"Condoms break," she informed me.

Now I knew for a fact that my face was fire-engine red. "I am aware of that. Good grief, Mom. Where's Ty?" I asked, sure he was going to jump out from the hallway with a giant smirk. I did not want to be having this conversation in front of him.

"Ty's not home yet," Mom said.

"Ah. Maybe he needs 'the talk.'" I started past her toward the safety of the hall and my bedroom, a full-scale retreat, and for once I was glad that Dad didn't still live with us. One parent in this situation was bad enough. I didn't need Dad and his shotgun.

"I just want you to be safe," Mom called after me.

"I'm safe," I answered, and then I went in my room and closed the door and took a deep breath. Because I was safe. Steven and I hadn't been past, er (what were the bases, again?)-second base yet. But we were definitely on second, taking a few steps in the direction of third.

Maybe it was time for us to discuss it, I thought. Maybe it was time.

I wanted it to be Steven, the first time. I knew that much. I didn't know when or how or where something like that could happen, but I did know who.

And sitting there in my bedroom, thinking about it, I blushed and I smiled.

December 3. I remember all that. In detail.

Steven. El and Beaker. Mom. Steven.

But I don't remember Ty playing. I don't remember him interacting with any of the cheerleaders.

I wasn't paying attention. I was too busy being the star of my own movie, while my brother might have been out there that night, in the dark somewhere, getting his heart broken. And 17 days later, he was dead.

"SO, HOW'S THE WRITING COMING?" Dave asks from his comfortable chair.

"Swell," I reply.

He waits for me to give him a straight answer.

I shrug. "I don't think it's doing me much good."

I glance at the clock. G.o.d. Forty-two minutes to go.

"Why do you say that?" he asks.

"There's no real point to it. No purpose."

"We discussed this. The purpose is to release some of the pain, express it onto the paper so you don't have to carry it around with you in your day-to-day life. It's cathartic."

"Yeah, that's not happening," I report.

I'm still carrying around plenty.

His eyebrows bunch together. Dave has very expressive eyebrows. "Are you writing about Tyler?"

"Look, I did what you asked. I wrote about the firsts and the lasts." I sigh. "I think it's time to try something else. Let's just call it done with the writing part of the healing process, okay?"

He rubs his hand over his mouth, then says, "But how does it feel, when you're writing?"

"Honestly? It sucks to try to remember. It hurts. I don't want to do it anymore."

"Ah. It hurts. Good," he says.

Wait, I think, good that it hurts? But then it hits me: Dave knows about the numbness. Somehow, he knows. And this writing thing isn't his attempt to get me to express my feelings so much as it's trying to get me to actually have feelings.

Dave's sneaky that way.

"Maybe I want to forget," I say, just to be contrary. "Maybe it'd be easier to forget, and get on with my life. Isn't that healthier? Moving on?"

"Is that what you really want?" Dave asks.

"Would you please stop answering my question with a question?"

"What would you like me to say? Aren't there some vital questions that you must answer for yourself?"

Dave doesn't play fair.

I sit back and consult the clock again. Ugh. Thirty-eight minutes.

"I think you should continue with the journal. Humor me for a while longer," he says. "What I think you might need, to make the writing seem more relevant, is a recipient."

"A recipient?" That doesn't sound good.

"Someone you are writing to."

Oh, this just keeps getting better and better.

He sees the look on my face. "Alexis. I'm not suggesting that you give the journal to anyone. It's for your eyes only, I understand. But perhaps if you use the journal to express something to someone specific, you'll be able to get some of the weightier issues off your chest."

I arch an eyebrow at him. "You're saying I need an imaginary audience, so to speak. Do you have someone specific in mind?"

"Well, let's see," Dave says, as if he hasn't already given this a lot of thought. "Maybe you could write to a future version of yourself. Many people write their journals to future selves, I think. It demonstrates a kind of hopefulness."

"So my audience would be some wise Alexis who's made it through all this c.r.a.p and occasionally cracks open this journal to see how far she's come and says to herself, Whew, I'm glad that's not my life anymore."

"Exactly."

I wish I could be her, I think. Fast-forward through this part of my life.

I shake my head. "But maybe she's just as messed up as I am. Maybe all of this has twisted me irrevocably, and I will forever be incapable of a healthy, normal future. Maybe it would only torture Future Me, having this record of where it all went south."

"Is that what you think?" Dave asks. "That you're twisted?"

He takes a few seconds to write something in the yellow legal pad he keeps his notes on. This makes me nervous.

