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Mason was sober for it, surprisingly. Waylon too from what I could tell. There was a party later that night of course, but only Waylon went. Mason and I went on a burn ride instead. Would’ve stayed out all night probably, blasting music with the windows down, smoking our brains out, if Mom didn’t start blowing up my phone demanding where I was.
She’s a mess, Iz. We’re all a mess. Dad doesn’t sleep. He’s lost weight. I swear his hair is thinning.
And Mom… Well, if I’m home, she might as well not even be here. It’s only when I leave the house that she seems to come to life. Leave the bedroom. Talk to me…
Sometimes I leave just so she’ll remember I’m here.
Please come back…
I don’t know how to do this without you
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
Shadows play on memories
Eclipsing their jagged edges
Where’d you go?
Who are you now?
Who am I, when you’re not around?
AGE 18, SEPTEMBER
Let the record show—I tried. I really fucking did.
I tried to be stronger.
Better.
Good…
I stopped partying as much, stopped drinking every single day…
And instead I turned my attention back to more productive things, like how I was in the weeks that followed our return from Florida, before the day to day mundanity caught up with me, and I started drifting toward more maladaptive ways of coping.
Taking a page out of Ray’s book, I made the internet my new playground.
My new drug of choice:
Believing I could do what the FBI couldn’t, and finding Isobel Montgomery.
It’s not like I had anything better to do.
Prep for college? Yeah, I think it’s safe to say that whole plan fell apart.
I did get into NYU for music studies. Got my acceptance letter a month after Izzy disappeared. I kept it for a while, but when the deadline came and went, and the investigation into Izzy’s abduction had all but come to a standstill, I struck a match and watched our future burn.
It was a rough winter. An even rougher spring.
But then… then something shifted.
I suppose if I had to pinpoint when exactly this shift occurred…
Well, I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t prom, and dancing with Jeremy, and the promises I made him.
What can I say? It gave me hope too. Hope for all of us, that somehow things would work out.
