The Death of Us (18 page)

The death of us

Words slide through my head. I’m so tired.

Rebecca arrives.

I say, “Um, you’re not crying, are you?”

“I might be.”

“You don’t normally cry.”

“Yeah, well,” she says, “you don’t normally go off a bridge either.”

“I’m sorry for … everything,” I say.

“You’re sorry? You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I knew. Deep down. I knew Ivy was messed up. I just wanted … I guess you were right … I …” My voice drops. “I thought I was in love with her.”

“You were.”

Neither of us looks at the other.

Rebecca says, “I can’t believe what she did.”

I say, “I can.”

Rebecca pauses. “When you get out of here, you—I—well, do you want to come to mine? Have that breakfast, or something?”

“Sure,” I say. “Sure. That sounds really good.”

Days pass. Sometimes, when I wake, my parents stand jiggling Cosmo between them. One day, they give me a new phone. It’s full of texts. More days pass. My friends visit; Tilly is back from the cabin, Alison and Alex from
Flat Earth Theory
stop by. It’ll be time for me to go home soon. My body is healing.

Early one morning I open my laptop. I toy with the idea of writing some lines of poetry onto a blank page, lines that have been blooming in my head since the accident.

Then I hear Kurt’s voice:
I lean against a tree at the back of the yard, the night around me like black water.

“Kurt?” I say into the dawn. “Ivy?”

In the silence, I listen.

Thank you:

Hadley (can I thank you twice?!)

Jackie

Maria

Allyson

Leona

Jen

Émile

Dad

Mum

and

above all

Yann

ALICE KUIPERS
is the bestselling, award-winning author of three previous novels,
Life on the Refrigerator Door, The Worst Thing She Ever Did
and
40 Things I Want to Tell You
, and the picture book
Violet and Victor Write the Best-Ever Bookworm Book
. Her work has been published to critical acclaim in twenty-nine countries. She lives in Saskatoon. Visit her at alicekuipers.com

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alicekuipers.com | @AliceKuipers

Cover photograph by Svetlana Sewell / Arcangel Images

The Death of Us
Copyright © 2014 by Alice Kuipers.

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EPUB Edition August 2014 ISBN 9781443424127

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