Page 38

“So you cut your foot off?” Kavita says.

“Part of it,” I correct. “But, yeah. On the floor of a meth lab, with a rock. Then I disinfected with whiskey.”

“That’s so you,” Meredith says. “Some of that hit the news and people on Twitter were calling bullshit, and I was like, whatever, I wouldn’t be surprised if she chewed it off with her teeth. So I got in, like, five tweet wars over it.”

“Thank you,” I tell her, and I mean it.

Kavita rolls her eyes but lets it slide. “I took your pack home for you,” she says, efficient as always. “And I charged your phone.” She reaches into her back pocket, pulling it out.

“Thanks,” I say. I’ve got thirty-five texts, but I slide it under my pillow for later. “So . . .”

I trail off, unsure of how much they want to hear about the woods, about thinking I would die and deciding that I would and then changing my mind about it. I don’t know if Meredith can handle the idea of eating worms and raw fish, and she for sure can’t hear the part about the one that swam back up my throat, or about me clubbing a possum to death. Kavita might, and maybe I’ll tell her one day, but right now I’m so far from that, here in this clean room, with my friends.

“Omigod.” Meredith perks up suddenly. “You don’t know because you’ve been gone, but Kate Fullerton ran over Jake Smalls with her truck at a field party because he said she smelled like week-old period. But it was just his foot, and it was, like, real muddy so he didn’t get hurt too bad.”

“That’s a shame,” I say, to which Kavita adds, “Preach.”

Meredith keeps going, telling me all the things that went on in my absence, what people said and did, the world that kept going without me in it, stuff that normally I might tell her doesn’t matter, that I don’t care. But this is my life, and these are the people in it.

And yes, I do care.

Duke is the last person to show up.

Dad is filling out paperwork so that I can leave tomorrow, but the scratch of his pen falls silent when Duke walks in, and I open my eyes. Dad knows what happened, the story coming out of me while he untangled my hair, so I half expect him to rebreak Duke’s nose.

It’s still lopsided and a bit yellow right around the bridge, so instead Dad just gives him a once-over and asks me if I want to talk to him. I tell him I do, and Dad leaves, not quite letting the door shut entirely behind him.

“Hey,” Duke says, taking a chair next to the bed.

“Hey,” I say. He leans forward like he’s thinking about taking my hand, so I tuck it under the sheets.

“Ash,” he says, eyes down. “I’m so goddamn sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I tell him, and he swallows hard like maybe there’s more words stuck in his throat but they’re having a hard time coming out. I know how that feels, know what it’s like to have all the feelings backed up in there and choking you. I felt like that when I found him in the woods with Natalie.

“I came looking for you,” he says after a second, voice small and quiet. “I went all up and down the hills. I did everything I could think of, Ash. But you weren’t there.”

“No,” I agree. “I was long gone and headed the other direction.”

It’s true in more ways than one, but I know he’s got to get it out, so I let Duke tell me about how he found my shoes and socks, the rock where I crushed my foot and the blood there. He tells me about search parties and sniffing dogs and news crews and reporters and people lining up in straight rows and combing the woods for me, Jason yelling himself hoarse. He needs to do it, needs to show me how hard he tried to make up for what went wrong.

“All the reporters, they’ve been going nuts since you got back,” he goes on. “They keep calling me, asking if I’ve come to see my girlfriend and how you’re doing and if you’ll talk to them sometime and I just keep telling them, ‘Hell, I don’t know. Ashley’s going to do what she’s going to do and you can’t make her do different.’”

That’s true enough. I can say a lot of things about this boy, but one of them is that he knows me, inside and out.

“Is there anything you want me to tell them?” Duke asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “You need to tell them to get their facts straight.”

“How’s that?” he asks.

“I’m not your girlfriend,” I say. “Not anymore.”

Duke nods like he’s just taking it in, but there’s tears in his eyes when he gets up. “All right then,” he says, hand on the doorknob. “Feel better, Ashley.”

“I already do,” I tell him.

When I finally get home there are reporters. The more industrious of the bunch have dug a little and found our address, something that makes me cringe. I’m not ashamed of the overgrown yard or the ripped trampoline, the cinder-block steps and the rusted spots in the metal siding. Maybe once I would’ve been, but not after I found out what it’s like to go without it.