Chapter Nine
I woke up Saturday morning knowing that something was horribly wrong.
Twelve missed calls and six voicemails, spanning from midnight to about three this morning. All from JJ. Each message was more worrisome than the last.
It's me. Call me back.
I miss you. We haven't talked in a while.
I need you, Max. Where are you?
Max. Call me.
Things are so bad, Max. So bad.
Need you. Need you. Can't do it anymore. Tired.
My heartrate climbed exponentially higher with every new message. I dialed her number with shaking fingers after the last one and prayed, for the first time in a long time, that she would answer.
She didn't.
"We have to find her."
Fang watched me pace in his room from his bed, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion. "Where would she be?"
"I have no idea but I just have this terrible feeling that something happened to her, and she won't pick up the phone and she called me and I didn't answer and—"
"Whoa, Max, calm down." He hopped off his bed and put his hands on my shoulders, halting me in my tracks.
"Don't," I hissed, jerking away from him, my skin tingling like a live wire. It was one thing when he was touching me just to comfort, but this made my stomach turn inside out.
"Sorry." He took a step back and actually did look sorry, rubbing the back of his head with one hand and blushing a little in what I took as shame. "Was wrong of me. Won't happen again."
He was back to talking in fragments, so I guess last night didn't mean that much. From what I could remember, he was certainly very wordy.
"Please, Fang. If you care about me at all, you'll help me with this."
He leaned against his bed and looked at me in that calm, regarding way he had that drove me up a wall and nodded. "Fine."
We searched for hours, well into Saturday night. We checked all of JJ's normal spots- all of the burnout houses, her grandmother's place, her house (where she never went), even a few motels where she had been known to frequent. But nothing; nobody had seen her. In reality, I knew when I got the voicemails. I mean, I didn't know, but I had a feeling. My stomach turned sour and my heart clenched and a voice in the back of my head tried to tell me. I knew. I knew as much as I could know without being told.
It was about noon on Sunday when I got the call.
I was sitting across the table from Fang, eating a lunch of vegetable soup and crackers. Angel and her mother were out grocery shopping during the brief lapse in snow. As soon as my phone rang, I pounced on it without even looking at the caller ID.
I answered the phone and only had to listen to the person on the other line for thirty seconds before my blood turned to ice in my veins and the bottom of my stomach dropped out. I wished fervently that I had never agreed to be her emergency contact.
"What's wrong?" Fang said, eyes searching my face. I think he knew too.
I swallowed, hard, and hung up the phone, refusing to meet Fang's eyes. I covered my face with my hands and forced the words out from between my fingers. Fang reached across the table, his thumb brushing against my elbow.
"JJ is dead."
It was an overdose.
I didn't know why I was surprised. I always knew it would be the drugs.
JJ and I had been friends for years. Since before my car accident and her mother's remarriage to the abusive dickhead she had to call a step-father. We met in kindergarten. We braided each other's hair at sleepovers and baked chocolate chip cookies in each other's kitchen for years, before life smacked us with a heaping dose of reality and shot us up with a syringe of fuck-you.
We tried cocaine together for the first time in our junior year of high school. We were in a dirty bathroom, snorting lines off a mirror so we had to look our innocence in the eye while we destroyed it. I decided it wasn't for me and stuck with weed.
JJ lost her damn mind.
When the mighty fall, they fall hard. She started stealing and lying and doing anything to get her hands on anything. Cocaine was how it started, but she made the transition from uppers to downers pretty fast. She was already too high-strung most of the time, and that stuff made it worse usually. She always said prescription pain-meds was where it was at. Vicodin was her main vice after the first few months, and it was easy to get her hands on it because her grandmother had bottles of it laying around everywhere. She found better, more efficient ways of destroying herself and I let her because if she was fucked up then she would stay with me and not realize how much better than all of this she was.
And now, here we were.
She was being lowered into the ground in a coffin at eighteen years old.
(It should be you.)
I felt, in that moment, standing in a graveyard with only a handful of people around me, that everything I touched turned to fucking dust, to ashes, to nothing. JJ's mom sobbed, leaning into her husband, and it took all I had not to start screaming when she met my eyes across the hole they were burying her daughter in.
The black dress I borrowed from Mrs. Fremont fluttered around my legs as the frigid wind whipped over us and I shivered, turning to look over my shoulder at the grey headstones behind me.
"I feel like ghosts are watching me," I muttered, rubbing the back of my neck. Fang looked at me out of the corner of his eye and stepped closer, putting his arm around my trembling shoulders. The shadows receded from my peripheral vision, scared of his heat.
