“Will you be okay?” She asked me as if I shouldn’t be the one asking her. They’d cut her hair and now Emily looks like a completely different person. Once she was a redhead who wore a blanket of hair. Now it sits just over her shoulders, something I haven’t seen since the day I met her.

“I used to think the rumors of this town being cursed were nothing but hearsay. Now I think they might be right. You get to escape alive, that’s good enough for me.”

Emily wore a frown disguised as a smile. I regretted saying those words immediately after saying them. I’ve forgotten everything that’s been going on. “Yeah,” she says somberly. “One day you’ll do too.”

The hospital was eerily quiet. I’ve never liked them. I like them even less now. Emily got lost in thought and it wasn’t any different then. I couldn’t find the right words to say. Everything I thought felt so awkward. She stared at her hands which were still bruised. It’s a miracle she came out of her coma relatively okay. Emily only suffered a few broken bones, mainly in her ribs, and a collapsed lung. Her life was only in danger before she got to the hospital. Still, it was too far close.

“I’m sorry for not giving you your space when you needed it. I was being selfish. I just wanted you to myself and I'm just so angry at you. I didn’t think about what you were going through.”

“No, Ems!” I stopped myself. “I shouldn’t have ignored you in the first place. I was being a headfuck for no reason. I just liked the attention. I’m the one who should be sorry.”

For the first time that day, I think Emily gave me a genuine smile. “I guess we’re both pretty shit people, huh?”

“Yeah, I guess,” we both chuckled.

“It’s going to be weird separated like this. I’m not sure how I feel about it,” Emily said with a frown now. “I’ve been thinking,” she paused.

“Yeah?”

“Did you mean it? Back in the Ferris Wheel, when you said you’ll come for me in New York?”

“Of course.”

“Don’t,” a single word stopped my heart. “It’s not that I don’t want you to. I just think you shouldn’t.” Emily closed her eyes and retracts herself deeper into her bed.

“What do you mean?” I almost stood from the chair I’d been sitting in.

Ems extended her right hand and I took hold of it. “Has there ever been a time when we weren’t together? I rely on you too much. I realized that when you were ignoring me. I didn’t know what to do without you. I don’t even know who I am if you aren’t around.”

“Emily…”

“I’m not breaking our friendship up, but I am breaking us up. I want to figure out who I am. I want to be lost, I want to be scared. I can’t do that if we act as we’ve always been. You’re my weakness, Cody.”

My open hand made a fist behind my back, but she was right. Everything she said was correct and that just made me even madder. I thought I couldn’t ever lose her. I always that Emily would be around no matter what I did. She’s my weakness just as much as I am hers.

I got angry, really angry. I wanted to yell, even scream at her but I’d caused enough pain for her. I couldn’t hurt her like that. That was one line I didn’t want to cross again.

“You’re not saying anything,” Emily pointed out.

“I…I can’t,” I said weakly, in a tone I never thought I had in me.

Emily smiled again and let my hand go. “Give me your thoughts.”

“What do you want me to say?” I said again in that pathetic tone. “No? That your mine forever and I won’t let you? That I can make it work, that I’m ready to be us now, that I love you?”

“It’s-”

“This is bullshit!”

“Let me speak?” Emily placed her index finger over her mouth, shushing me. “It’s not fair, yeah. But you’re not fair either. I realized that you only love me when you’re bored. You only love me when you’re jealous. And it only worked because I wanted you so bad that I couldn’t breathe. I just wanted to make you smile, to hold you down, kiss you softly, live inside your lungs and feel everything of you from the inside, Cody.” Emily’s tears started to overtake her eyes. I could feel my own start to swell up. “But it was always a game to you, wasn’t it? You’ve always had me, I’ve always had you. I don’t know how to be away from you, and neither do you. Well, I want to hurt you how you hurt me. I want you to tell me how bad it hurts, I want it to eat at you how it ate at me. I want you to hate me, to despise me for doing this to you. I want you to cry, to squirm, and have all that pain crawl into your skin like poison. Then when it starts to hurt less and less, I hope a sun starts to shine through the darkness. I want all of this to happen because I’ll be going through the same thing. Can’t you see how much this hurt me too?”

At that point, I couldn’t see how much Emily was crying. I heard her, it was plenty. I just watched my own waterfall slamming on the porcelain white floor. I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t. I never expect this, who could?”

My hand in my jacket pocket, I gripped the small little box Emily's dad had handed me a few days ago. One that belongs to her mother. It became useless that that moment.

When Emily calmed down, she said, “Hold up your head, speak to me. Yell at me.”

“No,” I wiped away the last of those sorry tears. “I’m leaving then. If there’s nothing else then there’s no point in all of this.”

“Then do me a favor,” She said as soon as I stood up. “Take care of Gracie, she won’t have anyone after I leave.”

“Fine.”

“Just don’t hurt her.”

Those were the last words Emily said to me.

-

Now it’s weeks later.

November 2nd. The night before the anniversary of when Emily beat her sickness

Something Emily and I did together was to sit in the treehouse and wait for the midnight strike so we could celebrate. We haven’t missed a year since the treehouse was built. Even now, I still refuse to miss it.

