We all raced through new snow to the backyard and found Mr. Weeks hunched over on his knees outside the shed, face buried in the heels of his hands. Kane tried to go inside, but Mr. Weeks lunged forward and grabbed him around the knees, begging him not to go in. Mrs. Weeks froze beside me, as if she was terrified to know what was in the shed.

My mind didn’t process things right. All I could think, over and over again, was that no one would believe Declan killed himself. That smile wasn’t only for selfies—it was Declan, all the time. He was always trying to pick me up out of the dumps. Hell, he rarely even frowned. The kid smiled in his sleep, for God’s sake.

My mind hasn’t been the same since. Thoughts float in and out at weird times and misshape themselves. Part of it is denial. Part of it is my stay at Shady Harbor. And part of it is just the good old passage of time.

Like, it wasn’t until much, much later, while I was sitting in the art room at Shady Harbor, coloring a picture of a sunset, that it dawned on me that he hadn’t sent me a Valentine. That thought floated into my head sometime in September. He’d said he would, told me he had it all written out, but still, he hadn’t.

I pull the blanket off my head, and my long hair crackles with static. I shine the flashlight on the box Mrs. Weeks gave me, then cringe as I make out one of its components—a slender bud vase from Declan’s junior prom. We’d made “us” official then, though we’d been dancing around the subject for months. Like I said, Declan took his time, which could be excruciating.

I already have a matching vase of my own that I buried in my closet to ward off the memories. I don’t need his too.

I stand up, push the flaps of the box closed, and shove it under my bed. Then I climb under the covers, in a gritty but comforting sea of crumbs, and let the blankets fall on my face, breathing in the warm, stale air. My stomach is already revolting, but I savor the feeling. It’s good to feel something, anything, because it means I’m still here.

Happy Suck Day.

524 Days Before

“You’re the luckiest girl in school,” Luisa said to me, throwing herself on my bed. “Sleeping this close to Kane Weeks every night.”

I stuck out my tongue as though I wanted to vomit as I tried to apply eyeliner to my upper eyelid for the fortieth time.