Forever Dark(58)

I fucking know it.

It’s why I avoid it.

But…

This could be me right now. This right here. This girl in this bed on a twenty-four hour suicide watch all because she was swimming with a memory she couldn’t drown.

Was she trying to make me see that?

Yeah. She was.

“I don’t want to blame you for what happened that night. But I do.” Her eyes hold truth. “I blame you and I blame Landon.”

“You should.”

She watches me carefully pushing her red hair from her face and then drops her hand to her lap. “Don’t do what I do. Don’t give up on him, or you. It’s not worth it.”





December 6, 2013



When we get to Canby, I stay away from where I know the girls are. At the hospital. I want to see Alexa but I can’t be around Madison right now. There’s no way. So I stay back at Steven’s house with his mom, Jackie. It’s been since last summer since I’d seen her.

“What happened?”

She’s referring to my appearance. “Hmmm. Well, I met a drug dealer, threw a chair through a window and this,” I point to the stitches above my eye, “that’s where Landon shoved my head into a locker.”

I figured she’d get mad.

So I thought.

Instead she starts laughing. “And I hear you guys just secured a bowl game?”

“Yep.” I nod. “December thirtieth we play the Texas Longhorns in San Antonio.”

“And Heisman Trophy contender too?”

I smile. She knows everything. Jackie was always that mom at every game keeping track of all of our stats for us.

We start talking about Alexa, she knows I haven’t seen her yet. “What did she take?”

“The doctor said they found Vicodin in her system and alcohol.” Jackie gives me a pained expression. "I went to Steven’s grave to talk to him and found her. If I hadn’t, she would have died.”

“Do you know where she got the Vicodin from?”

Jackie shrugs. “I’m not sure. She said some guy at school.”

Some guy? My jaw clenches.

I know who that some guy is but I can’t tell Jackie that right now. That’s the last thing we need to get into.

After some small talk, she looks at me. “You should have seen it coming.” Jackie says. “She’s barely hanging on, just like Madison and Landon. You and Macy are the strong ones. You have to show them the light or they’re just blinded. They’ll cover their eyes. But you, you can’t shine without a little darkness.”

Jackie is wise beyond her years. Steven had that. What she’s telling me, the looks I’m getting, they’re all Steven.

I won’t sit here and tell you that it hasn’t crossed my mind that Madison would kill herself. It has. She could easily be Alexa right now and that scares me more than it should.

“You need to be there for her.”

“For Lex?”

Jackie tips her head. “Her too. But I’m talking about Madison.” He face twists in what looks like pain. “She looks awful, Cash. She looks worse than Alexa.”

I know that. I’ve seen it.

Madison looks like hell these days and it’s part of the reason I can’t look at her.

I can’t because it’s been a downward spiral that I watched on the sidelines, like a fan at one of our games, and I did nothing about it.

That hurts.

I want to say fuck Madison but I’ll never say that around Jackie. And there’s still the issue of despite everything she’s put me through, I still love her damaged heart and her tortured soul.

There’s no way around that for me.

So I don’t say anything.

“I know you two haven’t had the easiest relationship but if you love her, and I know you do, say something before it’s too late.”

Too late?

Just thinking that possibility isn’t easy.

I feel the stab as the words hit my heart and I imagine it for a moment. What would I do if she did overdose?

I would… die. There’s no way around that. I can’t live in a world that she’s not part of.





I’m at Jackie’s house for another hour looking through old photo albums of Steven over the years that she shows me every time I’m over there. It’s hard to see but it makes her feel better and if that’s what she needs from me, to do this each time, then I can be that little bit of solace for her. It’s the least I can do.

I head back to my dad’s house around the block. He’s remarried now. I was six when my mom died in a car accident. I don’t remember much about her but I remember how she smelled. Like cookies.

Sometimes when I walk into my childhood home, the house he built with her, I still smell those cookies and smile like she’s there.