“Yes.”

He lifts his glass. “To perfect poster-child Abercrombie model looking douche-tools.”

“So you’re toasting you?”

He laughs once. “Fuck you, skater punk.”

I tap his glass with mine. “To the girl who chose to be happy…”

4

—Becca—

Journal

I’d never been to church, not until Grams had asked me to go with her when I first moved in. It was everything I expected it to be, but also nothing like I had hoped. I thought I’d walk in and God would know who I was and everything I’d been through. He’d look down on me, and I’d look up at Him and a calm would wash over me. I hoped that He’d somehow make me understand why it was this life had been chosen for me. No such thing happened, at least not from Him.

But when Grams pulled into the driveway and Josh looked up from yet another hole he was digging and he smiled, I felt the calm I’d been searching for. I also felt something else—like the beginning of turbulence. I shouldn’t have ignored that feeling, but I did. Maybe if I chose to grasp on to that instead of the calm, he wouldn’t have taken me on a ride that had me gripping my armrest and struggling for breath.

~ ~

Journal

I’ve been having these nightmares lately. We’re in a small plane—Josh and I. The plane starts to shake and I hold on to the edge of the armrest, my knuckles white from my grasp. “I got you,” Josh whispers in my ear, his breath warming my neck and relaxing me enough so he can take my hand. “I’ll always have you.” He uses his free hand to secure my seat belt. “You’ll always belong to me, Becca.”

That’s the last thing he says before the plane nosedives and crashes into a field.

I always wake up at the point in the dream when I get my camera out and take pictures of Josh’s dead body.

“Morbid” was the word Dawn, my therapist, used to define my dream.

“Morbid” wasn’t really what I was hoping for and I told her that.

She looked at me for a long time and then finally said, “Guilt.”

Guilt was the cause of my constant nightmares. It made sense, I guess, considering I’d spent the two weeks after the competition on the Internet, frantically searching for a reason for his sudden withdrawal. Maybe there was a family emergency, or an injury, or… anything that wasn’t me. Nothing came up. He disappeared. No one could get in contact with him, but his management—his mother—and his agent had come out and said that he was fine physically. It was all I could talk about during my sessions with Dawn. Until one day, she “strongly suggested” that I cancel the e-mail alerts and stay offline. So I did what she said, and I took her advice to focus on classes, focus on building my strength instead of trying to find reasons to excuse my weakness. And Josh, as she said, was my excuse, not my weakness. Whatever that meant.

~ ~

Journal

I spent a good portion of group therapy today listening to Aaron talk about Brandi, his ex-girlfriend, and all the guilt he felt for her death. All I could think about was whether my mother felt guilty for all the shit she put me through, or if she was pissed she didn’t succeed in taking me with her. When it became my turn to “speak,” I typed on my phone and let the words echo off the walls in the small room.

“I hate you.

I love you.

I hate that I love you.”

I was speaking about my mother. I saved the text as Josh.

~ ~

Journal

A couple weeks ago, Dawn found this app and she made me download it. She has the same one on her iPad. It shows her what I’m writing in real time so I can’t delete my thoughts and provide her with something safer. She’s mastered differentiating my truths from my lies based on how long it takes me to respond. I hate the stupid app. I hate it so much that I came home and defied her by looking up all things Josh Warden. Now I hate myself. Good job, World.

~ ~

Journal

My mother took me to get ice cream on my tenth birthday. She didn’t yell. She didn’t hit me. We smiled and we talked and we loved. It was one of the happiest days of my life. The next day, she asked if I’d stolen money from her purse. I told her I hadn’t. She said money was missing and that she hadn’t been anywhere in days. I reminded her of the ice cream. She didn’t believe me. I worked out later that she was drunk during our little outing and legitimately had no memory of it.

I wonder if she remembers her hand wrapped around my throat or the pillow she tried to suffocate me with.

Earlier, Dad bought five tubs of ice cream. We threw one against a brick wall, chucked one off a bridge, took a baseball bat to another, and then ran over one with the car.