The Healing (The Things We Can't Change Book 3) (42 page)

“No problem,” I say quickly, because now, in hindsight, it doesn’t feel like a huge drag, the way I thought it might be when I first started on this journey with Evie. In fact, I don’t even want it to be over, because I don’t want to not see Evie every day, and I definitely don’t want to leave her alone like this. “It was… good.” The words sound incredibly lame, but they’re all I can think to say.

“Yeah. It was. So…” She scratches her head and then gives me a distant, noncommittal smile. “I guess I’ll see you at school Monday.”

“Yeah, I guess,” I say, flummoxed by her casual farewell and distant attitude.

“Right. Well, bye, Zeke.” She gives one last, small smile, and then the door closes in my face.

I stare at it for at least five minutes, stunned. I can’t believe she just did it. And yet… she did. Evie shut the door in my face. Shut it in my face and just walked away. Anger and irritation rise up inside me, giving me the oomph I need to turn sharply around and begin to quickly descend the driveway, but it soon fades away into worry. Worry for Evie, and what she might be doing to herself this very minute.

I call and text Evie a dozen times over the course of the next few days, but she never responds. I tell myself it’s all right, just as I did when I was leaving her house. I remind myself that I’ll see her at school on Monday, and until then I should let her have her space. And yet I can’t shake the feeling that something is
wrong
. I feel it deep inside me, the same place that got nervous whenever Evie was cutting, though this feeling isn’t as intense. Still, I hate the wrongness and it makes me distracted and nervous, and I drop a tray and break a glass and plate at work on Thursday.

When I wake up Friday and instantly grab for my phone and see that Evie still hasn’t responded, I already know what I’m going to do. I have a morning shift at the club, but when I’m finished there, I stop home and change my clothes and then take my dad’s car since he’s out with Uncle Alex and then I drive the familiar road to Evie’s house. It seems weird, driving instead of walking as I’ve done all summer, and I’m both weirded out and grateful by the fact that I’m pulling onto Riverside Drive so quickly.

I’m at a stoplight, however, when a white Lexus coupe driving the opposite direction catches my eye, and I lean forward over the wheel as far as I can. The head in the driver’s seat moves slightly, and I see long, dark hair and I know instantly that it’s Evie, without a doubt in my mind. I also see that she has her phone held up to her ear, and when the light turns green and she drives right past me, I can tell she’s crying. I hesitate for just a moment, and then I pull an illegal U-turn and begin to follow her.

She doesn’t notice, and whenever I venture to creep closer to her, I see she still has the phone held up to her ear, though she never speaks into it. She just lowers her hand now and then and presses something, and then puts it to her ear again, as though she’s listening to something over and over.

I get a cold feeling in my chest as she jumps on the freeway and heads toward downtown and then up Broad Street, even though I’m telling myself that she’s not doing what I think she’s doing. It’s impossible. She wouldn’t. Not anymore. She’s past this, she’s better than this, and I know it. And yet she fails me by turning right on Grant Avenue and bypassing the downtown library, pulling into the underground parking garage of Grant Hospital.

This time, I don’t hesitate. I just pull in right after her and follow as she circles round and round the garage and finally parks. I do the same just a few cars down and then jog after her since she has a head start toward the exit of the garage. Anger is filling me now, anger that she hasn’t talked to me, anger that I let this go for so long when she was obviously struggling, and a biting disappointment in her.

She still has the phone up to her ear and doesn’t hear me approach, and I reach out and grab her arm, pulling her around roughly. Evie cries out and jerks away, panicked, but I don’t even feel guilt or remorse about it because I’m furious with her.

“Zeke!” she shouts my name in surprise, and then says it again on a relieved exhale. “Zeke. What are you doing here?” The relief is replaced by guilt and she quickly lowers her phone and hides it behind her back, an action that I keenly note.

“What are
you
doing here?” I ask, my voice sharp. “And don’t you dare lie to me, because I think we both know what you were doing.”

