* * *
I’ve been remembering my dad’s death a lot over the last twenty-four hours, ever since I found out about Quinton and his past. I think part of it’s because Lea keeps looking at me like that guy did after he realized my dad didn’t have a pulse. Like she pities me, because I want to find Quinton, because I don’t know where he’s living and I want to help him. She doesn’t think that I can help him, but she’s wrong—she has to be.
At least that’s what I keep telling my camera while I make my recording. “I’ve been telling myself over and over again there’s still hope, that Quinton’s still alive, therefore hope still exists,” I say to my camera phone screen as the red recording light blinks. “That hope can only be gone when someone’s heart stops beating, when they take their last and final breath, when they don’t come back.” I’m lying on the sofa in my apartment’s living room, with my feet propped up on the back and my head over the edge, so my hair’s hanging down toward the ground. My phone is angled at my face and it looks like I’m falling. I’m not sure how long I’ve been in this position, but I can feel the blood pooling in my head.
I started making recordings of myself partly because I was interested in film and partly because it was the only way I could get my thoughts out. There was also a teeny part of me that did it because it made me feel connected to my deceased boyfriend, Landon, because he made a video, minutes before he committed suicide.
Because I let him fall from my life, just like I did Quinton.
I blink at the camera, telling myself not to let my mind go there and to keep positive. “Hope is what keeps me searching for Quinton—what makes me determined to find him and help him. Even when I know that what awaits me in the future is going to be hard, that it’ll more than likely bring up painful memories of the things I did in my past. But I know it’s something I have to do. Looking back, I realize that Quinton entered my life for a reason. It may not have made sense when I first met him nearly a year ago, but it does now. And all that stuff I went through, the summer of bad choices, can be used for something good because it gives me insight into what he’s going through. I’ve seen the darkness that’s probably around Quinton right now and I know what it feels like to feel like you’re drowning in it…” I trail off as the memories start to build up inside me, weighted and unwelcome, but I take a deep breath and free the tension.
“Although I’m sure there’s way more to it than what I know. Not just because he’s gone deeper into the drug world than I ever did—into crystal meth…from what I’ve read on the Internet it’s far more addicting than anything I ever did, but then again there are so many things that could be classified as addiction…” I trail off and shut my eyes. “Addiction is the f**king devil—I swear to God it is. Whether it’s drugs or obsessive counting, something I still suffer from occasionally. It can be so comforting, peaceful, serene. It can make you feel so in control, but it’s just a mask, plain and simple, and what’s behind the mask—what we’re trying to hide—is still growing, feeding off the addiction—”
“Nova, get in here,” Lea, my best friend and roommate for the last year, calls out from my room, interrupting my video making. “I think I found something.”
I open my eyes and stare at my image on the screen, so different from how I appeared last summer when I was addicted to several things, including denial. “I’ll pick up on this later,” I say to my camera phone, then click it off and flip upright, getting to my feet.
Blood rushes down from my head and vertigo sets in, sending the nearly empty room around me spinning. I brace my hand against the wall and make my way to the bedroom.
“What’d you find?” I ask Lea as I stumble through the doorway.
She’s sitting on the floor in the midst of our packing boxes with the computer on her lap, her back against the wall and her legs stretched out in front of her. “An old newspaper article on the Internet that mentions a Quinton Carter involved in a fatal car accident in Seattle.”
I briefly stop breathing. “What’s it say?” I whisper, fearing the truth. She skims the article on the screen. “It says that he was one of the drivers and that two people in the car he was driving were dead on arrival.” She pauses, sucking in a slow breath. “And it says that he died, too, but that the paramedics revived him.”
I swallow hard as denial begins to evaporate and I’m forced to admit the truth. All that time I spent with Quinton and I didn’t know the dark secrets eating away at him. “Are you sure that’s what it says?” I ask her, denial trying to grasp hold one last time. I’m trying to hold on to the idea that Quinton just does drugs because he’s bored. Things would be easier if that were the case. Well, not easy, but then I’d just be helping him with addiction instead of what’s hidden beneath the addiction. And things are never easy—life never is. Mine isn’t. Landon’s wasn’t. Quinton’s isn’t. Lea’s isn’t. So many heartbreaking stories and I wish I could document them all.
Lea glances up from the screen with a look of sympathy on her face. “I’m sorry, Nova.”
I take several deep breaths, fighting the urge to count the cracks in the ceiling as I sink down on the mattress, wondering what I’m supposed to do. The plan was to move out of the apartment and head back home for summer break. Spend three months in my hometown, Maple Grove, until I return to Idaho to start my junior year of college. And I’m one for following plans, otherwise the undetermined future unsettles me. It’s one of the things I learned to do to help alleviate my anxiety.
I had plans this summer, to spend time with my mom, play music with Lea when she visits for a few weeks, and work on a documentary, maybe even get some better camera equipment. But as I take in what I’ve just learned about Quinton, I’m starting to wonder if I should be following a different plan, one that I should have followed nine months ago, only I wasn’t in the right state of mind to.
“It also says that he was driving too fast.” Lea adjusts the laptop, angling the screen so the light doesn’t glare against it. “At least that’s what it says in this article.”
“Does it say that it was all his fault?” My voice is uneven as I drape my arm across my forehead, catching sight of the leather band on my wrist and the scar and tattoo just below it. I got the tattoo a few months ago when Lea suggested we each get one to mark something important in our lives. I loved the idea and decided to get the words “never forget” to always remind me of my downward spiral. I got them just below the scar on my wrist, the one I put there myself, because I never want to forget just how dark things can get and how I pulled myself out of them.