She sits up, still smiling, knowing she’s gotten her way even though I’m still arguing. “You know as well as I do that you couldn’t get drunk even if you wanted to.”

“Only because I worry about you,” I say. “You always get so crazy when you’re drunk.”

“Not crazy, just fun,” she argues. “Now will you please get up and get changed so we can go? Ryder’s waiting for us in the living room.”

I hesitate and then sigh. “Fine, but I’m only going to keep an eye on you.”

She grins, then places a soft kiss on my lips. “Thank you. You take such good care of me.”

“That’s because I love you,” I tell her as she hops off my lap and I sit up, stretching my arms above my head.

Still grinning, she picks up a pair of my jeans and throws them at me. “If you love me, then hurry up and get dressed.” Then she walks out of my room, without saying I love you back.

But I know she loves me just as much as I love her, which is why I get up and get dressed, like she asked. Then I head out, not because I want to but because I love her, more than anything.

She means the world to me. Always will. Until the day I die.

May 10, six days before summer break


Nova

I remember when I was younger and everything felt so simple. Life seemed full of smiles and dancing, candy and costumes, so full of happiness and light. Dark things weren’t clear to me yet, not until I was twelve and realized that not everything was sunshine. The memory is as clear to me as the sunny sky.

“I bet you can’t beat me to the bottom of the hill,” my dad says, laughing as he pedals his bike down the hill.

I smile, pedaling my bike faster. It’s brand-new, with purple and silver paint, and has stripes on the pedals that reflect the sunlight. My tires crunch against the dirt as they spin and spin and I grip the handlebars as I speed down the hill, trying to win. Really I don’t care, though. No matter who wins, I’m still having fun riding bikes with my dad.

He stays a ways ahead of me as we wind down the hill, trees around us, a blue sky above us, and the air smells like dirt and leaves. I honestly won’t be surprised if he slows down right before we reach the bottom and lets me win. He usually does stuff like that, pretending that something happened so that it seems completely accidental.

So when he disappears around the corner and then I hear the sound of his tires slowing down I think: Aha! I pedal faster, hitting bumps, steering my bike around rocks, slowing down slightly when I reach the corner. I’m grinning, filled with the excitement of the race, but when I make it all the way around, my happiness all burns out.

My dad’s bike is on its side in the middle of the path, tires still spinning, and he’s lying on the ground on his back. For a split second I think he’s playing a joke, taking letting me win a little too far. But then I notice that he’s clutching at his heart, groaning.

Pressing on the brakes, I slow down, worried he’s fallen off his bike and hurt himself. When I reach him, I hop off my bike and drop it to the ground as I rush over to him, then kneel down in the dirt beside him. The first thing I notice is how white his skin is, like the cotton falling off the trees. Then I see the fear in his eyes. Sheer terror that something bad is about to happen.

“Nova…get help…” His voice shakes.

Tears sting at my eyes. “Dad, what’s wrong?”

“Just go get someone…” He groans again, clutching at his arm.

The look in his eyes makes me run back to my bike. I get on it and pedal back up the hill. It’s a very steep slope and it usually takes forever, but somehow I make my legs stronger than they normally are and move faster then I ever have. When I reach the top, I search the parking lot for someone. There’s a family at one of the picnic tables and I run over to them, leaving my bike near the trail.

“My dad,” I pant, leaning over, grasping my knees. “He fell back there and he’s hurt.”

The father of the family gets up from the table, telling his wife to go call an ambulance. Then he tells me to take him back to my dad and we go on foot, running down the hill. I really think he’s going to be okay. I really think because I got help, did everything right, that everything will be okay, but when we reach him, he’s not moving. Breathing. The guy checks his pulse and he doesn’t have one.

I don’t know what to do. I want to cry, but the guy keeps looking at me with pity, like he feels sorry for me, and it makes me not want to cry just to prove to him that he’s wrong, that everything will be okay.

