“Not determined enough,” I say, thinking about how I left Vegas—left Quinton there.

“Hey.” He puts a hand on my knee and I flinch. “You staying there wouldn’t have done any good. Like I said, Quinton needs to stop blaming himself before anything can change, and realize there are people that care about him. And even then he still has a lot of shit to work through.”

“Do you think there’s still hope?” I ask. “For him? That he could still get better?”

I hold my breath as I wait for the answer and I swear it takes hours when really it’s probably only seconds. He nods and I breathe again.

“I think as long as he’s alive still, there will always be hope,” he says softly. “And if we could get him sober, or at least give him an intervention and get him to a place where he could get sober, like my parents did with me, then maybe he could start working on forgiving himself.”

It grows quiet between Tristan and me, as soundless as that day I spent with Quinton on the roof. I wonder if it’s quiet where he is, if he’s enjoying the quiet, or if he even realizes it is quiet. I wonder if he has a roof over his head. I wonder if he’s eaten anything. I wonder if he still looks at things from an artist’s point of view. I wonder if he still draws. I wonder if he still thinks about me.

There are so many things I wonder but the biggest question I’ll always have is if he’s okay.


Quinton

I have lost track of time. I can’t remember what month it is, what day. I can barely tell it’s night. I’m down to my last pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I lost one of my shoes somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I’ve barely had any water to drink in days and I’m starting to feel it, a slow ache in my throat and belly, but I can’t bring myself to leave the roof, so I stay up there most of the time. Nancy complains about me being a lazy-ass junkie, leaving it to her to make all the money, dealing and whoring herself out. I always tell her to go and I wish she would so I’d finally rot all the way into nothing, yet she always comes back and keeps me going when I’m on the verge of dying.

Nancy’s been on her cell phone for a while, something she came back with the other day, telling me it’d help her with her clients, but I look at it as money wasted on the phone and the stupid card she paid for to get minutes. We’re getting low on our stash, only a hit or two left, and she’s trying to find more for cheap. She’s yammering away in the background, but her voice is barely there as I stand on the edge of the roof, staring down at the vacant houses and stores below, the wind against my back and my arms out to the sides. I don’t have a shirt on or shoes and my pants barely stay up at my hips. There’s hardly anything left to me, but I’m still here, wasting away.

One more step and I could be free. One more step and I could finally just fall and crash to my death. The lights would go off. The guilt would be gone. This personal hell that I live in would end.

“Why the hell are you always standing on the edge of the roof?” Nancy weaves around the signs and walks up to me with the phone in her hand.

“Because I’m wondering if I can fly.” I shut my eyes and breathe the air in, freedom just in front of me if I dare take it.

“Don’t be crazy.” She grabs my arm and pulls me down from the edge. “You’re just tripping. If you’ll relax for like five minutes, I can get you another hit ready and you’ll feel better.”

I stumble to get my balance as I turn around to face her. “But we’re running out.”

“I found us more,” she says, backing toward her backpack in the middle of the roof and stopping near the VIVA LAS VEGAS sign. She’s not wearing shoes and some guy hacked off her hair while she was passed out so it barely touches her chin. “But do you have any cash left on you at all?”

Even though I know I don’t, I still take my wallet out of my back pocket and open it up. Then I tip it upside down and dump the contents onto the ground: a few quarters, my driver’s license, which I thought I’d lost, and a piece of paper. Nancy quickly gets down on her knees and snatches up the quarters, then hands me my driver’s license. She picks up the piece of paper and starts to throw it to the side.

I grab hold of her arm, stopping her. “Wait a minute.” I pry the piece of paper out of her hand and open it up. A phone number is scrawled on it so I fold it back up and put it back into my wallet, before stuffing my wallet back into my pocket.

“What the hell was that?” she asks me, rubbing her arm where I grabbed her.

“Nothing.” I don’t say anything else as I sit down on the roof, trying not to think about whose phone number it is. I don’t need to think of her—can’t feel those emotions again. Can’t go back to that place. I need to stay here.

