I don’t mention how the accident was in front of my house, five fucking feet from where they were parked. Miranda passed out after getting drunk with Jenny and some other people nearby. Her foot stayed on the gas and revved her car into mine, pushing both cars into my neighbor’s car until mine hit a tree. She could have killed them all. All four of them in the car, high and drunk and not caring about the consequences. Consequences for more than just them.
Her voice is small. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad night.”
A bad night? It was a bad month, and the start of me losing my sister. That night, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to it any longer.
“I just wanted to say,” she begins, but raises her voice a little too loud and then has to clear her throat, tears rimming her eyes. “I wanted to tell you I’m really sorry.” Her sincerity brings my own emotions flooding back, and I hate it. “I loved your sister, and I’m…” This time I’m the one doing the hugging, the holding.
“Sorry,” she rasps in a whisper as she pulls away. I look beyond her, at the groups of people in the dining room and past that to the kitchen. There are maybe twenty or thirty people in my house. And not a single one looks our way. They’re too busy eating the food I paid for and drinking my alcohol. I wonder if they even feel this pain.
“She had this for you.” Miranda pushes a book into my chest before running the sleeve of the thin sweater she’s wearing under her eyes. Black mascara seeps into the light gray fabric instantly. “Right before she went missing, while she crashed at my place, she couldn’t stop reading it.”
It takes me a moment to actually take the book from her. It’s thick, maybe a few hundred pages… with no cover. The spine’s been torn off and my name replaces it. Bethy. That’s what Jenny used to call me. The black Sharpie marker bled into the torn ridges of what the spine would have protected.
“What is it?” I ask Miranda, not taking my eyes from the book as I turn it over and look for any indication as to what story it is. I can feel creases in my forehead as my brow furrows.
Miranda only shrugs, the sweater falling off her shoulder and showing more of her pale skin and protruding collarbone. “She just kept saying she was going to give it to you. That you needed it more than her.”
My gaze focuses on the first lines of the book, skimming them but finding no recollection of this tale in my memory. I have no idea what the book is, but as I flip through the pages, I notice some of the sentences are underlined in pen.
He loves like there’s no reason not to. That’s the first line I see, and it makes me pause until the conversation pulls me away.
“Before she died, she told me things.” Miranda’s large eyes stare deep into mine.
Jenny told me things too. Things I’ll never forget. Warnings I thought were only paranoia.
As Miranda’s thin lips part, my boss, Aiden, walks up to us in a tailored suit and Miranda shies back. My lips pull into a tight smile as he hugs me.
“You’re dressed to the nines,” I compliment him with a sad smile, not bothering to hide the pain in my voice. Miranda leaves me before I can say another word to her. She ducks her head, getting distance from me as quickly as she can. My eyes follow her as Aiden speaks.
“You okay?”
My head tilts and my eyes water as I reply, “Okay is such a vague word, don’t you think?”
He’s older than me, and not quite a friend, but not just a boss either. The second my arms reach around his jacket, accepting his embrace, he holds me a little tighter and I hate how much comfort I get from it.
From something so simple. So genuine. My circle is small, but I like to keep it that way. And Aiden is one of the few people in it. He’s one of the few people I can be myself with.
“I heard you didn’t go… that it was today?” he asks me, although it’s more of a statement, my face still pressed against his chest.
I won’t cry. I won’t do it.
Not until I’m alone anyway. I can’t hide behind anger then. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re lying in bed by yourself.
“I couldn’t bring myself,” I tell him, intending on saying more, but my bottom lip wobbles and I have to pull away.
He’s reluctant, but he lets me and I find my own arms wrapping around myself. Looking back to where Jenny’s friends were, I notice they’re gone, along with a lot of the crowd.