Backwards (24 page)

“Cat?” I brushed her hair back. Her forehead felt damp.

Cat lifted her arm, but it flopped on the pillow. She kept her eyes shut and her face turned away. Then I noticed a button hanging from a thread. The vest she wore had been ripped open, and her bra was pushed up. I tugged it down, trying not to look at her chest.

The door rattled but no one came in. One of the drunk guys in the hall must have bumped against it. I reached beneath Cat’s shoulders to carry her out. When I lifted her, the covers slid off and I saw that her pants were missing. Blood stained her underwear. I found her pants at the foot of the bed. I tried to push her feet into the leg holes, only it was hard to get her dressed without her help. Her head lolled from side to side, and she kicked weakly.

“What are you doing?” she muttered, eyes straining to open.

“I’m getting you out of here.”

“Dan?”

“It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t okay. Nothing about this was okay. “I’m sorry. I should have been here.”

She sat up, fighting against whatever drugs Finn had given her. Then her expression changed. “No,” she said, pushing me back. “I don’t want this.”

She stumbled out of bed, but she couldn’t get her shirt to stay closed. Several buttons were missing.

I reached for her.

“Don’t touch me!” Her gaze flicked to a green top hat and velvet coat by the bed — part of her costume. The Mad Hatter. Her boots were there as well. She staggered into the hall, leaving her things behind.

“Cat!”

She kept going, barefoot and shirt open, down the stairs to the living room. People’s eyes widened when they saw her. Some whistled or laughed.

“Looks like Danny boy got lucky after all,” said Finn in a voice loud enough for half the room to hear. He grinned at me from the base of the stairs, but there was nothing friendly in his expression. Already, he was trying to shift the blame to Dan.

I grabbed his shirt. For an instant, Finn looked unsure of himself, then his confident, lazy smile slid back into place. “What’s wrong?” he asked, lowering his voice so only I could hear. “Can’t stand coming in second place for a change?”

I considered strangling him. Dan would have let me — he seemed to want to as much as I did.

“Get out of my way!” Cat shouted.

She was by the back sliding-glass door. Bella and Laney stood before her, blocking her exit. Bella held a phone, and she was snapping pictures and taunting Cat, telling her to “work it.” I tossed Finn aside and shoved through the room to help her. Then she was out, running barefoot across the yard. I followed her down the block, still thinking that if only I could catch her, I might be able to fix things. It wasn’t until Cat turned onto a side street and the party faded into the distance that I realized
I
was the reason she kept running.

I slowed and called her name one last time, but she didn’t stop. The petal-white bottoms of her feet flickered into the darkness between houses.

Did she think I’d attacked her? Or was she simply too hurt to come back?

Either way it didn’t matter because now I could see, with perfect clarity, what I’d done. Instead of changing things, I’d made them happen. I’d caused what I’d feared, and now Cat was gone.

I turned my back on the lights of the neighborhood. The dark spiderweb structure of the train trestle loomed less than a block away. For once I didn’t try to run from my fate. When I reached the train trestle, I walked along the tracks until I stood above the river. Things had come full circle.

I’d thought knowing the future would make a difference, but it’s no different from knowing the past. Only the present matters, and I’d acted no better in mine than Dan had in his. All that was left was to be hit on the head. Was it a stranger who would do it? Or Finn? Or someone else?

I didn’t fear getting injured. Not anymore. I’d already failed Cat, Teagan, Dan’s mom and dad, and everyone else who knew him. With every decision I’d made, I’d made things worse. I deserved this.

“I’m here!” I yelled into the darkness. “Come on, hit me.”

In response, all I heard was the trickle of water over the rocks below.

I searched the shadows for my attacker, but no one came. There was just me, standing on a bridge over a river. My chest felt hollow. It had been me all along. I’d invited Cat to the party. I’d gotten Finn interested in her. I’d set her up to be raped. And then I’d abandoned her.
I
was the problem — the thing that was wrong. Not Dan.
Me.

I peered over the edge of the bridge, wishing there was some way I could go back and erase everything I’d done. The ground where the zombie would wake tomorrow, dizzy and bleeding, lay directly beneath me. A short, bitter laugh escaped my throat as I realized what I had to do.

I climbed over the bridge railing.

Dan resisted, but I pushed him back and leaned away from the railing. The ground bristled with rocks.

Maybe I’d fall and hit my head, and everything would be exactly as it had been before. Dan would wake up tomorrow beneath the bridge with a wound on his forehead and a deep, destructive self-hatred. Or maybe this time, when I fell, things would be different. This could be the lever I’d been searching for. All I had to do was lean a little more to change how I landed. An inch could mean the difference between life and death. Hit a rock headfirst and it would all be over — Dan and I would both be removed from the equation.

I took a deep breath and let go of the railing.

Dan resisted, but I shut him out and kept leaning. My muscles twitched, and my body tilted farther from the bridge. I focused all my will on this one thing — leaning until my control shattered.

Instantly, Dan shoved me aside and took over. He twisted. Hands reached back for the bridge railing. Fingertips brushed wood. Too late. Gravity had claimed him. His feet broke free of the ledge. Arms flailed, useless, through the air. And then we were falling. Cartwheeling through the night sky.

Dan’s frantic thoughts mixed with my own. It surprised me how much he wanted to live. I saw his body in the tub. The note he’d left his sister. How he’d tried to protect Cat by following her into her secret house. The hero he wanted so badly to be.