(They know it too.)
(They want to pull you into the soft, wet ground with them.)
(It's where you belong.)
I knew I was crying in that detached way that people in shock know their hand has just been severed from their arm. The body's response to pain was preprogrammed. It was the same reason that when you get punched in the nose, your eyes water. It was just what was supposed to happen. My brain knew that I should be sad, so it made me cry. It just didn't give my heart the message. I knew I should be sad or angry or anything but I was just numb.
She loved me and she was ruined.
(Did it hurt?)
(Are things easier now?)
(Was it an accident?)
Could it still be considered an accident if you were racing, full-speed ahead, towards the thing that wanted to kill you?
I destroyed people. It was what I did; it was part of my nature, unknown to me before now. It was hardwired into my system. I couldn't change it and I couldn't fix the destruction it caused once it was set in motion. I could only attempt to save the people I cared about by staying the hell away from them.
I looked up at Fang, and the voice in the back of my head said, very clearly:
You will ruin him.
"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me," Fang muttered, setting his jaw, a muscle fluttering in his temple.
"What?" I asked, turning my head to look in the direction he was scowling. The parking lot was mostly empty now, all of the mourners gone to carry on with their lives. Fang's truck was only one of two in the parking lot. The other was a silver Honda civic.
With a taped over back window.
I closed my eyes.
"The fuck you doin' here, man?" Fang asked, his voice loud and angry in my ear. He pushed me behind him, like he was preparing to physically defend me. I covered my face with both of my hands and hated myself for being so weak.
(You deserved it.)
Dead weight over my whole body.
(You're bad.)
Silver moonlight. Hardwood floor pressed against my spine.
(You couldn't stop it.)
Vomit in sink, clothes on. Kill him. No, don't, they'd find out. Can't have any more blood on your hands; that would be bad.
"I don't really think that's any of your business," Sam's voice replied. I held my breath and stared down at my feet, encased in dirty white high-tops that JJ had left in my car once, a billion years ago. It felt right to wear them today.
Lace your sneakers.
Someone just ripped my lungs out of my body.
"I think you just made it my business."
I peeked out from between my fingers; Sam was approaching us. He met my eyes and grinned, showing too many of his teeth. I shuddered and steeled myself, making my face a mask of hatred and hoping to god he couldn't tell that I was trembling under my coat.
Just get out, just leave, just go.
"Back off," Fang said, taking a step towards him. His long fingers were balled into fists, his knuckles turning white. I took a half a step back, my back hitting the cold metal of Fang's passenger side door.
"Fang, let's just leave," I said. The wind was angry and cold and smelled like snow. I wanted to be literally anywhere but here.
Run. Get away.
"What, is he your little boyfriend now Maxie?" Sam's face twisted into a feral scowl. "You let him touch you like I did? You let him do things to that pretty little mouth like I—"
There was the sickening sound of skin hitting skin, and then Sam was sprawled over asphalt, both hands holding his face, and there was blood on Fang's knuckles and a scream locked in my throat.
"What the fuck?" Sam yelled, muffled and thick through his probably broken nose.
"Did you just punch him in the face?" I asked, disbelief in my voice. My skin was crawling, Sam's words echoing in my ears on a never-ending nightmare loop. I wanted to vomit, but I wouldn't give the bastard the satisfaction of seeing me like that.
"Well, I would have punched him in his common sense, but he didn't have any." Fang's tone was dark and dangerous, and it sent a chill down my spine. He shook his hand, stretching his fingers gingerly, grimacing. "Get in the truck. We're leaving." His fingertips grazed my elbow, skin barely touching skin, and it was such a stark contrast to the violence he just showed Sam that a lump formed in my throat.
I followed his instructions, the bad feeling settling under my skin.
That night, a knife from the kitchen somehow managed to slide up my sleeve when nobody was looking.
That night, after everyone had gone to bed, my feet carried me to the bathroom.
That night, my fingers turned the knobs of the bathtub on, hot water gushing.
That night, my hand pulled the knife out of my sleeve, blade glinting.
That night, steam stuck to my eyelashes and blurred my vision.
That night, the knife dragged itself across the smudged, faded handwriting, turning Breathe into blood.
The bathroom door opened.
I looked up from where I was hunched over the sink, dripping red onto the porcelain. The fingers of my other hand were wrapped around my weeping wrist, trying to stop the bleeding. My heart was in my throat, pounding so hard I was afraid it was going to explode. I couldn't breathe or think or do anything past the panic at the sight of all that red.
