“He was struggling because of Mel’s diagnosis,” I say, swiping a hand over my eyes.
“We all were,” Naomi says. “There’s no point in badmouthing him now, even though I have Things to say. Do you know Mel blamed herself, too? For not being stricter, for not paying more attention, for letting him have that party at the lake.”
“It wasn’t her fault.”
“Or maybe it was, a little bit,” Naomi says, and I can’t believe she’s saying that. “Maybe it was your fault a little bit, too. But you’vepaidfor it, and you’ll pay for it for the rest of your life, because he’s gone.”
I’m bawling my eyes out now, crying so hard it’s difficult to breathe. “I just want to go back to that night.”
“You can’t. All you can do is go forward.”
“I’m trying,” I say. “I’m trying to be better.”
“The only way to be better isto be better,” Naomi says, and I wonder when she dispensed with being Mel’s irritable best friend and turned into a life coach. “Making life miserable for yourself isn’t changing anything. It’s not even being a martyr. It’s being stupid.”
I keep struggling for breath.
Naomi continues, “I mean, your refusing to go to school ... If you don’t want to go to college, don’t go. But if you do, why are you here?”
“I don’t know what I want to do.”
“Bullshit,” she says. “You’re afraid to make another mistake. But guess what? You’re going to make plenty more. Those plaid pants are a mistake.”
She points at my old pajamas, and I almost—almost smile.
“I think something’s wrong with me,” I blurt out instead, and Naomi raises an eyebrow. “There’s something about me. I can’t make the people I love stay.”
“Neither can I,” she says.
“No, it’s ... me,” I wheeze out. I’m crying so heavily that every time I open my mouth, I taste salt water. “It’s my Big Bad. I chase people away or destroy them or something.”
She gives a dismissive wave of her hands. “Oh, not that nonsense.”
“Mel said everyone has one.”
“Mel also said John Travolta would marry her someday. I’m telling you—it’s in her high school yearbook.”
At first I think she doesn’t get it, so I start to explain. How for so long I have believed this horrible thing about my life—that just by being born, I stole the light from my mother’s eyes. I tell her about my father, how he chased after Mom and constantly left me. How I didn’t just lose the entire Cohen family—I obliterated them.
Idid that.
Hurt Luke. Got Ro killed. Abandoned Mel. Hurt Luke again.
“That’s not a Big Bad,” Naomi says. “That’s called life. Shit happens.”
She narrows her eyes and leans forward so she’s looking me right in the eye. “Listen to me,” she says slowly. “I can’t make people I love stay either.”
It’s the second time she’s said it, but the first time it makes sense to me.
That maybe it’s not me, or whatever is inside me, that drives away and destroys and ends things. Maybe things happen just because, and maybe it has nothing to do with me.
Except that doesn’t bring anybody back. It doesn’t change any of what has happened.
“I don’t know what to do anymore. They’re all gone. All three of them are gone.”
“Maybe,” she says, “but maybe not.”
At first I think she means that Luke is still alive, but then she says, “Personally, I see Mel all around me every day. I hear her voice. I hear her favorite songs. And Ro—I can’t get through a tennis match without thinking of him.”
