If- Nina G. Jones Page 0,65

shirt, no phone, and no wallet. I feared for his safety. He wasn’t in his right mind. He had snapped.

I grabbed my phone to call the police when I finally had a moment of clarity. I dropped to my knees in front of Ash’s bag and pulled out his cell phone.

My hands shook uncontrollably as I flipped it open and went through the small contacts list.

MILL.

I had never spoken to Miller. I didn’t even know if he knew I existed. Last I heard, Ash wanted to give him space. But if Miller was to Ash anything like Jessa was to me, he’d help.

I hit “call.” The sound of my nervous breathing and the phone ringing competed for my attention.

“Ash?” a guy’s voice answered. He had been sleeping. I had forgotten it was almost midnight.

“Hi . . . I . . .” my voice was stuffy and shaky. “Hi Miller, my name is Bir—Annalise. I know your brother.”

His voice cleared. “Is everything okay? Is something wrong?”

“I don’t know. I’m his girlfriend and, um, he just freaked out. He ran out with no shirt and he doesn’t have a wallet. I don’t know what’s happening to him.”

“What’s your name again?”

“Annalise.”

“Okay, it’s okay. Did you call the cops?”

“Not yet.”

“When did he leave?”

“Just a few minutes ago.”

“Has he been acting strange before this? Hyper?”

“I guess.”

“Has he been sleeping?”

“Maybe not as much. He’s been working a lot. I’ve been working a lot so I wasn’t around as much. I mean yes, I guess he has been really excited but I’ve been gone the past few days almost all day . . . sometimes I’d be asleep before he got off from his shift at the restaurant. I don’t know what to do.”

“Is it okay if I come over to your place? In case he returns?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. I will be there in thirty minutes. If he returns, try not let him leave. Okay?”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m on my way. Text me your address.”

ASH—2 YEARS EARLIER

I swear I saw Sarah. I was in the studio, finally painting again. After she died, I got sick. I couldn’t get out of bed, food was unpalatable, my body ached. The pressure of going back to school in a couple of weeks and the show I also had coming up only made me sink deeper into my bed.

Eventually, my mother, who wasn’t in very good shape herself, had a doctor come to our house. He gave the family Xanax like he was handing out Halloween candy. In a couple of weeks, just in time to get back to school, I started to feel like moving again. By week three, when I was back in New York, I didn’t just feel good again, I felt fan-fucking-tastic. I felt like I could paint for days, and I had so many ideas. This usually happened. I would go for a few days or weeks, in my “crazy painting Ash phase,” my family would call it. Then I would get kind of uninspired and bummed and take some time off. But this Crazy Painting Ash was the best yet.

It was like a billion tiny fires raged in my cells. The pressure of Sarah’s death and everything coming up had put a stop to my creative thoughts, but now it was like someone unplugged that little cork that was holding the dam from bursting and now I was flush with ideas. I was a raging white river bursting with color and shapes and movement that had to be translated into the physical form.

I didn’t have time to sleep, or eat, or go to class. Two weeks, two whole weeks of a non-stop flood of ideas. This show was going to put me on the map. I wouldn’t just be a boy prodigy, I was going to be the fucking man.

Someone poked their head into the studio I was using. I pitched an unopened jar of red paint at the door and it exploded. I wouldn’t tolerate someone disrupting my flow. But then I stopped. The face at the door. The features were familiar. I had seen them for fifteen of my nineteen years. Oh my god, Sarah is alive!

I flung open the door, my hands now covered in red paint, and looked down the hallway. “Sarah! Sarah!”

There was no response. I had scared her away. All this time she was alive and just scared to come home because of the drama she had caused, the guilt she had caused me. Sarah had taken it too far just to show