The house is shrouded in darkness, with no light seeping through the windows. It’s late, so my dad must be home.
I insert my key into the lock, a familiar anxiety gripping me that it might not work. Even though my father has no reason to keep me out—he never asked me to leave—I’m unsure if he really wants me here.
Once inside, I shut the door and slip my keys back into my pocket. A sharp, unpleasant odor hits me, making me recoil slightly as I take in the scene.
Unease settles over me. The house is in disarray. My dad used to be a stickler for cleanliness, and with my sister and me pitching in, we always maintained a tidy home. But now, mail and newspapers litter the floor, laundry is scattered on the stairs, and there’s an unmistakable stench of old food mixed with dirty clothes.
As I pass the sitting room, I notice a light from the living room and peer in. The TV is on with the volume turned low, and my father is slumped in the recliner, dressed in pajamas and a robe. Next to him is a table cluttered with coffee cups, napkins, and a half-eaten plate of food.
I approach and look down at his sleeping form, a pang of guilt hitting me. Dane was right. My dad used to be so active. Even after Annie, he kept up with everything around here. But now, his cheeks look sallow, and his clothes are wrinkled, as if they’ve been worn for days.
My eyes sting with tears, and an overwhelming desire for Ryen washes over me.
I need her. I’m scared, and I don’t know what to do right now.
I couldn’t get back what I needed from Falcon’s Well, but I’m not sure I care anymore.
But I don’t want to leave yet, either. I want Ryen, but I also feel like if I walked out now and left my father for good, Annie would truly be gone. Any semblance of the life we had before would be a memory.
I lower myself to the ottoman, watching him. His head is turned to the side, and I spy a pill bottle on the table.
I don’t have to look to know it’s Xanax. My dad’s kept it around for years, something to take the edge off when raising two kids by himself got stressful. Honestly, though, I think he started taking it because my mother left. He’d loved her, and she skipped out. No notes, no calls, no contact. She left her kids and never looked back.
I dealt with it, my father buried himself in his kids, work, and hobbies to not think about it, and Annie waited. She always seemed to think our mom would come back and want to see us eventually. She’d be ready for her.
I still feel my sister in this house. As if she’s going to walk in the door, sweaty and out of breath from exercising, and barking orders, reminding me that it was my night to cook dinner and telling Dad to throw the clothes in the dryer.
“I miss her, Dad,” I speak low and quiet, despair overtaking me. “She called me that night.”
I look up at him, wishing he was awake but also glad that he isn’t. He knew she’d called me, probably only a minute before she collapsed on the road, but he wouldn’t hear any more. He’d fly into a rage, because he knew this was my fault.
“I didn’t answer, because I was busy,” I continue. “I assumed it was something little. You know how she always got on my case for not washing my dishes or stealing her chips?” I smile to myself at the memories. “I thought it was something unimportant, and I’d just call her back in a minute, but I made a mistake.”
I let out a breath and close my eyes. If I’d answered…I might’ve gotten to her in time. I might’ve gotten an ambulance to her before it was too late.
“When I called back she wasn’t answering,” I say, more to myself, reliving the night in my head as tears build. “I still wake up, frightened out my mind, and for a moment I think that it was all a nightmare. I grab my phone, scared that I missed a call from her.”
I bury my head in my hands.
In the weeks that followed Annie’s death, my father and I either fought or ignored each other. He blamed me for not being there when she needed me. She’d called me, after all, not him.
And I blamed him, too. If he’d just stopped pushing her and convinced her that our mother was never coming back, she might not have been destroying her body to try to be the perfect student, the perfect athlete, the perfect kid… And then her poor body might not have given out on her on that dark, empty road.
If he hadn’t popped Xanax when it was convenient then maybe Annie would never have gotten the idea to put herself on amphetamines to give herself the boost to do more than she should handle and be perfect.
Annie was going to be great. She fought for what she wanted in life. So much wasted talent.
“Sometimes I wish it was me instead, too.” I look up, seeing him still asleep.
He’d said that to me one night when we’d gotten in each other’s face, and I’d been hurt, despite how I acted like I wasn’t. I knew he didn’t mean it, but I do know he’d be happier still having the one child of his he had a good relationship with.
With me, what does he have?
But I can’t let him go. Annie is in him, she’s in this house, and we’re her family. We have to stay that way.
“We’re never going to have a relationship like you and she had, but I’m here.”
I stand up and quietly start clearing off the cluttered table, heading to the kitchen to do the dishes.
“Hey,” Dane calls, and I look up, seeing him walk back out of the gate at the Cove and head toward me.
