picnic area. It wasn’t as cold here as it had been in northern Indiana, and I lay down on one of the tables to stare up at the low charcoal clouds. A warm Texas breeze picked up, and for a moment, it was like being back in Las Vegas.
Mom had loved the desert. Sometimes in the summer she would wake me up and take me for a midnight drive. After buying two cups of hot cocoa from the 7-Eleven, she would head west on Flamingo, past the Strip, and into the darkness. We would pull off the road and lie side by side in the bed of her old Toyota pickup, staring up at the stars. She would point out constellations: Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Orion. Usually, I fell asleep.
I don’t think she ever did.
I sat up suddenly, blood rushing to my head. Those little drives—our “insomniac adventures,” she had called them—must have happened when she was manic. Why had it taken me so long to realize? I lay back down, searching the sky for Orion, but all I saw were clouds.
If her mania was responsible for all those good times, did it make them less real? Less special? If I dismissed all the valleys as flukes of neurochemistry, didn’t that make the peaks just as meaningless?
Mom would have known the answer. She had known all the answers, until she threw them away. I twisted a lock of hair in my fist and pulled until my eyes stung. No crying, she would’ve said. Beauty hurts. Might as well get used to it. I’d always thought she was talking about brushing hair, wearing tight clothes and uncomfortable shoes—all the inconveniences you had to bear and the sacrifices you had to make when you were a girl in the world of performing. But lying there, staring up at the west Texas sky, inhaling the warm breeze, I thought I knew better now. I felt connected to her words somehow, a thousand miles away and ten years dead. Beauty did hurt. Just noticing how things were, experiencing them fully, was painful for people like her and me, and probably always would be.
My phone buzzed. Probably it was just Ripley wanting to chat, and I didn’t feel like talking. It buzzed again, and I reluctantly pulled it from my pocket. My heart seized. It was a text from Liam.
Really sorry. Crazy couple of days. Will try to call tomorrow.
Dumbstruck, I stared at the glowing screen. What the fuck. Crazy couple of days? What did that even mean? Will try to call?
I clutched the phone to my chest and squeezed my eyes shut. I was an idiot. If Liam were really interested in me, he would have texted before now. I should have trusted my instincts. All that flattery, all that making me feel special—it had been nothing more than misdirection. A lie that was more satisfying than the truth.
And what did it matter? What did Liam matter, after what had just happened with Dad?
All at once, loneliness descended on me like a shroud. I started to type out a reply but deleted it. Composed another, and deleted that, too. I felt my mind slowing down, my thoughts beginning to corkscrew. I turned my head to look at the man-made pond. The water was black, and I couldn’t see the bottom. How deep was it? A foot? Eighteen inches? Deeper than a sink, anyway. Deep enough.
I closed my eyes and imagined how it would feel as the surface crept over my lips, my nose, my eyes, sealing me off from the air above. I had held my head under the surface a hundred times but never had the courage to inhale. Would it burn when the cold water hit my lungs? Would I let it take me, or would I cough and sputter and fight to survive?
My doctor in Indianapolis had given a name to this particular loop of thought. He called it suicidal ideation, and I was supposed to consider it an alarm bell. I was supposed to reach out. Only I didn’t feel like reaching out. I wasn’t even sure I had the energy to type the pass code into my shitty phone and place a call. I felt myself tipping downward, as if I’d reached a steep slope and tapped the brakes, only to find they didn’t work.
I rolled over, got to my feet, and walked toward the pond. I had the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in my contacts, but I had never