SUNDAY, MARCH 31
7 days left

I'm woken up by the glare of the morning sun. Harry's arms are still wrapped around me and I roll away from his grasp. We fell asleep a few feet from the tent, and my shirt and jeans are streaked with muddy grass marks.
I pull my phone out of my pocket and see I have a missed call and voice mail from an unknown number. I start to walk away from where Harry is sleeping, but I stop when I hear him sleepily groan in my direction.
"Where are you going?" He sits up and rubs his eyes. "What time is it?"
"Almost eight a.m."
"Ugh." He flops back down on his back and squeezes his eyes shut. "It's too early and too bright."
"Someone had too much wine," I say in a normal a voice as much as I can. I know he said that last night didn't change anything, but I don't know how to act like things haven't changed. He's no longer Blurryface, my Suicide Partner from the internet. He's Harry, who held me all night. To me, there's a difference. A big difference.
He's no longer the person I want to die with; he's the person I want to be alive with. I want to experience things with.
"I'll be right back," I say, and head off toward the river. I walk down the same path I did yesterday. I look at my phone's screen again. I missed the call around 7:00 p.m. last night. Maybe I'd already drank too much wine to notice my phone vibrating.
I press my ear to the phone and listen to the message. It's Jacob, the guard from the prison, calling with information about my dad. My breath shortens as I replay the message. Jacob located someone who works at Saint Anne's Behavioral Health Hospital who knows something about him. Jacob gives me the name of the person, Tara Woodfin, and her number. I replay the message again and then glance down at my phone. It's probably too early to give Tara a ring, especially on a Sunday. I'll have to wait a bit.
Once I get back to the campsite, I find Harry in the same position I left him. He's lying on his back, his eyes squeezed shut and his face frozen in a painful frown. I kneel down beside him and shake his shoulders. "Come on, we should go. Let's take down the tent."
"Why do we have to leave so early?" His speech is still slurred and he rolls over on his side.
I walk over to the tent and try to figure out how to collapse the thing without breaking it. I fumble around with the poles until I figure out that they can be removed from the tent's flaps, and once they're out, you can bend them in half. I'm sure there's an easier and prettier way to take it down, but Harry is too zoned out to judge me, and if he has his way, he's never going to need to use this tent again anyway.
The thought is almost unbearable, and I push away the sinking feeling, swallowing the lump in my throat. Stay busy. Don't go there. Once the tent is collapsed, I shove all the parts into the bag Harry packed it in. There's no order to it, but I'm sure Mrs. Styles will fix it once we get back.
As I head toward the cooler to grab a bottled water for Harry, I notice his backpack slumped next to it. I peek at him to make sure he's still sleeping and unzip it. I pull out his sketch pad. I know it's wrong, but I can't help it.
I sit down cross-legged on the ground and flip through his sketch pad. My breath catches when I reach the last page, the drawing of me. The girl I'm staring at is not me, but she is me. Her large eyes are focused away from the viewer, but there's something in them I don't immediately recognize: hope. Her posture looks straighter than mine, like she's stronger, more resilient.
"Thank you, Harry," I whisper to myself. I tear the drawing out of the sketch pad. I don't care about how angry he'll be when he realizes I took it. I need it. I need it to remind myself that I can be this girl, that this girl is inside of me. This hopeful, strong person. I fold the drawing into a tiny square and slide it into my pocket and then carefully put his sketch pad back inside his bag.
As I pull a water bottle out of the cooler, I think about what I have to do. I have to do for Harry what he has done for me: I have to show him the person still inside of him, the person he thinks is gone and defeated. A boy full of adventure and talent, with a sloppy smile and an infectious laugh. A boy with eyes like summer grass and sunshine that see things most people don't, and hands that create incredible sketches. I close my eyes and remember holding his hand at the carnival, how solid and tight his grip was.
I have to help him save himself. I have to.
Taking a deep breath, I muster the courage to walk over to Harry. I crouch down beside him and press the cool bottle to his forehead. "Wake up."
"Hey!" he yelps out in surprise.
"I figured that would feel good."
"It does, thanks. It just startled me a little." He takes the water bottle from me and rolls onto his side so he can gulp down a few sips before pressing it against his forehead again.
"I'm going to put everything in the car and then we can take off. Okay?"
I'm about to get up, but he reaches for my hand and pulls me back down to the ground beside him. "I wasn't so drunk that I don't remember last night, Taylor."
I stare at him blankly. I can't say what I want to say, and I figure silence is better than all the words he doesn't want to hear. And besides, I don't want to speak until I have the right words. The magic words. The words that will convince him to live.
He shakes his head and takes another gulp of water. "Don't pretend like you don't know what I'm talking about."
I stay silent and run my tongue over my teeth, searching for the right words.
"Taylor," he says as he reaches for my hand again. I grip his hand and stare down at it. The hand that drew that picture. "Jacob called," I say.
His fingers softly massage mine. "And?"
"He gave me the name of someone I can call to get some information on my dad."
Harry drops his gaze to the ground but keeps my hand in his. "We might not have time to visit him before . . ."
"I know, but . . ." I pause and inhale, letting the cold spring air fill my lungs. "About last night. I know you told me not to let it change anything, and maybe last night in particular didn't change anything, but I'm starting to think that maybe we should stop and really consider . . . everything." I stare down at our hands.
He drops my hand and scoots away from me. I take a sharp breath. "Look, I knew it was a bad idea. It's just you're, you're, you're . . ." He sputters like a stalling car's engine.
"I'm what?"
"You're you. You get it. You get all of it. And you're sad like me, and as screwed up as that is, it's pretty beautiful." He reaches over and brushes his hand across my face, touching my hair. "You're like a gray sky. You're beautiful, even though you don't want to be."
But he's wrong. It's not that I don't want to be. But I never wanted to be beautiful because I was sad. Harry of all people should know that there is nothing beautiful or endearing or glamorous about sadness. Sadness is only ugly, and anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't get it. I think what he means to say is that he and I are ugly in the same way and there's something familiar, comfortable, about that. Comfortable is different from beautiful.

I think about his drawing of me.
The girl that he drew, she was beautiful. That girl wasn't a gray sky. She had hope. Hope is beautiful.
And so I don't want us to be ugly in the same way anymore. I don't want to be a gray sky. I want us to find hope. Together. I look away from him to hide the fact that my eyes are welling up. After a few moments of silence, I stand up and dust myself off. "We should probably get going."
"Taylor," he says, and there's an urgency to his voice. "We should talk about this."
"I know, but I don't know what to say."
He squeezes my hand and all I can do is squeeze back because I'm too scared of letting go. Of losing him.

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A//N: Only a few chapters left!!

-CK