“SOMETHING’S WITH YOU,” Aiden says as he sits on the wooden stool next to Anna’s desk. I watch him stare at the pictures on her desk, one in particular. It’s the picture of me Anna drew during my junior year. You could probably tell from the smile on my face, the flower in my hair, the strange feeling I get whenever I see it. I see myself, but I can’t tell who she is anymore. It’s as if she left without a trace, her life left with me, someone who can’t handle what she’s been through.
“Damn, Anna can draw,” Aiden says, “I’d forgotten how good she was.”
“Yeah,” I say as I stare at the door, the drawings she’d created throughout her junior and senior year. Pictures of me, Aiden, random objects. It’s strange how realistic they look, almost as if they were photographs.
“Seriously, though,” he continued, “What’s up?”
“Nothing… I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.” I lift one of the pictures, stare at the one beneath it. I can tell it’s an adaptation of an actual photo. It’s of me and Anna, our trip to New York. We were standing in Time Square, our faces twisted in a disgusting way, and I know this is the picture Aiden took. I laugh.
“What?” he asks.
“Nothing… What are you talking about?”
“I don’t know. It’s just that… I saw you at the beginning of the summer, and you looked different.”
I snap back to reality when I hear Anna laughing downstairs. She’s with Jeremy again, and I’m guessing they’re having a good time.
I shudder at the thought, close my eyes to try to block out the memory.
His body was pressing onto me…
“See,” Aiden continued, “Now, you look messed up.”
He stands up, walks toward me as I open my eyes, place my hand onto the doorknob.
“I’m fine,” I say, looking up at him. My fake smile fades when I see the look on his face, how concerned he looks for me. God, it makes me want to tell him now, to bleed out what Jeremy’s left with me. That might change everything.
Then again, Aiden has more of a reason to believe Jeremy over me. He is his best friend, and although Aiden’s known me longer than anyone else…
“You sure about that?”
It’s probably worth the risk.
“N—'”
The door pushes against me, so I back away from it, Jeremy’s green eyes appearing. He smirks at me. My body tenses, shrivels up.
“Anna needs you downstairs,” Jeremy says to me, “Something about Ethan.”
I frown as I look up at Aiden, and he smiles at me, which makes me relax a little before I walk out of the bedroom, downstairs and into the kitchen.
“You need me?” I ask, watching her as she opens the oven, pulls out some type of food. She’s always been able to cook. Gets it from her mother.
“Nope. Just about done with this.”
My body shrivels again, Jeremy’s words taking over.
Mark says she’s going crazy.
You know, hallucinating, making up lies.
I don’t know, Mark wouldn’t tell me what she was lying about. I just know it was bad enough to send her to a therapist.
You shouldn’t really believe anything she says. She’s prone to make that up.
“Mother’s coming next week,” Anna says, smiling, “from her conference in Vegas.”
I jump back to reality, nod. “Good. I miss her.”
“She misses you too, ‘specially since you’ve been so busy lately.”
Busy…
Right…