I've been preparing for this moment ever since I opened my eyes in the hospital, waking up to blinding lights and wondering why I wasn't in some better place. It was one of the first thoughts I had, and its inevitability hurtled towards me as I recovered day by day. I found myself constantly wondering how she was doing, nobody had told me much, and everyone was too focused on my recovery to give me any details of what had happened that night. I think they thought it would upset me so they've all kept quiet. I wonder whether I had changed things for her, things had definitely changed for me. Now just over a month later I'm turning moms Accord down into Serenity Place because I know I need to talk to her, and that she probably wants to talk to me, if only for an explanation. I have to speak to Juliet.
The Accord drifts all the way down to number fifty nine before I drag it into the driveway. I'm not entirely sure I should even be driving, but I'm managing my crutches, and the doctors said that I'd suffered no permanent brain damage so that should mean I'm okay to drive, right. Once I shut off the engine I haul my crutches from the back seat and climb out, awkwardly slamming my body against the door to shut it, which ends up being more painful than I'd wanted. I'm not too beat up, most of my injuries were internal but that was sorted, I did manage to break three ribs and damage muscle in my back, so now I'm wearing this thing under my shirt that looks like one of those things people strap over their stomach to help them tone up as opposed to doing actual exercise, aside from that and the crutches I'm fine.
I pass the rooster shaped mailbox sitting at the side of the flowerbed, ease myself up to the front door and ring the doorbell, waiting impatiently for sounds on the other side as my heart jumps in my chest. I don't know why I'm so nervous, I know she's alive, I've been told that much. But maybe on some subconscious level I'm expecting to be greeted by a solemn family member who tells me that Juliet is no longer around, that she tried again on another day and finished what I stopped, or that I'll have no idea what to say to her when she does open the door. I let out a long sigh of relief when I hear shuffling on the other side of the door, a gentle clicking noise sounds and then the door opens slowly, hesitantly like a startled deer checking you out to sense if you're a threat, and all of a sudden there she is, Juliet.
She looks shocked. Her blue eyes are wide and she's blinking slowly, gripping hold of the door handle from the inside like she's not sure whether to slam it in my face. Her hair is down but it's tucked behind her ears and her lips are parted slightly. I notice once again how pretty she is, wondering how I could've ever not noticed. She's wearing a heavy dark grey cardigan over a lighter grey t shirt and jeans that hang loose on her thin legs. She tugs the cardigan sleeve over her free hand. She looks shocked, but she's here alive and in front of me, I think to myself, letting relief sink in. I realise she isn't going to make the first move and that I'm going to have to.
"Hey," I say over a bout of nervous laughter, smiling awkwardly as she studies me from the doorway. She doesn't quite know how to respond, I can see it. It's like I'm watching moments flash by in her eyes. Watching her think of all the bad memories and the memories of me helping her on that last day merging together so she can't decide which ones feel stronger. It feels much better than that empty look in her eyes from before.
"Um…hi," she stammers quietly, like she's trying out her voice for the first time and wonders how it sounds. "So you're out of the hospital." Her face somehow falls flatter than it already was, like she's scolding herself for saying something so obvious.
"Yes, I am," I confirm, getting ready to go in with my opener. "And I was hoping we could talk." I try to put as little pressure on her as I can, keeping my voice gentle. After a long pause she gives me a faint nod.
"Do you need help coming in?" she asks, looking down at my crutches.
"No, I'll be fine," I assure her, swinging myself over the threshold once she steps aside to let me in. the hallway is lighter than I remember it, and the dead flowers in the vase on the table have been replaced, the new ones are bright yellow and wilting but they're not quite gone. I don't even look at the photo frame. Juliet leads me into the room with the old furniture and the paper mask, which I manage to catch a glimpse of as I sit down on one of the couches, my movements automatic. It takes me a second to remember that nobody but me knows I've been here before, and I try to look less familiar with the room. Juliet sits on the other couch, facing me.
