Falling into Place(48)

“How is she?” he asks.

Julia examines the hickey on his neck. “Where have you been?”

He runs a hand through his hair. It’s so overly gelled that the crinkle fills the room—the junior class has paused its card games to listen. “I didn’t hear about it until an hour ago,” he pleads.

“You were in school today,” Julia says flatly. “It was all over Facebook last night. You couldn’t have not known.”

“Oh, come on,” he says, growing defensive and consequently unpleasant. “You know I was at basketball practice last night. And I don’t check my wall every five minutes, like some people.”

Julia’s eyes narrow. For a moment, her expression is so uncannily similar to the one Liz often wears that Jake is unnerved. “Nice hickey,” says Julia. “Who was it?”

“I don’t—”

“Your girlfriend,” Julia says, “is f*cking dying.”

That shuts him up, because Julia never swears.

Jake collapses into a chair and rubs his face. He looks tired, afraid, and I know that he cares. But like Julia, like Kennie, I hate him because he has never, ever cared enough.

“I didn’t know what to do,” he says in a hollow voice. “I heard that she was in the hospital, and—god, Julia. We had a fight on Sunday, okay? I tried to apologize and she told me to go away. Do you know how guilty I’ve been feeling? God, don’t you think I regret all the things I said to her?”

Julia stares at him for a moment. Then, without warning, she punches him in the face so hard that his chair falls backward.

And with Jake curled on the floor, shocked and wincing, his hands cupped over his eye, Julia says in a hard voice, “This is not about you.”



CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE


The Second Visitor


In the commotion, no one notices that Liam gets up, shoves his hands in his pockets, and walks after Monica.

He arrives just as she is leaving Liz’s room.

“Oh,” she says, hastily wiping at her eyes. “Hello. You . . . are you . . .”

“May I see her?” he asks quietly.

She hesitates, considers him as she has never considered any of Liz’s boyfriends, and gives a small nod.

Liam has to close his eyes for a moment, because she looks so, so much like Liz.

Then he reaches for the door, his fingers curling around the cold handle, takes a breath, and goes in.

He leaves the door open and feels Monica standing just beyond view, giving him a privacy that he is grateful for beyond words. He doesn’t want to be quite alone with Liz Emerson, but he wants to see her. He wants to see her.

He sits in the chair and looks at her. Carefully. He follows the tubes running up her nose and taped to the insides of her wrists. He observes the infinitesimal rise and fall of her chest. He can see the faint blue of her veins beneath her gray skin.

He says one word.

“Why?”

It’s something that he has wanted to ask her for so long that hearing it aloud is strangely surreal. He wanted to ask her at the end of fifth grade. Why haven’t you noticed me? He wanted to ask her during freshman year. Why did you do it? He wanted to ask her when he watched her staring at the sky. Why are you afraid of being yourself? He wanted to ask her that day in the gym lobby. Why do you want to be unbreakable? He wanted to ask her after the party. Why don’t you remember?

He never asked before because he didn’t think she would answer.

She doesn’t.

“Liz,” he says, and that’s another thing that he’s always wanted to say, her name. Just her name. “Liz, I never thought you’d be the first one to quit.”

He grips the metal bars on the side of the hospital bed until his fingers are nearly as white as her face. “Liz,” he says. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the bars.

“Please,” he whispers. “Remember the sky.”

She doesn’t respond, and after another minute, he leaves.



CHAPTER SIXTY


Two Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car


“Ms. Emerson,” Ms. Greenberg said severely. “Why aren’t you working?”

“Forgot my calculator,” said Liz.

It was a combination of her careless tone and her incomplete homework and the fact that she had forgotten her calculator every day for the past week that led to Ms. Greenberg’s ten-minute lecture on the irresponsibility of today’s youth, and at its conclusion, Liz was sent to her locker to retrieve her calculator.