Time for a change of subject. "Or I could write to aliens or robots or whoever's left in ten thousand years. An extraterrestrial will lift this book in its gray fingers and think, Hmm, so this was the life of a female h.o.m.o sapiens. How interesting."

"Yes," Dave says, like he is taking me completely seriously. "You could write to aliens."

Who am I kidding? n.o.body's going to care. Not future me. And certainly not an alien species.

This is pointless.

"You could write to G.o.d. That has been known to be therapeutic to many people," he suggests.

"No. I don't have anything to say to him. I mean, I don't believe in G.o.d."

Dave writes more in his notebook.

"You could try writing to someone else," he says then. "Someone you want to talk to. You could speak to him or her by writing. Even if that person never reads it. Even if that person can't hear."

That's when I understand where he's been leading me all this time. That person. "You mean Ty."

"If you'd like."

"I don't want to write to Ty," I say without hesitation. I had my chance to talk to him, when it counted, when it would have meant something, and I missed it. "He's gone."

"The people we love are never truly gone."

"Yeah, you know what, you should design b.u.mper stickers or something. That's profound. That's catchy."

He sits back. "You seem tense today, Alexis. Has something happened?"

My heart rate picks up. A part of me still wants to tell him everything, ask him what I should do about the letter and talk about the times I've seen and smelled Ty, the dreams I'm having about him, just get it all out there in the open, see what he'll have to say, but my desire to confess is still considerably less than my fear that he will think I'm crazy, and if a mental-health professional thinks I'm crazy, I probably am.

"Lex?" Dave prompts. "What are you thinking about?"

"Nothing," I say automatically. "Nothing's happened."

Thirty-one minutes.

He sighs and writes something else in his notebook. "Well, I think your a.s.signment this week should be to figure out some kind of audience for your writing."

"A recipient," I say.

"Yes."

"Great," I answer. It's fruitless to argue with Dave; he's so freaking calm. "I'll get right on that."

I can't wait.

THIS TIME TY AND I ARE SWIMMING in Branched Oak Lake, the water cool and green and deep under us. At first it feels just like the old days. He says he'll race me to the sh.o.r.e, and we start out swimming steadily side by side. Then I become aware that I am swimming alone.

I've lost sight of Ty.

I tread water and look for him. He's gone. Nothing but dark water all around me. I call his name. I turn in the water, searching, and then suddenly he comes up right beside me, spraying me, laughing.

"Gotcha," he says. "Look at your face. What, did you think I drowned?"

"Jerk," I say as my heart rate begins to slow. There was another dream I had, a couple of nights ago, in which he drowned in a swimming pool, a lifeless shape at the hazy blue bottom that I was trying to fish out using the pool net.

"You know you love me," he says now.

I do.

"Hey, what's that?" He looks off over my shoulder at something in the water.

I think he's still joking around with me, but I turn. There's a fin cutting its way toward us, maybe twenty feet away. Then ten. Then five. Then it glides under us, out of sight.

"Uh-oh," Ty says gravely. "I knew we shouldn't have come out here. It's not safe."

"Don't worry," I say, with that weird logic that exists inside dreams. "This is fresh water." As if my stating this fact will negate the existence of this inevitable shark.

He pivots in the water. "There," he says, pointing down. "Do you see it?"

I see it. A huge dark form taking shape below us, closing in.

It's on us before I can catch my breath.

Ty screams. He thrashes and goes under. There's billowing blood in the water. Ty pops up again, sputtering, caught in the middle by a ma.s.sive great white. I try to grab him as the shark shakes him the way our dog used to shake her toys.

"Ty!" I cry. "Tyler! Ty!"

I can't get a grip on him. He's too slippery.

Then, as suddenly as it came, the shark is gone. Ty comes to the surface, gasping. His face is white as milk, his lips tinged with red.

"Lex," he chokes.

I turn him over onto his back, grab him by the shoulders, and start to tow him toward sh.o.r.e. Blood trails behind us as I swim, so much blood, too much, but I don't stop to think about that.

"Lexie," Ty says again, this time like a warning. "I . . ."

"No." I kick hard, swim with as much power as I can, but the sh.o.r.e doesn't seem to be getting any closer.

"I have to . . . go," he says.

I stop. "No. Stay with me, Ty."

"It hurts," he whispers.

"Stay with me," I plead. "Stay."

His eyes close. His breath rattles in his chest. And then stops.

"Ty!" I scream, and then I sit up with a jolt, tangled in sheets.