NOCTE (Nocte Trilogy #1)(6)

From the memories.

From the people who think we’re weird.

From everything.

Finn’s face stays expressionless. “Cal, you don’t have to go around the world to re-invent yourself, if that’s what you want. You can do that in California. But you don’t need to change yourself at all. You’re fine the way you are.”

Yeah. Being known as Funeral Home Girl is fine. But he’s right. No one will know that in California. I can get as good a new start there as I can anywhere. I won’t be surrounded by dead people, and people won’t always be asking How are you feeling?

We drift into silence and I continue staring out the window, thinking about college and what my new life there might be like. Since my father has agreed that Finn and I should stay together, there’s nothing scary about it. It’s just exciting. And it will include a lot of expensive shoes and pashminas. I’m not exactly where what pashminas are, but they sound sophisticated, and so I need them.

“Well?”

Finn’s insistent tone brings me out of my thoughts. He’s obviously waiting on an answer to something.

“Well, what?”

“Well, did dad decide? About the carriage house. We could just share it, you know. I’m sick of smelling like formaldehyde all the time.”

For real. I can’t even count how many times I’d hear snide girls at school whispering as I walked past, old tired jokes like, “I smell dead people.” I always wanted to tell them to quit ripping off old movies and come up with something original, but of course I never did. To them, I was Funeral Home Girl. But I never gave them the satisfaction of knowing that their words hurt.

“We don’t smell like formaldehyde,” I assure Finn. We smell like flowers. Funeral flowers. It’s not much better.

“Speak for yourself,” he grumbles. “Can we, or not?”

I shrug.

“Apparently, dad’s going to rent it out, after all.”

Finn stares at me for a second before returning his gaze to the road. “Seriously? I didn’t know we were that hard up. We have mom’s life insurance money, and the money from the funeral home.”

“College is expensive,” I murmur. Because that’s the only explanation I can think of, other than maybe dad just wants to follow through with something that he planned with mom. Finn nods, because it’s an acceptable answer. Obviously, sending two kids is expensive.

We’re quiet as we drive the rest of the way, and still quiet as we walk the sterile halls of the hospital, our Chucks squeaking on the waxed floors.

“I’ll meet you back out here in an hour,” Finn tells me casually, as though he’s going shopping instead of going to talk about his mental illness with other mentally ill people. Like always, Finn carries his cross like a champion.

I nod. “I’ll be here.”

Because I always am.

He walks away without looking back, disappearing into a therapy room. As I watch him go, I can’t help but think, for the millioneth time, that it could’ve just as easily been me born with SAD. It’s a thought that makes me feel panicky and guilty at the same time. Panicky, because sometimes I still worry that I might get it, that it might show up out of the blue. And guilty, because it should’ve been me in the first place. Finn is a better person than I am.

I’m the one who was born first, the one born bigger, the one born stronger…regardless of the fact that Finn really is better. He’s funny and witty and smart, and his soul is as gentle as they come. He’s the one who deserved to be healthy.

Not me. I’m the snarky, sarcastic one.

Mother Nature is a bitch sometimes.

I find a nearby bench in the sky-lit atrium, and curl up beneath an abstract bird painting, pulling out a book to read. Having my nose buried in a book accomplishes two things.

1. It lets people know I’m not in the mood to be talked to. Honestly, I seldom am. And 2. It kills the boredom while I wait.

The sounds of the hospital fade into a buzzing backdrop, while I immerse myself in blissful fiction. Fiction is best served alone. It’s how I survived my school years, reading through lunches and awkward classes when no one talked to me, and fiction is how I survive waiting for Finn during long hours in the hospital psych wing. It’s how I can ignore the shrill, multi-pitched yells that drift down the hallways. Because honestly, I don’t want to know what they’re yelling about.

I stay suspended in my pretend world for God knows how long, until I feel someone staring at me.

When I say feel, I literally feel it, just like someone is reaching out and touching my face with their fingers.

Glancing up, I suck my breath in when I find dark eyes connected to mine, eyes so dark they’re almost black, and the energy in them is enough to freeze me in place.

A boy is attached to the dark gaze.

A man.

He’s probably no more than twenty or twenty-one, but everything about him screams man. There’s no boy in him. That part of him is very clearly gone. I see it in his eyes, in the way he holds himself, in the perceptive way he takes in his surroundings, then stares at me with singular focus, like we’re somehow connected by a tether. He’s got a million contradictions in his eyes….aloofness, warmth, mystery, charm, and something else I can’t define.

He’s muscular, tall, and wearing a tattered black sweatshirt that says Irony is lost on you in orange letters. His dark jeans are belted with black leather, and a silver band encircles his middle finger.