Love You Hate You Miss You by Elizabeth Scott

They’ll forget her.”
    “I won’t.”
    “No,” he said. “You won’t. Even if you want to forget, you’ll remember. I can still see my dad’s face. He was mad about how much it cost to get in, kept talking aboutit. People were staring. I wasn’t listening, wanted to go find my friends, and then he sort of…he just gave me this look. This weird look, like he didn’t know me, like he didn’t know anything, and then he was on the ground…” Patrick stopped talking. He looked like he was back there, like he was trapped in one horrible moment. I know what that feels like.
    “The movie made you think about it, didn’t it?”
    He laughed, and I was sorry I’d said anything because his laugh didn’t sound like a laugh at all. It sounded like pain.
    “Everything makes me think about it. I know it shouldn’t. He didn’t die. He’s still alive; he’s doing okay, learning how to walk again and stuff, so really, I’m pretty damn lucky. I shouldn’t be so…I shouldn’t be out here, hiding. I should be okay.”
    “I didn’t say—”
    “You didn’t have to. It’s the truth.” He wrapped his arms around his legs again. “Do you miss the person you were before she died?”
    “I…No.” I did, though. I do. I thought things were hard before but they weren’t. I never knew how lucky I was until it was too late.
    He looked at me again. He didn’t say anything but his eyes were easy to read. In them I saw he was calling me aliar without ever saying a word. Laurie would love him.
    “It wouldn’t matter if I did,” I said sharply. “It’s not like I can go back.”
    “If you could, though? If you could go back and change things a little, make it so Julia would live, would—?”
    “You can’t say things like that. You shouldn’t…you can’t think like that.” I stood up, shaking. “I don’t think like that.”
    “Amy?”
    It was Dad. I looked behind me and saw him standing a few feet away, on the lit part of the sidewalk. He looked worried.
    I forced myself to smile. His expression relaxed a little, and I knew Patrick was right about one thing. Everyone needed me to be okay.
    “You’re right,” Patrick said as I walked away. He was talking quietly but I heard him. “You can’t go back. No matter how much you want to, you never can.”
    I didn’t answer him. I didn’t look back. I walked over to Dad and followed him to the car. When I got in I fiddled with the radio so I could have something to do. So I could pull myself together. I told Dad Patrick was no one when he asked, said he was just a guy in one of my classes who’d asked about homework while I was waiting for Dad to come get me. I said, “No, I’m fine, I’m just notready to go out yet,” when Dad asked me if I was okay. I said, “I promise, I would tell you if something was bothering me,” when he asked again.
    I could see Patrick in the side mirror as we drove away. He was looking at me. He was just a shadow, dark against dark, but I saw him.

114 days
    Julia, you—
    You knew.
    It’s 4:00 a.m., and I’m sitting on the bathroom floor. It took me forever to fall asleep because everything Patrick said was rolling around in my head, but I did. I fell asleep and woke up shaking from a dream that wasn’t one, from the memory of your open eyes staring unseeing into mine.
    I’m sorry for what I did, and you know that, right? You have to know that. But J, did you—
    You knew, didn’t you?
    That night, the one where you didn’t want to leave Kevin at that party, you knew what that guy did. I know what you said at the hospital really meant now, J. Why didn’t you say anything that night? Why?
    No.
    You didn’t know.
    You couldn’t have known. You were wrapped up in Kevin, desperate to be with him, but you were going to take me home. You said you would. You got rid of that guy for me. You might have seen something, but it wasn’t enough to make you sure of anything, and if you had, you would have said something.
    You