"So how've you been?" I start, propping my crutches against the arm of the couch. I watch Juliet's hands fall into her lap, she tugs her sleeves over her hands again.
"Okay I guess," She answers, her voice holding no real sense of emotion. I wonder whether she's gotten better at all since the accident. "You?"
"It's been okay," I begin. "It's gotten better since I've been able to leave the house," I laugh like this is some kind of inside joke, like she must know what I mean. I don't even know what happened to her after the accident. Taking a breath, I ready myself for the conversation I came over here to have. "Now aren't you going to ask me the question that I know you want to?"
Her face goes blank, she's taken aback by my being upfront, batting her lashes over her wide eyes as she tries to think of something to say. But then she changes. She slumps in her chair like she's trying to make herself invisible, and that dead, empty look returns to her eyes, almost as if somebody injected it into her. She leans forward, looking straight at me, hunched over and resting her hands on her knees. I barely even hear her when she chokes out "Why?"
"Because I didn't want it to end like that," I say, feeling all the sadness and guilt and frustration flood back into me as if it were February twelfth all over again. Ready to defend my choice to save her, to explain to her why she deserves to live. "You deserved a second chance."
"But I was ready!" she counters, her voice breaking like she's about to burst into tears, like I ruined her life by shoving her out of that road. My heart goes cold. How bad must things be for someone to decide that they're done so early in life, that there's no hope left for them and they're ready to go. But of course, I know. It makes me want to take it all away even though I know I can't.
"Nobody should have to be ready as young as us, we have our whole lives ahead of us, a whole lifetime for things to get better," I explain, feeling like I've had this conversation a million times, but I think now I would have this conversation a million more times if there was any chance of it getting through to her.
"You don't know that," She spits.
"But you don't know it won't," I argue. Juliet goes quiet for a second, pulling her eyes to the floor before lifting them back up to look at me.
"Yes, I do," She responds, so sure in the words she's saying. "You don't even know me. Maybe things get better for you but for me they don't, they only get worse."
"I know," I say softly, hoping that she can hear that I'm genuinely sorry about everything that they we put her through. "And I want to put a stop to that."
Juliet's face changes again, and this time she doesn't look startled or emotionless or even angry, she looks suspicious. And at first I feel slightly offended but then I think, I probably would be too if I was in her position, if the words coming out of someone's mouth differed so much from their actions. Me being a bitch to her is all she's ever known, she's probably just trying to protect herself.
"I know I've been a bitch," I start explaining. I want her to trust me, maybe then she'll listen. Which I realise sounds selfish but I really want to make sure she's okay, and if she keeps telling herself that there's no hope for her then she won't be. "And what we did was cruel and unfair but I'm sorry, really truly sorry and I want to make things right, or try to at least."
"Where has this come from, this sudden realization?" she asks, the flatness in her voice making her sound sarcastic. For all I know she could be being sarcastic, which again makes me feel mildly offended but I swallow my pride. While I know that it took me living the same day seven times over to see my mistakes and try to fix them, all she sees is a person who treated her awfully all her middle and high school life make a behavioural U-turn out of the blue, I should try to understand that.
"It kind of hit me," I answer. Or I hit it, over and over again.
"Look, I want you help you, I want you to feel better," I continue, racking my brains for any way I can get her to trust me. She's still staring at me like she doesn't believe a word I'm saying. "I'll get everyone to lay off at school," I say, hoping that might make a difference. I have no idea whether I could actually do it, maybe people won't argue with me because I'm injured, I don't know. It would definitely be worth a shot though. Juliet looks up at me and flashes me a sad smile, shifting in her seat. This makes me feel strangely hopeful, a sad smile has got to be better than no smile at all. I also notice she's not fighting me as much as she did before, she's actually listening to me. Maybe me saving her made her see something she couldn't before.