Fang watched the red seeping across the counter top, pooling around the drain. He blinked once, then met my eyes in the mirror.
"What the fuck?" he whispered.
"I'm not going to say I'm sorry." Except I was.
He moved towards me slowly, like I was an animal that would spook. He wrapped his hand around mine, adding pressure to the wound. "What the fuck," he said again, his voice right in my ear. My whole body felt cold. The sound of the taps snapped off, and the room was silent except for our breathing, wild and whistling—like cornered animals.
"I'm just so tired." I gasped, the sound harsh and wet in my own ears. My throat tasted like rust. "And everything hurts."
(NeverGoingToEndNeverGoingToEndNeverGoingToEnd.)
My face was wet. I closed my eyes as his other hand came up to smooth over my cheek, wiping away the tears. His fingers wrapped around the back of my neck and pulled me to him. My bleeding wrist and his bloodied fingers, still wrapped around the wound, rested on the bathroom counter. I let my forehead settle just below his collarbone. The world was tilting and turning fuzzy and grey and the fact that I didn't have to support the weight of my own head anymore was a huge relief.
"You didn't have to do this."
(You did.)
(It's the only way.)
My breath shuddered in my chest.
"I was afraid." My voice is barely audible over the rushing noise in my ears.
"Afraid of what?"
"Of feeling nothing." I choked back a sob. "Of feeling everything. Of being afraid forever."
His fingers dug into the space between my shoulder blades as he clung to me. The fingers around my wrist were trembling. My whole body felt frozen with fear. I held my breath until he sighed and stepped back, releasing my wrist. Another river of red gushed out, and I had to look away when my knees turned to rubber. The pain was surprising in that I couldn't feel it.
"Sit down," Fang said, then turned towards the medicine cabinet.
I did as he said, lowering myself gratefully onto the closed toilet seat. Fang pulled a first aid kit out, then clicked the cabinet shut. He set it on the counter, avoiding the small pools of blood. I cradled my wrist in my other hand, clamping my knees shut around it, and watched the muscles in his back move as he dug around in the kit, pulling out gauze and a small bottle of hydrogen peroxide. My eyes were unfocused and my lips felt numb. The top of my head was too hot and the rest of me too cold.
He froze suddenly, planting his hands on the counter and letting his head droop. His shoulder were heaving. "Were you trying to die?" he asked, voice wavering.
I sat quietly, watching him for several moments before saying, "I don't know."
It was the truest thing I knew.
Fang swallowed, nodded, and turned towards me with a handful of gauze. "Okay."
He patched me up with gentle fingers, steady in their motions. The bleeding eventually stopped, but I felt like I was going to fall over. My head was woozy and my legs were unsteady and I felt sick to my stomach. He finished wrapping the gauze around my arm, thick and tight, and taped it down, then held my hand in his until I met his gaze.
"Don't do it again. Please." His voice was neutral, but his eyes were begging. I nodded and looked back down at my hand cradled in his, my hair falling in front of my eyes as they blurred with tears. "Come on," he said gently. He helped me stand on shaking legs, his arm around my back and his hands cradling my elbows.
"I don't want to be alone," I whispered. He didn't say anything, just led me down the hall to his own bedroom. My heart was too tired to beat any faster at the idea of being in his bed with him, in the dark, alone. All I knew was that he was safe, and he was warm, and he was right here next to me and willing to protect me and I hadn't had that in years.
I didn't know what to do with that feeling.
He didn't turn on the lights when he opened his bedroom door. He just helped me get into the bed, holding the blankets up for me to snuggle down under, and then following me. I laid facing him; it was a full sized bed, big enough that we weren't squished up against each other.
It was quiet for a few moments, the sounds of our breathing echoing each other. My eyes adjusted to the dark eventually and I could make out the line of his cheekbone, the curve of his shoulder, the black smudge of his eyelashes, longer than they should be allowed to be. I swallowed and said, "He's never going to leave me alone." The confession sat between us in the dark, growing bigger the longer the silence stretched on. There was fear sitting in the middle of my chest, carved into the fabric of my bones.
(It's true.)
(You know it is.)
"Can I touch you?" he asked in a whisper. I wiggled closer in response, moving so that our heads shared a pillow. My bandaged left arm was pressed between us, but the pressure made it stop throbbing so I didn't mind. I lifted my head so he could put his arm under it, and his other went around my waist. My forehead rested under his chin, and our breathing synced. He smelled clean and familiar, and his bed was soft, and the blankets were warm. I felt my muscles relax, finally.
My heart slowed, my eyes closed, and I felt safe for the first time in weeks.
