Me: And saddle shoes.

Nova: And a beehive hairdo.

Me: Sounds sexy.

Shit. Why do I always have to cross the “just friends” line? And why do I seem to care less and less each time I do? This isn’t how things are supposed to be. I’m supposed to be suffering. Paying for what I did, not flirting with a girl I’m pretty sure I fell in love with over the summer, even in my drugged-out daze, although I haven’t told her that yet.

Nova: Okay, you talked me into it, but you have to wear a leather jacket, slick your hair back, and roll up the bottoms of your tight jeans so we can match.

Me: It sounds like you’re trying to make me look like a character from Grease, which btw was made in the 1970s not 1950s.

Nova: Lol, I think my era mishap was totally just overshadowed by the fact that you know when the movie Grease came out.

Me: Hey, there’s nothing wrong with knowing what year an old movie came out.

Nova: An old movie that has a bunch of singing and dancing. Tell me, do you know the lyrics and dance moves too?

Me: You’re freaking hilarious today. You know that?

Nova: I do know that. In fact, I’m thinking about entering a stand-up comedian contest that’s going on at this pub later tonight. Jokes about you and tight pants will be the highlight of my bit ;)

I’m about to type back when I realize the car has come to a stop. When I look up, we’re parked in front of the therapist’s office, an undersize brick building centered between a secondhand shop and a diner on the more worn-out side of town. That doesn’t mean it’s the bad side. Just older.

Me: Gotta go. Just made it to my therapist’s.

Nova: K. R u calling me tonight?

Me: Of course.

I type it without even thinking, and as I put my phone into my pocket, I begin analyzing that fact way too much. How comfortable we’ve gotten in just a few weeks. I need to stop what’s going on between us, but how do I end something I want so f**king badly? But maybe that’s my punishment. Maybe I’m supposed to want her like that so I can suffer through not having her.

“Was that Nova you were texting?” my dad asks as I reach for the door handle.

I nod. “Yeah, why?”

“It’s nothing.” He shrugs. “I just notice you smile a lot when you’re texting.”

My face twists in puzzlement as I recap the last few minutes, but honestly I was in some sort of Nova zone and can’t remember much of anything. I do realize how much lighter I feel at the moment. But the feeling dissipates as I get out of the car, which makes me hope today is a decent day in therapy so I can continue on this “high.” Turns out the world wants to play opposite-of-what-Quinton-wants, because therapy not only sucks but opens up a hell of a lot of emotional shit I didn’t feel like dealing with today.

It starts off when I begin talking about how I don’t want to move to Virginia, but staying in Seattle on my own seems like it’d end up a huge problem. When Greg asks me why, I tell him it’s because I think I’ll get into too much trouble on my own and I don’t want things to change when I’m just getting my life back together.

“Things are going to change no matter what you do, Quinton. That’s life,” he says in the monotone he always uses when he’s forcing me to talk about something that’s emotionally draining.

“But what if I can’t handle them changing?” I ask. “Because just the idea of something as simple as moving makes me feel like my head’s going to explode.”

“You’ll get there,” he reassures me. “It’ll just take time.”

“But what if I don’t want to get there?” I say, staring at the clock on the wall, the hands moving around and around. Time always moving no matter what I do. “Dealing with the future seems so hard.”

“You will, but it’ll take some time and effort on your part,” he says, scooting his chair closer to his desk. “Tell me, have you worked on taking down those photos and pictures on your wall yet, like we’ve been talking about doing?”

“No, and I’m not ready to,” I say coldly, gripping the handles of the chair. “So stop pushing it.”

“Why do you think you’re not ready?” he inquires, crossing his arms on his neatly organized desk. He’s always calm, just like he’s always wearing a wrinkle-free suit without a tie. I can tell he’s a man of routine, which makes me wonder how the hell he’s supposed to help me with my erratic instability, because he probably doesn’t understand it.

“I don’t think it. I know I’m not.” I slump back in the chair and fold my arms, fighting the overpowering urge to reach for my cigarettes and light up right here in the office. “Every time I go to do it, I feel like I’m going to freak out and lose it… I feel like I’m letting go of stuff I shouldn’t be letting go of.” Like Lexi. My mom. My anguish and self-torture.

“I know it’s hard.” He reaches for the pen and notebook in the file cabinet just behind his desk. “And I’m not saying you have to take them all down. But I worry that the reason you’re keeping them up there is to remind you of the past, which is hindering you from completely working on moving forward and healing yourself.”

I want to get angry with him, but he’s only saying the truth. “You know what, you’re right,” I say straightforwardly. “That’s why I’m holding on to them, but even thinking about taking down the photos and sketches—letting go—makes me want to do drugs again. If I had drugs in my system then I’d easily be able to take them down or at least feel better about it.”

“Why, though?” he asks with attentiveness. “Why would doing drugs make you feel better about taking pictures on the wall down?”

“Because I wouldn’t have to feel the things I know are coming when I pull the pictures down.”

“Feel what exactly?”

“The guilt.”

“Over what?”

I narrow my eyes at him because I’ve talked to him enough about this that he knows what I’d feel guilty about. “You know what.”

“You’re right. I do.” He jots something down in his notebook. “But I’d like you to say it aloud. Verbally express what’s going on inside your head.”

My jaw sets tight. “I’d feel guilty about the f**king accident and that I killed people,” I say through gritted teeth. “There. Are you happy? I said it.”

He shakes his head. “What I’d like to know is, what about the accident do you feel guilty about, exactly?”

I shake my head, fearing the emotions that will prickle at the surface. “You know the answer to that.” I dig my fingers into my palms and stab hard, trying to override the emotional pain with physical pain. “So quit asking.”

