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over me but without the one person I most wanted to see.
    My parents talked and talked, said all the things I suppose Laurie and Pinewood taught them to say. The truth, J, the truth I know you already know, is that their talking isn’t what stopped me. Pinewood isn’t what keeps me from drinking either. It never has been. The reason I don’t drink is because of what happened to you. What I did.
    I tried once, the morning after you died. I rolled out of bed, rested against the floor until I felt strong enough to stand. I found a bottle in my bottom dresser drawer. I went to pick it up and saw your face, heard you crying and me promising everything would be all right. I opened the bottle, and you stared at me, eyes open and glitter dusted across your cheekbones. I took a sip, and I couldsee out the ambulance window. You were lying on the ground, your hands open wide, holding on to nothing. There were people standing over you, looking down at you, and I knew you’d never see them.
    I couldn’t swallow. I opened up the attic window, gagging, then grabbed the bottle and tossed it as far as I could. That afternoon my parents started talking about Pinewood. They started talking about it more when I said, “Fine. Whatever. I don’t care.”
    I thought about killing myself the day after your funeral. I was in my room, behind the locked attic door staring at the picture we had taken the time we skipped school and went to Adventure Park. Remember that? You talked that guy into letting us in for free and we rode on all the rides and bought a picture of ourselves smiling with someone in a squirrel suit. I knew Dad kept a bottle of sleeping pills in the medicine cabinet in the bathroom he shares with Mom, for the times he’s overseas and has to sleep because he has an early meeting about whatever merger his company is working on. They wouldn’t have noticed till it was too late.
    You know why I didn’t do it? It wasn’t because I didn’t want to. I did. God, I did. I didn’t because living with what I’d done to you was what I deserved. I deserved tobe alone. I deserved the shaking and the headaches and the fact that every single time I took a breath I felt a squeezing in my chest, my heart beating even though I wished it wasn’t.
    I deserve to live like this now, to have tonight happen to me. I deserve to remember the way things were and realize they’re gone. That I destroyed them. I won’t drink and let myself wipe it away for a little while.
    When Mom and Dad were done talking tonight they made me sit between them on the sofa. Dad fiddled with the remote and patted my knee. Mom put an arm around my shoulders, squeezing gently every once in a while. We watched a movie, something with wacky misunderstandings and an ending where everything turned out okay. I could tell because there was happy music. It was a very long eighty-seven minutes.
    “You did it,” Mom said as the credits rolled. Dad said, “Amy, we’re so proud of you.” It made me happy to hear them say that, and I don’t deserve that either. I always wanted family stuff like this. It’s kind of funny, isn’t it? All those years of great grades when I was young, all those years of trying to squeeze into their world, and it turns out I just needed to stop caring, become a drunk who dragged her best friend into a car and—I can’t stand this, you being gone. I’m so sorry, J. You don’t know how sorry I am for what happened. For what I did.
    I know they’re just words. But I mean them, I swear. I’m sorry. Please forgive me everything.

SEVEN
    I TOLD JULIA about tonight, but I didn’t—I didn’t tell her about school. I tried, staring at the paper, pen in my hand, but the words wouldn’t come. I don’t want…
    I don’t want her to know what I saw today.
    I was at my locker at the end of school, grabbing my stuff. Everyone was talking, planning their weekends and discussing what we’re all supposed to care about, who did what to who and why.
    I