“I’m tired of chilling. I’m sick of being this pushover who lets everything roll off his back. I have a month of detention ’cause I’m sick of letting Matt rub the fact that he’s dating my ex-girlfriend in my face, and I don’t even care. Who just puts up with that shit for as long as I have? What sort of person am I, letting them try to make me feel like I’m nothing? He was supposed to be my friend.” I stop talking, hands shaking, insides turning. It’s a new feeling. It’s a feeling. “All those people at school, they were supposed to be my friends. May was supposed to be my friend. My mom was supposed to be…” My voice breaks. I stop speaking.

We’re silent for a while, sitting there on the hood of my car, staring into the blackness of the yard, and then Conor reaches into the bag and pulls out another beer. He hands it to me without turning my way, and I take it and bump his shoulder in thanks.

Chapter Fifty

My parents let me go straight to bed when we get home from the assembly. I’m in no condition to talk. No condition to hear about what I did wrong, because I already know—I did everything wrong.

Everything.

—

I wake up the next morning early, because my body and my brain won’t let me sleep. I don’t want to open my eyes. I don’t want to breathe. I don’t want to be here anymore.

I lie in bed, unmoving, under the heavy covers, until the sun starts to peek through the curtains. Until my bladder won’t let me anymore.

So I get out of bed.

—

I stumble into the hall and toward the bathroom, trying my hardest to be quiet. I don’t know if both my parents stayed here last night. I don’t know what they’re thinking. The car ride home with my mom was awful. She wouldn’t look at me. She drove silent, crying the whole way.

When I get out of the bathroom, the door to their bedroom is open. My breath catches. Some tiny part of my brain recognizes that I haven’t seen that door open in months. It’s always shut tight, just like Jordan’s.

“May.”

My dad’s voice floats out the open doorway. He’s here, for once, not wherever he’s been for the past year at night. I don’t even know if my parents are together still. I don’t know anything, and I haven’t had the mental capacity to ask.

A sudden sharp pain in my stomach almost bowls me over.

“Can you come here, please?”

I want to say no. I want to leave. I want to run.