(Author's note: This story contains 24 chapters. For the record.)

"Hey."

It was something like the understatement of the year. This was Ryan. Typical Ryan. Three days without seeing anyone, as far as she could tell, and all he did was greet her like they had just bumped into each other in the supermarket. He shoved his hands in his pockets, looking like he was trying desperately to look casual, like he'd only been passing by. Passing by the side of her house that didn't face his house. Yeah, okay.

"Where were you?"

He took another step back, approaching the shadows. He was only steps away from disappearing completely. She leaned forward out of instinct. "Around." He looked like he wanted to run away. His hair was matted and his jacket was dirty.

"Get in here, you little shit."

"I, uh, was gonna go around front," he said feebly, shrugging his shoulders, looking helplessly lost inside his oversized jacket.

She stopped. "Oh."

Theresa wound her way through the quiet house to the front door. Her mother and Arturo were asleep. She walked quietly, her footsteps sounding so loud in the silence. In the darkness, in the night, the house she'd grown up in seemed so foreign to her. She had the strange feeling of being in a strange, exotic land.

There was a faint odor to him as soon as she opened the door. She wrinkled her nose. It wasn't bourbon or stale milk. "Where have you been sleeping?" she hissed, as he slipped into the house.

"Haven't."

She swallowed just a little, but bit her lip into silence.

Once they were in her room and the door was closed, she turned and leaned against the door, more to keep Ryan inside than anything else. "What the hell does that mean?"

"I don't know, I... I didn't want to go home, but I have to... I can't do this, Theresa," he whispered, his eyes wide. "I can't sleep out there, can't do it-" He trailed off. He was slipping away.

"The memorial was today," she said, trying to fill the silence. "And your mom? Told me to tell you to come home."

"Did she." He sniffed the air a little and rubbed at his nose. "Well."

"It's right next door," Theresa said, hearing the edge to her own voice. "Not that far."

"Yeah." He shuffled his feet now, fingering his last cigarette. "Guess..."

"Why didn't you come home, Ryan?" Silence. "Is it because you're mad at me?"

He closed his eyes, starting to shake his head. "Theresa..."

She cut off his search for words. "Look, Eddie is my boyfriend now. But you and I, we've always been, we'll always be-" She stood by the door, stock still, not knowing quite what to do or say. Not knowing how to finish the sentence.

He couldn't look at her. He couldn't look away from the cigarette he was fidgeting in his hands. "Forget it."

"No, say it."

"Look..." He shook his head and clenched the cigarette in a fist. "It's not that, Theresa. It's..." He stopped. He couldn't finish a sentence. Ryan had never been very verbal, and right now, she just wanted him to say something. Open his mouth and say a goddamn word, something, anything to tell her what he was thinking, because right now, with all this fumbling and starting and stopping, she honestly didn't know. "It's not you!" he burst out at last.

The words ripped something deep within her. "Yeah. I thought so."

"Thought what?" he asked, guarded.

"All that stuff?" She swallowed. "That you said at Eddie's house?"

He nodded, a bit too quickly. "Yeah, I remember."

Theresa straightened up and folded her arms. "I thought you didn't mean it."

He blinked at her, suspicious. "Yeah, like which part?"

Her voice was stronger now. She was sure now. "The part where you were okay with it. Admit it, c'mon. You're pissed at me."

"No," he insisted, looking over at the music box still open on her bed. She couldn't tell if he even remembered it. "You weren't tryin' to piss me off, I – I get that."

She clenched her fists, feeling years of emotion boiling over, heating her from the inside. Years of Theresa and Ryan all coming to a head right here, in her bedroom, and she was too tired from Eddie and the funeral and Becca and Lily and Ryan and everything else to edit herself. "Maybe I was! Didya ever think of that?"

"What?" His voice was barely audible again. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Jesus!" She threw up her hands and turned around, catching herself in the familiar joke even as she did. "I mean Ryan. I mean – no. You're not Jesus. You never were. You don't know who you are, you don't know yourself, I don't know you anymore. Who are you, Ryan?"

He shook his head at her. "Who do you want me to be exactly?"

"You, Ryan!" she shouted. "Goddammit Ryan, my fucking best friend, I fucking love you, and you know it, and you're standing there like a slack-jawed yokel, just doing what everybody wants you to do, being what they want you to be. God, say something! Anything!" She picked up a pillow and threw it at him. It glanced off him as he stood there stock still, processing what she was saying. The pillow tumbled to the floor and Ryan stayed there, searching for words. The cigarette fell from his hands as well, forgotten.

