Chapter Thirty-Four

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"Do you ever still want to drink and do drugs?" I asked.

We had moved up to Lori's bedroom, and now we were sitting on her bed, both of us still in our pyjamas. A slab of chocolate lay on the covers between us.

I felt like a great weight had lifted from my shoulders.

My heart was still sliced open and raw, and Mum's loss would never really stop hurting, but it would not kill me.

That didn't mean I was completely out of the rabbit hole yet.

"I do drink sometimes," Lori reminded me. "Just not often, and generally not much. Every now and then, I go too far and get a bit sozzled, but that's okay too. I don't let it control my life, and that's what's important." Her expression turned serious. "But yes, I do still want to do it all in the way that you mean, especially lately. I've been hurting so much since Mum died, and I know that I can take the pain away by drinking myself into oblivion, or popping some pills, but that'll only cause more pain in the long run. Maybe I'll always want them when things get rough. Maybe this is a battle that I'll be fighting my entire life, but it's worth fighting."

I could empathise with that in a way I'd hadn't been able to before. I wasn't an addict and Lori definitely had been, but we both struggled to resist the urge of numbing everything because it was better than feeling.

Lori put her hand on my knee and leaned forward, her face serious. "How bad has your drinking got? Be honest."

I winced. "Well . . . most days."

Lori bit her lip. "How worried do I need to be?"

"I'm not addicted. I've been drinking . . . well, you know why, but I don't need it. It's not like I'm thinking about it all the time, or counting down the minutes until I can get a drink. I've been using it to forget, but I can stop. I'm just scared that I'm not strong enough to fight this horrible thing inside me that keeps making me hurting people."

Lori squeezed my knee. "If you ever feel like you're not strong enough, then tell me. You can lean on me when you're too tired to fight, and I'll fight for you."

Tears stung my eyes.

I had kept Lori at a distance for so long, but I suddenly realised just how much I loved my sister.

She knew what it was like to go down the rabbit hole – she knew it better than I did – and she would stand at the edge and pull me up, as many times as it took until we were both far away from it.

"Although by the sounds of things, you're better at kicking butt than me," said Lori, a hint of mischief creeping into her eyes. "An umbrella? You threw an umbrella at him?"

"A broken umbrella."

Lori pressed her lips together, and suddenly we were both laughing, doubled over, the bed creaking beneath us.

"Oh my god," I whispered, pressing a hand to my chest. "I can't remember the last time I laughed."

Guilt squeezed my heart. Mum would never laugh again.

"It's okay to laugh," Lori said, putting her arm around my shoulder. "Mum wouldn't have wanted us to be miserable our whole lives."

I stuffed a square of chocolate in my mouth, thinking about that. I couldn't feel guilty every time I laughed, because then I'd feel guilty every time I felt anything good. If I wanted to leech this poison out of me, then I had to remember that my life hadn't stopped.

Mum would have hated to think that I didn't want to laugh anymore because she couldn't. She would want me to live.

"Dad's been asking after you," Lori said, toying with her pillow.

"Really?"

She nodded.

"I didn't think he even noticed I existed anymore," I muttered.

"He does. He's struggling, Laini."

"He pushed us away."

"I know, and believe me, I'm still mad at him about that. But I don't want to cut him out of my life. I don't want to lose two parents."

"What if we've already lost him?"

She put her head on one side, smiling a little. "I don't believe that. Dad's lost right now, but he'll come back. And I'd like to be there for him when he is."

I didn't know how to identify my feelings for Dad. They were tangled and twisted, hate and love knotted together until I couldn't quite tell which was which. I wasn't ready to untangle it all.

"You need to get your friends back," Lori said. "I know you were mad at them for how they acted, but you've been acting the same way. Do you think you can build bridges with them?"

"I don't know," I admitted.

"Not even Ella?"

Ella was – or had been – my oldest friend. We'd bonded when we first started Greylock, seven years ago, and we'd rarely fought during that whole time. I still thought that she and the others had let me down when I needed them, but could I really hold that against them when I had done the same thing to Lori?

