"Because something happened," he said.

I glanced at him sharply. He had crossed his arms and was running his forefinger over his bottom lip like he always does when he's ferreting out information on me.

I sighed. "It has nothing to do with why I blew Jessica off."

"Just a coincidence," he said.

I didn't answer. Just shook my head and let the tears roll. "I just want it to go away. I just want all the drama to stop. n.o.body would believe me anyway," I whispered. "n.o.body would care."

Dr. Hieler shifted, leaned forward in his chair, and leveled his eyes so they looked deeply into mine. "I would. On both counts."

I believed him. If anyone would care about what happened at the party, about what happened with Troy, it was Dr. Hieler. And holding it all in, what felt comforting just a week ago, suddenly felt heavy and almost physically painful. Next thing I knew, I found myself, unbelievably, talking. Like even the silence wasn't friendly to me anymore.

I told Dr. Hieler everything. He sat back in his chair and listened, his eyes growing more and more vivid, his body growing more tense as I talked. Together we called the police to report Troy's threat. They'd check into things, they said. There probably wasn't much of anything they could do. Especially if you're not even positive it was a real gun, they said. But they didn't laugh at me for telling. They didn't say I deserved it. They didn't accuse me of lying.

When my session was over, Dr. Hieler walked me out to the waiting room, where Mom sat alone reading a magazine.

"Now you need to tell your mom what happened," he said. Mom looked up, startled. Her mouth made a small o o shape as she looked from him to me. "And you're going to work your a.s.s off to get better," he warned. "You don't get to just check out now. I won't let you. You've worked way too hard. You have more hard work ahead of you." shape as she looked from him to me. "And you're going to work your a.s.s off to get better," he warned. "You don't get to just check out now. I won't let you. You've worked way too hard. You have more hard work ahead of you."

But I didn't feel like working hard, and when I got home all I could think about was flopping back on my bed and sleeping.

I told Mom everything in the car, including Dad's threat on the side of the highway when he picked me up. She looked impa.s.sive, disinterested while I talked, and said nothing when I finished. But as soon as we got home she called Dad. I climbed the stairs to my bedroom, listening to Mom's voice ratchet up notch by notch as she talked, blaming him for knowing and not telling. For picking me up without calling her. For not being at home where he belonged in the first place.

After a while I heard the front door open, followed by Mom's murmurs again. I opened my door and peeked downstairs. Dad was standing in the entryway, his hands on his hips, his face lined with annoyance.

I noticed he was in street clothes, which I found odd because it was a work day and Dad never left work before dark. But then I noticed some splotches of paint on his shirt and realized that he must have been at home today, painting Briley's apartment. Making it theirs. I quietly closed my door and paced to the window. Briley was sitting in the car at the curb waiting for him.

I heard my mother's anxious voice mumble again. Heard him thunder back at her, "What was I supposed to do?" A pause and then his voice again, "Send her back to the d.a.m.n psych ward, that's what I think. I don't give a s.h.i.t what that shrink says about progress!" And then I heard the front door slam. I paced to the window again and watched him get into the car with Briley and drive away.

Not long after Dad left, I sensed movement around the door and opened one eye. Frankie stood leaning tentatively up against the doorframe. He looked somehow older, with his hair buzzed short and glistening with gel and his b.u.t.ton-down shirt b.u.t.toned loosely over an Abercrombie T-shirt and his factory-faded jeans. His face looked unnaturally smooth and innocent and he had these permanent little pink patches over his cheeks that made him look constantly embarra.s.sed. Maybe he was was always embarra.s.sed. Look at the life he had to deal with. always embarra.s.sed. Look at the life he had to deal with.

Ever since Dad moved out, Frankie had pretty much gone to live with his best friend, Mike. I'd overheard Mom telling Mike's mom that she needed some time to get things straight with her oldest and sure appreciated Mike's family for taking Frankie in. I figured it was this time spent with Mike that accounted for Frankie's transformation. Mike's mom was one of those perfect moms who wouldn't ever have a kid with spiked hair, much less one who shot up a school. Frankie was a good kid. Even I could recognize that.

"Hey," he said. "You 'kay?"

I nodded, sat up. "Yeah, I'm okay. Just tired I guess."

