☆ Evan ☆

I want to stop this feeling. I want to stop ruining this—ruining it like I do with everything else.

But it's my fault.

I kick the beanbag chair in front of me. It rustles against the floor, and it serves nothing to get rid of the helplessness attacking me from every angle. I don't cry—but I don't have the tears to form an ocean. I don't even have the tears for a raindrop.

Peter starts to reach his hand out, but he hesitates. We both do. I don't get to come back from this, and neither does he. I can't swallow the words, just like he can't pretend that he hasn't seen it.

"You can tell me," he says, and his voice is all low, all sympathy. "You've been holding onto it for a long time."

He's right. I don't like admitting it, even to myself. I can talk about my father for ages, and I don't shy away from mentioning Elaine. But a mother is a nebulous thing, and it was her that taught me that baring my soul would only leave me exposed. It would leave me in the same story I've been in for years. The story where I don't say what I mean, and I don't know how to feel.

I don't know how to feel.

"You were right. It was a metaphor," I mumble.

Peter steps closer, even as I turn away from him. Even as I don't face him. "Sorry?"

(Why does he have to apologize like that? Why?)

"The drawing of my room," I explain, digging the toe of my shoe into the beanbag chair. "You said it was like loneliness. It isn't—it's like home."

He lingers behind me. I can feel his presence—I can smell the fresh pine infused with the sharpness of the cold that fills the ski resort. This far away from the waterline, the thick scent of the ocean spray is gone. It hits me that I can recognize Northwood—that one hundred and seventy-three days from now, I will stumble out from the known, and into the unknown.

I continue as I lower myself to the floor, "A house without somewhere to sleep is not a home. It never has been. That day you were at my apartment—why did you write, Everything is temporary?"

"It helps," he answers, "with all the thoughts I shouldn't think. With all the things that I shouldn't say. And it reminds me of you, with your countdown. Isn't that why you're counting? It brings you closer to getting to the end. That this... this year will fade if you keep your eye on the clock for long enough."

(This is the ending I want. It's the one that makes sense.)

"The countdown isn't about going anywhere in particular. I mean, not really," I utter. I seek the skiers in the snow like ivy, like veins twisting through the earth. My breath fogs up against the glass of the window. "It's about getting away from home."

I guess I'm supposed to feel sick when I leave Northwood. I guess it's supposed to hurt. The people in a small town are not well-versed in goodbyes. I don't know homesickness like Randall does. I used to think it was like a thread unspooling. And if I left Northwood, I could only get so far before I ran out of thread, and I'd be reeled back.

I say, "If I tell you everything, I can't take it back." I can't reduce us to passing strangers after this.

"If you disappear, I'll just pretend that I forgot," he tells me, and he acts like he's kidding, but somehow it's comforting.

Softly, I say, "When I disappear. Because this town sucks, remember?"

He nods. Of course, he remembers, since he replies, "But it might be better to have someone go with you so that you don't get lost."

A smile cheats its way onto my face. I turn back to him. "You thought I was talking about the party. Back then. I wasn't. It was about both—this town and that night." I sigh. Condensation pools on the bottle of champagne in my peripheral vision. It makes me queasy just to look at it. "I don't drink because it reminds me of my mother. It was part of why I needed to get out of the party. I didn't want to be around that. As much as I needed to waste my time... I couldn't."

I take a deep breath, folding into the chair. It hugs my arms, pulling me closer to the floor. Peter remains standing. I have to crane my head upward to look at him. His eyes have lost the shine they take on when we're talking about the club or things that aren't Sam Fields. He's been through this once already.

"I know. I get it," he says.

I wonder if he's already a passing stranger to Sam. And I wonder if Peter thinks I'm going to betray him, too.

"I don't want to go back," I say, and my voice trips over it—fumbles for it—and the truth tastes like cigarette smoke. It clings to me, and I try to claw it off. But I can't. I can't get nicotine-honesty out of my mouth. "Home, I mean. If I can even call it that. This day—it was fun. I've wrecked it, now. There will be nothing left but a bad memory. I'm sure you know that fact, right? Negative experiences stay."

"It's called the negativity bias," he tells me. "And I won't just remember the bad memories. I can forget."

I gulp. My throat is dry. And when I start to tell him, everything after that flows out. I tell him about Carolyn. About the punishments, about my father. All of it—and throughout the process, Peter's face turns shocked. He kneels down with me. He mimes like he's about to hug me again, but he doesn't move.

(Do I want him to?)

"You don't deserve that," he says, like I could believe it. "This is not fair. You know that, don't you?"

I don't answer him. I can't; not without lying.

"I try—I try to fix it, but I can't. Some teachers have noticed. I've let them check in on us. I've let them hold meetings over it. But every time, my mother—Carolyn—puts on a show. And they believe her because I'm just a kid. I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm not known for telling the truth."