“Then why are you asking?” she shoots back defensively, and it’s our oldest trick; flip the argument to the other person and evade, evade, evade. I won’t fall for it, not now, not ever again.

“You’re going to visit Tony again, aren’t you?” She doesn’t say anything at first and I start to tremble, I’m so mad at her. I shake her a little, not hard enough to hurt her, but enough to make her eyes go wide with shock and so she knows I’m not messing around. “You are,
aren’t you
?”

“Yes!” She shouts it and it echoes in the garage, the answer repeating a dozen times before going quiet as Evie and I stare at each other.

“Why?” I whisper it, trying to rein in my anger, knowing that she will just get defensive if I keep yelling, and I
need
to know what’s going on, what happened. “Why, Evie?”

She looks at the ground, refusing to meet my eyes.

“Evie!” I shake her again, and then tell myself to cool it. “Tell me, Evie. What’s going on?”

She still doesn’t say anything, but her hand comes out from behind her back with her phone, which I see has a long crack down the middle of the screen. She clicks it on and I want to roll my eyes, but restrain.

“Are you texting?” I ask, unable to believe it.

Still no answer, but she dials something and then holds the phone out to me, her face expressionless, but not her eyes. No, in her big, wide eyes I see real, genuine fear as I take the phone and put it up to my ear. It’s going through a voicemail introduction, naming off a date and time.

“Seriously, Evie? What-” I stop immediately as the last voice I ever expected fills my ear.
Tony.
He sounds completely crazy, totally off his rocker, and it’s like watching a train wreck. I want to pull the phone away. I don’t want to listen, and yet I’m magnetized.

And it only gets worse. Halfway through, I actually bend over a little as pain hits my waist. My voice. My words, calling out to Cindy. The nightmare I used to see every single night, actually recorded. I want to throw up. I feel like I’ve been cut open and my pain, my grief is there on the floor for everyone to see. I see it all over again in my mind’s eye, Cindy’s lifeless eyes, her mangled legs, and I want to die myself for a moment. And then Tony’s last words echo through the message and it ends, just as abruptly as it started.

I’m shaking as I lower the phone from my ear, and I stare at Evie incredulously. “You… You’ve been listening to that? All this time?”

She looks ashamed, scared, and I don’t blame her. The biggest secret of all has finally come to light. “Yes,” she whispers. “At least, just recently, I have. I didn’t for a long time, but school starting, and I don’t know. I listened to it one day and I… haven’t been able to stop. And with you not coming over again anymore and the message and school starting… it all caught up to me today I guess. And I wasn’t going to come here, but then I listened to it and next thing I know, I’m in the car.” She sniffles, and I don’t want her to cry but I don’t make a move toward her to comfort her, because I’m still in shock.

“Evie,” I say, slowly, carefully, firmly. “You need to delete that fucking message, and you need to let Tony go.”

Evangeline

80

The words seem to slice right through me, and I know they’re true. Zeke is always right where I am concerned, but oh, it’s so hard to make myself believe it sometimes. Especially now, with Tony’s words ringing over and over in my head.

I shake my head back and forth, refusing to look into his eyes and see the disappointment and earnestness there. “No,” I say quietly, fighting back sobs. “That won’t fix it, Zeke. It won’t make it not my fault that I put him in the hospital. He tried to kill himself for me.”

“Evie!”

He snaps my name, so hard and loud that I jump and am startled into looking at him.

“Evie,” he says, still sharply but with a bit more kindness. “You are not that important. You were just a catalyst. And you kept dogging me and bullying me into letting Cindy go. And I’ve done that. And so the least you can do for me is let Tony go in return.”

I let out another gasping sob, trying to keep myself under control because I know Zeke hates it more than anything when I cry, even though he tries to hide it. “I don’t know how,” I whisper, because it’s true. If I could have found a way to release myself from Tony’s hold so easily, from his influence and the guilt the message represents, I would have done it long ago.