"Thanks," she says quietly, and I can already tell from the miserable tone in her voice that there is a but coming here. "I would appreciate that but it won't make things better. You can't just undo what's already been done," and I realise that she's right, getting people to stop making fun of her at school in the last few months of senior year won't undo all the horrible things that had happened to her before. A few months of peace won't undo the damage left by years of torture, how could I have thought it would? She also seems angrier now, like that time when I locked her in the bathroom during one of my repeats of February twelfth. She's leaning against the arm rest now, pushing against it to make me aware of her space rather than shrinking into the couch, her other hand balled into a fist in her lap. Her eyes have spark too, like that hopeful flicker when you try to use a dying lighter, a flame that's there but barely.
Something in the air changes, and Juliet must see that I have gotten her message because just like that lighter with not enough fluid the spark in her eyes goes out. She falls back into her seat, eying me the entire time as I watch her shrink away again. She looks away, smoothing her hand over her face as if it will calm her down. I hear a mangled sob from behind a curtain of pale blonde hair.
"And you can't," she chokes out, now looking at me again with shiny blue eyes, like she's about to break. "You can't fix what's already broken."
"You're not broken," I reply immediately, remembering a time where I once felt similar and a long conversation I had with Kent that made me feel so much better. Right now I wish I had his way with words to help me. "And some things don't need to be fixed, only changed."
"What do you mean?" her confused stare is boring right into me, her eyes like blue spotlights pinning me in place. She's so quiet, I think, and something starts to tell me in the back of my mind that this time might be different, that she might believe me. My shoulders heave as a huge sigh falls through my mouth, and I run my hand through my hair.
"I know some horrible things have happened to you and you're never going to be that happy girl in fourth grade again," I can feel the weight of my words in my chest, the determination, sadness and guilt that drives them coursing through me. "But you have a future, you can make sure that you never become that girl out on the road again either."
Juliet blinks at me, and I think, just for a fraction of a second that I might have actually gotten through to her. But then her eyes grow sad again, not just sad, tired. "And how do I do that?" she asks in a split tone that I don't quite know how to take. On the one hand she sounds almost sarcastic, like she's so sick and tired of everything and my words amuse her, but on the other hand she sounds so desperate, like she's been searching for answers for such a long time and I might just give them to her. "Because I can't see any way that's possible." I'm about to open my mouth to speak but she continues. "See, I told you that it was too late for me."
"It's never too late for anyone!" I argue again. A small part of me is beginning to grow frustrated with her. I want to shake her, to show her every good thing in the world, everything to live for. "You just need a little help, and I want to help you."
"You can't! Don't you see that," she spits, her voice breaking so it sounds in a twisted way like she's laughing.
"Tell me why," I demand, wondering if maybe I shouldn't have been so soft on her to start with.
"Why should I?" she argues, that glimmer of rage returning to her eyes.
"Because believe it or not, I'm trying to help you!" I fire back, hurt and anger spreads through my chest, frustration boiling in my blood because she can't see that I'm trying to help her, and she keeps refusing help when she clearly needs it. Another second passes and I calm myself, telling myself that it's because she still doesn't trust me and that she is under no obligation to even though I am trying to help her. I guess making up for your mistakes was never supposed to be easy. "I'm not the person I was before the accident anymore. I'm serious, I want to help you."
"Well do you see another way of it ending? Because I don't think I can take it anymore!" she exclaims, energy radiating from her, pressure ready to be released like Juliet is the soda bottle that someone shook before opening and I'm trying to twist off the lid. And In a way that's exactly what I'm doing, I want her to explode, to open up to me and tell me why she sees death as her only way out, what took all of her emotions away and left her with that blank look in her eyes like she feels nothing, I want to understand her so I can help her.
"Of course I do," I reply softly. I think she scoffs at me.
"Do you want to know what the saddest part is?" it's a rhetorical question, but I'm desperate for the answer. "I don't even care anymore," She says it like it's almost funny, her mouth twisted into this sarcastic smile. And I can only watch, listen as it's finally her turn to speak.
