sat down, it bit him on the ass. We were friends ever since. But her parents and my dad had this stupid rivalry. Some kind of business deal that went sour when Dad first came to the city. I brought her over for dinner one night, and you’d have thought I proposed marrying a streetlamp the way they reacted. Our parents forbid us from being friends, so we hung out in secret.”
“Noah doesn’t know?”
Eli shook his head. “We didn’t want to risk trusting anyone in case it got back to our parents, and then when it all happened with Noah’s brother and her family disappeared, I couldn’t tell him. You didn’t know him then, but he barely held it together.”
I grin. “Considering what a picture of mental fortitude he is now, I’ll take your word for it.”
“Anyway, I’ve been looking for her ever since she disappeared. I even hired a private detective last year, but he couldn’t tell me anything. I’d given up hope of ever seeing her again. But today, she walks into school and looks at me like I’m scum. I tried texting on her old number, and I can see she read my message, but she hasn’t replied. I can’t understand it. Mackenzie and her parents have been missing for four years – what has to happen to a person to turn her into a stranger?”
I want to say that people are turning into strangers in front of you, every single day, and you don’t notice until they’ve swallowed every pill in your stash and died in your arms in a rancid hotel bathroom. I want to say that sometimes you’re closer to random people on the public bus than you are to the people you profess to love. (Not that I’ve ever ridden a public bus. Like a commoner. No thanks.)
I want to swipe the bottle from Eli’s hand and toss the whole thing back, to feel the burn of whisky in my throat and the sweet oblivion that alcohol brings, the void of nothingness where I can live with myself until the hangover comes.
But that’s fucking morose, and Eli already looks like he’s fronting a 90s emo band, so I keep my mouth shut.
Eli stares at the sky. Notes dance around in my head – snatches of a song that might, in the hands of someone who hadn’t completely bollocksed up his life, become something sorrowful and beautiful. But the notes are snatched away like a firefly snuffed out, and I’m left with only the darkness in my own head.
9
Noah
Fuck you, Gabriel.
I bury my foot in the floor and yank the wheel, throwing the car around the corner at an irresponsible speed. The wind whips my hair across my face, and my chest squeezes tight. Red welts dance in front of my eyes, but I don’t lift my foot from the accelerator until I see our house up ahead.
The wind does nothing to ease the heat of my rage. My fingers grip the steering wheel so hard they’re numb. I wish I was numb.
I slide the Lambo into the garage beside Dad’s Aston Martin and click the button to lower the doors. A breeze blows in from outside, fluttering the edge of the white cover that hides my brother’s car. Dad gave him the keys to a Bugatti Veyron Vivere when he got his acceptance letter to Harvard – the dream car to go with Felix’s full-ride athletic scholarship.
Now, the Veyron sits in the shadows, hidden beneath a shroud. Not unlike my brother.
I fling off my books and gym bag. They hit the wall with a THUMP and drop into a messy pile on the tiles – out of place, out of order. Like me. I don’t stop to pick it up. Who cares? Some maid will be along to arrange my things in the neat little rows my father demands.
My shoes squeak on the tiles as I wander through the hallways, peering into the rooms, half-desperate to see another person, half-dreading what would happen when I do. The grandfather clock ticks in the foyer – the sound ricocheting like a gunshot through the silent rooms. When Felix was around, he made this house fun – we stood on either side of the grand staircase and tossed a football to each other and wrestled on the furniture until we broke expensive things and Mom yelled. But Felix’s easy smile would always get us off the hook in the end.