Page 25 of What You Left Me

I follow her into the guesthouse, and she drags me into the bathroom. It’s Cameron, Aminah, Daniel, me, a toilet, a sink, and not an inch to spare.

“What’s going on?” Aminah whispers.

“What do you mean?”

“What is Michael Turrey doing here?” Daniel snips, a quick scissor cut into our conversation.

“He drove me home. He’s your neighbor.”

“I’m very aware.”

“Do you hate him?”

“No,” Daniel snips again.

“What did I do?”

Aminah pinches me. “You’re losing your mind!” she says. “I ask again. What is going on with you?”

“Nothing!” I shout.

Aminah glares at me. “You’ve been weird all week. Maybe all year, if I’m being honest. This is so not nothing!”

I hope for Cameron to be on my side, to take Aminah up on the fight she’s angling for—I’m never the source of these things; I never get involved—but right now she’s a silent fourth wheel, smashed into the door. She is applying aloe. At least that’s true.

“You don’t know Martin,” Daniel says. His snips are getting bigger. The scissor is dangerously close to making a real cut.

“So what? Why can’t I be supportive?”

“You visited him in the hospital! People are still saying he could die, wishing they could see him again, and you actually did it. You took away time that someone who knows him could’ve used!” The words sting. Even more when it registers that they came from Cameron, who never involves me. Who never makes me the source of these things.

I look up, finding all their eyes coating me with guilt.

• • •

It’s not my dream.

I’m trying to let that sink in and become something I can actually believe. For some reason, it still makes more sense that I’m the one that’s dreaming. And shit, maybe I am. If that car accident really happened, Iamasleep. Just not the kind of asleep I thought I was.

Okay, notif.

Becausethat car accident happened.

• • •

“Do we have to do this in the bathroom?” I ask.

“You really want to talk about this in front of his friend?” Aminah questions.

“I thought you were ignoring him because you liked him?” I ask, trying to turn the tables on her.

“I was ignoring him because I thought it was really weird that you brought him here!”

“Aminah and I leave for school in a little over a month. Forgive us for being selfish and wanting to be around our best friend,” Cameron says to me. She lays her head on my shoulder and pets my arm, knowing her guilt trip really stung me.

“It’s our last summer. Let’s not be wasting it on Michael Turrey,” Daniel adds. “And Martin Fly or whoever. Yes, it’s sad. Yes, you should feel bad. But no, you should not throw yourself into his life.”

I salute him, opting out of words for fear of their inappropriate anger.