"Have you told them yet, Ava?"
"No," I whispered, pulling my knees up to my chest and hiding my face. I wished I could just curl up and disappear, just this once. "I don't know how."
Jamie, my best friend since sixth grade, was beside me before I could object to his nearness: my bed groaned underneath his weight, and his breath rustled my tangled hair. "You have to tell them, A. They're your parents, her parents; they need to know what really happened that night."
Tears collecting behind my eyelids were threatening to overflow in a waterfall over my lashes the moment I opened my eyes. No, I thought, feeling the knot in my stomach grow tighter, they don't. It'll kill them.
"It's not that simple, Jamie," I croaked, fighting the lump in my throat. "They'll never want to look at me again. They'll hate me. And, I mean, I wouldn't blame them . . . but do you really think we should put them through the added grief of knowing they raised a murderer?" My voice cracked. "A monster?" A single tear escaped down my cheek. "Me?"
"You're not a monster, A." He caressed my cheek, and wiped the tear away. "You made a mistake. A foolish spur of the moment decision that could, in the worst case scenario, cost your sister her life." A sob broke free from my lips. My stomach shrank, twisted in knots. "But I'm in this as much as you are, and I'm not letting you tear yourself down like this. We'll get through this together, okay? One step at a time." His cool gray eyes soothed the raging pit of fire in my chest, blotting out a fraction of the pain. "I promise you, everything's going to work out."
Numbness overwhelmed my body. I couldn't place one thought: they were jagged puzzle pieces scattered on the backdrop of mind, complicated and unattainable. I needed to figure out a way to fix this. I had to. But of course, like so much else, it wasn't that simple.
Jamie pressed his forehead against mine, pulled me into his lap. I tried to nod, to give him a sign I had heard him. But speaking, like so much else, hurt. Finally, after what felt like hours, with a sob lodged in my throat, I murmured a broken, "Okay."
Even though deep inside a part of my breaking heart I didn't believe everything would work out, I knew I had to at least try to have a little faith. For Kaylee. For the girl who was coming undone right before our eyes in that depressing old hospital bed. For the girl who never should have been in that car, on that street, at that moment . . . all alone.
—-
