Between the Spirit and the Dust

Chapter Eleven

“So what did you do?

I didn’t make eye contact with Max and resumed unpacking, even though I’d startled when he’d suddenly entered my room. “What do you mean?”

“What’d you do to get kicked off the team?” clarified Max, leaning against my doorframe.

 I should’ve expected Evie to let the team know that I was suspended but even then, it still hurt to know that the message had gotten out so quickly. And I probably should’ve prepared an excuse but nothing came to mind so I went with the truth 

“She thought that I wasn’t ready for it.”

He didn’t say anything in response and I glanced at him, catching the appraising look that he was giving me. Max was wearing one of my favourite shirts on him; a sky blue crew neck shirt that I thought matched his eyes. Feeling my cheeks burn, I asked, “What? What’s with that look?”

 Max shrugged, walking into my room like he owned it. I rolled my eyes, knowing that there wasn’t any way that I could get him out of my room now. He sat down next to me on my bed.

 He seemed to be searching for the right words before he spoke. “I don’t think that she’s wrong about that, Ems. You’re not ready for this. 

I raised my eyebrows at him and replied, starchily in order to hide how shaken I was, “I don't remember asking for your opinion.”

“I know you didn’t ask. But I’m letting you know what I think. We’ve been friends for a while now…and from what I’ve seen over the past year or so, I don’t think you’re ready either.”

“Why does everyone keep saying that? I am ready. I know I am. 

“Really? Because all I’ve seen you do in the past year, hell the past two years, is to push your friends away. When’s the last time you’ve even spoken to Holly, Sarah or any of those girls that you used to hang out with?”

Flinching, I tried to respond but I couldn’t find the words. Holly and Sarah were my old friends from high school; girls that I’d grown up with. But when everything with Sylvia happened, when all the sympathy started coming in, I didn’t know to handle it or how to handle them.

You wouldn’t think it but it’s a lot easier to lose friends than you would know. A few missed calls, avoiding their texts and skipping lunch everyday was all that it really took. You might’ve thought that you wanted to be alone. But that’s the most perverse part because the truth is when it really happens, when you’re truly left alone, that’s when you find out that you needed them the most 

But by then, they’d already moved on. For them, life with or without Emily Wilkins didn’t seem to make a huge difference. They moved onto to bigger things in college, made new friends and adapted.

 And I’d tried to as well. Not that it really worked out for me, seeing as how I couldn’t let anyone know that I was the Emily Wilkins. The only person who knew who I was in college was Max and it wasn’t like I had a choice about whether or not I’d wanted him to know.

 “What are you actually saying, Max?” I asked, raising my voice.

 “I’m saying that you’ve spent the past two years trying to avoid everyone who even cares about you a little bit. None of this—obsessing over Gabriel St. Clair as the killer, avoiding anything else—is healthy for you. And maybe Evie sees that too. 

“Look, I don’t want to talk about this, I still need to unpack--"

“Do you ever want to talk about this?”