“Okay then.” Nancy looks at me like I’m crazy, but she’s pretty much on the same page at this point, ready to lose her mind if she doesn’t get a bump or two. “How about we get you taken care of and then you can relax while I go get us a better stash?” She squats down beside her bag and opens it up.

“Why do you always help me like this?” I gesture around at the roof. “Why do you stay with me when I can’t give you anything?”

She peers up from her bag. “Does it really matter?”

I shake my head, because it doesn’t. “Not really.” Nothing does anymore.

She takes out a syringe and bites off the cap. “Then let’s get you taken care of.”

I lie down in front of her and wait. Moments later she’s sinking the needle into my vein and for a moment I taste freedom, but it’s not as potent as it used to be and as I feel myself falling into a state of euphoria, I find myself wishing that instead I were falling off the roof.

Chapter 17

August 19, day ninety-six of summer break


Nova

I’ve been watching the show Intervention lately because Tristan makes me. I’m not even sure why he does, except that he seems to think it’ll teach us a thing or two about how it goes down, just in case we ever do stumble across Quinton again. He likes to compare the episodes to what happened with him, how his parents confronted him in the hospital and his mother cried a lot. He said his dad was actually kind of a dick, but only because he cares—Tristan can see that now. I asked him if he thought that was what was wrong with Quinton’s dad and he said maybe, but we might never know unless a real intervention happens.

I’ve also started to pack for school, even though I don’t head back for a week. Lea and I have an apartment, the same one we lived in last year, we just have to sign the forms when we get there and put down a deposit. I’ve ordered all my books, enrolled for all my classes. Everything is set, yet it feels like so much is missing.

The sun is setting outside, another day come and gone, another day when I try not to think about Quinton, but I always do. The worst is when I close my eyes and see the look in his eyes when we kissed near the roller coaster and I stupidly believed everything was going to change. Sometimes I see the self-hatred I saw when he told me the accident was his fault. Sometimes I dream that I’m reaching out to him as he falls into darkness, but he won’t reach back and take my hand. Sometimes he turns into Landon as he’s falling and he starts to reach back but then at the last second he pulls away. I’m really starting to hate dreaming.

“Do I really need to take four classes?” Tristan asks as he scrolls through the list on my computer. He looks even healthier than he did during his first visit, his skin clearer and his eyes filled with a little less misery. He’s actually been hanging out with me a lot, mainly, he says, because I keep him out of trouble. I’m glad. I wish I could turn it into a job or something, although the breakdowns I have when things don’t go my way would probably happen a lot more frequently.

“The more classes you take,” I tell him as I fold up my clothes and stack them on my bed, “The quicker school will be over.”

He grins over his shoulder at me. “Now there’s some motivation.”

“Glad to be of service,” I joke as I put a stack of shirts into a duffel bag, the ones I’m not planning on wearing until I get to school.

“Have you asked your friend if she minds sharing an apartment with a dude?” Tristan asks as he clicks the mouse. “Especially when she’s seen me at my worst.”

“Crap, I forgot to bring that up,” I say, zipping up the bag.

“Forgot?” Tristan questions in a joking tone as he glances over his shoulder at me. “Or are you avoiding it?”

“Maybe a little of both,” I admit as I reach for my phone on the nightstand. The screen says I have one message and for a second my heart leaps in my throat. But that happens every time my phone shows a message or call, because for some reason I think it’s going to be Quinton, but it never is.

The message is from Lea, telling me to call her please!

I sigh and head toward the doorway. “I’ll be right back,” I tell Tristan, noticing that he’s left the campus website and has now opened a search engine. I don’t need to see what he’s searching for. He told me once that he reads through Vegas articles for information about where Quinton could be. He’s says it’s pretty much pointless, especially when Quinton might not even be in Vegas anymore, but he does it anyway because it makes him feel better—makes him feel like he’s doing something to help Quinton the way Quinton helped him.

I go out into the kitchen, where my mom and Daniel are, getting ready for the week-long camping trip that they’re leaving for tomorrow. They’ve got the tent, the sleeping bags, and a few Tupperware bins on the table and the floor that they’re packing with food, pans, utensils, and whatnot.