Page 223 of Haunt Me

“Well, you know, panicking always helps,” she gasps, trying to laugh. “It’s the first thing you’re supposed to do in such cases.”

I don’t find it remotely funny.

Once we’re back in her room, I help her lie down, and then there’s nothing to do except wait for the medicine to take effect. Her color returns in time, and her pulse goes back to normal. Which is more than I can say for mine.

“You look scared,” she observes half an hour later. She looks normal now, except that her eyes are dark and tired, as if she could sleep for a few days. She probably should.

“I was scared.” All the blood has left my head and I sway on my feet. “But you were so calm, you… You knew what to do.”

“I did know what to do. It happens to me often, so I’ve learned to deal with it,” she shrugs. “I’m just sad that you had to see it.”

“ThatIhad to…” I sputter, and she lifts her eyes to me, looking upset at my sudden outburst.Not the time.You need to calm down.“Let’s get you to sleep, baby,” I say, lifting the covers, but her eyes are still on my face. “What?”

“Nothing.”

But I know what it is. I flinched when she said ‘often’. I couldn’t help it—but I’m sure that her brain found a way to misinterpret my flinch. She’s asleep within seconds, and I have no time to explain my reaction to her before her eyes drift closed. I will try to, later, but the thought is inside her head now.

It’s going to be doubly hard to get it out of there; to convince her that I am not scared of anything she might need. I’m just scared of how muchIneedher.

…

“Have you been crying this whole time?” Eden says as soon as she wakes up and takes one look at my face.

“No!” I protest. She raises her eyebrows. “Just… most of it.”

“This is not good, Isaiah,” she says, and the fact that she doesn’t call me ‘Zay’ feels ominous. “It’s not good for us. You… This is not a good balance. I don’t want you to be in pain because of me.”

“No, it’s the other way.Idon’t want you to be in pain because of me, my fame, my life…” I close my eyes and remember the day she almost died at my show. Back before I knew it was her. “I was supposed to be making up for what I did back then, not…”

“Wait wait wait.” She sits up so fast I’m worried she will get whiplash. “Whoa. What did you just say?‘Making up for what you did?’All you did was save me, again and again. Every single day.”

I swallow. It hurts.

“I didn’t see you,” I whisper. “You were drowning in front of me, and I didn’t see you.”

As I’m saying it, my stomach sinks all over again. It feels like I’m never going to get over it. Eden half rises and my arm shoots out instinctively to stop her.

“Whatever you are about to say right now,” I choke out, “don’t.”

“I am going to say it,” she says, calmly. Isn’t that always the way? Me panicking while Eden is calm in the middle of the storm. “I’ve wanted to say it for a while now. Isaiah, I’m not sure that there is anything but fear and guilt between us right now.”

“How can you say that?” I nearly shout. “How can you not count in all the love, all the—”

“I can’t count it,” Eden replies, “because it’s buried under all the survival we had to do. All the pain we had to deal with, and still do. I don’t know… I don’t know that we can ever find it again.”

“Don’t even try to say that to me,” I burst out, desperate. “New York was real, it happened.”

“And it ended,” she says. “Now you’re on tour, and fainting backstage because you are so stressed and exhausted by all this. And I…” she hesitates for the first time.

“You what? You what, Eden?”

“I’m failing two of my classes,” she admits. Her head is down, and I can’t stand it. I tip her chin up. “I know you’re going to say that it doesn’t matter, and maybe it doesn’t,” she says. Tears roll quietly down her cheeks. “But it matters to me. It matters to me, dammit. I need to be good enough for something. I need to be good enough for somethingonce.”

“Stop it, Eden,” I yell, standing up. I can’t take this anymore. My heart is breaking and there isn’t a damn thing I can do to stop it from happening, because my heart is outside of my body. Inherchest. “Stop it.” I’m crying so hard I can barely talk. “It’s over now. That… that…” I want to say ‘monster’, but I remember our conversation from Christmas, when she told me that she still misses him sometimes and she feels like the world forbids her to. “That person who made you think you are not good enough is gone. I’d love for him to not be gone, so that I could murder him right now for making you feel like this. But he is gone. And what he said, and what he made you feel was never true.”

She is listening to me intently, tears pouring freely down her face.

“How didImake you feel, Eden? Tell me, do you remember that? Back then, how did I make you feel?”

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