Falling into Place(50)

“Me?” Julia’s voice was so hard that it stopped Liz in her tracks. “I didn’t ruin my life, Liz. You did.”

Liz stood there for a long time, trapped between those little words and the truth of them.

I’m sorry.

Those were the right words. She just hadn’t been able to get them out.

Liz stumbled back against the side of the school and leaned her forehead against the cold brick. The rough surface stuck to her skin, and when she closed her eyes, the tears froze on her eyelashes.

Julia was right.

It wasn’t just people Liz disliked that she destroyed. It wasn’t just nerds, or gays, or sluts, or band geeks, or the members of the crappy cheerleading team, or the chess team members, or the Buddhist Club members, or the quiet ones, or the annoyingly loud ones that Liz destroyed. She destroyed everyone. Even the people closest to her. Especially the people closest to her.

And even when Julia texted her that night to apologize, saying that she didn’t mean it, that she was just PMSing, even when Julia made it clear that she was willing to forget, there was no going back.

Some people died because the world did not deserve them.

Liz Emerson, on the other hand, did not deserve the world.



CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE


World of Idiots


“Oh my god,” Kennie says in a teary, wavering voice. “You hit him.”

Julia says, “I think I should have aimed lower.”

Kennie sniffles. “I wanted to hit him too,” she says, and begins crying again.

Julia sighs and puts her arms around her. “What now?”

“She’s going to kill me,” Kennie says with a muffled wail.

“Why?” Julia asks. Because honestly, there could be a number of reasons. All the crying, for example. Liz hates crying.

“Because,” Kennie sobs, “I didn’t get it on video.”

Julia stares at her.

Suddenly they’re both laughing, and it’s a relief. They’re laughing as hard as they were crying, and everyone is staring, and for once, neither of them cares. And there are so many things to laugh about—they’ve done so many stupid things. They are a group of idiots in a world of idiots, and Liz was the most idiotic of them all.

Finally, when they calm down and wipe away the laughing tears as well as the sad ones, Kennie stands up, wobbly.

“Where are you going?” asks Julia.

“To get a picture.”



CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO


The Third Visitor


Julia gets up too. Monica is standing guard by the door to Liz’s room, but she gives Julia a hug and a shaky smile, and walks away. Julia goes in. There’s a nurse wearing scrubs with pink dinosaurs, adjusting one of Liz’s tubes.

“How is she?” Julia asks.

The nurse turns and smiles at her, and Julia can see in her eyes that she’s considering a lie. But in the end, the nurse says, “Honey, she is an absolute mess. But she’s holding on.”

Julia can’t help it. She begins to cry. She rubs her eyes furiously because everyone is crying, and honestly, she’s sick of it. She sees why Liz hates it so much.

But she can’t stop.

The nurse gives her a sad smile and leaves, and Julia sits down in the chair that Liam vacated moments before. She touches one of Liz’s hands, and it’s so cold that a tremor runs through Julia. Liz always had cold hands. Bad circulation. Julia takes Liz’s fingers in hers, careful to avoid the needles and tubes, and tries to rub some warmth into them.

But Julia’s hands are cold too, as she stares at Liz’s quiet face. There were many days when Liz was strangely, inexplicably quiet, but not like this. There were many parties at which she had found Liz crying, but they had never really talked about why. Behind all of her wildness and anger and insanity, Liz was a girl of silence, and Julia always let her keep her secrets.

Now Julia wonders exactly how many secrets Liz had.


Julia didn’t drink at that first party.

She didn’t like the smell of beer, and she was already drunk on the fact that they were there at all. Kennie was curious, but not, at that point, enough to try it.

Liz, on the other hand, celebrated by forgetting everything she had ever learned in health class. She had three Solo cups of beer and was completely wasted.

Near one in the morning, when Kennie’s brother arrived to pick them up—having been paid fifty bucks to keep all of their parents ignorant of their whereabouts—Julia realized Liz was missing.