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I’m dead calm as I talk, piling the words on top of one another so I don’t have to hear my parents’ voices in the hall, demanding to see me. I told Nolan to keep the door closed so I could tell the factual version, the one that has dates and times, conversations and locations. I’ll tell Mom and Dad the story from my heart, the one with Branley and blood, the smell of smoke in the night and tears sliding over freckles.

The nurse told me I’m in shock and that’s why I don’t feel anything yet. I’m okay with that, because I know when it hits it’s going to be a freight train that flattens me, knocking the wind out and leaving me on my knees, mouth open in a perpetual inhale before the racking sob breaks out.

Branley is already there. She’s having a complete breakdown in the next room. I can hear her through the wall, the rise and fall of her voice as familiar as my own but breaking with emotion, whipping everyone along in a tide that floods through the whole hallway. She started screaming when they separated us, feet kicking, swear words flying. It took two orderlies to get her under control but they must have lost their grip at some point because now I can hear them yelling at her to get down off the bed and stop swinging the IV tree.

“Your friend isn’t cooperating,” Nolan says, putting the final period on my statement and slapping his notebook shut.

“Don’t expect that to start anytime soon,” I say.

“Okay for your parents to come in?”

I nod and they’re through the door in a second, a nurse on their heels. My mom is a mess of tears, her face a mask folding under the mixed pressures of anger and grief, Alex’s name a word her lips can’t form yet. She just says your girlfriend with a question mark at the end of it, and I shake my head no. Dad’s more like me, a brick wall that I know I’ll have to run smack into as soon as I get home, all the questions and repercussions stopping me short the second I walk in the door.

“We want to keep him overnight because of the shock,” the nurse tells my parents. They try to argue that I’m better off at home, but the truth is I’d rather stay here, and not just because I’m not ready to tell them everything. The sooner I’m home in my bed staring at the crack in my ceiling, the closer I’ll be to returning to everyday life; the sooner I’ll have to stare at the Hancock pennant my mom hung over my bed and admit that the fantasy Alex and I spun together about apartments and part-time jobs and Irish wolfhounds was exactly that—a fantasy. One that evaporated right in front of me in a spray of blood.

I know that the seconds are ticking by, making minutes, turning into hours, becoming days that will stretch into weeks and years. And with every sunset Alex will be a little farther from me, her face a bit fuzzier, her voice an echo, our time a memory. And I’m not letting go just yet. Right now life is on pause and I want it that way, because she can’t slip away from me entirely until I start moving on.

Branley comes to me in the night, smelling like hospital soap and tears. I heard her shower running through the wall and her skin is still hot from it. Some of the red fades as she lies next to me, her body cooling. But there are spots where she scrubbed herself raw and they stay bright, peeking from under the sleeves of her hospital robe, the hem that stops right above her knees.

“I’m sorry,” she says again, her throat raw.

I wrap my arms around her and she settles into me, her nose fitting in the spot between my collarbones, my chin resting on her head. We’ve been like this so often, as friends and as more, that it’s second nature. Our breathing finds a rhythm together and I feel her soft movements beneath the blanket. I put my hand on hers to still it, where she’s rubbing her upper arm. Her breath hisses out in pain as my fingers pass over three bumps just under the skin, embedded shot.

“I wouldn’t let them take them out,” she says, her lips moving against my chest.

I nod my understanding as her hand goes back to them, rubbing up and down in a hypnotic movement that draws us both down into exhaustion. And while she came to me out of habit, I know there’s more comfort for her in those wounds than I can ever give.

62. PEEKAY

I’m somewhere I should never have to be.

Alex’s grave has already settled, the dirt sinking a little lower with each rain. The grass all around her stone is trampled and muddy, pockmarked from the high heels and camera tripods. But the news crews aren’t the only ones coming. I’ve been here every day in the week since her burial clearing away the debris.

There are the expected flowers, which I’ve been taking home and putting in vases until Mom said our house smelled like a funeral home, then clapped her hand over her mouth like she wished she could force the words back in. The plastic flowers I took to Goodwill until the girl at the donation center told me they didn’t want any more. Now I just throw them in the Dumpster.

There are other things I don’t know what to do with. Notes with names and dates, pages of diaries ripped out and weighed down with stones. Some of them have been folded tightly, some wide open, edges flapping in the wind. They’re for Alex, not me. I read only a few at first, the open ones that were begging for someone to finally know. I wanted to stop because I couldn’t stand the hot weight of all their knowledge in my stomach. Still, I read them. I read them until I understood Alex and what she did.

Her tombstone has become a shrine, the pilgrims coming under cover of darkness to unburden their secrets. The notes I clear away, sending their accusations to the sky with flames and smoke while I sit at the fire pit, across from the empty chair where Alex should be. Some things take longer to burn: a broken necklace, a frayed bra clasp, a pair of underwear with I was fourteen written on them in permanent marker.

My father presided over her funeral, not meeting my eyes when he quoted Romans 12:19 (Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay,” says the Lord), but he looked right at me when he hit on Micah 7:19 (And all our sins are cast into the depths of the sea). I don’t know if he meant Alex’s sins or everyone else’s. Or maybe my own.

I hadn’t talked to Jack about what he told the cops until we crossed paths at her grave one evening, me hauling away an armload of wilted flowers, him carrying a fresh batch. When he tried to talk to me about it, I punched him in the chest and he let me, crushing petals against him and driving thorns into his skin.

“You really didn’t know?” he asked, eyes pinning mine in a way he must’ve picked up from Alex. I couldn’t find words so I shook my head and walked away, but his question stuck with me.

No, I didn’t know. Everyone else wants to talk about the Alex who tore Ray Parsons’s nose off when he tried to hurt me, the Alex who tortured the man who killed her sister, the Alex who burned a child molester alive and blew a rapist away with a shotgun blast. Nobody wants to talk about the girl who held kittens in the palm of her hand, humming to them while they fed, or the girl who would pick fleas off a dog for hours. Because nobody else knew her.

I’m left to mourn someone alone, someone who I can’t square with the one they put in the ground, the one the camera crews want to interview me about. I don’t know how to say good-bye to someone who shared only half of herself with me.

Going back to school is the hardest part. The principal makes a big announcement about how we still have jobs to do even though there’s only two days of school left, and we can’t let recent events interrupt our education. The halls are filled with Alex’s name even though she’s not here anymore, and the whispers are so loud I almost don’t hear Branley’s gasp from the next locker down.

Somebody drew a dick on her locker. Anonymous. Erect. Demanding.

“Seriously?” Sara stops when she sees it.

Branley just stands there, a flush rising in her cheeks. I dig in my locker for a pencil, finally finding one with a decent eraser. Sara opens her backpack to find her own and between the two of us there’s nothing left but smudge marks in a matter of minutes. But there are still tears in Branley’s eyes when she thanks us and walks away as the bell rings.

Sara shakes her head. “Motherfuckers,” she says under her breath.