Page 26 of What You Left Me

“Good. Now that we’ve settled that,” Daniel says, “we need to come up with a way to kick Michael out of my backyard.”

• • •

Somehow I’m in some gray, endless, nothing place between life andyou know,and somehow I’m getting into people’s dreams. Spencer and Turrey. And Petra. The girl on my mind when that car came barreling into my side.

She’s dreaming of me.

I stood in the shallow end of a pool filled with strangers. They were yelling at her. Criticizing her for ruining their fun. I called out to her to let her know I was there, and she rushed over. In the weirdest way, she reminded me of my sister’s cat. Like you could tell she pounced, but only when she had to, and never for more than she needed. It could’ve been the way she was positioned, balancing on all fours on the water’s surface, her head cocked to one side, pain keeping her from relaxing.

The only thoughts I got out to her were “I’m stuck” and “I can’t wake up,” like they somehow summed up everything that’s been happening to me. Whatever it is about Petra that makes her radiate—the glow stick she must’ve swallowed to make her burn so bright—was pointed in my direction. It lit me up too, and I swear she could see every single part of my entire being. Everything I really wanted to say disappeared. I wanted to deny that it was her dream or help her out of the pool so it wouldn’t hurt her anymore or stop the people around us from yelling, but I didn’t. I was like a caveman marveling at fire.

It does make me feel better to knowI’mnot the one imagining her in pain, but it hurts to know she’s imagining herself that way.

I have to keep reminding myself:it’s not my dream.

But itismy reality.

I can’t forget that.

13

We sit in Daniel’s kitchen, sulking around his island, already complaining about what’s to come. We’re momentarily ignoring the Turrey problem that was once so pressing I needed to be woken from sleep to address it. Hopefully ignoring the me problem forevermore.

“Our dorm room seriously goes from here,” Cameron declares to Daniel, standing up to take a few steps forward, “to here. It’s nuts.”

“It’s not that bad,” Aminah says. She glares at Cameron. “At least we have each other. We could be living with a stranger.”

This is one of those random transitional conversations meant to ease the tension of the fight we just had minutes ago. For them, it might be working. For me, a live wire has been cut, and it sparks around inside of me. Annoyance and Martin and algebra and scholarships and Martin and algebra and money and anger and Martin and scholarships and frustration and algebra and Ryan and money and Martin and algebra and failure and—wait. Wait. No.

No Ryan.

Daniel gives me a look like,Can you believe these two?“You guys are the worst. I haven’t even gotten my roommate yet. I could be living with an ax murderer.” He keeps looking at me, expecting my scowl to rework itself into a pitying smile. “So could Petra.”

“Well, I toured Notre Dame with Petra. The dorm rooms there aren’t nearly as small as ours,” Cameron adds. “If Petty Pet bunks her bed, she’ll have plenty of room to hide from her ax-murdering roommate.”

Now everyone is doing the thing where they use my name to get me to participate in the conversation. I know their hearts are in the right place, but for once, I don’t care to pretend.

Guilt wears on me. For bumming around. For opening and closing the refrigerator door at my leisure. Asinine everyday behaviors usually taken for granted. All the things I do to avoid my problems. All the things Martin can’t do at all.

Shirtless Turrey slides open the screen door before Cameron can ask me what’s really wrong. The swooshing sound of his intrusion cuts through the invisible barrier my friends thought they hung in the air. This is what happens when you stop paying attention to your problems. They keep showing up.

“What’s up in here?” Turrey asks.

“Cooling off,” Cameron says. She offers him a cup, which he takes. He grabs the pitcher of iced tea sitting on the counter and begins pouring.

Aminah lurks by the fridge, shifting from side to side, her eyes skewering Turrey’s every movement. “What are you doing here?”

Turrey puts down his cup. He maintains steady eye contact with Aminah as she fidgets. “Getting a drink.”

“We don’t know you,” Aminah responds.

Awkward explodes.

Daniel somehow slipped out of the room. Even my detective skills missed it. Cameron and I, surrounded by the smell of organic kitchen-cleaning products and the draft of open windows, are helpless spectators to this unexpected face-off.

“I’ve been Daniel’s neighbor my whole life,” Turrey tells her.

“I’ve got lots of neighbors. Don’t know the first thing about them. And there’s probably almost six hundred people in our graduating class that I don’t know either.”