Boys Like You(59)

Maybe spark something inside him.”

I couldn’t answer. There was no way I was getting any words out. But I nodded. I nodded like a goddamn bobble head and followed Mike Lewis back down the hall.

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Chapter Twenty-Eight


Monroe


I was dreaming about Malcolm. It was summer. Hot and humid with air so thick you could practically see it.

It was the kind of day when the pavement burned right through your sandals. The kind of day you’d spend hours running through the sprinklers at the water park. It was the kind of day when everything is slow and lethargic.

It was the kind of day when bad things happened.

I’d had this dream before, and it always ended the same. I lost Malcolm, there in the shadows, the deep ones that the sun didn’t seem able to find.

I lost him, and usually I heard him crying for me. For Mom.

For Dad.

The sound drove me insane, but this time…this time there was no crying. For a while, there was nothing— I knew he was gone but there was just nothing.

Then I heard his laughter riding the air like bubbles falling over a waterfall. They were light, dancing in the air. Clear, round sparkles that filled my chest until I couldn’t breathe.

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“Malcolm,” I whispered, afraid that the sound would go away. God, I didn’t ever want it to go away.

But it did.

His giggles faded until I couldn’t hear them anymore, and no matter how much I tried to find them…to find that slice of time where he existed, I lost him.

I lost him in the sunlight and the water and the endless heat.

? ? ?

I woke abruptly and lay in my bed for a good ten minutes, just

remembering how he sounded. How he smelled. How he felt.

My skin was drenched in sweat, and I was still in the clothes I’d worn the day before. My hair looked like it hadn’t been combed for days, and I groaned. Ugh. I needed a shower.

Sunlight poured into my room, and the clock on the dresser across from me told me that it was nearly noon. I grabbed my cell but there were no messages from Nathan. I guess that was a good thing. In this case, no news was good news.

The hot water felt like heaven, but the restlessness in me had me showering as if I was running a race, and less than ten minutes later, I was trudging down the stairs, wet hair leaving streaks down my green sundress as I took them two at a time.

Eager to get back to the hospital and Nathan, I rounded the bottom step but froze when I heard voices from Gram’s kitchen.

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For a second, I wanted to run back upstairs and turn back the clock, because I knew that, for me, summer was almost over.

And that meant no more Nathan.

Pain twisted inside my chest at the thought of what Labor Day weekend meant, but I forced myself to take those steps until I leaned against the doorframe and watched Gram chat-ting with my mother.

Instead of her usual business clothes— Mom was a lawyer in Manhattan— she was dressed in a simple white T-shirt and a pair of blue-and- white plaid shorts. Her golden hair, normally kept in a sleek, straight cut to her jaw, touched the tops of her shoulders.

She’d left it natural, and the waves looked incredible on her.

She was still too skinny, but it was nice to see her looking relaxed. Kind of normal. I suppose it was all we could hope for.

Kind of normal.

Dad leaned against the counter by the sink, watching his mother— Gram— as she talked up Mom. He was casual too, wearing an old pair of jeans and a Rolling Stones T-shirt. There was a lot more gray in his hair, and he had lost weight as well, but he looked good.

They both looked good, all considering.

Just then, my dad glanced up and my heart turned over as he stared at me in silence, Gram and his mom still talking softly, unaware that I was there.

In that moment, I saw the love, the pain, the anguish, and the question…was I better?

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Was I?

Were they?

For so long, he’d acted as if our small, battered family had already moved on. As if the tragedy that had happened to Malcolm had been dealt with— wrapped up in an ugly box and put into storage. It used to piss me off so much. How could he not wallow in the pain? Pain is what made us remember.

But I think I kind of got it now. It was how he’d been trying to deal with the fact that his son was gone, and even though his daughter was still around, she’d pretty much taken a vacation. I had been nothing after Malcolm died.

Just skin over a bunch of bones with no heart and no soul.

I’d been so wrapped up in my own pain that I hadn’t once considered my parents didn’t know how to deal with theirs.

I’d thought that Dad’s apathy and Mom’s need to overcom-pensate in everything was their way of dealing with me. But it wasn’t. God, it wasn’t at all. It was them falling away and trying to deal with their own pain.

The thing was?

We were still here. My mom. My dad. My gram.

Me.

I was still here.

I thought of the dream I’d had less than an hour ago, and I realized something. Even though Malcolm was dead, he wasn’t gone. Not really.