"C'mon, don't do this." He had found his words at last.

"Too fucking late, Ryan. We've been doing this. Way too long."

He finally found the words. "Theresa – I mean it's not – like-"

She heard what he wasn't saying, the silences in between the words, and tried to remain composed. It wasn't easy, with the shattered feeling in her chest.

"You sure have a funny way of loving somebody, you know," he finally said. "Lying and sneaking around?"

"I-" Now she was the one with no words.

"What am I s'posed to do? Naw, you – you're just like everyone else." His face was hardening now, scaring her. "Maybe I was right before, maybe I can't trust you now."

"Ryan-"

He looked like A. J. Medena. He looked exactly like A. J. Medena right now. She felt cold as he spoke. "Yeah. Yeah. You know, maybe you and Eddie deserve each other."

"Ryan, don't do this," she begged. "Please don't, don't do this..."

"Goddammit!" he shouted, and now he was loud enough, surely, that Arturo and Eva would be up any moment. "I thought I knew you!"

"So I guess I was right then." She felt all the suppressed emotion, all the anger she'd been holding in ever since their fight in the field behind Trey's apartment, all the resentment from years of casual sex and empty flirtation. All the time she'd wasted on Ryan Atwood. "Maybe we never really knew anything, I never knew who you were."

"I'm whoever you want me to be," he said, and there was a sad, almost quiet look to him just for a moment. "You know, maybe we just never trusted each other either."

"I guess we didn't!" she screamed back at him. His face was growing red now, and she was sure that hers was, too. "I guess it was all for nothing!"

He kicked the pillow away, searching for an outlet for his anger. "Go lie to Eddie too, I'm sure he won't care!"

The kick, the violence, the movement startled her back to reality. Reality was Ryan in front of her, and the chasm growing deeper and wider, and in moments, in seconds they would never be able to cross it again. "God. Oh god. Ryan."

But Ryan was far from finished. "As long as he's getting laid, what does he care?"

"Stop it. Just – just stop it. Now."

It was too late to stop. His face crumpled again, and he turned around abruptly, moving to face the wall, bracing himself against it with an arm over his head, leaning in to the wall, as though he would fall down without it.

There was silence in the room for a long time. Too long. Theresa felt the anger rising and cresting within her as Ryan took in the silence, his shoulders rising and falling.

"The hell are you thinking over there?" she finally asked.

"You know what the fuck I'm thinking," was his quiet response, and it caught her off guard completely. The too-familiar phrase was so incredibly out of place. YKWTFIT.

Once, they'd said it so much that they had to start abbreviating it. Once, they'd always known what they were thinking. Passing coded notes in physical science class, so incredibly indecipherable to anyone else. Now, she had to admit to herself that she truly didn't. She didn't know what he was thinking, and she didn't know what she was thinking.

But he turned around, and the look on his face wiped the tiniest smile from hers. "If you had to choose? Me or Eddie?"

She blinked. She hadn't even realized- "Right now? One or the other?"

"C'mon," he said impatiently. "You have to know."

"Ryan, cut it out. Don't make me-"

"One or the other," he said loudly, talking over her. "It's not that hard a question. I know you, I know what the fuck you're thinking, I always do, I know you've been thinking it over for months, and I know you have to know." She couldn't remember ever hearing him say a longer sentence.

"Eddie and I haven't been together for months," she said automatically.

Wrong answer. "Course not," he said stiffly. "So?"

She shook her head. "You're – you're right," she said at last. "I can't think about anything else."

"Who?" he asked. His face was set like steel, set so much that his jaw was practically shaking. He was still leaning against the wall for support, just a little bit. Leaning. He was the animal and she wanted him for it.

"Who do you think?" she asked finally. She could hear her own voice trembling. "But I don't have a choice, do I?"

In one sudden movement, his arm swept the music box up from the bed. Before she could stop him, before she could restrain him, he had launched it with extreme force against the wall. A cacophony of notes rang out as the box hit the wall, disintegrating into pieces, the lovers flying through the air, the lip gloss and the crystal and the ring falling to the floor, the sides of the box tumbling to the ground in even more pieces.

There was a stunned silence in the room for a moment.

The door to her room flew open. It was Arturo, wide-eyed and alarmed, barefoot and in his pajamas. "The hell?" he hissed. "Ryan? What are you doin'?"

Ryan stared back at him, silent, with a defiant expression.

Arturo rose to his full height and folded his arms. "Get the hell out of my house, man."

