Echoes Between Us - McGarry, Katie Page 0,120
love you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
“But I do.”
“But you shouldn’t.” Veronica steps back, rejecting my touch.
“Why?” I run a frustrated hand through my hair. “You’re smart and you’re funny and I’m fascinated by all of your quirks. You love life, you don’t judge and you’re so damn beautiful that it hurts to look at you. I think about you all the time—when I wake up, before I go to bed. I dream of you. I look forward to seeing you so I don’t understand why I shouldn’t care.”
“Because I’m dying!” she shouts.
“You don’t know that. You said the tumor was small, but you’re fine!”
“I lied! The tumor’s growing. My headaches are worse, my symptoms are worse, I know that you know I see my mom! That’s not normal. Not even for me. I want her to be real. I need her to be real, but I’m not stupid. I know what it might mean. I know that I’m dying.”
Her words echo through the field and through my soul. She said it last night, but I knew it before her whispers. Yet I still had tried to talk myself out of it, but there’s no rationalizing it away. The admission is a crushing weight, it’s a rope tied to my ankle that’s stuck to the bottom of the quarry pond. The moisture lining the rim of her eyes tells me she just delivered the gospel truth.
I can’t breathe, and I flinch as I fight the need to double over. It’s like someone has punched me in the throat then in the gut.
“My decision about how to handle the tumor—that’s why this project is so important to me. I want to show my dad that when it’s time, when the tumor progresses like Mom’s did, that we don’t have to go through all the terrible treatments. That he can just let me live my life and permit me to enjoy whatever time I have and then it’s okay to let me go because I won’t be leaving him alone. Not really. If I prove ghosts are real, he’ll know that I’ll still be with him—just in a different way.”
My lungs burn as my heart beats wildly. It was there—the truth, the whole time.
“We’re project partners,” Veronica whispers to me as if she’s angry, and I’m the reason why. “We stay on track, we do our project, and because you can’t handle keeping emotions out of it, we aren’t together and we won’t kiss again.”
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why can’t I be with you?”
Her face contorts. “Because you’ll stay with me, that’s why.”
My eyes widen as if she doesn’t get that’s the point. “That’s what people do when they love someone.”
“It’s not what I want you to do—not with me.”
“Why?”
“Because this isn’t how it was supposed to go. You were never supposed to know I was dying. We were never supposed to fall in love. We were supposed to have fun and enjoy our senior year and make a million memories. And then we were supposed to graduate. You were supposed to go to college and I…”
“Was supposed to die?” I finish for her. “And I was supposed to leave and forget you?”
She nudges the grass with her foot. “It’s what happens when people leave this town.”
“I could never forget you!” I roar.
“I know that now, and I don’t want this for you! I want you to live!”
“Don’t you get it? The only time I live is when I’m with you.”
“Because maybe I’m just another adrenaline high,” she pushes. “Have you thought of that? You don’t want to jump anymore so you hang out with the weird girl who does weird things to get the high so you don’t have to face the fact that your mom is an alcoholic and that you enable her every step of the way.”
My entire head moves as if I was slapped in face. “What did you say?”
Veronica looks down like she’s ashamed, as if she’s sad. “Your mom is sick, and it’s killing you.”
“She’s fine,” I say, but the words feel empty, and I don’t understand the growing anger inside me. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re right, I probably don’t, but it seems obvious.”
“She’s not a drunk!” I shout. “Alcoholics drink all the time and my mom is sober during the week. Yeah, she drinks a lot, but she’s not a drunk! She’s not!”
Veronica places her hands in the air in a show of retreat. I curse aloud then run a hand through my hair. This isn’t what I wanted—a