"Not about you, or Lindsay or any of the other assholes at school, I don't care about myself. I used to be angry, I used to dread coming to school every day and I hated it but at least I felt something, and now I can't even do that," The words burst out of her, expelled into the air surrounding me with all the force behind them, the rawness in her voice sitting in my chest and spreading painfully along with the knowledge that I'm partly responsible for making her this way. My bones ache with regret as I watch her eyes fill with tears as she talks. I would have felt better if she had walked over here and punched me in the face.
"I feel completely empty, nobody knows I exist and the few who do make sure that I suffer for it. I don't care what happens to me anymore and I barely have the energy to get through each day. I would just be better off d…"
"No, you wouldn't!" I snap before she can even end her sentence. "And you might feel numb now but that will change. School is over in a few months, you can go to college and start over where nobody knows all the nasty high school bullshit. You may not see an end to it but there is one."
More blinking, but this time I'm met with a dazed expression sitting in the puddles of Juliet's eyes rather than an emotionless void. She wipes up the few tears that spilled down her cheeks with her sleeves.
"What if I'm an unlikable freak wherever I go?" she splutters wistfully, staring down at her lap as her hair falls into her eyes.
"You're not," I assure her, my voice soft with pain for her. I hope that she can't hear the underlying guilt. "What happened to your reputation was our fault, there will be plenty of people who aren't bitches like us who will like you for who you really are."
Juliet gives a dejected sigh. "I'm not even sure I know who that is anymore."
"You'll find out again," I say. She gives me a very small smile.
A blanket of silence settles over us, soft like first snowfall, light like the sun streaming through a patch in heavy clouds. I feel like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders, freeing me so that I can finally breathe again. The same seems to happen to Juliet, because she sits up and tucks her hair back behind her ears, showing me her entire face. She still looks like she could start crying at any second, but she looks less blank, like her insides feel a little less hollow.
"So what happened the night of the accident, after I pushed you?" I ask, breaking the silence after remembering the other thing I came here to talk to her about. She shifts suddenly like I've made her jump, turning her head to face me away from the spot on the floor she was watching.
"Um, well everyone ran over, and somebody must have called an ambulance," She starts retelling, her face indicating that she isn't quite sure of herself, her memories of that night must be blurry. "They took us both to the hospital and Kent came with us, he wouldn't leave your side." This makes me beam but I shake it off, it's not the time to be grinning over my boyfriend, its time to listen to Juliet and find out what happened after the accident, the stuff no one's been telling me.
"You um," Juliet stammers, giving me the hard news look, the look your parents give you when they're about to tell you that grandma died. "You died a few times before we got there, but they managed to resuscitate you."
So I did die, but maybe some force decided that I got a second chance for seeing the error of my ways and helping other people. "What about you?" I ask.
"A few cuts and bruises, sprained wrist, not much," She explains. She then pulls on her sleeves and cringes before continuing. "But they kept me in the hospital when they realised that I wasn't in the road by accident."
"And then what?" I urge her. This is the part I really want to know, if she's getting any help. She seems hesitant to reveal the next part of the story, but continues tentatively.
"They've put me on pills, and I've got to see a therapist once a week," she reveals, looking instantly like she regrets the words ever leaving her mouth. I'm suddenly so happy. Thrilled to hear that she's going to be okay, that my actions managed to get her the help she needed. I flash her a wide smile, which makes her look slightly afraid.
"That's great," I beam. "Are the pills working?"
"A little," She replies, grimacing. "They're taking a while to kick in. Kent made school a little better, he started talking to me after the accident and has been helping me deal with everyone at school."
Once again I'm grinning like a maniac over my amazing boyfriend. Not only did he accompany me to the hospital and stay calm through me dying on him, but he made sure Juliet wasn't lonely at school, a girl he barely knew.
"He's an amazing guy," I sigh, and Juliet gives me this strange, knowing look. It makes me wonder exactly what she and Kent have been talking about at school while I've been in the hospital and on house arrest. Clearly Juliet starts thinking about school too, because she goes blank again. Her emotions seem like a switch, as soon as she allows herself to feel anything other than misery someone throws the switch and everything turns off again. It makes me sad to see that I'm losing her again, after all the progress we've made.