People were complicated.

Sometimes they screwed up, but that didn't mean they were bad people.

I had pushed Ella away, cut her out of my heart like she'd never mattered, but it wasn't until that moment that I realised she'd left a raw wound behind. I remembered all the years we'd been friends: me rushing to her house when I finally got my ears pierced; us trying on makeup in her bedroom because my parents wouldn't let me; the first time she got her period and cried in my arms because it was new and scary; the first time either of us kissed a boy.

Yes, she had let me down when Mum got sick, but . . . she was still a huge part of my life. I had let anger and hurt override everything else, and I had forgotten how important she was to me.

"You should call her," Lori said.

I twisted my fingers together. "You really think she'll give me another chance?"

"Yes," said Lori at once. "I'm not saying that you'll apologise and all will be immediately forgiven, but this is Ella we're talking about. She's been your best friend for years, and whatever's happened between you two, she won't hold it against you."

Even if she did, I had to try.

I had to try and fix everything that I'd broken.





The next day I texted Ella and asked if she could come over.

Maybe it wasn't fair to expect her to come to me when I was the one who'd pushed her away, but if I ever wanted this house to feel like a home again, it needed to be filled with people that I cared about.

I wasn't really expecting her to say yes, or at least, if she did, that she would want a more neutral location, but she responded almost immediately, agreeing to come.

My battered heart lifted in my chest.

If she was agreeing to come, it meant there was hope.

I hadn't realised just how much I'd missed her until I dragged myself out of the rabbit hole and into the light.

When she turned up, she was, understandably, wary. She followed me into the kitchen, but she didn't take the seat I offered her. Instead she stood by the edge of the breakfast bar, close to the door. Probably so she could easily leave if she wanted to.

"I don't even know where to start," I said, twisting my hands together.

"Sorry would be a good start," Ella said, but there was a little glimmer in her eyes – not quite a smile, but something close.

"Sorry doesn't begin to cover it." I rubbed the back of my neck, trying to find words.

And then everything spilled out, same as it had with Lori. I told her everything I had been feeling, how I felt completely let down by her and Jill and Steph, and everything that had happened with me and Kell.

Halfway through, she silently sat at the breakfast bar.

By the end, tears were trickling down her face.

I leaned my forearms on the bar, exhausted. I felt like I'd purged myself all over again, and it was good to let it all out, but it was draining, too.

"I didn't know what to say," Ella admitted, wiping her eyes. "When you first told us she had cancer, I thought it would all be over pretty quick. But it wasn't."

"It felt pretty quick to me," I said.

Her face reddened. "Sorry, I didn't mean it like that."

"I know." Once, I would have given her hand a reassuring squeeze, but I wasn't sure we were at that point yet.

"I just . . . I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to say. I've never known anyone who died before, and I've got no experience with it. I know that's a lame excuse, but it's true. At first I knew what to do because you were so obviously upset, but then after a few weeks, you changed. You didn't seem to be upset all the time, but you weren't yourself either."

"I was upset all the time, just in a different way."

"I know that now." Ella shook her head, picking at her thumbnail. "Or maybe I always did, but I pretended not to because I didn't know how to deal with it. And that really wasn't fair to you."

I managed a faint smile. "Yelling in your face at that party wasn't really fair to you."

"It kind of was, though. I'm meant to be your best friend, but I let you down when you needed me the most."

Emotion knotted in my chest. "Maybe I should have explained to you how I was feeling instead of letting it all fester inside me until I blew up."

Ella slid her hand across the breakfast bar until she was touching my fingers. "Shall we just say that we both could have been better?"

I tried to find words, but my throat was too tight. All I could manage was a nod.

In so many ways, Ella had let me down, and in so many ways I had let her down too, but this was why she had been my best friend for so long. She had a good heart. She was kind and forgiving and she didn't hold grudges, and maybe we had both screwed up, and our friendship had been tested in a way that I could never have imagined, but we were both still here, and we were going to make this work.

