“Maybe they don’t exist,” Mabel says, wiping an arm over her sweaty forehead and sitting back on her heels.
I shake my head. “They exist,” I insist. “They have to. She wouldn’t write that list and put that book in your room without there being two others out there that she wanted us to find. She wouldn’t fuck with us like that.”
Mabel just watches me through sad eyes.
“No,” I say. “Don’t look at me like that. Don’t pity me, Mabel.”
“I’m not pitying you. She was my sister. I miss her as much as you do.”
“Yeah, but you weren’t the one who killed—”
Mabel leaps to her feet. “Seriously, Ryden, enough with that. Just stop.”
I stare back at her indignantly. I don’t care what she thinks. She thinks she knows everything because Meg’s journal entry said she didn’t blame me, or there was nothing to blame me for, or whatever. But Mabel wasn’t there. She wasn’t part of any of it. She has no idea what she’s talking about. But I’ll stop saying it around her if that’s what she wants.
“Well, either way,” I say, “Meg knew what she was doing with the journal. She wanted us to find it because she wanted us to know the truth. Without that first one, we wouldn’t know that she knew she was going to die all along. I think there was something else she wanted us to know, and I think we owe it to her to find out what.”
Mabel stares at me. “We owe it to her? Since when is that the reason we’re searching for these journals? I thought it was because we wanted the answers for ourselves. So we could move on.”
“There are lots of reasons.” I stand up too. Now I’m the one looking down on her. I lift Hope out of her car seat, balance her on my hip, and give her a pacifier. She’d be on my side about this if she were old enough to understand. I’m beginning to think she’s the only one. “We can’t give up.”
“But what if they don’t exist? We’ll be chasing a ghost for the rest of our lives.”
“They do.”
She crosses her arms and speaks more softly. “They don’t, Ryden. They’re not here. Maybe she never got the chance to mark the other two and put them where we would find them. Or maybe she forgot about it. Or maybe she died before she could finish them. She was really weak and totally out of it toward the end, you know.”
What, she thinks I don’t remember exactly what Meg was like in those final days? Her body thin and brittle, her stomach round and looking more like a tumor than any of the actual tumors inside of her. Her lips dry, her eyes unclear. Asleep most of the time, and the rest of the time too exhausted to do much more than walk the short distance to the bathroom. But still looking at me with more love than I’ve ever known in my life.
And then, one day, gone.
“She finished the journals,” I say. “I know it. And I’m going to find them.”
Mabel pushes the boxes against the storage room walls, picks up Hope’s car seat, and walks to the car. I follow, closing and locking the garage door.
The drive back to her house is silent. Before she gets out of the car, she turns to me and says, “I’m done, Ryden. You’re on your own. I have to move on.”
I nod. I guess I kinda knew that was coming. “Call me whenever you want to see Hope.”
“Thanks. See you at school on Monday.”
She walks up the path toward her giant, cold house.
The thing is, now I’m even more determined to track down the journals. There was something Meg wanted us to know, me to know, and now I’m the only one left who wants to hear what she said just as desperately as she wanted to say it.
• • •
“Brooks!” Coach shouts as I run onto the field. “That little conversation we had on Monday wasn’t for my health. That’s it. You’re sitting out next Friday.”
“But, Coach! That’s the first game of the season!”
“I’m aware of that. Two miles. Go.”
Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck! My teammates have stopped what they were doing and stare at me as I switch from cleats to sneakers and start my eight laps around the track. Most of them are looking at me like Coach is looking at me—pissed off for my being late again and for