesn’t, and I don’t—I don’t want to be thinking about 231
it. About him. I don’t want to wonder what he’s thinking, what he’s doing, if he’s thinking of me—
God! Look what you’ve done to me. Look what you’ve made me into. I don’t know why you—
We were both in your car. We both had our seat belts on. What was so different for you? That you were driving? You always drove. Why was that night so different?
Why did you have to leave me?
Patrick was right, J. I hate myself.
But I hate you too.
232
152 days
J,
I meant what I said the other day. I hate you. I wish I didn’t, but I do.
And knowing that—Julia, knowing that makes everything so much worse. I hate you for
You wouldn’t blame me.
I miss you all the time; how you’d henna your hair because it was a Tuesday, the way you’d laugh and say,
“A, you mope,” when I said something stupid, how you somehow always knew when I needed a bag of salt- and-233
vinegar potato chips from the vending machine to get me through the last few periods of school, but the past couple of days I’ve missed you so much it’s felt like missing you is all I am.
Like if someone looked inside me, there wouldn’t be a skeleton and muscles and blood and nerves. There’d just be memories of you and all the things I’ve tried to say and ripped out of this notebook, all the things I want to say but can’t because I don’t have the words. You don’t know how bad that makes me feel. How can you? I can’t even begin to say.
I don’t know what to do about Patrick. It’s been four days, J. I haven’t spoken to him since that afternoon. He hasn’t spoken to me either. I should be happy about that.
