Chapter Eight

"You have to go."

I turned the volume up on the television to drown out the sound of Fang's voice.

I heard him sigh over the noise, and thought I won. Which was when the TV cut off.

"Hey!" I said, glaring at Fang. He twirled the television plug between his fingers and gave me the faintest of grins.

"It's her birthday, Max. You have to go."

Iggy and Gazzy had invited a few people over to their house tonight for Nudge's birthday. There would be drinking and dancing and strangers. It sounded like my worst nightmare.

"She's counting on you."

"How is it that Nudge can get you to talk in complete sentences, but I can't?" I grumbled, crossing my arms.

"Just go."

I rolled my eyes. "Fine. But I'm not going to like it."

"Max!"

I caught the flying ball of curls that came hurtling at me as soon as I walked through the front door of Iggy and Gazzy's house, almost knocking me off my feet. "Whoa, hey there, Nudge. Happy sixteenth birthday," I mumbled, spitting out a fluff of hair.

"I'm so glad you came!" she squealed. "I didn't think you were going to."

(She has a point.)

(You are unreliable.)

(What a bad sister.)

I patted her back and laughed, then gently pushed her away so I could breathe. "Of course I came. Sixteen is an important birthday. Wouldn't miss it for the world, babe." I pressed a kiss to her forehead and she giggled.

"I had no idea you even knew Iggy and Gazzy, much less Fang."

"I didn't until recently."

"Come on, let me show you the cake before Gazzy gets ahold of the icing," she said, grabbing me by the hand and dragging me towards what I assumed was the kitchen. I turned to shoot Fang, who was laughing, a glare over my shoulder, and hurled my coat in his direction. He caught it before it could hit him in the face, my intended target, and laughed harder, his eyes following me until I disappeared from the room.

Nudge showed me her cake, and the stack of presents on the kitchen table. When she turned away to pull a cup out of a cabinet for me, I plopped my gift down on top. It was one of the sweaters Fang's mom had bought me that ended up being a bit too small. I had already taken the tags off, so I couldn't return it, and I didn't have any money to buy her a different gift with so, you know, two birds with one stone and all that.

Plus it was really her color.

Nudge pressed a cup into my hand that was filled with dark liquid. I took a sip and it burned all the way down and all I could think was: finally.

I gulped half the cup in one sip, the alcohol numbing my upper lip. Nudge blinked but said nothing, which I was grateful for.

"I'm going to go mingle. Want to come along?" Nudge asked. The sounds of talking and laughing in the next room over were getting louder as more people arrived, and I scrunched up my nose.

"No, thanks. I'm just going to chill here for a bit."

"Alright, suit yourself." Nudge gave me a winning smile and disappeared in a whirlwind of sparkling fabric and fluffy hair.

I spent the next hour downing as much free alcohol as I could and moved from spot to spot, trying to stay away from people as much as possible. I had lost sight of everyone I knew almost immediately after Nudge ran off, and now I was too tipsy to be bothered to find anyone. At one point I spotted Fang, but he and Lissa were yelling at each other, so I decided to leave that entire situation alone.

Presently, I was sitting on the couch in the living room. Music was blaring and there was a group of people dancing. Ig and Gazzy's parents really were loaded; the living room was super posh and expensive looking, with heavy drapes across the windows and all leather furniture, dark hardwood floors, and a stone fireplace. Not to mention the various paintings on the walls, all of which looked authentic. Whatever that means.

"Wine?"

I looked up to see Iggy holding an actual wineglass out to me, filled almost to the brim with a dark red liquid. I took it, then raised an eyebrow at him.

"Very classy. Have you met me?"

He laughed and sat down next to me on the couch. His movements were slow and over exaggerated, which let me know that he was definitely already drunk too.

"Having fun?" he asked, voice slurring.

"Um, yeah. Let's go with that." I swirled the wine around it its glass a bit before taking a huge swallow.

"I feel you. It's a great party, though. One of our best, if I do say so myself." He gestured above us at the streamers and multi-colored Christmas lights that were dripping from every available surface. "Nudge seems happy with it. I just wish Ella could be here. She would've loved to see Nudge so happy."

I looked at Iggy out of the corner of my eye. I was drunk and my nosiness got the better of me and I asked, "Who is Ella? Fang won't talk about her."

Iggy stared into his glass and was quiet for several long moments. The music beat in time with my heart, and somewhere in the house something made a brilliant shattering noise. Iggy didn't even flinch.

"She was Fang's biological sister."

My brain immediately focused on the 'was' part of that statement. As in, past tense. I bit my lip to keep from interrupting.

"She was also my girlfriend, but that's not really the important part of this story." He sighed and ran a hand through his pale hair. "She ran away to New York city last year, around this time. They found her body about eight weeks after she disappeared; she had been killed. Strangled." He sounded like he was choking on the words, and my heart broke for him. "Nobody ever really knew why she left. I think Fang may have an idea, but he's not exactly the sharing type." His voice was dry. We both sipped our drinks.