“I’ve been texting you,” he says.
“Yeah, I saw.” I slam the truck door and reach into the bed of the truck, taking out some boxes.
After cleaning the kitchen at home, I’d opened some windows to air the house out while I threw in a load of laundry, sorted through the mail, took out the garbage, and cleaned up my bedroom. Which is pretty impressive, because I never do that.
I’d covered my dad with a blanket, and hopefully, when I bring groceries home tomorrow, he will be okay with me being back.
I guess I’ll find out.
“I’ve been going over this song you gave me with the guys. We were up until three last night,” he tells me. “I think we really got something.”
I nod, not really that invested in that right now. My head is in a million other places. I still have no idea how I’m going to fess up to Ryen.
God, she’s going to kill me.
Dane walks with me as I head through the parking lot for the gate entrance. “What are you doing?” he asks. “Are you moving back?”
“I’ll be home soon,” I say. “I just have some stuff to clear up here first.” “Do you need help?”
I jerk my head over my shoulder. “Go grab more boxes if you want.”
He runs back and collects the rest of the boxes I’d taken from my garage at home, and we walk through the old park.
I didn’t bring much with me when I decided to hide out here, so it won’t take long to pack my stuff, but I’m not in a hurry.
I don’t really want to leave, but I can’t stay here as Masen Laurent anymore—a name I picked out of thin air a month ago when I asked my cousin to help me get my fake driver’s license and forge some school records. I just kept my same initials.
Once people—two people, in particular—find out I’m Misha Lare, the jig is up.
And I can’t lie to her anymore. Things were never supposed to get this
far.
I don’t have any friends. Hearing her words and seeing her eyes tonight,
that moment when she broke, I hated myself. What is she going to think tomorrow when she finds out her best friend stabbed her in the back and looked her in the eye doing it?
Dane and I climb down the field house stairs, and I head over to the opposite wall, throwing some switches. Lights spark to life, illuminating the long hallways as we make our way straight, to the room I’ve been using.
“I don’t know how you slept down here,” he mumbles. “It’s like a horror movie.”
I give a weak laugh. It’s definitely creepy, but… “I wasn’t really thinking a lot back then.”
I figured because it’s close to Falcon’s Well, I probably wouldn’t be discovered—or so I thought—and I have good memories of coming to this place with Annie when I was a kid.
I swing into the room, Dane following behind, and I walk the short distance to the bed table and switch on the light.
“Whoa,” Dane says.
“What?” I look up and follow his gaze, but I quickly notice what he’s referring to, and I stop breathing for a moment.
Wha—
“What the hell have you been doing in here?”
I turn in a circle, seeing the flood of papers scattered over nearly every inch of the room. Posters are ripped off the walls, my clothes are strewn about, and a table with some candles is tipped over, all of my personals laying on the floor.
I suddenly feel the pulse in my neck throb like the vein is trying to punch through the skin.
“I didn’t do this.”
I lean down and grab a fistful of the papers off the floor, seeing my name at the bottom of every letter, a couple of them a year or two old, and one from grade school. I can tell, because I signed my name Mish during an asinine spell to sound less girly.
These were all letters that were sent to Ryen. She’s had them. How did
—
Something tightens around my stomach, and I wince, knowing there’s
no other way these letters got here. “What’s that say?”
I sway off balance, but I look up, following where he points. On the wall, written with a can of black spray paint are huge letters glaring down at us.
You trick me? Watch your back, wait, and see.
“Oh, shit.” I can barely fucking move. It’s a lyric from one of my old songs Ryen helped me write.
I dive down to the shelf on my bedside table, seeing that the few items that were stashed in there are pulled out. I grab the pocket folder where I kept some of her letters—my favorite ones that I reread—but as soon as I pick it up, I already feel the weightlessness of it.
“No, no, no, no…” I flip open the top and look inside. “What is it?”
“Fuck!” I growl. Every single one of them gone. I fling the folder away from me. “Shit!”
“What? Who?”
Jesus Christ. I shoot up and run my hands up and down my face. She knows who I am, she found her letters, and she took them back.
I spin around and run out the door. “Misha!” Dane yells.
But I don’t stop. I race for the stairs, run up to the main floor, and dash outside, speeding through the park.
She’ll listen to me. She’ll understand. All this wasn’t meant to happen.
I dig in my jeans for my keys and climb in my truck, charging out of the park and onto the highway.
The letters. Goddammit! Knowing Ryen’s temper, they’re probably shredded at the bottom of a garbage disposal right now. Fuck!
I grip the steering wheel, rubbing my eyes with my other hand. The road is blurry, and I try to calm my breathing.