“Yes, you do,” Zeke says firmly. He takes hold of my shoulders, his hands big and warm against my body, which has felt permanently cold ever since I first listened to Tony’s message in the bathroom. “You have to go up to his room and tell him goodbye, and then you have to delete that creepy ass message.”

I shake my head vehemently, trying to step away from him, even as his hold on me tightens. “No,” I whisper, over and over again. “No, no, no. Really, Zeke. I can’t.”

“Yes, you can,” he says forcefully, and he goes to the method he always does when I refuse to go along with his plans. He strong arms me into it—literally.

He keeps one arm on my shoulder and drags me along behind him, just as easy a feat as it ever has been, since he’s so much bigger and stronger than me. I flutter along behind him, trying fruitlessly to pull away until he’s stuffed me in the elevator and the doors are closed and there is no escape. I huddle in a corner and cross my arms, refusing to look at him.

“What floor?” he demands.

“I’m not tell-” I begin, but when I look up at his face to refuse, my words die on my lips. He’s deadly serious and he’s not going to take no for an answer. “Six,” I mutter sourly, resuming my stare at the floor. “Room six-twenty-four.”

My heart sinks to my feet as the elevator jolts to life and we ascend the track, each sway and bump making me feel sicker. I don’t want to do this. I felt the guilt so keenly that I couldn’t resist coming to see Tony, didn’t have control over it and just found myself in the car on the way to the hospital before I even realized what I was doing. Now, however, especially since Zeke is here, I don’t want to do it. I don’t want to see Tony, and I definitely don’t want to cry around him and tell him goodbye and delete the message. Something inside me rebels at the idea, even though I know I shouldn’t.

I should be embracing it, welcoming it. I need to let Tony go. I need to take this final step and just move on with my life. But I can’t. I don’t know
why
I can’t, don’t know why I’m still holding on to it all, and I know Zeke doesn’t understand that either.

The sense of dread and foreboding increases as the elevator doors ding open and Zeke drags me out, through the maze of hallways. I start to drag my feet even more as I recognize the hallway from my other visits, as the room numbers get closer and closer to Tony’s. Six-twenty, six-twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three… Six-twenty-four.

Zeke stops hard and I almost run into him, and for a long moment, we both stare inside the room. All we can see is the foot of the bed, but it’s enough. Dread, battling with fear and the urge to throw up, fills me from the bottom of my toes all the way up to my brain, and I want to run. I actually try, lose my head for just a moment and turn and try to bolt, but Zeke still has a hand on me and he yanks me back with ease, and then pushes me toward the room.

“Go,” he commands, and it’s in a voice that brooks no argument.

I walk into the room as one going to the gallows, remembering the last time I did this. I cried, raged at Tony, wanted to hate him, to be able to hurt him the way he hurt me. Then, he was gaunt and skinny, pale and broken-looking just as I had been at the time. Now, however, it’s as though my own healing has been matched in him.

He still looks as though he’s just sleeping, now more than ever. There is color in his cheeks now. He looks almost healthier, his face more filled out than before. I have a vision of him awakening, right then. What if he woke up and found me at his bedside? Would he think nothing had changed? Would he think that I’d been here all along, just watching and waiting for him to wake up, the vigilant girlfriend, still under his thumb?

The idea makes me feel sick inside, even sicker than the idea of seeing Tony, of listening to the message, sicker than the guilt does. I don’t want that. I don’t want him to wake up and think things will be back to the way they were. I don’t want him to wake up and to hear that he’s asked for me and feel so guilty that I come running back to him and heel at the snap of his fingers.

I don’t want that at all, and in that moment, I know that Zeke is right, and I have to let Tony go, just as he let Cindy go. I have to break the hold, and even if it feels all wrong and I have to fight the guilt with everything inside me, I know that it’s good for me and it must be done. I approach the bed until I’m standing right next to him, my knees bumping against the frame and I’m looking down into Tony’s face.