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Everything about the man screamed pain. God, there was so much pain, and I was sick of it. It hung in the air, sucking up all the oxygen, making it hard to breathe.
It slid over me. Into me. And I stumbled, tears springing to my eyes at the unfairness of it all.
What had I, or Nathan, or this man done to deserve the crap-ton of hurt thrown our way? Had we pissed off the higher power? Had we done something so bad that we needed this heavy dose of pain to tip the scales back to where they were supposed to be?
Was it just our bad luck? Or was it fate?
Or maybe I had it all wrong. Maybe there wasn’t a reason or a plan and I was overthinking everything. Maybe things just were, and the good and the bad happened for no reason other than they just did.
Stuff came at us, and it was up to each of us to handle it. Some of us survived and others, well, others just didn’t. Maybe that was the point of it all.
But if you were like me, you survived because someone gave you a reason to.
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“He’s so sorry,” I whispered. “You have no idea.”
Trevor’s dad stopped but didn’t turn around, and I took that as a sign to keep going.
“Nathan would never hurt Trevor on purpose. The way he talks about him…it’s like they’re brothers or something, and it’s killing him to know he made a mistake that put his best friend in the hospital.”
My voice caught and I shuddered, cold and frustrated.
“I know that what happened to your son is the most awful thing ever—”
“You don’t know shit, little girl.”
I swallowed hard as Trevor’s dad turned around and glared at me. “Who are you again?” he barked.
“Monroe. My name is Monroe Blackwell. I’m just a friend and…and you might not like to hear this, because I know that most adults don’t like it when a kid tells them that, well, tells them that they’re wrong.” I paused and prayed for strength. “You’re wrong.”
He took a step closer, and that fear inside me expanded until I was trembling. But I didn’t back down. I couldn’t. I needed to make him understand. I needed to do this for the boy I loved.
“You’re wrong to hate Nathan for what happened to your son,” I gasped. “So, so wrong. It’s not fair.”
He made a sound—something almost inhuman—and took another step toward me. His eyes glistened with a hardness that made me flinch.
“Who the hell are you to preach to me about what’s wrong or what’s not fair? I’ll tell you what’s not fair. It’s not fair that my son is lying in a hospital bed where he’s been for over three months. It’s not fair that now he’s battling an infection that could kill him.” He scrubbed at his eyes. “They think he’s leaving us tonight, did you know that? The doctor told us this morning that they don’t expect him to make it. Christ, Trevor isn’t even seventeen. What in hell is fair about that?”
“Nothing,” I whispered. “Nothing about this is fair, don’t you see? What if Trevor had been driving that night and it was Nathan in a coma? Would you think that your son deserved all this hatred? All this blame?”
“Trevor wasn’t driving the damn car!” he roared.
“But he could have been.” How could I make him see? “He could have been! We’re kids. We make mistakes. We screw up and sometimes we screw up so badly that people get hurt. Haven’t you ever done something so wrong or so bad that you wished you could take it back?”
I have.
My voice broke, and he looked away as I struggled to keep it together. “Look, we don’t know each other and I’ve never met Trevor. But from what Nate told me, I think that, no,” I shook my head, “no, I know that Trevor would hate what you’re doing to his best friend. I know that Trevor would be big enough to forgive Nathan.”
Tears shimmered in his eyes, and my heart turned over at the raw pain I saw there. “Forgive. That’s a joke,” he said hoarsely. “It’s so damn hard.”
I nodded. “I know. It’s hard not to blame someone. It’s hard to just accept when something awful happens because it hurts so much, but I…” I paused and choked back my own tears. “I don’t think Trevor would want his best friend to be broken for the rest of his life. I think that Trevor would want his family to be compassionate. I think he would want them to forgive.”
Trevor’s father didn’t say anything else. He looked away, stared at the ground for a few seconds, and then turned around.
He disappeared into the shadows, leaving only the sound of his footfalls to echo into the silence. To echo into my head.
And it seemed as if I stood there for forever, until the sound went away and I was able to move.