Those letters are everything. They’re her and me, kids just trying to figure themselves out and going through all our growing pains. They’re where I first started to fall for her and need her. They’re my fucking songs and a part of me.
Our history is in those letters. Every beautiful thing she ever said to me to tilt my world on its side.
My stomach rolls. If they’re gone, so help me God…
And if Ryen won’t hear me out, I don’t know what I’ll do.
After ten minutes, I’m finally parking on the street in front of her house.
I kill the car and jump out, running up to her front door.
The house is dark and quiet, which is expected at one in the morning.
But when I lift the flower pot, the key is missing. I curl my fists.
I round the house, checking windows to see if they lift, but then I spot a ladder propped up on the side of the house and stop. Gazing up, I see no light coming through Ryen’s window.
Fuck it. If she’s not there I’ll wait. I start climbing.
Making my way up the ladder, I step onto the roof and walk over to her window. The room is pitch black, but I hear music, “True Friends” by Bring Me the Horizon playing, and I don’t hesitate. Lifting the window, I swing a leg in and bow down, sliding in.
And I immediately feel her.
Standing upright again, I hear an intake of breath and turn, spotting her dark form sitting with her knees bent up in the corner of the room.
She shoots off the ground and charges for me. “Get out.”
I take in her red and wet eyes, her rumpled sleep shorts and tank top with tear drops soaking through the pink fabric, and her hair hanging in a mess around her. She looks like she’s been crying for hours.
But still, that temper of hers is there.
I step toward her. “Where are the letters?”
“Get fucked!” she bursts out. “I burned the letters!” I whip around and slam my hand into the wall. “Stop!” she whispers. “My mom will hear you!”
“I don’t give a shit,” I say, turning around and getting in her face. “You belong to me more than you ever did to them.”
She shakes her head, eyes filling with tears again. “How could you do this? I was supposed to trust you, and this whole time, you were right here, watching me. You ruined everything!”
“I didn’t come to Falcon’s Well for you,” I shout back, bearing down on her. “But believe me, I’m not sorry. What a waste of time you were all these years. Now I know.”
She chokes on a sob. “Get out.” But I can’t leave.
I never thought I’d make Ryen Trevarrow cry, but both times I have, it’s been in the past two weeks.
We kept writing because we needed each other, because we made the other one’s life better. But even after knowing her for years, it took no time for me to break what we had.
We were perfect for each other.
Until we met.
I realize now as I’m staring into her angry eyes that hold a pain she’s trying to shield from me, that there is so much more to her than what was in her letters. And so much in her letters that she let me see and no one else. I want it all.
“You’re so selfish,” she cries softly. “You take and take and take, and you didn’t even think of me, did you? I was never real to you.”
The despair in her eyes comes through, and hatred winds its way under my skin. I hate that she’s looking at me like I’m one of them.
Walking toward her, I force her back against the wall and pull my shirt over my head, clutching it in my hand.
She stares at me, confused. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Look.” I hold her eyes, willing her to look at my body. We were too consumed at the drive-in, and in bed this morning I was behind her, so she hasn’t gotten a good look.
I light up my phone and hold it up, illuminating my skin.
Her eyes drop, looking hesitant, but slowly she starts letting her gaze drift over me. And I know exactly what she’s seeing.
Her eyes fall over the cassette tape high on my torso, musical notes stringing out of it, and the label on the tape reading The Hand That Rules the World. It was a play on words from a poem Ryen quoted in a letter once when she was encouraging me to start a band.
Her gaze trails down to the small black birds taking flight on the side of my stomach and over my hip. Words float along with the art, reading, And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. It’s from Hamlet, Ryen’s favorite Shakespeare play. I got the tattoo after Annie died.
She takes my phone and slowly circles me, shining the light and taking in my chest and back, the Pearls of Wisdom down my arm—another letter
about our parents—the decaying heart on my shoulder, stitched up down the middle and reconnecting the words You’re My Tribe—inspired by her words which even led to a song I wrote. And then there’s the countless other little quotes and designs, the scenes of things we talked about, dreamed of, and laughed over.
I wasn’t covered, and I didn’t have full sleeves going on, but it was a lot to take in. And almost all of it, she was the root of.
She comes around my front again, her breath shaking and her eyes glistening with tears.
“You were the only thing that was real to me,” I tell her.
She looks at me like she has no idea how to process all this. I mean, really. What did I expect? Even tomorrow, when I meant to tell her everything, how was I planning on doing that? Was there any way for her to find this out in a way she was going to understand?