"Are they really gonna send you back to the hospital?"

I rolled my eyes. "Dad's just blowing off steam. He wants me out of his hair."

"Do you need to go back? I mean, are you crazy or something?"

I almost laughed. In fact, I did chuckle just a little, which made my head ache. I shook my head no. I wasn't crazy. At least I didn't think I was. "They're just upset right now," I said. "They'll get over it."

"Well, if you go..." he started and then stopped. He picked at my bedspread with chewed fingernails. "If you go, I'll write to you," he said.

I wanted to hug him. Console him. Tell him it wouldn't be necessary because there was no way I was going to go to some stupid psych ward. That I'd just stay away from Dad and he'd eventually calm down. I wanted to tell him our family would be repaired-would be better, even.

But I didn't say any of those things. I didn't say anything at all, because somehow saying nothing seemed more humane than giving him all these rea.s.surances. After all, how was I supposed to know anything at all?

He brightened suddenly. "Dad's getting me a four-wheeler!" he said excitedly. "He told me on the phone last night. And he's going to take me out and show me how to ride it. Isn't that awesome?"

"That's awesome," I said with as much conviction as I could muster. It was cool to see Frankie smile and get excited again, even if I didn't believe for a minute that Dad was going to buy him anything. That would be so... dad-like... and we both knew that our dad was totally not dad-like.

"You can ride it, too," he said. "If, you know, you come over to Dad's sometime."

"Thanks. That'd be fun."

He sat around some more, looking uncomfortable the way boys do when they're sitting somewhere under extreme duress. If I were a good sister I would have told him to go ahead and do something more fun. But I didn't mind sitting there with him. He radiated something that made me feel good inside. Hopeful.

But pretty soon he got up. "Well. I gotta get to Mike's. We're going to church tonight." He ducked his head, as if church were embarra.s.sing. He walked toward the door. "Well... see ya," he said awkwardly. And he was gone.

I sank back into my pillows and watched the horses on my wallpaper go nowhere. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine myself on one of them again, the way I used to do when I was little. But I couldn't see it. All I could see was the horses bucking me off time and again, dumping me on my b.u.t.t on the hard ground. They had faces, too-Dad's, Mr. Angerson's, Troy's, Nick's. Mine.

After a while, I rolled to my back and stared up at the ceiling, realizing at once that there was something I had to do. I couldn't change the past. But if I were ever to feel whole again I would have to say goodbye to it. Tomorrow Tomorrow, I told myself. Tomorrow is the day. Tomorrow is the day.

36.

Even though I'd never been to Nick's grave, I knew exactly where it was. For one thing it was on the news about every ten seconds for the first two months after the shooting. For another I'd heard enough people talking about it to get a pretty good idea.

I hadn't told anyone I was coming here today. Who would I tell? Mom? She'd cry, forbid me, probably follow me, screaming at me out the open driver's side window. Dad? Well, we weren't exactly on speaking terms. Dr. Hieler? I would have, but I didn't exactly know I was going to do this the last time I saw him. I probably should have; Dr. Hieler probably would have driven me, and right now my leg wouldn't hurt so much from walking all this way. My friends? Well, I had kind of kicked all of them out of my life, one way or another.

I walked down a few rows of neatly kept graves with polished new headstones and unweathered bouquets and found it between his grandfather Elmer and his aunt Mazie, both of whom I'd heard of, but neither of whom I'd ever met.

I stood and stared for a minute. The wind, which had only begun to shake off the winter, played around my ankles and made me shiver. It all felt right-my desperation, my chest aching from exertion, the chill, the wind, the gray. This was how graves were supposed to be, right? It's how they always were in the movies anyway. Cold, murky. Did the sun ever shine when you visited the eternal resting place of someone you loved? I doubted it.

Nick's grave gleamed just like those around it, the light of the overcast sky playing great gray shadows across the words. Still I could read them: NICHOLAS A ANTHONY L LEVIL.

19902008 Beloved Son The words "Beloved Son" took me by surprise. It was small, italicized, almost hiding in the gra.s.s. As if in apology. I thought about his mom.

