In my mind, I flashed back to another time and another person who had been curled up as though she would fall apart if she let go.
I thought about the time I had gone into Jayme’s room a few months before she had died. Our rooms were beside each other, and I had heard her coming in hours after her curfew. Mom and Dad had been out of their minds with worry when she hadn’t come home at eleven like she was supposed to. They had been after me to go find her, but I had a huge research paper due on Monday, and I had convinced them she was just acting out in a stereotypical teenage rebellion. I had been the good girl. Jayme had been the wild one from the time she started her period.
How easy it had been to dismiss her behavior as typical.
I had planned to go into her room and chew her out for worrying our parents. I had been puffed up on self-righteous moral superiority. I didn’t make Mom and Dad worry. I did what I was supposed to. Jayme should have been trying to emulate me. She could have learned a thing or two from her straitlaced older sister.
What I had found when I walked into her room had made all my platitudes die on my lips. My fifteen-year-old little sister had been curled up on her bed, much like Renee was now. Her entire body had been shaking with the force of her sobs.
When I had sat down beside her, she had crawled over and put her head in my lap, her long blond hair, so much like mine, tangled in her face. She had been shaking uncontrollably, her cheeks pale and her eyes bloodshot from crying, and from, as I would learn later, the drugs she had taken that night.
I had asked her what was wrong, but she didn’t answer. She had only clung to me and cried and cried and cried. And I didn’t question her. I hadn’t demanded answers. I had only held her until she finally fell asleep. I had then carefully removed her shoes and tucked her under the covers, wiping mascara from her face with my thumb.
The next morning Jayme had acted like nothing had happened. She never mentioned why she had been crying. And I had never asked. I had gotten sidetracked by finishing my paper, and my parents had again threatened to ground her, though they had never followed through. She was their baby. The favorite. They forgave and excused her each and every time.
And then two months later Jayme was dead. And I had never asked her what made her fall apart that night. Why she had needed me to hold her so badly. And I hated myself every single day for not finding out. Because maybe I could have helped her.
I made the vow then to never make that mistake again.
I went immediately to Renee’s side and got up on the bed next to her. I pulled my friend into my arms. She resisted at first, holding herself away from me, but I wouldn’t give up.
And finally, she gave in and fell into me, her head in my lap just as Jayme’s had been all those years ago. I found myself repeating actions that were oh so familiar: smoothing her hair away from her face and just letting her cry.
This time, though, I didn’t stay quiet. I wouldn’t pretend that my friend wasn’t detonating right in front of me.
“What happened, Renee?” I asked quietly once she had calmed down. Renee rolled her head away from me, covering her face with her thick red hair.
“Please, just tell me what’s wrong,” I pleaded gently. Renee slowly sat up, her head bowed, hair obscuring her face.
“I’ve been so stupid,” she whispered, her voice breaking as she began to cry again. She pushed her hair back and looked at me almost defiantly. I bit back on a gasp as I looked at her.
Her skin was red and splotchy from crying, but that wasn’t what made me recoil in horror. It was the sight of the purple bruise ringing her eye. Her upper lip was busted and crusted over from where it had been cut open.
I covered my mouth with my hand, trying not to scream in rage at the sight of her pretty but now horribly mangled face. There was no need for me to ask who had done this. The savage grief in her eyes was all the confirmation I needed.
I was going to kill Devon Keeton.
“What happened?” I ground out.
Renee shook her head, her hair falling back to conceal her from view. “He was just so angry. I’ve never seen him so angry. I didn’t do anything!” Her voice rose in hysteria, and I reached out to hug her. She relented easily this time, not fighting my efforts to comfort her.
I rubbed her back slowly, gently. “I know you didn’t,” I murmured, all the while plotting a hundred ways to turn her shithead boyfriend into a paraplegic.
“Why do I let him do this to me?” she sobbed into my shoulder, and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling back.
“Has he done this before, Renee?” I asked, my words clipped and hard.
Renee’s eyes darted in panic as she read the violence in my tone. “Just once,” she said in a rush, and I closed my eyes at the flush of my anger. God, I was really going to hurt that bastard.
I hugged her again and let her cry herself out. And when she finally settled down, we lay on her bed the way we used to do, staring at the ceiling while we talked about the things that were the hardest for us to say.
I let Renee do most of the talking, and I listened. And most of all I was there. I couldn’t help but think of Jayme and how many times I had turned my back because I had other things going on. I had my life—school, a few friends, homework, and college prep. I had my world. And I had been blind to my baby sister, who had just started high school, floundering as she tried to find her place in the big sea of teenage acceptance.
Renee told me about Devon’s anger and jealousy, the way he had lost it in the bar when she talked to a guy from her Econ class, punching him in the face and dragging Renee outside by her arm.
Devon had taken her around the side of the building, where it was dark, and screamed at her, accusing her of cheating. He had smacked her in the face and then punched her in the chest. He told her she was ugly and stupid, that she was lucky he even looked at her, that no one would ever want her but him. And then, ignoring her staunch denials, he had threatened to do worse if she ever looked at that guy again. He had laughed when she begged him to stop. He had become furious at her tears.
“I can’t see him ever again, Aubrey. Ever!” she cried, covering her battered face with her hands.
I held her as she began crying again, my mind distracted from my own rage by memories of my sister.
“He loves me, Bre. He doesn’t want me to even look at another guy. He says he’ll die without me,” Jayme said, desperate for me to understand.
I had walked in earlier to find my sister and her boyfriend, Blake Fields, in her room fighting. He had her against the wall, his hands pinning her as he yelled in her face. Jayme had been crying, and Blake had only yelled louder. The idiot was lucky it was me and not my dad who walked in while he had his hands on Jayme like that.