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The girls say it’s because Jack always gets bored eventually.

They’re both utterly broken.

And no one knows why.

44. ALEX

I didn’t know a living person could hurt you so badly.

When the pain originates with someone who is gone, it’s your own memory that hurts you. Walking through the house, touching things they’ve touched, hearing sounds they heard, wondering what they would’ve thought of one thing or another. This is pain that I know, pain that I can handle, pain that is so much a part of me that if it were removed I would not be whole.

But when it’s someone who’s alive who hurts you, the pain can’t be escaped. The things they’ve touched are still warm because they were just there, the sounds they hear reach your ears too—sometimes their own voice, and it’s excruciating to bear. I know what he thinks about this, that, or the other because I can hear him saying so. But not to me. He doesn’t talk to me anymore.

I want to take it back.

Not just the words I said in the dark, his face slowly closing against me as the smoke rose from my clothes and the sirens ripped the air. I want to go back further, back to the moment where I stood at my own door. I dream about walking through it instead of spinning and running into the dark. I dream about going to sleep that night to the smell of coconut shampoo, my phone screen glowing with whatever latest text came in from Jack.

I want that instead of what happened, instead of the smoke that I still can’t get out of my pillowcase, the dark screen of my phone staring back at me whenever I glance at it. I don’t want the memories that I have. The smells and the sounds, and all the small things I did that rounded up to one big thing.

One big thing that I can’t take back.

45. JACK

It took me a while to be able to go back.

The clearing is frozen solid when I finally get the nerve to sneak up the hill in Dad’s truck, the chains on the tires the only thing stopping me from sliding back down. It’s been so damn cold nobody has been out in the woods. I can’t even find deer tracks. Every living thing is hunkered down, waiting for spring.

I am too, in a way. Every night when I go to bed I’m thankful that there’s a streak of eight or nine hours of unconsciousness ahead of me, time in which I don’t have to think about Alex and what happened. Sleep is a kind of victory for me, because when I wake up it means there’s another day solidly behind, one more step away from that night. I want to pile time on top of itself, years upon years so that I can forget, or at least make what she did a hazy memory. I want to jump ahead a decade to when I’m out of this damn town, and the fresh grave in the cemetery has settled, and Alex is a name that doesn’t feel like a slash on my heart.

I kill the engine and listen to it cooling, those small mechanical noises the only sounds out here as the sun sinks. It’s easier to think when I’m alone and my brain runs through it all again. Alex’s words, the smells that clung to her, the tears on her face and the news about Sara’s uncle that tore through the halls the next day. The thing is, I’ve always been good at logic puzzles, and the only answer that fits says that Alex murdered someone.

It could’ve been an accident—that’s what the cops decided, anyway. It wouldn’t have been the first house fire this winter. We’ve all been freezing in our beds, the cold fingers of wind slipping through the tiny cracks to find us no matter where in the house we are.

But it was the only fatal fire, and the only one where my girlfriend showed up in my driveway immediately afterward, having some kind of nervous breakdown and smelling like smoke. All those damning little things say a lot, and all the pressure that was trying to push the words I love you out of my mouth now wants me to scream that Alex is a killer, but I can’t do that. Not where people can hear, anyway.

Park wants to know what’s wrong. Branley wants to know what’s wrong.

Everybody thinks that Alex and I got into some big fight and broke up. I almost wish we had. I wish I’d told her she was crazy, pushed her away from me. But I didn’t. I held her and told her everything was going to be okay even as the ash started to drift in from the north, heavier than the snow and darker by far.

What I did was worse. I abandoned her.

It started when her ring tone made me want to vomit instead of answer, the guilt plunging deep into my belly and making me choke. I couldn’t read her texts and I couldn’t listen to her voice mails, scared of what she might say next. Scared of what she might do next. I even stared at the pic I’ve still got on my phone of Officer Nolan’s email and cell once or twice.

But the thing is that I told her everything would be all right. I said that when this girl who I didn’t even think could bend was completely broken, sobbing against me and hating herself. And I’ve been there. I know exactly what it’s like to fuck up hard and not be able to fix it, so I couldn’t damn her even if what she did was so far above and beyond my own screw-ups we can’t even see each other across the gap.

I let that logic have its way with me, and I’ve waited so long that if I rat her out now Nolan’s going to want to know why I covered for her. Even if I leave an anonymous tip I’m screwed because we—the oh-so-happy new couple—suddenly broke up right when the shit went down, and he’ll ask me questions. Questions that tear down the good-guy thing I’ve got going on and punch holes in any chances I have at a scholarship.

Alex has faded away in the past couple of weeks. Branley is highest on my recent calls list, Alex’s number buried somewhere behind some sophomore girl who found the courage to call me in the bottom of a bottle. I couldn’t understand anything she said, but I kept the voice mail, hoping I might find it funny eventually.

Branley has been doing her best to cheer me up but I haven’t touched her. She’s confused and pouty about it, and while I know she could distract me for an hour or two, it would still be Alex on my mind. Because fading or not, she still shines brighter than everyone else, and I have my nights when I want to call her up anyway. Fuck the fire and the smoke and the tears running down her face.

“Goddammit,” I yell, punching the horn and sending some birds out of their nests, reprimanding me with harsh voices.

I get out of the truck, snagging the garbage bag I brought along. It billows in the wind behind me like a dark sail. The tree looks like shit: the ribbons I tied on with freezing fingers in anticipation of telling Alex I loved her are ripped to shreds, the ends frayed and brittle. A few of the ornaments have blown off and I step on one accidentally. It breaks with hardly any resistance and a million silver shards scatter across the snow.

I’ll never be able to get all the pieces. They’ll sink down into the ground with the winter melt, nonbiodegradable witnesses of my failed night that will never rot, just release whatever chemicals they’re painted with. I try to scoop everything up, but every time I think I’ve got it, the sun hits another piece, and soon my gloves are soaking wet, my fingers are painfully crooked, and I’ve spent a half hour trying to pick up one goddamn ornament and I am pissed.

The part of me that’s held on to everything I know is swelling, a bitter anger that inflames my heart and sends my blood pushing through my veins too hard, shooting black spots across my vision as I head back to the truck. Dad’s ax is in the back, and it’s heavy in my hand as I take my first swing, the tree shuddering under the blow. Ornaments fall and are crushed under my boots but I keep swinging, the pressure in my chest lightening a little with each connection, the head of the ax sticky with sap.