Of course I'd seen her on TV, but it never seemed like the real woman. I knew her as "Ma," just as Nick had called her, and she was always so laid-back and nice to me. Always sort of in the background, intent to let Nick and me do our own thing-never suffocating, never issuing edicts about proper behavior. Just cool. I liked her. I often thought of her as my mother-in-law and enjoyed the fantasy.

Of course Ma would have wanted Nick remembered as a "Beloved Son." Of course she'd do it in the most laid-back way possible-whispering it to him in tiny letters on his headstone. Just a whisper. You were beloved, son. You were my beloved. Even after all of this, I still remember the beloved you. I can't forget. You were beloved, son. You were my beloved. Even after all of this, I still remember the beloved you. I can't forget.

There was a bouquet of plastic blue roses sticking up from a built-in metal vase at the top of the headstone. I bent and touched one of the brittle petals, wondering if Nick would've been the type to want flowers on his grave, and then I was taken aback that I had never bothered to know that about him. Three years together and I'd never bothered to ask him if he liked flowers, if his favorites were roses, if he found the unnatural color of blue on plastic roses to be absurd. And suddenly that felt like a great tragedy in itself, my not knowing.

I lowered myself to my knees, my leg screaming under me. I reached out with my forefinger and traced Nick's name. Nicholas Nicholas. I smirked, remembering how I teased him about his name.

"Nicholas," I had sung, dodging around the corner between the kitchen and dining room, holding the framed photo I'd just s.n.a.t.c.hed off the fireplace mantel in my hands. "Oh, Nicholas! Come here, Nicholas!"

"You're going to regret it," he said from somewhere in the living room. There was a smile in his voice and, even though I was teasing him over a given name that he truly hated being called, I knew he wanted to catch me not to punish me but to be playful. "When I get my hands on you..."

He jumped around the corner with an "Aha!" I squealed and ran, laughing through the kitchen and up the stairs toward the bathroom.

"Nicholas Nicholas Nicholas!" I yelled through my laughter. I could hear him laughing and grunting behind me, just on my tail. "Nicholas Anthony!"

"That's it!" he cried, lunging for me and catching me around the waist just short of the bathroom. "You're gonna pay!" He'd knocked me to the floor and flopped on top of me, tickling me until I cried.

Seemed so long ago now.

I traced the name on his headstone again with my finger. And then again. Somehow it made me feel like the old Nick-the one tickling me on the hallway floor outside the bathroom on the second floor of his house-was more alive than he'd ever been.

"I don't hate you," I whispered, and then I repeated it, louder. "I don't." A bluejay answered me in a tree off to my left. I searched the leaves and branches with my eyes, but never found it.

"It's about time," said a voice behind me.

I jumped and whirled around, falling off my knees and onto my b.u.t.t. Duce was sitting on a concrete bench behind me, leaning forward, hands dangling between his knees.

"How long have you been sitting here?" I asked, trying to slow my heart by resting my palm on my chest.

"Every day since he died. What about you?"

"I didn't mean that."

"I know."

We stared at each other for a minute. Duce's stare felt like a challenge. Like the way a dog will stare down another dog when it's ready to fight.

"So what are you doing here now?" he asked.

I locked eyes with him, this time doing the challenging myself. "You can't chase me away from here," I said. "And I don't know why you blame me so much anyway. You were his best friend. You could've stopped the shooting, too."

"You were the one with the list," he countered.

"You were the one who spent the night at his house two days before the shooting," I snapped, and then added softly, "We could do this all day. It's stupid. It's not going to bring anyone back."

A car rolled up and an old man gingerly piled out of the back seat, then picked his way to a grave nearby, holding flowers at his hip. We watched him as he knelt slowly, his head bent over, his chin nearly touching his chest.

"The cops, they questioned me too," Duce said, still looking at the old man. "They thought maybe I was in on it because I hung around with him so much."

"Seriously? I never heard that."

"Yeah, I know," he said, his face sour. "You were all about poor you, poor Valerie. You were shot. You were grieving. You were a suspect. You never even considered any of the rest of us. You never even asked, man, how the rest of us were doing. You totally just ditched us."