It’s still difficult to breathe. It feels like my lungs are constantly full of water and only so much air can come in. I felt the same way when I thought Emily died in the car crash. I felt the same way when Emily was dying when we were little. It felt the same as when I discovered Elizabeth did what I thought was meth.

“You’re spacing out again,” Chris snaps me out of it.

I watch him light a small bowl and hand it over to Gracie who coughs up a storm after smoking it. It’s just been the three of us since Emily left. I started to show up to school again just to hang around Grace like Emily wanted me to. She sticks to me like a lion cub and I’m not particularly fond of it. Grace is a fish out of the water, naive and restless to be friends. She comes up to me between every period to walk me to my class, sits next to me during lunch and our class, and walk together to her house before mine. It’s a leash that somehow feels is stripping me from my freedom but I remember what it is, so I keep in mind to lay eggshells to remember to be careful.

“Did you get contacts?” I ask her, noticing her cartoonishly thick glasses are gone.”

“Yeah!” She says proudly. Literally yesterday.”

I always thought Grace look kind of goofy by how small her glasses made her eyes look. She has some pretty large eyes for someone so small.

“Like them?”

“You’re less of a dork now,” Chris snickers.

“Uh, thanks.”

“Maybe you’ll make friends that aren’t us now,” I say.

“No,” Grace pouts, “I’m just fine with you two. I’m one of the cool kids now. Even Megan and her friends don’t fuck with me anymore.”

“You cursed,” Chris points out but I don’t find it weird.

“What’ll you do after Chris and I graduate in a few months?”

“Well, that’s why I’m hanging out with you guys, so I learn how to be cool. Then everyone will be my friend,” She pumps up her fist like a kid.

I scoff then chuckle, “Not if you keep acting like that, you won’t.”

“S-shut up!”

Grace truly doesn’t have anyone else. Emily and Sara were teaching her how to be a normal girl. I can’t do that for her. The best I could do is teach myself how to stop being weird. Grace’s mother works odd hours and her father’s dead. She has no role modal. She’s been alone her entire life and as soon as she gets a grasp of a normal life, Sara dies and Emily leaves for New York.

Sara, fuck. I didn’t mean to think about her.

“At least Sara was funny when she made fun of me,” Gracie says as she knows what I was thinking about.

“Sara’s dead,” Chris bluntly says.

“You don’t know that!”

We don’t, but nobody has found her. They found her shoes and phone laying on the ground near one of the pier's edges. They think the waves carried her body somewhere during the storm. Everyone save for Grace and Andrew thinks she’s dead, otherwise, the final text she sent to Emily wouldn’t make sense.

The thought of Sara leaves a sour taste in my mouth and fills my lungs with even more water. She’s another victim of Darkwood. Someone else dear to me who died. Someone else I couldn’t save. I’m so good at seeing people’s intent and story, but I couldn’t see Sara’s sadness. I couldn’t save her.

“Do you think Andrew will ever come back to school?”

“I’ll kill him before he does,”

Andrew’s been searching since. I’ve no idea what he’s been up to, but I don’t care. He crashed the car, he almost killed Emily. He tried to steal her away from me, he took Elizabeth away. I can’t ever forgive the motherfucker. There isn’t anything good he’s ever done for the world. Nothing good comes from him.

“Don’t tell me you miss him.”

“No. Well, maybe. I don’t know. He’s an asshole and always makes fun of me, but at least it felt like he cared about me. Like tough love.”

“He doesn’t give a shit about anyone.”

“Except for Sara,” Chris adds.

“Why were you guys friends with him then?”

“Fuck if I know,” I grab the bowl from Grace.

“Well, I’m glad you two are around. It would suck to be by myself again like at the beginning of the school year. I’m just glad Emily took pity on me and introduced me to you all.”

“You know it was pity?”

“Duh, I’m not stupid.”

Chris laughs, “Maybe it wasn’t just pity, but fate that guided you to us.”

“Dude, Chris, you say the oddest shit.”

“The hands of fate that bounds us all.”

“Is he ever normal?” Gracie asks me.

“You get used to it,” I chuckle.

It took me a while too. Chris is normal, just too deep in thought to ever act like it. He’s this prodigy who just wants to stay out of the spotlight. I know his talent is limitless but I never understood why he never uses it or rather hides it. Every time I ever asked, all he did was give me a riddle of some sort.

Like it isn’t his place.

All it feels like is that he’s afraid.

He never talks about it, but I always felt like he could see the future.

“Oh, it’s a minute before midnight,” Graces notes. I look over at her phone’s lock screen. It’s of the three girls together. “So what happens at midnight? You still haven’t told me what we’re doing here.” At that moment, Grace gets a text. A text from Emily.

“Nothing special, I just wanted to be here.”

I watch as Grace responds. I want to text Emily. I want to see how she’s doing. I wonder if she’s hurting just as much as I am. Every text message I receive makes me so anxious thinking it’s from her; hoping it's from her.

It never is.

I say nothing ever good has come from Andrew, but can I say the same for myself?

I make myself sick.

I’m numb. I can’t feel anything. I’m not even angry anymore. The more and more I ponder the more I wonder if anything I touch stays in good condition. I’m left with this task that I never asked for. How am I supposed to look after Grace? If Emily knows who I am, why did she entrust me with her?

Why would she trust me with this when I can’t even trust myself?

I can’t do this.