would just let us—”
“No, I mean, I’m sorry for you. It sucks that you have to do all this. It must be really hard.”
She started to cry. Like, really cry. She just stood there, face in her hands, her whole body shaking.
“This is never what I wanted for you,” she said after a while, the words muffl ed by her fi ngers. I wanted to hug her, but I was afraid to. What do I know about comfort, about making things better? I only know how to make them worse.
244
T W E N T Y - T W O
158 DAYS, and I saw Laurie this afternoon.
For once, I’d actually been looking forward to seeing her. I figured if anyone would be willing to point out how horrible I am for what I’ve been thinking about J, it’s her.
“I’m mad at Julia,” I said as soon as I walked in, and waited for the pen clicking to start.
When it didn’t, I sat down and added, “I’m mad at her for dying. I’m mad at her for listening to me that night.
I . . . sometimes I hate her.”
Laurie nodded. That was it. She
I stared at her. She stared back at me.
“Did you hear me?” I said. “My best friend died because of me, and sometimes I hate her.”
245
“Why do you hate her? For dying? Or because she listened to you?”
“Both!” I said, almost shouting. “I made sure she saw her boyfriend cheating on her. Made sure she saw it, and didn’t just hear about it. Then I told her we should go because she . . . she didn’t tell him to go to hell like I thought she finally would. She didn’t . . . she was so sad, and I did that. I broke her heart.”
“Amy—”
“There’s more,” I said. “You know it. I know it. I told her to get in the car. I told her to drive. She did all that, she listened to me, and I hate her for that.
She died and I hate her for that too. What’s wrong with me?”
Laurie sighed. “Did Julia always do what people told her to?”
“You didn’t listen to anything I said about her at all, did you? She always did her own thing. But that—” I broke off and glared at Laurie, because I knew what she was doing and I was sick of it, sick of her. “I know what you’re going to say, I know what you’re thinking, but it doesn’t—it doesn’t mean what you think it does. Julia didn’t choose to die.” My voice was shaking. My whole body was shaking.
246
“No, she didn’t. But she chose to get into her car and drive, just like you chose to drink.”
“That’s it?” I said, and I was yelling now, full of fury and something else, something I didn’t want to think about. “Just like that, just that simple, you say she chose to get into the car and I’m supposed to . . . what? Forget what I did? Say ‘I see it now, I do, and yay! Laurie’s made everything’s okay!’ and move on?”
“If you can see your choices, why can’t you see hers?”
“Because it’s not that simple. Because you can’t—you can’t make everything all right,” I said, and stood up. I walked out of her offi ce, and I slammed the door behind me so hard it shook. I wished it would crack in half. I wished Laurie’s office would crumble around her.
To my surprise, she came right out after me.
“No one ever said what happened was simple,” she said, her voice firm. She motioned for me to come back inside.
“Why?” I said. “So you can tell me more about choices?”
“Because you’re right,” she said. “I can’t make everything okay for you.”
I hadn’t expected that, so I went back in and sat down.
247
She followed me, and as soon as she was in her chair, she picked up her pen. I knew it was coming at some point, but now? I glared at her and started to stand up again, but then stopped, frozen. Frozen because I knew what I’d felt right before I left. I was angry, so angry, but I also wanted—I wanted to believe her too. But like she said, she couldn’t make everything okay.
“You know what?” I said, staring at that stupid pen and hating myself for wanting to believe her. For wanting to think I didn’t kill Julia. “Here’s something new for you. I had sex with someone. Why don’t you tell me how I should feel about that?”
Laurie just looked at me.
“Go on,” I said, my voice rising again, and she said,
“How do you want to feel about it?”
“I don’t feel anything,” I said, but my voice cracked a little. “It was just—it was the first time I did it when I wasn’t drunk and it was . . . it was different. That’s all.”
