“No.”
“Well, I can't go to the hospital. Mom went in the ambulance, and Dad already left. I'm too drunk to drive, and someone had to stay here with Rose. I think you're in shock. You need to get up.”
Glancing up, I took in the sight of my best friend. She had black stuff streaked down her cheeks and some of Georgie’s blood smeared in her spikey brown hair. Ellie was tough. She never cried. It hurt my already churning stomach to see her so upset—especially seeing it for the second time today. “I'm not in shock,” I assured her. “I'm fine. Go take care of Rose. Don't let her near this bathroom. She's too little to see something this fucked up. Let me know when you know anything new about Georgie. In the meantime, I'm going to try to clean some of this.”
“You don't have to do that.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve, shaking noticeably.
“Yes, I do. You know how I get.”
She nodded, reluctant but agreeing. “Okay. I'll go get you some towels and bleach. Thanks, Noah.” She went for the door.
“For cleaning? I have nothing better to do right now.”
“No, for saving her life. The paramedic said if you'd found her even a few minutes later or hadn't done all you did…she'd be—” She sighed a big huff of air and continued, “She’d be dead now, too. You saved her.”
I’d never saved anyone or anything in my whole life. I didn’t like the idea of it. I was nobody’s hero. But the alternative option would have been to let Georgie die, so I guess just this once an exception had to be made.
Ellie left and returned a few minutes later with towels, bleach, and cleaning supplies. I might have known I needed to get Georgie flat on the floor and elevate her legs when that had mattered, but I didn't have the first clue on how to clean up a giant bloody mess. Once I started, I realized the smell of blood and bleach didn't mix well, and all I'd done was spread the red further over the tile floor. My cleaning wasn't helping jack. Dammit. I sighed, taking a step backward, trying to come up with a better plan to tackle the mess. That was when I noticed a pink cellphone laying rather ominously on the bathroom sink. Georgie's cellphone.
Being nosy as hell and not caring, I grabbed it and slid the unlock button to turn on the screen. The notes app on the phone opened. She'd left a goodbye letter. It read:
I'm sorry. I know my timing is horrible, but I couldn't let Ben go into the dark alone. He's my other half. Please understand. I love you all, but I love him, too. And now I'm with him. Love, tons and tons of love, Georgina
It was the sweetest and the stupidest fucking note I'd ever read. She'd lost her brother. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground was hard for all of us to watch today. I understood she was in pain. I understood she wanted to ease that pain. She wanted to follow him into the dark… I even understood that. What I didn't understand was why it was cutting me up inside. Because it was. Finding her on that floor, holding her cold body, watching as the paramedics took her away, and staring at the evidence of it all still staining the bathroom floor—it was ripping me to fucking shreds. And it had been years since I’d let something affect me like this.
“Noah—” Ellie came rushing back into the bathroom. “Dad just called.”
“Tell me she'll live,” I demanded.
“She’s gonna live.”
I let out a breath of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in.
CHAPTER 2:
FOUR MONTHS LATER
GEORGINA
There comes a time in every person’s life when they hit rock bottom. And it is how you handle yourself when that time comes that defines you. It was safe to say, when my rock bottom came screaming in my face, I’d failed. Miserably. I had tried to commit suicide—tried being the operative word in that statement. If it hadn’t been for my sister’s friend, Noah Clark, then I’d be dead. The most depressing part of all, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Noah saving me was a good thing.
But, nevertheless, he had saved me. Maybe I was still trying to figure out how to be okay. Maybe I was still missing my brother every single moment of the day. And maybe I was still nothing close to the person I wanted to be. But I had a smidgeon of hope now, where before I’d thought I had none, and I had Noah to thank for that.
I sighed, staring out the window at the rows and rows of beach houses ticking by. The Cove—the recovery facility I’d been sent to and had spent the last four months ‘recovering’ at—was a three hour drive from our seaside home in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Four months and three hours had flown by, and we were minutes away from the house. It had been an uncomfortable drive, given that my parents had forgotten how to act normal around me, and I feared being home and facing reality again.