Chapter 2

Two days later, Shelby reached across the aisle to borrow my highlighter.

We were in Mrs. Patterson's third-period English class. Lord of the Flies. I hadn't read it, but I'd skimmed the SparkNotes enough to fake my way through any discussion questions.

October light slanted through the windows, catching dust motes, making everyone look slightly golden and slightly bored. Shelby was two seats over, close enough that I could see her doodling in the margins of her book. Little flowers. Spirals. The kind of mindless art you make when you're not really listening.

I wasn't really listening either. Mrs. Patterson was talking about the conch shell, about how it represented order and civilization, about how its destruction meant something important. I was thinking about Friday. The volleyball game. The party at Brianna's I wasn't invited to.

I'd told Shelby I wasn't mad, and I'd meant it. Mostly. But the cold thing in my stomach hadn't gone away. It sat there like a stone, and every time I thought about her walking into Brianna Hollister's house without me, the stone got a little heavier.

"The conch is fragile," Mrs. Patterson said. "That's Golding's point. The systems we build to keep ourselves civilized are always fragile. They can shatter in an instant."

Shelby leaned over the seat toward me. "Can I borrow your yellow?" she whispered.

I held out the highlighter. She took it.

Her fingers brushed mine.

And something cracked open.

It wasn't like the flicker in the hallway, that brief blur of someone else's nervousness that I could shake off like water. This was a flood. A door slamming open in my chest and everything on the other side pouring through at once.

I saw Shelby's kitchen. The one I'd sat in a hundred times, eating Mrs. Hoffman's bulgogi, feeling almost normal. But I wasn't there. I was seeing it from inside Shelby's head, feeling what she felt, and what she felt was tired.

Her mother was at the counter, slicing scallions into thin, exact rings the way she always did when she was upset. The kitchen smelled like sesame oil and tension.

You're still spending time with the Lawrence boy?

Shelby at the table, pushing peas around her plate. Mom, I promised.

Her father, not looking up from his food. It's been three years, Shell. You've done enough.

The words hit me, but the feeling underneath hit harder. Obligation. Duty. The specific weight of a promise you never wanted to make but couldn't figure out how to break. And underneath all of it, a question Shelby wouldn't let herself ask out loud: When do I get to stop?

The scene shifted. Shelby's bedroom now. Purple walls. Volleyball trophies on a shelf. String lights casting everything in a warm glow. She was curled up on her bed, phone in hand, texting someone.

The name on the screen was Brianna Hollister.

he's SO weird, Brianna had written. how do you stand it

I watched Shelby's thumbs hover over the keyboard. Watched her type something, delete it, type something else. The feeling coming off her was tangled and ugly. Guilt. Defensiveness. The particular shame of being caught in something you know is wrong but aren't willing to stop.

Finally she sent: he doesn't have anyone else

Like that explained it. Like that was the only reason someone would choose to spend time with me.

The scene shifted again. Shelby younger now. Eleven, maybe. Standing in my living room, and I recognized everything. The old wallpaper, the one with the little blue flowers that Dad had painted over the summer after Mom died. The couch we'd donated to Goodwill because neither of us could stand to look at it. The afternoon light coming through the front window, making a rectangle on the carpet.

People everywhere. Casseroles on the counter. Sympathy cards crowding the mantle. The hushed murmur of adults who didn't know what to say but felt like they should say something.

Mrs. Hoffman had her hand on Shelby's shoulder, pressing down hard. Her eyes were red. Everyone's eyes were red that week.

You look after Eli now. Her voice was thick with grief, with the desperate need to do something useful when there was nothing useful to be done. Elizabeth would have wanted that. You be his friend. He's going to need someone.

And Shelby, eleven years old, looking across the room at me. I was sitting on the stairs in my too-big suit, the one Dad had bought the day before because I didn't own anything appropriate for my own mother's funeral. I remembered that suit. I remembered how the collar scratched my neck. I remembered feeling like I was wearing someone else's skin.

Shelby looked at me, and what I felt from her wasn't friendship. It wasn't pity, exactly. It wasn't even resentment, not yet.

It was responsibility. The heavy, unwanted weight of a chore she'd just been assigned by a crying woman who needed to believe she was helping.

The flood stopped.

I was back in English class. Mrs. Patterson was still talking about the conch shell. About how once it shattered, the boys had lost something they couldn't get back.