"I don't even know why I'm telling you this," she sighs, running her hands through her shimmering blonde hair. "How do I know you won't go running off and tell this to all of your friends?"
I look at her, seeing the regret in her eyes that she said anything but also the overwhelming force telling me that she's lost all sense of trust in people. "Because I won't," I swear to her.
"We kinda got in a fight anyway," I confess, hoping it will make Juliet feel a little more at ease. "Because they can't even deal with the idea of me and Kent being together."
"You and Kent, huh," She responds, eying me knowingly.
"Yeah," I grin, nodding my head like an embarrassed schoolgirl telling her best friends that she had her first kiss.
"You really must have changed," She states, with a tone in her voice that sounds almost like she's laughing. It does nothing to stop the grin on my face. "Rob was an asshole anyway." Juliet adds, and now I'm laughing. I wasn't expecting anything like that from her, I think I could definitely see myself liking her.
"I know," I exclaim, still laughing. And I think she almost laughs too but then then we hear the front door close. Both of our attentions turn in the direction of the open living room door, where a soft, feminine voice calling Juliet's name carries through.
"In here," Juliet responds to the voice, which I now realise belongs to her sister Marian.
"Is everything…oh," Marian stops as she leans against the doorframe in her team jacket with her hair pulled back into a tight ponytail. The faintest hint of chlorine drifts into the room as Marian studies the both of us with extreme scrutiny, her eyes bouncing from me to Juliet and back again. She clearly wasn't expecting anyone but Juliet to be home.
"Hi," I say awkwardly, hoping to relieve some of the tension.
"Sam Kingston," Marian says, watching me with suspicion in her eyes, her tone the same, and I would almost go so far as to say that she sounded displeased. Shouldn't she be happy, I did save her sister's life, but then again I was part of the reason she tried to end it in the first place.
"That's me," I reply, much more awkwardly this time. Marian gives me one lingering look before shifting her full attention onto Juliet.
"Are you guys okay?" she asks, much softer than she was with me.
"Yes, we're fine," Juliet answers her sister, flashing her a smile. "You can go now."
"Okay, talk to me later if you need to," Marian says finally before leaving, taking the chemical scent in the air with her. I turn back to Juliet, who sits smiling to herself, stopping when I catch her.
"We've been much closer after the accident," She explains, and by that I assume she means her sister, who I guess from that encounter has been rather protective of her.
"Me and my sister have too," I admit, thinking of all the great bonding time I've had with Izzy since waking up.
"It still feels like they're smothering me," Juliet confesses. "The few weeks after the accident everyone kept a constant eye on me in case I was still a risk."
"It means they care about you," I tell her, smiling as I think of my family at my bedside, who I will never take for granted again. "The accident made me appreciate my family so much more. So I don't mind if they fuss over me."
"But you're on crutches," Juliet counters me, giving the impression that she feels their attention unnecessary. "I just-"
"Need their support," I assure her. "Don't shut them out."
My eyes catch the clock on the wall, and I discretely check my phone in my pocket because I'm honestly not sure if the clock has the right time, but it turns out it does. It's later than I intended to be.
"I should probably get going," I announce, digging around in my pocket for a piece of scrap paper I shoved in there before I left with the intention of giving it to Juliet. I hoist myself back into my crutches and we make our way over to the front door. Before I leave I turn to Juliet and hold the piece of paper out to her. She takes it, reluctantly.
"Here's my number. Please use it." Are the last words I say before swinging out the front door. As I get in the car I think I see Juliet give me a small nod, I can't be sure, but I do know she shoved the piece of paper into the pocket of her cardigan. I don't know what to expect from this. I know that we won't be friends straight away and it's going to take a while for her to trust me, but I hope she does. I want to see the person trapped beneath the despair, get to know her, maybe even consider her a friend. I drive off wondering about when I'll hear from her next, will it be when I go back to school, will it be this weekend, will it not happen at all? But I drive off with a sense of relief that we both got the closure we wanted from each other, hoping that closure won't just be it.