Ryan stormed past him without a word. Arturo, dumbfounded, could only turn and watch him go.

Theresa stared in shock at the broken pieces of her music box on the floor. A dozen pieces destroyed beyond repair, the strange innards of the mechanical song strewn across the room, a mark on the wall from the impact.

She felt that she should do something now. Dissolve into tears. Yell after Ryan. Scream at Arturo. Laugh. Cry. She felt that she could feel something, but she felt nothing at all. Nothing except for a deep, pervading numbness, a lack of feeling altogether. A hollowness down in her core. Something wasn't there that used to be there.

"I take it he found out, huh?" Arturo asked.

Theresa shrugged. She couldn't take her eyes off the carnage on the floor.

He turned around. "I don't think he woke Mama up."

"Good," she said definitively. She studied the mess in front of her. "Hey. Maybe you can get the broom?"

"Theresa..." Arturo stared at her.

"Let's clean this up. Mama will never know."

Arturo nodded silently and turned to search for the broom, leaving her alone in her room, with the broken music box scattered on the floor in front of her.

She picked the lovers up from where they'd landed, and if she'd been ready to feel anything at all, she might have been amused that they had broken apart, a leg here, a head there, cracked almost exactly straight up the middle, torsos and hearts separated. She carefully dumped the pieces into her trashcan. She never wanted to see them again.

Somehow, it felt like her heart had reached the end, and if anything, she was just relieved to have it over with. She wasn't going to hurt again. She wasn't going to feel again. Not for Ryan Atwood.

Now, it could just be over.

Once Ryan was out of Theresa's life, she found that time started to pass very quickly.

Theresa stopped looking for Ryan everywhere. Sometimes she saw him, usually with Trey, since neither Arturo nor Eddie was speaking to him. Eddie had heard her version of the story, and probably Arturo's as well, and wasn't interested in Ryan's version. But she didn't talk to Ryan, and he didn't look at her, and it was as if he was a complete stranger. And after all, maybe he always had been.

She took a casserole over to Eddie two days after her fight with Ryan. Eva had made a rice and bean dish, since Eddie's mom was reportedly still grieving and lord only knew Eddie couldn't cook worth a damn.

"Arturo told me what happened," Eddie said as soon as he opened the door.

She forced herself to meet his eyes.

"Look, it's over, okay, baby?" she asked. "Really this time."

He waited until she offered a smile, and then he also relaxed, guiding her inside the house, his hand placed comfortably on the small of her back.

She greeted his mother and the aunt who was visiting, and they excused themselves to the yard and left them alone in the kitchen. He finally spoke up again as she was heating the casserole on the stove. "I know," he said softly, surprising her. She looked at him curiously.

"I know, I'll never be Ryan."

She reached for a potholder. "Yeah, well. Maybe I don't want a Ryan right now."

She turned around and met his eyes, and she knew that he understood.

But she realized as he kissed her gently that she didn't know if she did.

Lily hooked up with Jamie Vega a week later, at a party at Becca's house. Theresa wasn't invited, but Becca called her the next day and told her all the gruesome details, completely ignoring the fact that Theresa hadn't been invited. She spent half an hour going on about how it was all anybody would be talking about when school started, although Theresa heard the edge in her voice. They would be talking about other things, too, not that Becca would dare say it to her face. Becca still seemed willing to speak to her, even though Trey wasn't, mostly because they were broken up again. Or something. Theresa really couldn't keep track anymore. Theresa really didn't care anymore.

Theresa was finding more and more that she didn't care about much of anything now.

There was yet another brawl right after that, and Arturo was involved again, though luckily no one was hurt this time. Some kids from another school attacked Patrick Terrell, and somehow Turo got in on it, and came home with a bloodied nose. Eva was furious at first, because after Eddie's dad, every fight was suddenly scarier and more dangerous than ever. That changed once she talked to Arturo, though, and Theresa felt a certain dull urge to find out why. All that she could tell from Arturo's vague description and the various rumors floating around was that it might have been a gay-bashing of some sort. If Theresa could have felt anything, she might have felt proud that Arturo got involved, and broke it up, and then brought Patrick over to their house and gave him some clothes, and then hurried to find a girl to hook up with later that day to assert his own heterosexuality. It was something that should have stirred some emotion, some minor pride in her brother, or foolish scorn at his latent embarrassment.

But there was nothing.

No feeling. No stirring. No emotion.