Shelby was highlighting a passage in her book, my yellow highlighter in her hand. She hadn't noticed anything. For her, no time had passed at all.

For me, three years had just been rewritten.

I stared at my desk. Someone had carved initials into the corner a long time ago. JS + MT. The letters were worn smooth by years of elbows and backpacks. I traced them with my finger and tried to remember how to breathe.

The bell rang. I don't know how much time passed between the flood and the bell. Minutes, maybe. It felt like hours. It felt like seconds.

Shelby was saying something to me. Her mouth was moving. Words were coming out. I couldn't make them mean anything.

I grabbed my backpack and got out of there before she could touch me again.

The hallway was chaos. Bodies everywhere, lockers slamming, someone's phone blasting music too loud. I kept my arms pressed tight against my sides and moved through the crowd like I was radioactive. Every shoulder that came close felt like a threat. Every hand that swung near mine made me flinch.

The bathroom near the old gym. The one nobody used because it smelled like mildew and regret. I locked myself in the last stall and sat down on the toilet lid and tried to make sense of what had just happened.

It didn't make sense. None of it made sense.

I'd seen inside Shelby's head. I'd watched memories that weren't mine like movies playing on a screen behind my eyes. I'd felt her feelings, her guilt, her exhaustion, her obligation.

That wasn't possible. People couldn't do that. Whatever was wrong with me, whatever made people keep their distance, it wasn't supposed to include reading minds like some kind of freak psychic from a bad movie.

But I'd seen the texts. He doesn't have anyone else. I'd heard her parents asking when she could stop. I'd watched Mrs. Hoffman's hand pressing down on eleven-year-old Shelby's shoulder, assigning her a chore that would last for years.

And suddenly everything made sense in the worst possible way.

Every movie night where Shelby picked the film and I pretended to like it because I was just grateful to be there. Every lunch period in our corner of the cafeteria, me talking too much because I was so hungry for someone to listen. Every time she chose me first for teams in gym class even though I'm terrible at sports, and I thought she was being kind.

I thought we were friends.

But she'd been texting Brianna. How do you stand it. She'd been pushing peas around her plate while her parents asked when she'd done enough. She'd been carrying me like a weight around her neck for three years, and I'd been too desperate and too stupid to notice.

I pressed my forehead against my backpack and tried not to make any sound. The tiles were cold under my feet. Water dripped somewhere, a slow rhythmic plink that counted off seconds I didn't want to pass.

My phone buzzed.

Shelby: you ran out so fast. you ok?

I looked at the words for a long time.

She sounded worried. The same way she'd sounded worried a hundred times before. Checking in. Making sure I was alright. Being a good friend.

Being a good friend.

I wanted to laugh. I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw my phone against the wall and watch it shatter into pieces.

Instead I just sat there, staring at her name on my cracked screen, and tried to figure out what I was supposed to do now.

I couldn't confront her. Couldn't say I touched your hand and saw inside your head and I know everything. She'd think I was crazy. She'd tell everyone. The weird kid whose mom died would become the crazy kid whose mom died, and whatever thin thread was holding my life together would snap completely.

I couldn't pretend nothing had happened. Couldn't go back to our corner table at lunch and laugh at her jokes and act like she was still my friend. Not now. Not after seeing what she really thought of me.

So what did that leave? What was I supposed to do with this impossible thing that had happened, this door that had opened in my chest and shown me exactly how alone I really was?

I put my phone away without answering.

I stayed in that stall for a long time. Through the bell for fourth period. Through fifth. Through the muffled sounds of the school going on without me, announcements and footsteps and the distant roar of the cafeteria at lunch.

I didn't go to lunch. Couldn't face our corner table. Couldn't watch Shelby save me a seat like she always did, knowing now what that gesture really cost her.

Around 2:30, my phone buzzed again.

Shelby: eli seriously where are you

And then, a few minutes later:

Shelby: im getting worried. please just tell me youre ok

She was worried. Maybe she really was worried. Maybe part of her had grown to actually care about me over three years of mandatory friendship. You could learn to love your chores. Stockholm syndrome for obligations. Maybe what started as duty had become something almost real.

But I couldn't stop seeing those three dots. Her typing and deleting and typing again before finally settling on he doesn't have anyone else. Like that was my whole identity. Like that was the only thing worth knowing about me.