"God. That's awful," I finally said. I looked over and forced myself to swallow down the anxiety it gave me and put my hand on his shoulder. He looked a little shocked. "I'm so sorry Iggy."

His eyes looked cloudy with tears, and he just nodded. "Yeah. It sucks. It never stops sucking."

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, that might console him, but Gazzy appeared at that moment and saved me the trouble.

"Dude, punch bowl is empty. I need you to help me fill it because you're way better at mixing crap and I'm too drunk to do it alone," Gazzy slurred, pulling Iggy up by the collar of his shirt. He waved at me over his shoulder as Gazzy pulled him away.

And I was left alone, once again. Well, not exactly: there was still a room filled with way too many people who were way too drunk and high and loud and god, it was getting hot in here. I really wanted a cigarette, but it was so cold outside and I was down to my last few and had no money to buy more so I was trying to ration.

My skin felt too small for my body, and when two separate couples fell down on either side of the couch and basically starting dry-humping each other out here in the open for everyone to see, it got to be too much. My chest seized and threatened to collapse in on my heart. I set my drink down on a side table, breaking the number one party rule (never leave drinks unattended, kids) and pushed out of the room and up past people making out on the staircase.

I stumbled down a hallway, checking every room for a bathroom because trying to get outside for air seemed like an awful lot of effort and also I was pretty sure I was about to vomit.

Finally, I found a bathroom. I barely had time to lock the door and get the light on before falling to my knees in front of the toilet and puking my guts up. All of the alcohol and dinner I ate before the party came up in a couple of heaves.

(I hope this kills me.)

I sat back on my heels, gasping for air, my own stomach acid burning my throat and my nose. My eyes watered, tears streaming down my cheeks and probably smearing the eyeliner and mascara I borrowed from Fang's step mom all over the place. I spat into the toilet and flushed, panting, letting myself slip to the side to press my face against the cool tile.

I was only semi-conscious, the pounding of the base pumping up through the bathroom floor and into my bones, when Fang found me. I was pressed against the wall, the top of my head pressed into the door frame and my feet pushing against the side of the bathtub every once in a while so the wood would dig into my skull and keep me in the here and now instead of drifting off to sleep because sleep meant dreams. Dreams meant nightmares.

"Max? You in there?"

I swallowed the glass in my throat and croaked, "Yeah. Hold on."

I reached up and unlocked the bathroom door, then curled back in on myself. The door opened, a flood of sound pouring in, and closed again, muffling it. Black vans appeared in front of my face.

"What are you doing?"

"I don't feel good," I murmured. It wasn't a lie. My stomach was churning and my chest felt tight and the air was too warm and too close. Fang moved so that he was also lying down, facing me.

"Lissa just dumped me. Told you that would happen."

I smiled, but even I knew it looked fake. "If it makes you feel better, I had a panic attack on the bathroom floor because I saw people kissing."

"Want to talk about it?"

"You first."

His brows pulled together. "What?"

"I want to know about Ella."

"Max, no—"

"Please. I want to not think about my own nightmare life right now."

He swallowed, and I watched his throat work. It hit me then how attractive he was, and how Before I would probably have been all over him at a party like this.

"You first. What happened to your family?"

I blinked. Then blinked again. Then tried to keep my brain from zapping me back to the literal worst day of my life.

Blinding white, spinning wheels, a crash. Shattered glass twinkling in the moonlight. Flashing red and blue, wailing sirens. Strapped down, flat on my back-

(All your faultfaultfault.)

(You should've died in that wreck.)

"That's not fair," I whispered, taking a shuddering breath.

"Fair is fair." He held out his hand, pinkie out. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Scar for a scar."

I studied his eyes. They were so dark I couldn't tell where his pupil ended and where his iris started, but I could see my own reflection—Dead eyes, staring down at me, their vacancy holding me, paralyzing me, making it impossible to move— and I clenched my eyes shut so I wouldn't have to look at myself. I offered my own pinkie. He wrapped his around it and left them that way, intertwined between us.

I took a breath and let myself fall.

"Car crash." The words come out in a rush. "I was driving. I had just gotten my license that week. There was a snowstorm, and my tires locked up on the ice. We slid into the oncoming path of an eighteen-wheeler." I was breathing too fast, and the hysteria in my voice was steadily rising. "I killed them. My mom and dad and four year old brother, Ari."

I opened my eyes and met his again, expecting to see disgust or anger or even maybe fear. But there were none of those things. Fang's gaze was soft and sad, his mouth drawn into a firm line.

"I'm so sorry that happened to you. It wasn't your fault, Max."

I gulped for air and swallowed past the lump of cotton in my throat. "Stop. Don't try to make me feel better, please. It makes me feel worse." Cold skin, fingers pulled out of my grasp. Screaming. My screaming. Sirens screaming. Wind screaming. But me screaming loudest of all. "I'm so tired of people telling me not to blame myself. It was my fault."

Now that I've started telling the story, the words won't stop coming, even though I vowed I would never let them touch my lips.

