Page 149 of Find My Way Down to You

And sink.

And sink.

I jolt awake.

A scream claws at my throat. It’s too dry for anything more than a weak gasp. Sweat dampens my face. My muscles ache like I’ve been running. Or trying not to drown.

It takes a moment before my eyes adjust. Silvered light streams across my sheets. I’m in my bedroom. But I can’t remember how I got here. My head is fuzzy, falling in and out of focus.

When I was eleven, I had my tonsils removed. My mom thought it was a just bad sore throat. A virus I caught at school. But my dad knew better. This is how I felt after the procedure and the anesthesia wore off.

Foggy. Like the world wasn’t real. Walking through a thick haze and unsure of where I was going.

I blink again. My gaze snags on something. A navy blue hoodie at the end of my bed. In the night’s half light, yellow letters spell outUCSB.

London’s hoodie.

Quietly, I wait for the ache to come. Spread through my chest. Leave me curled in a ball for hours. But the feeling never arrives. Instead, a sensation I haven’t felt in years blossoms bright and wild inside my veins.

Gratitude.

I hug the cottony soft material to my chest. He’s not gone. I still have a piece of him here with me. In my arms. In my heart.

The door creaks open. I half expect it to be Diana.

Max’s head peeks in. “Are you up?”

Weary, I nod. On the fringes of my memory, I remember fighting with her. Our harsh words in the pizzeria. Max walking away. Me storming out.

She sucks in her cheeks, also uncertain of where we stand. Her eyes fix on the hoodie. “Is that…London’s?”

Again, I nod.

Max sits next to me. Shoulder to shoulder.

We hover in silence. I tug at a loose thread in the hoodie’s hem. She glances at my naked bedroom walls. The lack of real furniture. It looks like no one lives here. Like I made myself disappear from this home Max made for me.

The corners of her mouth lift a little. “You need a dresser. And a hamper.”

Diana has happily flopped onto my pile of discarded clothes on the hardwood floor.

Max taps her chin. “While we’re at it, hang some photos on these boring-ass walls.”

“Of you and me?” I suggest.

“No. Just me. Everyone should have a framed image of this beautiful face.”

I laugh. It feels good in my chest. Missed, needed.

“Some plants too?” I propose.

Max reels back. “Plants? You?”

I give a half-hearted shrug. “Yeah. I’m not saying I’m good at it.” Light warms my skin as I daydream about my mom’s greenhouse. My favorite place in the city. In the world. “But I want to keep trying.”

That makes Max chew on her lip.

“Auggie—” Her voice isn’t as confident as it was a second ago. “I’ll never know what you lost that night.” She skims fingers up the sleeve of London’s hoodie. “But I lost him too. We were friends. The three of us. Because of you.”