We hit the ground with a bone-jarring impact. His knees collapsed, and his hands shot out to fend off rocks. Then his chest came down, and last his head, smacking a fallen log. A tidal wave of pain broke over me. I didn’t try to hold on anymore. Instead, I let go. I let Dan’s fear and rage and hurt carry me away.

His eyes flickered shut and senses swirled like the last drops of water spinning into a drain as he blacked out. I followed the water down, surrendering myself completely.

Funny,
I thought.
I’d despised Dan for killing himself, and here I was doing the same thing — trying to end my existence.

In that moment, I finally understood him. How much he hurt. How deeply he cared. How noble and flawed we both were.

I woke up drowning. The undertow of time pulled me farther from shore, increasing in strength with each passing second. There was no going back. No land to cling to. No returning to myself. There was only the question of how long I’d have before I slipped under and what my last moment of awareness would be.

Things came in flashes and stutters. I knew immediately that it was Friday morning again — the day of the Halloween party. It had never occurred to me before how different the light was every morning. The subtle changes in the smell of each day. The ever-evolving symphony of birds, wind, and leaves. I’d taken these things for granted, but the moment Dan opened his eyes, I knew this was the same day I’d lived before. The tide of time had shifted.

Perhaps it’s like this for everyone in the end — even if we want to die, we fight it. I thought of how Dan had struggled in the tub to hold on before taking his final breath and letting go. And how, on the bridge, his hands had shot out for something solid to grab on to. We cling to what we know.

I suppose that’s why, as I faded into him, I clung to all that I’d done and seen. My time may have been short, but it was still my life — everything I’d been bound up in two backwards weeks. I sorted the days into a story I could tell myself, like a book written in disappearing ink, each word doomed to vanish shortly after I wrote it.

And the end of my story? Here’s what I saw:

A mirror. The familiar brushing of teeth. The shower with its blissful abundance of water. A sense of melting. A fleeting notion that to be nothing is to be boundless.

Dan dried himself. Dressed. It was so hard to separate my being from his anymore.

Back in his room, he lifted the calendar off the wall and turned the page from this month to the next. Then he stared at the blank spot where the calendar had hung.

I considered encouraging him to write a message there. Something inspirational like
THERE IS ONLY NOW
. That seemed a funny thing to carve beneath a calendar. But then I decided, or he decided, it would be better to leave it blank. Leave things open to possibility. Maybe he could hang some pictures on the wall to brighten the room. He might even paint them himself.

“You still thinking about Thanksgiving?” asked his sister from the doorway. She tried to sound neutral, but her anxiety about him leaving was obvious.

He tossed the calendar onto his bed. “I think I might stick around,” I said. Or he said. “That is, if it’s okay with you?”

“That’s great.” She smiled, then caught herself and put on a more stern expression. “As long as you don’t eat all the mashed potatoes.”

I lost track of things for a while after that, my awareness diffusing like blood in a stream.

His phone buzzed with a text. Someone named Finn wanted to be picked up. I tried to recall who that was, but my memories flowed away from me. All I could come up with was a vague sense of irritation at the tone of the message.

Mom asked if he’d take Teagan to school.

He looked at his sister, and she tensed. She seemed ready to storm out. I pictured the small cracks gradually widening, becoming insurmountable chasms. And so I said, “Yes.”

He said, “Yes.”

That seemed important, although I couldn’t remember why anymore.

When his phone rang again, he turned it off, ignoring Finn’s second text.

Teagan got into the car. He started the engine and drove down leaf-covered streets. She complained about not having a chance to eat breakfast. “Let’s get some donuts,” she said, pointing to a gas station. “I’ll run in. It’ll only take a second.”

He pulled into the station and parked by one of the pumps. While she was gone, the smell of gas caught his attention. He glanced at the dash. The tank was nearly empty.

Better fill it up,
I thought.
Take care of what you can.

He unhooked the nozzle and refueled his car. This, too, felt different. This mattered.

“I got Bavarian cream for you,” said Teagan, returning with a white paper bag. “That’s your favorite, right?”

At school he stayed in his car to eat the donuts with his sister.

Students gathered in clusters around the main doors. A girl wearing striped leggings stood by the flagpole talking with a large girl dressed in black. Teagan zipped up her backpack, preparing to join them.

“Are those your friends?” he asked her.

“Maybe.” She sounded surprised that he cared. I don’t think he’d ever asked her this before. “They’re juniors. Do you know them?”

He shook his head. “Not really. I’d like to meet them sometime. They seem nice.”

“They are,” she said. “Especially Cat. You’d love her.”

I smiled, knowing his sister was right. I would love her. So would he. And someday he’d tell her as much.

The first bell rang. People began to shuffle inside. Teagan stepped out and hurried after them.

He watched her go.

I
watched, raising a hand to wave at the girl in the striped leggings. She paused and waved back. Whether she was waving to him or to me, I couldn’t tell. In that moment, everything felt connected. Whole.

It’s time,
I thought, unable to cling to my separateness any longer.

This was it. The tale had caught up to the telling. The words disappeared as I thought them. The last memory of my self vanished.

And then —

Gold leaves against a blue sky.

The smell of apples and smoke in the air.

A girl with a scar above her lip looking back and smiling.

A taste of sweetness on my tongue.