Put Me Back Together(75)

There was some discussion in the other room, maybe an argument. I hoped he wasn’t killing them. They didn’t seem so bad. I hoped I hadn’t brought this on them, too.

Then he was back, looming over me, touching my face. I swatted his hand away. “Are you going to kill me now?” I demanded. All this waiting around was beginning to seem awfully unfair. If he was going to do it, I wanted him to do it. Get it over with. Unless he was waiting for something. Like my permission.

“It’s okay,” I mumbled. My mouth sort of felt like it was full of cotton now, too. My eyes felt so heavy. “I know I deserve it.”

I heard a clicking sound and saw a dim light beside my head. Then he said two words, which I heard loud and clear: “Goddammit, Katie.”

And then there was nothing.





19





I woke up in Brandon’s grip. He was everywhere, his voice in my ears, his spiteful face reflected on the insides of my closed eyelids, his deeds running through my mind on a never-ending loop. He’d been my companion throughout my fitful sleep and for the tiniest moment when I opened my eyes at last I thought I was waking up in my hospital bed six years ago. It was as though Tommy had just died yesterday.

The pain that hit me in that moment nearly tore me apart.

My eyes focused on Emily lying in the bed beside me. One of her hands was wrapped tightly around my wrist. I knew precisely why: I’d tried to hit her in my sleep.

As I very carefully extricated my arm from her grip, a few stray memories of the night before floated through my mind. I tried to piece together what had actually happened, but it wasn’t easy. Nothing made sense. I’d let the memories in. I’d let the fear in and it had overcome me. How many hours had I spent sitting there, obsessing over Brandon, waiting for him? I must have gone a little mad.

One thing was obvious: Brandon had not come, though my brain told me without a doubt that he had. I flexed my aching fingers and felt my heart begin to race as I realized how much I’d given away. Emily definitely knew something was wrong now. I remembered screaming at someone. But maybe what I’d said had been unintelligible. Maybe I was still safe in my bubble of lies. Except…

Someone I’d thought to be Brandon had carried me to my bed. And I’d asked him if he was going to kill me. And I’d told him I deserved it. But if that hadn’t been Brandon, then it could only be one person.

I started gagging and scrambled out of bed just in time. The popcorn from last night came up the second I gripped the toilet bowl. And then the burger I’d had for dinner with Lucas. And the yesterday’s lunch and breakfast and on and on until there was nothing left, but still I kept on gagging. Eventually I slumped against the bathtub, pressing my cheek into the cold porcelain. I was back to feeling old feelings again, the paranoia of walking high school hallways and feeling their eyes on me, of being so sure they could see through me, that they’d found me out.

He knows.

Sipping from a cup that normally held my toothbrush, I tried to look at the situation with a clear head.

Yes, Lucas knew something, but he didn’t know everything. And if Brandon had actually come to find me, wouldn’t Lucas have found out everything anyway? Just because Brandon hadn’t come last night didn’t mean he wasn’t still coming. My time was running out. My time to tell Lucas everything, in my way, on my terms.


As I pulled on some clothes I found in the bathroom hamper, I realized I wanted to tell Lucas the truth, even if it meant I would lose him. As he’d said, I wanted to get it out of me. But more than that, I wanted him to know me, all of me, the real me. It had been so long since anybody had. Even if I only got to hold him for a moment as myself, that was what I wanted.

I wanted to set Katie Archer free.

Much as it pained me to leave Emily without a word, knowing how worried she must have been about me all night, I knew waking her up would mean long hours of explaining everything. I had to talk to Lucas first. So I left a note for her on my pillow that I hoped said enough but not too much and tiptoed out of my bedroom. By the clock on the microwave I saw that it was already four o’clock in the afternoon. Already most of a day gone, with Brandon circling and Lucas thinking God knows what about me. I felt my feet itching to go and find him, but made myself choke down some dry toast first. Then I flipped through the school directory until I found what I was looking for and I left.

I walked the whole way there. I really should have taken a bus—it was drizzling, and wasn’t there a murderer on my tail?—but it didn’t occur to me. I just bowed my head and walked, one foot in front of the other, all the way through campus. I was hoping the words would come to me, that by the time I found my way there I would know exactly how to say what I’d never been able to say. But as I stood staring at the doors of Victoria Hall, I realized I’d spent the entire walk picturing the look I would see on Lucas’s face when I began to speak.

Great. It looked like I’d be winging it.

By some miracle I managed to follow a lone student into the building and get directions from him to Lucas’s room, which seemed odd for a moment, until I remembered he was Lucas Matthews. Of course everyone knew where his room was. The halls echoed with silence. Term was ending. It felt like everything was ending. It seemed fitting; the end of school, the end of Lucas and me, the end of my charade…the end of me?