Blurred

I didn’t look back as I let my legs carry me out of the cafeteria as fast as they could without running.

“Cash, wait!” Emma called out from behind me.

I stopped and exhaled, listening to her footsteps echo down the empty hall. She touched my shoulder and I spun around.

“What?”

She pulled her hand back, looking hurt. “You’ve been out of the hospital a week. You don’t answer my calls or texts. You don’t answer the door when I come over. Are you going to be mad at me forever?”

I looked her over, this girl who was as close to me as anyone was ever going to get. I wanted to stay mad at her. I didn’t want to hug and make up yet. I didn’t want to say everything was fine, because it wasn’t. I wasn’t sure if it ever would be again. “I don’t know. Are you going to keep screwing the corpse?”

Emma took a wide step back and her breath caught in her throat. Most of the time that sound, that little intake of air, was as close as she’d let herself get to crying in public. That little sound was all I needed to hear to know that I’d hurt her.

“H-he’s not a corpse. He’s a-a—”

Shit. Without thinking I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into me, pressing her face into my chest.

Breathing in the warm, familiar scent of her hair. Her bag fell off her shoulder into the floor. She felt stiff, but didn’t pull away. I didn’t want to miss her. I just wanted to be pissed off and say mean things that I didn’t really mean. Couldn’t she give me that? After all of this, wasn’t I allowed to be mad?

When Emma relaxed into my hold, I squeezed her tighter against me and sighed. As much as I hated it, this was so much easier than staying mad.

“I’m sorry,” I said into her hair. “I’m just pissed, Em. I don’t want any of this. You might have chosen it, but I didn’t.”

Emma wiped her eyes on my favorite Blink if you want me T-shirt and pulled away. “You think I chose all this?”

“Yeah. I think you did. You chose to love a dead guy, didn’t you?”

She glared at me. “You can’t help who you love, just like you apparently can’t help being a jerk.”

I stared at my reflection in her watery blue eyes. Let my gaze trace the same path that my brush would’ve on a canvas. The soft curve of her cheek, the smooth white column of her neck. She was wrong. You could choose. I could’ve loved this girl if I’d let myself. Anybody who got as close to

Emma as I had would know it’s harder not to love her than to just give in. But I always knew she could do better than me. Better than somebody who was even more broken inside than her. Instead, she found him. A freaking corpse. She gave her heart to someone who didn’t even have one.

“What?” She looked like she wanted to crawl out from under the way I was looking at her.

“Nothing,” I said. “Look, I have somewhere I need to be.”

I messed with the strap of my backpack so I wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes when I lied to her.

I may have lied to a lot of people in my life, but Em was never one of them. It made me feel like shit having to do it now.

“So this is it?” she asked. “You’re just going to throw away our friendship over something I can’t control?”

I rolled my eyes, hating every second of this. I didn’t want to fight with her. I just wanted to get away from her, the way she was looking at me, like I was some broken thing she needed to fix.

“I don’t know,” I finally said. “Maybe I just need some space to deal with this. Besides, you’ve got

Finn now. It’s not like you need me hanging around all the time anymore.”

Her eyes narrowed as if she couldn’t quite believe what I was saying. “Are you pissed at me because you think this is my fault, or because I’m with Finn?”

I didn’t even flinch. I just said it. “Both.”

Emma shook her head and took a few more steps back, palms raised. “You…you’re unbelievable.

You of all people I thought would be happy for me.”

“Happy for you?” I narrowed my gaze on her and closed the space between us. “I’ll be happy when you wake the hell up. You’re not supposed to be with him, Em!”

“Then who am I supposed to be with?” Emma shouted.

Me. We stared each other down, chests heaving, and everything in me was screaming to say it. I couldn’t. I didn’t want to say it, because saying it meant acknowledging I’d pissed away something that could have been everything. I didn’t want to say it because I felt like someone was putting my heart in a vise grip and I didn’t know why. Was I jealous? Did I want her? Or did I just want my best friend back? There were too many lines blurring for me here. Finally I grabbed control of the emotions ripping me apart inside and exhaled.

“Not him,” I whispered. “Just…not him.”

Emma pressed her lips together, wrapping her arms around her chest, and started to back away from me.

“Em, wait…”

“No, you don’t get to say sorry,” she said. “And if you’re more interested in being pissed at me than finding a way out of all of this, then be my guest. I’m done.”

She grabbed her bag from the floor and dug out a Tupperware container. Her fingers shook as she shoved it into my hands and backed away.

“You look like you haven’t been eating,” she whispered. “Just…you need to eat something.”

I stood still as stone, watching her disappear through the swinging metal cafeteria doors. I probably could have stopped her if I wanted. It wouldn’t have taken much with Emma. She was too good. Too forgiving and kind and…well, she was all of the things that I wasn’t. I glanced down at the container in my hands filled with some kind of homemade granola bars. The note attached to the top said, “Don’t worry, there’s chocolate in them, too!” I stared at Em’s trademark smiley face that she’d been leaving on her notes to me since the sixth grade, and my heart thudded almost painfully in my chest.

I…was an asshole.

Damn it! Why did I have to run my mouth like that and make her cry?

I shoved the container in my bag, hiked it up over my shoulder, and shut my eyes against the fluorescent school lights. Against the regret swirling around in my head. When I opened them again, I spun around and slammed my fist into the set of blue lockers that lined the wall. I expected pain to explode in my hand, but…it didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. Blood began to trickle down my split knuckles and I turned my hand over to inspect it. What the hell? Finally, I gave up trying to figure it out. I wiped the blood on my jeans and headed for the only place I could think of to find some kind of answers.

I hadn’t been in a library since like ninth grade when I got detention for drawing big-boobed cartoon women in the backs of the entire R.L. Stine Goosebumps collection.

Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Chapter 4

Anaya

“I know you’re there.” Finn tied the laces on his tennis shoes, and a half grin carved a dimple into his cheek. “No use in hiding.”

He stood up as I stepped into sight, allowing him to see me. I hesitated a moment, not really knowing what to think of this new Finn. Gone were the plain jeans and gray T-shirt I’d seen him wear for at least the last ten years. Now he wore a pair of black running shorts and a sleeveless blue shirt.

He looked ridiculously human. Placing my hands on my hips, I surveyed the sparse living room that

Finn now called home. There weren’t any pictures hanging from the walls like I’d seen in most humans’