He sets the pen down and overlaps his fingers on his desk. “No, I don’t, Quinton. Because every time we get to the accident you never fully say how you feel about stuff. You always tiptoe around it and run away from it. Something that drugs help you do, which is why you always want to go back to that every time you have to deal with the hard stuff.”

“The hard stuff.” I give him a cold, hard stare as I scratch my arm where the tattoos mark my skin: Lexi, Ryder, No One. All the people who died that night, No One being myself. I remember that when I got it, the tattoo artist looked at me like I was a nut job, but I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but making sure I hurt myself more and more because it was the only way I could distract myself from the pain and the guilt. “Do you know how much talking about the hard stuff hurts and makes me feel like shit? How hard it is to breathe whenever I have to talk about the hard stuff… about the accident… about the deaths… dying.” My voice is sharp because he’s digging up memories I don’t want to deal with. “Jesus, it’s not like anyone else would act differently. Causing people’s deaths… I’m sure no one else would want to talk about it.”

He considers what I said and then reaches for his pen again. Then he scribbles something down on the corner of a piece of paper and tears it off. “I want you to attend a group meeting,” he says, stretching his arm across the desk to hand me the piece of paper.

“I already do that every Tuesday and Thursday night.” My tone is clipped as I snatch the piece of paper from his fingers.

“Yeah, but this is a different kind of support group. It’s not a sobriety group like the one you’ve been going to. This is one that’ll help you deal with your guilt over the accident,” he explains. “Many of the people who go have been through similar experiences. Both with the accident and with the drugs afterward.”

I glance down at the piece of paper, which has a phone number and an address on it. “People go to this because they’ve caused car accidents and caused people to… die?”

He wavers contemplatively. “Well, not all of the instances were driving accidents, but I think it’d be good for you to talk to people who’ve gone through something similar to you and have experienced your form of guilt.”

My fingers wrap around the piece of paper in my hand. “What stuff have they gone through, then?”

“Well, the founder of the group, Wilson Ferrison, ran a red light while he was on the phone,” he says sadly. “It killed an older couple. He got into drugs for a lot of years… he’s actually a friend of mine, so I saw firsthand how bad it got for him. But he does a lot of community service now and spends time talking to people about what happened, trying to not only prevent things like it from happening, but to help people who’ve experienced similar things and are left trying to cope with the guilt.”

I put the piece of paper into my pocket, taking what he said in, but it’s hard to process. “Should I call first or just go?” I ask, getting to my feet.

“Call first and tell them who you are. I’ll give Wilson a call and let him know,” he says, putting the notes he took throughout today’s session into my folder. “Just please make sure you do call. I really think it’s important for you to know that you’re not alone.”

Not alone. Such a foreign concept to me, and I’m not even sure how to respond. When I died and came back, I felt sort of like a ghost that no one wanted to talk to, because I was the reminder to everyone of the horrible thing that happened. So I did the world a favor and did everything I could not to exist. Over the last few years the world has felt really big and empty, but now he’s saying that’s not the case and that there are people out there who will understand what I’m going through, understand what it’s like to live life with a void in your heart, put there by pain.

“Fine, I’ll call,” I finally say, and a tiny bit of the weight on my shoulders chips off and falls to the ground.

“Good,” he says, and then he shakes my hand, something he does after every meeting. “And work on taking down those pictures. Like I said, it doesn’t have to be all of them. But only leave enough up that you’re not overwhelmed by the past.”

I don’t respond to that comment and leave his office with my thoughts jumbled inside my head. For the briefest second, I wonder if talking to someone who gets what I’m going through could possibly help. What if I am helpable? I don’t know how I feel about that. I’m not sure how I feel about anything, but maybe I’m on the right track to finding out.

Chapter 4

November 29, day thirty-one in the real world

Nova

“Life is strange. Life is complicated. Life is messy. Watch the news. Read headlines. Go help out at suicide hotlines. You’ll hear stories. Heartbreaking stories. I’ve heard my fair share and lived a few of them myself.” I’m sitting in the living room on the sofa with my legs crisscrossed, passing time filming while I try to figure out what to do for the rest of the night. “Today my film professor, Professor McGell, was talking about the heartbreak in the world after he showed us an interview clip with a woman who lost her husband to suicide… a clip that made me think of Landon and Quinton…” I trail off, remembering how much the woman cried in the video and how I wished I could tell her that everything would eventually be okay again.

After staring into empty space for a while, I concentrate on the camera again. “My professor said he wants to do something that could show what people are going through, not just when they lose someone to suicide but to other kinds of death, drugs, abuse. He said he was starting up a program that would be committed to making a documentary about the aftermath of surviving. He said he would have more information on it at the start of the next year. That it would require travel. Part of me wants to join. Take off and do what I’ve always wanted to do. Film stuff that matters. But it’s a four-month program where I’d be on the road, in different countries. I’d have to leave everything behind… I’m not sure I can walk away and just leave everyone behind when they need me.” I shift my legs out from under me and lower my feet onto the floor. “How can I just walk away when Tristan and Quinton are still healing? Leave Lea behind? My mom? Walk away from school for a semester? It just seems too… I don’t know… impulsive, selfish, risky.” I seal my lips shut, not wanting to say the words tickling at the tip of my tongue, but I ultimately let them slip out. “But I really want to do it. So much.”

I leave my recording at that and put the camera down on the coffee table, figuring out what to do next. Classes are coming to an end and I don’t have a lot of homework left to do. Most of my free time is spent texting and talking to Quinton and Tristan. I’m glad, though, because I’m getting to know Quinton better. And with Tristan, I figure as long as he’s here talking to me all the time, then I know for sure that he’s not going to parties and getting into trouble.