"The car flipped three times before landing in a ditch, upside down. I was trapped in my seatbelt, hanging there." My pulse was pounding in my ears and I forgot where I was; all I could see behind my eyes was the nightmare. Fang's eyes were on me, never wavering. He was holding my whole hand now, not just my pinkie, and I clung to him.

"I was conscious the whole time, though. I saw my mother's cracked skull in the passenger seat and my father's broken neck in the back. But worst of all, I saw my little brother, bleeding from his thigh. There was this huge shard of glass sticking out of it. Blood was everywhere; it had severed an artery, I later found out." I told this part of the story like a medical journal, cold and clean and to the point.

"His eyes were glassy and his face was pale, and he reached for me and I held onto his little fingers until his arm went limp and there were sirens but it was too late, they were all gone and it was all my fucking fault and I just remember screaming until my throat tasted like blood but nobody could hear me, and I felt like I was the only person left in the entire world. And I didn't want to be alive. It hurt like—god, like nothing I've ever experienced."

I was breathing heavy, like I'd just run a marathon. Tears were streaming down my cheeks. "Every time I think about them I want to claw my skin off because it feels like something bad snuck inside of me that day. Like I'm bad because of it." I pursed my lips and thought about what I wanted to say next before I said it, then figured I didn't have much else to lose at this point and said, "And I feel like I deserve the bad things that happen to me now because of what I did."

I was making soft sounds in my throat in an effort to hold back the sobs that wanted to break out. Fang's free hand hovered over my cheek, his eyes searching mine for permission. I nodded ever so slightly, and he gently wiped his palm over my skin, drying my tears. His hand was warm and soft and I closed my eyes when he touched me—not because I was afraid. But because I wasn't.

Because who was I without the fear?

"You are not a bad person Max." He waved me away when I started to protest. "Listen to me. You're not. You're a good person who has had bad things happen to her. You are not bad." His thumb strokes my cheekbone and I can feel my face crumple under his words, more tears flowing freely down my cheeks. "None of this bullshit has been your fault, and you did not deserve what that bastard did to you. It's not the things that happen to us that define us. It's what we do with those things, and how we choose to let them affect us, that matter.

"I know you don't believe me. I can see it in your face. And I wish I could help you understand. But I can't help you until you help yourself."

His words hurt, but I knew he was right. I couldn't believe him, even though I wanted to, and that devastated me. And I think he realized that, because he sighed and the next words out of his mouth were the beginning of his story.

"Ella was my little sister." He pulled his hands away from me and sat up. I followed, the room swaying as I did. He leaned against the cabinets behind him and propped his elbows on his knees, one of his hands raking through his hair.

"Our mom left us when I was fourteen and Ella was almost thirteen. She left my dad a note, saying she was going to the Brooklyn and not to follow her. She was never really made to be a mom." He clasped his hands together and let them dangle between his legs. I watched as he picked at his cuticles, letting the silence stretch out in front of us. I think he was trying to put the pieces of this story together in his head. I would be willing to bet he had never told the whole thing out loud before.

"She got pregnant with me real young, and then married my dad because she felt like she had to, I guess. He was around a lot more often than she was, and he was a good dad. But I could always tell there was somewhere else she would rather be, and I think Ella knew it too.

"So my mom took off and left us with my dad, who married my step-mom when I was almost sixteen and El was fourteen. Then my dad died right after Ella's sixteenth birthday, and I guess she freaked out. I don't really know what got into her. She left." He swallowed and shook his head, meeting my gaze for the first time since he started talking. I didn't say anything because I didn't want to ruin his flow. This was the most I had ever heard him talk at one time. And in complete sentences to top it off. This was important.

I also liked that I wasn't thinking about my own shit life, for once, which probably made me a worse person than I already was.

(It did.)

"She told me that she wanted to find our mother, who had been gone for years at that point. And even if she hadn't been gone for years, she still left. She didn't want us and she threw us away like fucking garbage so she could go be a brand new person." He was practically spitting the words, and his face was pinched in anger. I'd never seen him so animated. "What's worse, is that I let Ella go. I knew. I drove her to the fucking bus station.

"We found out about eight months ago that her body was found. She had been strangled to death. We never found out who did it. We put out all sorts of amber alerts when she left but New York is too big and she was too good at hiding." He clenched his jaw and shook his head again. "It was in her blood, I guess."

Everyone had ghosts. I guess the only difference was whether you were chasing them or running from them.

We made eye contact and held it. Our secrets were out in the open, filling up the air in this tiny space. Neither of us could take anything back, and so we had to sit here and breathe in our grief on every inhale.

I pushed myself up onto my feet, leaning heavily against the wall, watching him watch me. I put a hand out, offering myself to him for once instead of the other way around. "Come on," I whispered. "Let's go home."

A/N Early update since I posted late this week. Happy Thursday! (ps this is my favorite chapter until chapter thirteen, so leave me a review and tell me how you liked it!)