* * *

I’ve been remembering my dad’s death a lot over the last twenty-four hours, ever since I found out about Quinton and his past. I think part of it’s because Lea keeps looking at me like that guy did after he realized my dad didn’t have a pulse. Like she pities me, because I want to find Quinton, because I don’t know where he’s living and I want to help him. She doesn’t think that I can help him, but she’s wrong—she has to be.

At least that’s what I keep telling my camera while I make my recording. “I’ve been telling myself over and over again there’s still hope, that Quinton’s still alive, therefore hope still exists,” I say to my camera phone screen as the red recording light blinks. “That hope can only be gone when someone’s heart stops beating, when they take their last and final breath, when they don’t come back.” I’m lying on the sofa in my apartment’s living room, with my feet propped up on the back and my head over the edge, so my hair’s hanging down toward the ground. My phone is angled at my face and it looks like I’m falling. I’m not sure how long I’ve been in this position, but I can feel the blood pooling in my head.

I started making recordings of myself partly because I was interested in film and partly because it was the only way I could get my thoughts out. There was also a teeny part of me that did it because it made me feel connected to my deceased boyfriend, Landon, because he made a video, minutes before he committed suicide.

Because I let him fall from my life, just like I did Quinton.

I blink at the camera, telling myself not to let my mind go there and to keep positive. “Hope is what keeps me searching for Quinton—what makes me determined to find him and help him. Even when I know that what awaits me in the future is going to be hard, that it’ll more than likely bring up painful memories of the things I did in my past. But I know it’s something I have to do. Looking back, I realize that Quinton entered my life for a reason. It may not have made sense when I first met him nearly a year ago, but it does now. And all that stuff I went through, the summer of bad choices, can be used for something good because it gives me insight into what he’s going through. I’ve seen the darkness that’s probably around Quinton right now and I know what it feels like to feel like you’re drowning in it…” I trail off as the memories start to build up inside me, weighted and unwelcome, but I take a deep breath and free the tension.

“Although I’m sure there’s way more to it than what I know. Not just because he’s gone deeper into the drug world than I ever did—into crystal meth…from what I’ve read on the Internet it’s far more addicting than anything I ever did, but then again there are so many things that could be classified as addiction…” I trail off and shut my eyes. “Addiction is the fucking devil—I swear to God it is. Whether it’s drugs or obsessive counting, something I still suffer from occasionally. It can be so comforting, peaceful, serene. It can make you feel so in control, but it’s just a mask, plain and simple, and what’s behind the mask—what we’re trying to hide—is still growing, feeding off the addiction—”

“Nova, get in here,” Lea, my best friend and roommate for the last year, calls out from my room, interrupting my video making. “I think I found something.”

I open my eyes and stare at my image on the screen, so different from how I appeared last summer when I was addicted to several things, including denial. “I’ll pick up on this later,” I say to my camera phone, then click it off and flip upright, getting to my feet.

Blood rushes down from my head and vertigo sets in, sending the nearly empty room around me spinning. I brace my hand against the wall and make my way to the bedroom.

“What’d you find?” I ask Lea as I stumble through the doorway.

She’s sitting on the floor in the midst of our packing boxes with the computer on her lap, her back against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her. “An old newspaper article on the Internet that mentions a Quinton Carter involved in a fatal car accident in Seattle.”

I briefly stop breathing. “What’s it say?” I whisper, fearing the truth. She skims the article on the screen. “It says that he was one of the drivers and that two people in the car he was driving were dead on arrival.” She pauses, sucking in a slow breath. “And it says that he died, too, but that the paramedics revived him.”

I swallow hard as denial begins to evaporate and I’m forced to admit the truth. All that time I spent with Quinton and I didn’t know the dark secrets eating away at him. “Are you sure that’s what it says?” I ask her, denial trying to grasp hold one last time. I’m trying to hold on to the idea that Quinton just does drugs because he’s bored. Things would be easier if that were the case. Well, not easy, but then I’d just be helping him with addiction instead of what’s hidden beneath the addiction. And things are never easy—life never is. Mine isn’t. Landon’s wasn’t. Quinton’s isn’t. Lea’s isn’t. So many heartbreaking stories and I wish I could document them all.