I typed back: sick. went home.

Shelby: oh no! feel better. text me later?

I didn't respond.

The final bell rang eventually. I waited until the sounds of the school died down, until the buses had pulled away and the hallways had gone quiet. Then I slipped out of the bathroom and walked home alone.

The afternoon was gray now, clouds rolling in from the west. The leaves that had looked so beautiful a few days ago just looked dead. Brown and crumpled, piling up in gutters, clogging the storm drains.

I passed the old Presbyterian church and didn't look at it. Passed the empty factory on the hill. Passed all the boarded-up storefronts and the faded signs for businesses that didn't exist anymore.

Millbrook had been dying for years. I'd just never noticed how much it looked like me.

Dad wasn't home yet. I let myself in with my key and stood in the kitchen for a while, not sure what to do. The house was quiet. The fridge hummed. The clock on the wall ticked off seconds that felt meaningless.

I went upstairs and lay on my bed and stared at the water stain on the ceiling. The one that looked like a rabbit if you squinted. I'd been staring at that rabbit for three years, ever since Dad moved me to this room because he couldn't handle walking past my old one.

Three years. The same amount of time Shelby had been pretending to be my friend.

I thought about the flicker in the hallway. The new kid bumping into me, that brief flash of his nervousness bleeding through. I thought about Mr. Reeves, the guidance counselor, and that wave of bitter resentment I'd felt when I shook his hand in seventh grade. I thought about Mr. Howard the janitor and his ancient grief.

I'd been feeling other people's insides for years. I'd just never let myself admit it.

But those had been flickers. Moments. Easy to explain away as imagination or anxiety or some weird brain thing.

What happened with Shelby was different. What happened with Shelby was specific and detailed and impossible to deny.

I'd seen her memories. Lived inside her feelings. Known things I had no way of knowing.

That wasn't imagination. That was something else. Something I didn't have a name for.

My phone buzzed. Shelby again.

hope youre feeling better. miss you.

I read the words three times. Tried to find the lie in them. Tried to feel the obligation underneath.

But that was the thing about texts. They were just words on a screen. No warmth to read, no emotions bleeding through. Just words, and words could mean anything.

Miss you.

Did she miss me? Did she miss the routine of me, the habit of having someone to sit with? Or was she already relieved, already feeling the weight lift now that I wasn't there to carry?

I turned my phone off and shoved it under my pillow.

The ceiling stared back at me. The rabbit stain. The cracks I'd memorized. The geography of a room I'd never wanted but couldn't escape.

I thought about my mom. About the way she used to look at me sometimes, like she was searching for something in my face. About the questions she'd asked that I hadn't understood. Do you ever feel things that don't belong to you? Do people ever seem too loud, even when they're not talking?

I'd always said no. I'd always lied.

Maybe she'd known anyway. Maybe she'd seen something in me that I couldn't see in myself. Maybe that was why she'd looked at me like that, with that particular sadness, like she was already grieving something she couldn't prevent.

The light faded. The room got dark. I didn't turn on a lamp.

At some point I heard Dad come home. The front door opening, keys hitting the table, the familiar sounds of him moving through the kitchen. He called my name once, twice. I didn't answer.

Eventually I heard his footsteps on the stairs. A knock on my door.

"Eli? You in there?"

"Yeah."

"You okay? School called, said you missed some classes."

"I felt sick."

A pause. "You want me to bring you something? Soup? Crackers?"

"No. I'm just gonna sleep."

Another pause, longer this time. I could picture him standing in the hallway, hand raised like he was about to knock again, not sure what to do. He was never sure what to do. Neither of us was.

"Okay," he said finally. "Let me know if you need anything."

"Okay."

His footsteps retreated down the hall. I listened to him move around downstairs for a while. TV sounds. The clink of dishes. Normal life going on like nothing had changed.

But everything had changed. I'd seen behind the curtain. I'd found out that the one person I thought had chosen me had never chosen me at all.

I lay in the dark and let that truth settle over me like a weight. Like dirt filling a grave.

I had no one.

I'd never had anyone.

And whatever was happening to me, whatever impossible thing had cracked open when Shelby touched my hand, I was going to have to face it alone.

The rabbit on the ceiling stared down at me, patient and silent.

I stared back until I finally fell asleep.