Vivian Divine Is Dead by Lauren Sabel Page A

She’d Want You to Be Happy, Life Goes On, Keep Your Head Up. But Nick gives me something I’d never expect: “I’m afraid of the same thing.”
    I’m shocked that Nick’s afraid of anything. He carries a gun, and he can skin a squirrel with a pocketknife. What could he possibly be afraid of?
    “You are?”
    He nods. “I was really close to my mom too. It was just the two of us for so long.”
    “What happened to your dad?”
    “He just handed me and Mom off to my godfather, and left. He didn’t love me enough to stick around, I guess.” Nick shrugs. “And if my own father couldn’t love me . . .” Nick picks up a piece of gnarled wood and feeds it to the fire’s hungry mouth. As the flames devour it, his voice drops to a barely audible level. “Then why would anyone else?”
    “I’m sure, if your dad saw you now, he’d love you.” If he saw what I see , I want to add.
    I can barely hear Nick’s voice when he speaks again. “Not after what I did to my mom.”
    “It can’t be that bad,” I insist, scooting a little closer to him.
    “It is.” He hesitates for a long time. I know he doesn’t want to talk about it, but for some reason, I need to hear.
    “What happened?”
    “I left her to die,” Nick says.
    “You what ?”
    “I convinced Mom to cross la frontera with me. She didn’t want to, but I thought there had to be a better life for us there, where we made our own money, and we didn’t have to depend on my godfather.” Nick adds another piece of dry wood to the fire. “But then—when we were crossing the desert in the middle of the night, a car drove up. I thought it was Immigration, so I started to run.”
    “Didn’t she run too?”
    “I thought she was with me, but then I heard a shot. Someone fell, and I just knew. I knew it was Mom.”
    “What did you do?”
    “I kept running,” Nick says, his voice so choked up he can barely get the words out. “I was such a coward. And when I finally went back, she was dead.”
    I want to tell him it’s going to be okay, but it will never be okay, for either of us. Beside me, Nick’s tears are quiet, like drops of water at the bottom of a well. I can feel the hole inside of him—it’s as big as mine.
    We sit in silence for a long time after that, until the fire has simmered down to a layer of muted red and the pops of the dying branches poke holes in the empty space inside of me.
    “It’s not your fault,” I whisper. Each word reverberates inside my body, like someone beating on a hollowed-out stick.
    “It is my fault,” Nick says. “I’m the one who wanted to cross the border. I’m the one who ran away and left her to die.”
    “You can’t blame yourself,” I insist, thinking of the hours Mary’s spent trying to convince me of the exact same thing. And it’s true: Nick may have led his mom across the border, but he didn’t kill her; and despite all the guilt I’ve put on myself, despite the note Mom got before she was kidnapped, the one that said, “I’m coming for the girl,” I wasn’t the person who killed my mom. It’s not my fault. I have to stop blaming myself.
    “I just wish,” Nick continues, “I wish I had been shot instead.”
    “Don’t say that!” I exclaim, and I desperately need him to believe me, to not blame himself, so I can stop feeling all this guilt too. “You couldn’t have known what would happen.”
    “Logically, I know that. But inside . . .” Nick takes a deep breath. His chest rattles as he breathes it out. “You wouldn’t understand.”
    “But I do understand. When my mom died, I blamed myself, too,” I blurt out, “but it wasn’t my fault.” I take a deep breath to keep my voice from shaking. “And it wasn’t your fault either.” I stare into the dying fire, thinking about how our moms’ deaths happened to us, but not because of us . It wasn’t our fault.
    Nick slides his arm around me and draws me closer. “I miss my mom every day.”
    “Me too.”
    All of a sudden,