“Misha?” she whispers, and all of a sudden she’s scanning me up and down, looking at me like she’s finally seeing me.
I take the phone from her and slip it in my pocket. Moving in, I bring my hands up to hold her face, but she flinches.
I immediately drop them. “You have to listen.” “Ryen?” someone calls, knocking on the door. It’s a woman. Probably her mother.
“Get rid of her,” I whisper.
Ryen blinks up at me, wiping her eyes. “Ye…yes?” she stammers, calling out. “I’m in bed.”
“Okay,” her mom says. “I thought I heard the TV or something. It’s late.
You need sleep.” “Okay, goodnight.”
I pull the shirt back on and lower my voice, hearing her mother’s door close.
“I never intended to let it get this far,” I explain. “I had business here, and I wanted…” I trail off, searching for the right words, because I’m scared. “Part of me couldn’t resist being this close to you. I think part of me needed you. I never thought we would speak again after the scavenger hunt. I didn’t want to ruin what we had, but then I came here and…”
She runs her hands up and down her face, starting to cry again, and I can tell I’m losing her.
“But then you steal my shit,” I keep going, “and I see you harassing Cortez. And then you try to fuck with me in the lunchroom, and one thing leads to another, and we were constantly in each other’s faces. It was like… It was like, even if we’d never been pen pals, we still would’ve found each other, you know?”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cries. “At any time you could’ve said, ‘Hey, I’m Misha!’” She shakes her head, glaring at me. “I kissed you. I went to bed with you! The whole time you knew me, and I had no idea. You humiliated me! You’ve been right here in front of me this whole time. Do you have any idea how fucking creepy that is?”
“I had no reason to tell you!” I growl in a near whisper “I didn’t even know if I liked you anymore that first day! And I definitely had no reason to trust you. You were a snotty, little brat, and you know it. Why did you lie to me?” I scowl. “Why did I think, for seven years, that you were strong and fucking nice? Someone who has balls and stands up for herself?”
Her shoulders shake, and little gasps escape as she struggles to breathe. I quickly look around, angry and guilty at the same time. Seeing an inhaler on her desk, I grab it and hand it to her, but she knocks it out my hand.
“I lied about the people in my life and the parts of me I fake for others,” she explains. “Everything else was true. The movies and the music, my ideas and my dreams, everything else was true. The rest wasn’t important.”
“I trusted you, too,” I point out. “I believed in you.” “I’m everything I said I was.”
“You can say whatever you want,” I retort. “Doesn’t make it true.”
Her head falls, and she inhales shaky breaths through her nose, clearly trying to calm herself and get her body under control. The inhaler lays on the floor. I wish she’d just take the fucking thing. She’s making me nervous. “I was the real me when I wrote you those letters,” she says quietly. “I
was everything I wanted to be.”
And I can understand that. There are definitely some minor things I haven’t told her, because I wanted to be free with her, like I can’t be at home. But she has to know that, even though what I did was crazy and things got way out of hand, it hurt me, too, to be tricked. To find that the person you care about and hold on a pedestal is shallow and mean to the rest of the world.
“And when you would write me,” I ask her, “telling me to stand up to my dad, believe in myself, stay true with no regrets… Why would you tell me those things when you didn’t follow them yourself?”
She looks away, but I don’t back off. I stare at her, holding her hostage.
Why preach to me all the things you didn’t have the courage to do yourself?
“Hmm?” I prod, dipping my head down to meet her eyes.
“Because…” she whispers, avoiding my eyes. “Because you want good things for the people you…”—she breathes fast, barely whispering
—“love.”
I suck in a sharp breath. God, what is she doing to me?
I’d give anything—anything—to have her in my arms right now.
I reach for her, cupping her face, my mouth less than an inch from hers. “Ryen, please…”
The tears and quiet sobs start again, and I try to comfort her, but she pushes me away. “Oh, God, get out,” she cries, holding up her hands to keep me away. “I can’t look at you right now. I can’t wrap my head around this. I feel sick.”
“Ryen, please,” I beg, feeling the ache in my chest spread. “I love you
—”
“Oh, God!” she cuts me off. “Get out!”
I wince, my eyes burning with tears. I feel like my heart is ripping apart. I watch as she buries her head in her hands and stands there, breaking in
two.
There’s no way I can go back and change this. While she may have been vile to others, she was always a good friend to me, and I can’t say the same. She aggravated me and pissed me off, but I broke this. I’m responsible.
I bend down and pick up the inhaler, putting it on the desk in case she needs it.
And then I climb back out through the window and head back to the Cove. I’m not going home.
I’m not going anywhere until she’s mine.