"Evan..." Peter says, and he won't look at me. The snow has melted, leaving my hair dripping wet. The droplets land on the coat he bought me. I drag my finger through a stray curl and dislodge a pine needle from its depths. Peter breathes out, and his hands wrap around the edge of his shirt. In the bounce between hot like ice and cold like fire, he meets my eyes.

I didn't think a person could become sweeter when tired, but he manages it. He adjusts his glasses like the frames have slipped—even though they haven't. As he moves, it's like the shutter speed of a camera captures an isolated millisecond. He would probably know what's smaller than a second—he would probably know there are picoseconds, and something even smaller than that.

"You can't—" Peter says and shakes his head. "You can't stay there. It's not safe."

"What am I supposed to do?" My attempt to argue with him, to divert the subject—it gets jammed in my throat like paper in a printer. "I've tried everything."

We hit a stalemate. Peter thinks about it for eight seconds before he says, "And leaving would only make it worse."

One of these days, I'll be able to leave without caring about that. I know I have to get out of here as fast as I can, but I can't leave without making sure Elaine will be protected. "Not really. Carolyn would probably be glad to have us gone."

He says, "If you leave, what happens to Elaine?"

When, I correct silently. "That's what the college fund is for. It will take care of her. It's not much, but that's what I have. She needs it more than I do."

Softly, sadly, he presses his lips into a thin line. He forms the word, You, but it echoes soundlessly in the room.

"Me?" I say. "I stop existing." A look of panic rushes to his face. I stumble to explain, "No, not like that. Jesus, I'm not going to die. Metaphorically, I'm going to leave without a trace. Without anything to hold me back."

"Ah." He pauses. "If you need anything—I don't know... it'll be..."

"Fine," I finish, quietly.

He shakes his head, and he looks baffled by the thought. "No, you idiot, it's not fine. This is why you couldn't quit soccer. You want something to do to give you an excuse. It's why you're working endlessly."

"You've noticed?"

"Idiot," he says again, like he's berating me, but it isn't an insult. It's almost playful, and I don't know why it makes my heart clench. "You are not fooling me."

No, no, I tell myself. I'm as cold as ice. I'm fine. I need to be fine.

The drive home is calm, and Peter doesn't say much. It doesn't seem to extend for as long as it did on the way here. As time charges on without me, the clouds darken shades of grey and violet behind a storming sky. Before I can convince him not to take me home—before I can figure out where I would fly away to.

I say goodbye to Peter and sneak back into the apartment, as silent as an assassin, when I slide through the kitchen, heading to my room.

I pass out on top of the bedsheets.

When I wake, my light is flickering. It turns on, then back off. On, off.

An annoyed-sounding Elaine commands, "Get up."

I groan, my eyes squeezing open. I can barely see her. My arm hangs off the bedside, feeling like it's been filled with static.

"What are you wearing?" Elaine says.

Grumbling under my breath, I answer, "Clothes."

She continues to stare at me like I've grown a tail. This room is an inferno. When I tumble to my side, I remember.

I'm still wearing the coat. I had the damn sense to hide the evidence of the ski equipment in my closet, but I forgot about the coat. I don't bother explaining as I answer, "Okay, okay, I'm getting up."

"We're going to be late."

I heave as I climb out of my bed, and my legs ache. (She explained what causes this, once. It's something about the cells in my body rebuilding—or was it multiplying?—for the next time I exercise.)

"I have to shower," I say.

Elaine scoffs, but I just shoot her a smile and shut the bathroom door.

It takes me eighteen minutes to get ready. Elaine waits for me. Before we head out, I tell her I need to grab some cash from the tin of money in her room.

As he suggested, I plan on buying Peter a coffee and bringing it to him to return the favour and bring us back to being even. The thought that I owe him one isn't pleasant, and it was especially true when Claire would offer me charity that I didn't deserve.

My hand reaches underneath Elaine's bed, in the gap between the mattress and box spring. I pat the bedsheets until my finger catches on the edge, and I tug it free.

The tin makes no noise as it comes into sight.

"Elaine!" I shout. Maybe she moved it, and she just forgot to tell me. Maybe it's hidden behind my paintings, or it's at the bottom of her backpack. "Come here."

Her footsteps grow closer. She ducks into the room, her hands propped on her hip. "What do you—"

But she doesn't get to finish her thought before noticing the empty container.

Neither of us speaks for a prolonged breath. Elaine's hands fall, limp, at her sides. In unison, we turn towards where her new headphones are resting.

Carolyn found the college fund. She spent every single penny. She knew, and she didn't say it. She knew we would find out, and that we'd have no way of stopping it. No way to get it back.

It's all gone. A shadow chokes the light from the room. It sucks the air out of me, swiftly, before I can regain the sense to fight it.

My feet are ravelled to the ground. And somehow I know—I can't leave like this.