“It didn’t seem like you wanted me around anymore,” he said.

To expel the fire burning my skin, I yelled, “You didn’t ask me!”

The younger neighborhood kids at the park stopped to stare.

“I…” he started again. He looked to Aidy. “I tried.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tried to talk to you, Ollie.”

“This is enough,” Aidy snapped. “Can you say the actual words, like she’s asking you to do? Do you have to make everything a whole thing?”

Nick nodded. “I’m sorry I haven’t talked to you guys.” His low, steady tone accentuated how ridiculous my previous yelling sounded. “I really am. I’ve missed you every single day. It just seemed too complicated… It doesn’t matter now. Know that I’m probably sorrier than it seems. I’m not great with this whole speech stuff. I can’t sleep most nights because of Marley and what happened to her.” He stopped. “What I did to her.”

I had to look up.

He bit his lip, hard, leaving the indent of his teeth on the pucker of skin above his chin. “If there are pieces of her she left behind, we need to find them. It might make life easier for us. Or maybe it makes it harder. It’s Marley. It probably makes it harder. I guess we don’t know yet. We’ve never finished one of her Adventures before. But I need something to change, because this way isn’t working so great. I’m the one person who didn’t know better. Everyone would’ve done things differently that day. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve run the moment through my head, making different choices. No matter how many times I do it, the end result is still the same. She dies.” His teeth pressed back into the imprints, freshening the marks. “If you need me to say sorry once an hour every hour until time runs out, I’ll do it, if it means I get to be around. Whatever I have to do, I’ll do. Even if that still makes me the only person in the world who doesn’t know better. At least I’m good at being that.”