Ella jumped up from her stool and flung her arms around me. "I missed you," she whispered.

I hugged her back and rested my head on her shoulder. "I missed you too."

I was still some way off getting myself properly back on track, but this was one very important step into the light.





Days slipped past, and bit by bit, I started picking up the pieces of my life, and fitting them all back together.

I stopped drinking, and started spending more time with Lori and Ella.

I saw Steph a couple of times, and though she was more cautious with her forgiveness than Ella had been, I was happily confident that we could – eventually – things out.

Jill, on the other hand, seemed to be completely done with me.

I didn't exactly blame her.

Maybe one day, when things were fully resolved with Steph, Jill would want to put our group back together, but I was prepared for the reality that that might not happen.

I was lucky enough that anyone wanted to be my friend again.

Sometimes I still felt I had to hide my grief. Sometimes I still let things fester, but every time that happened, I reminded myself – or Lori reminded me – that it was okay to let this out. It was okay to cry, okay to scream, okay to be angry.

A couple of times I snapped at both Ella and Lori, and both times they talked it over with me afterwards, and we moved on.

Things were getting better.

But I still couldn't bring myself to visit Mum's grave.

I hadn't tried to patch things up with Dad, either.

Part of me wanted to, but every time I saw him, all that old hurt and anger roared to life again.

I was trying to deal with everything, but I wasn't ready to deal with that yet.

I still hadn't seen Kell – not properly.

We shared some classes together, and sometimes we passed in the hallways of Greylock, but we never spoke, and every time I saw him, it was a kick to my slowly recovering heart. I wanted him back so badly it hurt, a constant ache in my chest, but I was still terrified that I'd stray too close to the rabbit hole again, and then I'd pull both of us in.

I was also afraid that he himself would fall down without me, but he hadn't cut any classes since we'd broken up, and I took that as a good sign.

And if the rumour mill was to be believed, cutting class wasn't the only thing he'd stopped doing. I heard about him going to parties, but never about him hooking up with anyone, or doing anything else that was worth talking about. No getting drunk, no drugs of any kind. I'm not even sure he was smoking anymore.

I wanted to tell him I was proud of him.

But I didn't know how.

Even if there was a chance of us ever picking up where we'd left off, I had no idea how to do it. I didn't know how to approach him again. It had only been a couple of weeks since that horrible night at Warren's, but it felt like much longer. It felt like he was standing on one side of a huge chasm, and I was on the other, and I really wanted to cross to his side, but I didn't know how.

And it wasn't fair to expect him to come to me, not when I was the one who'd ended things.

So it came as a complete shock one Thursday morning, before school, when someone knocked on the front door and I opened it to find Kell standing there.

"Hi," he said.

I couldn't even speak. Although I had seen him at school, it wasn't the same – we always tried to maintain a healthy distance.

Now he was right here in front of me, and I was painfully aware of every part of him; his hands, his mouth, those scruffy jeans with the ripped knees, that mop of hair, the rings glinting in his ear and the rings glinting on his fingers.

My heart gave a great leap, as if it was trying to scrabble out of my chest to reach him.

Kell's expression faded, and he shoved his hands in his pockets. "I guess you're probably not ready to see to me yet, but I really need to talk to you. In private."

There was something strange in his voice; I couldn't pinpoint what it was. And why wasn't he wearing his uniform?

"Okay," I said, my mouth dry, and stepped outside, leaving the door fractionally ajar behind me.

Kell rubbed a hand along his jaw, then ran it through his hair. "I . . ." He broke off, and sighed. "Shit. This is harder than I thought."

He smiled a little, and I had to smile back, because he was so beautiful and awkward, and every part of me missed every part of him.

"Okay, so I'm just going to come out and say it," Kell said. His eyes locked with mine, even more intense than I remembered. "I've found Lori's baby."

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