A whole lot.
There were, like, twenty pages of this very fine small handwriting, like she’d become somehow suddenly obsessed with me and just scribbled like mad.
It began three months ago, around the time I followed her to that funeral. She’d broken up with me the week before that.
I didn’t understand why she got so suddenly interested—I mean reinterested.
It really surprised me that she had all these incredible feelings about me, these sudden incredible feelings.
She blamed herself for my never having seen her, for never opening up to me and letting me get to know her. I always pushed him away, I was so mean to him, I was so terrible, I never told him my feelings, why didn’t I tell him, I made him feel like he was nothing, what happened to him was because of me, he did it because of me, it was my fault, I did it to him, I can’t forgive myself, I can’t forgive myself, I loved him but I wouldn’t let myself feel it, I wasn’t allowed to feel it. . . .
It went on and on. I must say she blamed her mom quite a lot.
I was glad to learn she really loved me.
But that wasn’t the important thing.
There was something else.
There was a thing I’d done that had changed my life completely and had affected her so deeply she’d decided to do it to herself.
It was something I’d forgotten. But now it came back to me, and I sat there for, like, twenty minutes staring at the ceiling, because I suddenly knew.
I knew exactly what had happened to me that had changed her, and even more suddenly I knew exactly the reason why I’d come into her house, the real reason. I knew it crystal clear as if I’d always known it my whole life.
I could remember everything, too—I mean everything—and to tell you the truth, I knew exactly what was going to happen unless I did something to make sure it didn’t happen.
And right then—at that exact second—I heard the door open downstairs and I knew it was her—it was Laura—and she’d cut school and come home early.
And if you want to know how I knew it, it’s because it was all written down and planned out in the diary.
But I somehow knew it anyway because I saw it all in my mind.
I heard her coming up the downstairs hallway.
I froze.
I stayed there and I stared at the windows across from me and I didn’t move a muscle, because I knew now that three months ago I’d had an accident, and I had died.
Chapter
Seventeen
I heard her walk up the hall and go in the kitchen. She put her book bag down on the table and sat on one of the stools.
I could feel her under me. I could see her sitting there. I could see her staring at the living room door.
After a few minutes she got up and walked back into the hall and turned onto the stairs.
I got up quickly.
I wondered whether she would be able to see me when she came into the room. I was uncertain about that, just as I was uncertain why I could see her as she walked through the house, because when I stopped trying to see her, I was just staring at the empty, quiet room.
Still, it wasn’t right to just stand there watching her.
I stepped over to where the curtains hung over the windows, beside a partition wall with corkboards on it where she’d pinned some notes and schoolwork stuff. I slipped behind a curtain, pulled it completely shut, and waited, standing very still.
She came up the stairs, but she didn’t come into her room.
She crossed the hall to her parents’ room and stood outside the door for five minutes.
Then she went in.
She went straight to her father’s bedside table, opened the drawer, picked up the gun, took the key from under the lip of the drawer, removed the trigger lock, and dropped it back into the drawer. She put the key back under the lip, closed the drawer, and stepped out into the hall with the gun in her hand.
She came up the hall, opened the door to her room, and entered.
I watched her through the veil of the curtain.
She had on her school uniform: a white shirt, blue necktie, plaid skirt, and saddle shoes. I’d seen her in it before. The girls at her school have to wear all that stuff. They’ve worn the same sort of uniform for sixty years. Laura hated it.
She shut the door silently and stepped to the center of the room. She gently put the gun on the bed.
She stood still for a moment, her figure just a hazy shadow in the middle of the darkened room, until she sat on the bed, picked up the gun, and pressed the barrel to her left breast, over her heart.
I said, Laura, stop.
She stopped.
At first she did nothing. She didn’t move. Her face was lowered and her hair had fallen around it.
I stepped out from behind the curtain.
I came forward a step, looking at her.
She raised her face.
Slowly.
She looked at me.
Through me.
I now knew just how good I was at hiding.
She couldn’t see me.
I didn’t even know if she could hear me.
You can’t do this, Laura, I said. Please. You can’t do this.
I was lying. I knew she could.
I saw her face. Her beautiful face covered in shadow: dark, fixed, decided.
Ready to die.
I didn’t know where to begin.
I prayed not to say something stupid.
I’d thought of great things to say to her—when I was behind the curtain I’d really thought of great, comforting things.
She had to listen.
But everything had just sort of vanished from my mind.
I thought nothing.
I said, I’m here with you, Laura. I didn’t mean to die.
It was stupid to say that.
I leaned closer.
I died. But I didn’t mean to. They think I meant to, but they’re wrong. It wasn’t your fault like you