I looked at him, stricken. He was right. I hadn't asked Stacey during our one visit how anyone else was doing. I hadn't called anyone. E-mailed. Nothing. I hadn't even considered it. "Oh my G.o.d," I whispered, and suddenly I could hear Jessica's voice in my ear: You're just selfish, Valerie. You're just selfish, Valerie. "I'm sorry. I didn't think..." "I'm sorry. I didn't think..."

"That Detective Panzella practically lived at my house, man. Took my computer and everything," Duce said. "But the real kicker is... I really had no idea. Nick never said anything to me about shooting anybody. He never even warned me or anything."

"He didn't warn me either," I said, but my voice was almost a whisper. "I'm so sorry, Duce."

Duce nodded, fumbled in his pocket for a cigarette, took his time lighting it. "I felt really stupid for a while, not knowing. I figured maybe we weren't as good of friends as I thought. And guilty, too. Like I should've known and then I could have done something. Helped him. But now... I don't know. Maybe he didn't tell us to spare us."

I let out a sarcastic grunt. "Well, if he did plan to spare us, it so didn't work."

Duce chuckled softly. "No kidding."

The old man was struggling to his feet again, pulling his jacket tight around him as he headed back toward his car. I watched him. "You remember the time we went to Serendipity together? The water park?" I asked.

Duce chuckled. "Yeah, you were a drag that day. All whiny about being cold and hungry and nag nag nag. You wouldn't let him have any fun."

"Yeah," I said. I looked back at the grave. Nicholas Anthony. Nicholas Anthony. "And at the end of the day when you guys took off and Stacey and I had to look all over for you and we finally found you eating Oreos with those two blond girls from Mount Pleasant..." "And at the end of the day when you guys took off and Stacey and I had to look all over for you and we finally found you eating Oreos with those two blond girls from Mount Pleasant..."

Duce's grin widened. "Those girls were hot."

I nodded. "Yeah, they were. And do you remember what I said to Nick when I found you there?"

I looked up at Duce. He shook his head no. Smiling. Hands dangling.

"I told him I hated him. I said it, in those words. 'I hate you, Nick.'" I reached down and picked up a dried leaf and began flaking it to bits with my fingers. "Do you think he knows I didn't mean it? You don't think he died thinking I hated him, do you? I mean, it was forever ago and, you know, we made up that day. But sometimes I worry that he still thought about me saying that and that maybe, on the day of the... the shooting... when I tried to stop him he remembered me saying I hated him back at Serendipity and that's why he killed himself. Because he thought I hated him."

"Maybe you do hate him."

I thought about this and then shook my head. "I loved him so much." I let out an exasperated laugh, shaking my head. "My tragic flaw." That's what Nick would have called it, had I been one of the suffering characters in one of his beloved Shakespeare tragedies.

I heard a sc.r.a.ping of clothing against concrete. Duce had moved to one side of the bench and was patting the concrete next to him. I got up and sat next to him. He reached down and picked up my hand. He was wearing gloves and the warmth of his hand enveloped mine, radiating through my whole body.

"Do you think he did it for me?" I asked softly.

Duce thought about it, spat on the ground at his feet. "I think he had no idea why he did it, man." It was a possibility I'd never considered before. Maybe I couldn't have known what Nick was about to do, because Nick himself didn't even know.

He let go of my hand, which quickly grew chilly again without the warmth of his glove around it, and slid his arm around me. It made me feel weird, but not entirely in a bad way. In some ways Duce was the closest to Nick I'd ever be again. In some ways it felt like Nick's hand behind me, Nick's warmth beside me. I leaned my head back into the hollow of his shoulder.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

I nodded.

"If you loved him so much, why weren't you here before now?"

I chewed my lip. I thought it over. "Because I didn't really feel like he was here. He was still so much everywhere else I looked, I didn't think it was possible for any part of him to be here."

"He was my best friend," Duce said. "You know?"

"He was mine, too."

"I know," he said. There was an edge to his voice but it was very soft. "I guess. Whatever."

We sat there in silence for a while, both of us staring at Nick's grave. The wind picked up and the sky darkened and the leaves swirled around my ankles in tighter and tighter circles, making them itch. When I began to shiver, Duce pulled his arm away from me and stood up.

"I've gotta go."

I nodded. "See ya."