I smile. “No.”
“Good. I thought we could just drive.”
Sabin, who I’m guessing is horribly hungover, falls asleep the minute we hit the highway. I suppose that I should be exhausted, too, but I don’t feel it. All I feel is such a shocking level of tranquillity that I can’t imagine sleeping right now because I want to enjoy this new feeling.
Chris turns up the radio and then takes my hand as he settles in for the drive. We say nothing for the first hour. Occasionally he drops my hand to change the music, but then immediately takes it back in his. Perhaps I should find this confusing, given that we are not anything other than friends. Friends don’t go around holding hands all the time. I mean, it’s not like Estelle and I sit around our room holding hands while we do homework. I wonder whether I was wrong thinking that we are meant to be more. Then I decide to focus on what I know for sure: that I have found a friend, this spectacular boy, who has saved me from drowning.
Chris turns down the radio. “Blythe?”
“Yeah?”
“Whatever happened to the summerhouse that your parents bought? The one you never got to stay at?”
It seems like such a funny question to me, maybe because I haven’t thought about it in so long.
“Oh. Well, James and I own it, I guess. The last I heard, it was pretty much shut down and a maintenance guy checks in on it a few times a year. My aunt has been paying the taxes and stuff from our account.”
“You haven’t been to it since that summer?”
“No. It… This is going to sound crazy… but it’s never occurred to me. It wasn’t even officially ours yet when my parents died. They’d bought it but we’d only walked through it, we’d never moved in.”
“But you haven’t sold it.”
“No, I haven’t.”
“How long has it been? Four years?”
“Four years last July.”
“July?” Chris squints into the bright sunlight. “Huh.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just… It’s nothing. Well, maybe you’ll go to the house one day.”
“Maybe.”
For a moment he takes his hand from mine and moves his fingers over my forearm. “How badly were you hurt? You said your arm was bleeding a lot, and with all the smoke… Were you in the hospital long?”
I like that he’s not afraid to ask me more about that night. “I was treated for smoke inhalation, but it wasn’t too bad. My arm was… messy. No permanent injury except for the scar, of course. We were not exactly in the big city at a top hospital. I was stitched up and otherwise put back together, but James needed more help than I did.”
“James? So he was really hurt,” Chris says.
“Yes. He severed a vein—or, I guess, I severed his vein—and some muscle, which is why there was so much blood.” Even though I’ve just relived the trauma of that night a matter of hours ago—and I now have new, sharp, graphic memories—the clarity and full understanding of what happened makes this easier to talk about. I have the complete story and the complete truth, and that is already freeing me. “They were concerned about shock because of all the blood loss.”
“You said that he hates you because of that night. Why?”
“So many reasons. He nearly bled to death and was in the hospital for weeks. Before, he’d been a serious soccer player. Incredibly talented, and it seemed clear that he’d go on to play professionally.”
“So after the fire, your brother’s soccer career was blown, I assume.”
“Yes. Months of physical therapy. Months of pain. Some muscle damage. He was devastated. He was the one who was good at something, not me. I was never good at anything. I don’t have a… a special skill or talent. An injury like his wouldn’t have been as big a deal for me.” I realize it feels so good to talk about it. I’ve spent four years having half-conversations with myself, and now I get to have them with someone else. It’s a relief because there are no longer secrets. “So he lost his parents and his potentially amazing future in soccer. He thought that I was stupid and careless in getting him out of the house.”
“That’s not fair.”
“No, maybe not, but he wasn’t that coherent for most of it, so I don’t think he can understand. He thinks he would have had the sense to get us out safely. All he remembers is that I fucked up in every capacity, and he cannot forgive me.”
“It’s probably easier to blame you, because then there is somebody to blame.”