Trey Atwood lost his house shortly thereafter. He couldn't pay rent, and she heard that he was evicted, and all of a sudden he started showing up around the neighborhood again, coming and going from the Atwood house at strange hours, looking sullen or belligerent. She didn't look when she saw him. She didn't want to see him. Not only that, half the time he was with Ryan, and she didn't want to look at Ryan at all right now. And so she looked away.

She still kept expecting to see him in her room at night, every time she looked at her window. Every time she saw shadows moving in the rain. But now, it was only the wind. Ryan didn't come to her house anymore. Ryan wasn't a part of her life anymore.

Juana Medena lost her job next, after she missed work too many times. Angelita had been sick for most of the summer. Eva told Theresa that she was taking the kids to Seattle to live with relatives. Theresa nodded numbly as she heard. She would never have to babysit for the little brats ever again, and it should have made her happy, but she couldn't be happy right now. She couldn't be sad. She couldn't be excited, or disappointed. She still couldn't feel anything right now.

Eva found a house. It wasn't Trey's, although the two events followed quickly upon each other. It was half a mile away, and had a beautiful backyard, and a garage apartment for Arturo, and a private bathroom for Theresa. It was small, but they could afford it if they scraped some money together and Theresa kept working for the school year, and if all went well, they would be able to move by Christmas. The change might have made Theresa nervous, if she was feeling anything, but by now, enough had changed. Another little change couldn't bother her that much. It didn't matter if she couldn't look over at the Atwood house from her yard anymore.

She started thinking about what to pack, but nothing really mattered anymore. If her house burned down, there wasn't anything she would miss. Material things didn't matter. Clothes and pictures and scrapbooks didn't matter. Music boxes and dumb rocks and lip gloss and cheap rings didn't matter. They were things. They weren't worth getting upset about. Just like people. People weren't worth getting upset about. Nothing was worth getting upset about.

Getting upset hurt too much. And nothing was worth the pain.

Becca snapped at her one day. They were in the parking lot at the shopping center with a crowd. Becca was only there because she was looking to flirt with some of the boys, and Theresa was only there to keep an eye on her. But Becca was the only one who noticed Theresa off to the side, staring across the highway at the high school, and she could finally keep her big mouth shut no longer.

She slid off the hood of the truck where she'd been perched with Crystal, and approached Theresa's side, startling her when she spoke.

"It's not like he died, Theresa, he still lives next door."

She was startled that Becca knew exactly what was on her mind, but then, it was Becca. And she knew Becca better than anyone, even if she tried to pretend that she didn't. Maybe Becca was her best friend after all, all along.

Still, she turned to Becca, scowled, and stormed across the parking lot for the LeBaron. She didn't want to deal with this.

Eddie was there. All this time, Eddie was still there, calling her every night now, coming over to her house, taking her out for drives, picking her up to take her over to his house. There was sex, and he was enjoying it, and she thought maybe she was, too, although she wasn't sure. Because she still wasn't feeling much of anything, but it didn't seem like Eddie was picking up on that. Or if he was, he was doing a good job of hiding it in their nights alone in his house, muffled under the covers, trying to make sure his mother didn't hear, and planning for the apartment he was going to rent. Eddie had big plans, and now he was sharing them with her, in these late nights buried under his thick comforter, cuddling and fucking and whispering into the intimate early morning hours.

Sometimes she still found herself staring at the Atwood house, only when she was sure she wouldn't see Ryan. Only when she knew he was out, working at a construction site, or out with Trey, because those were about the only two things he did anymore, it seemed. She couldn't help but look at the house. It didn't make her feel anything, because she wasn't feeling anything, but she just had to look at it anyway. Maybe it was habit. Theresa wasn't sure.

Three weeks passed. One thing followed upon another, and Theresa heard and saw it all, and she felt nothing. She absorbed it all, wondering if sometime later she would process it all, collect her thoughts and finally figure out what was happening to her life, and what she could do about it.

It was only a matter of time. She knew it. She was going through a phase. She wasn't going to feel like this forever. She would feel something again. She would return to normal, and collect everything together, and figure it out, and then the world would make sense and she would be a regular girl again, and everything would go on like normal.

She consoled herself in this thought. Theresa could be rational, and she knew that one day, everything would return to the way it used to be. She wasn't a child anymore, and she saw the world differently, but even when things changed, they still stayed the same. She knew that her world would right itself and everything would be okay, once she just gave things enough time. She just had to wait for the pendulum to swing her way again, the way that it always did.

And then she woke up one day and Ryan was gone.