"Belly, let's go," my mother said, taking my hand. She hadn't done that in a very long time. Like a little kid, I followed her inside. We went upstairs, to her room. She closed the door and sat down on the bed. I sat down next to her.

"What's happening?" I asked her, faltering, searching her face for some kind of answer.

She took my hands and put them in hers. She held them tight, like she was the one holding on to me and not the other way around. She said, "Belly, Susannah's sick again."

I closed my eyes. I could hear the ocean roaring all around me; it was like holding a conch shell up to my ear really close. It wasn't true. It wasn't true. I was anywhere but there, in that moment. I was swimming under a canopy of stars; I was at school, sitting in math class; on my bike, on the trail behind our house. I wasn't there. This wasn't happening.

"Oh, bean," my mother sighed. "I need you to open your eyes. I need you to hear me."

I wouldn't open them; I wouldn't listen. I wasn't even there.

"She's sick. She has been for a long time. The cancer came back. And it's--it's aggressive. It's spread to her liver."

I opened my eyes and snatched my hands away from her. "Stop talking. She's not sick. She's fine. She's still Susannah." My face was wet and I didn't even know when I had started to cry.

My mother nodded, wet her lips. "You're right. She's still Susannah. She does things her way. She didn't want you kids to know. She wanted this summer to be-- perfect." Her voice caught on the word "perfect." Like a run in a stocking, it caught, and she had tears in her eyes too.

She pulled me to her, held me against her chest and rocked me. And I let her.

"But they did know," I whimpered. "Everybody knew but me. I'm the only one who didn't know, and I love Susannah more than anybody."

Which wasn't true, I knew that. Jeremiah and Conrad, they loved her best of all. But it felt true. I wanted to tell my mother that it didn't matter anyway, Susannah had had cancer last time and she'd been fine. She'd be fine again. But if I said it out loud, it would be like admitting that she really did have cancer, that this really was happening. And I couldn't.

That night I lay in bed and cried. My whole body ached. I opened all the windows in my room and lay in the dark, just listening to the ocean. I wished the tide would carry me out and never bring me back. I wondered if that was how Conrad felt, how Jeremiah felt. How my mother felt.

It felt like the world was ending and nothing would ever be the same again. It was, and it wouldn't.

  chapter forty - three

When we were little and the house was full, full of people like my father and Mr. Fisher and other friends, Jeremiah and I would share a bed and so would Conrad and Steven. My mother would come and tuck us in. The boys would pretend they were too old for it, but I knew they liked it just as much as I did. It was that feeling of being snug as a bug in a rug, cuddly as a burrito. I'd lie in bed and listen to the music drifting up the steps from downstairs, and Jeremiah and I would whisper scary stories to each other till we fell asleep. He always fell asleep first. I'd try to pinch him awake, but it never worked. The last time that happened might have been the last time I ever felt really, really safe in the world. Like all was right and sound.

The night of the boys' fight, I knocked on Jeremiah's door. "Come in," he said.

He was lying in bed staring at the ceiling with his hands clasped behind his head. His cheeks were wet and his eyes looked wet and red. His right eye was purpley gray, and it was already swelling up. As soon as he saw me, he rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand.

"Hey," I said. "Can I come in?"

He sat up. "Yeah, okay."

I walked over to him and sat on the edge of the bed with my back pushed up against the wall. "I'm sorry," I began. I'd been practicing what I would say, how I would say it, so he would know how sorry I was. For everything. But then I started to cry and ruined it.

He reached over and kneaded my shoulder awkwardly. He could not look at me, which in a way was easier. "It's not fair," I said, and then I began to weep.

Jeremiah said, "I've been thinking about it all summer, how this is probably the last one. This is her favorite place, you know. I wanted it to be perfect for her, but Conrad went and ruined everything. He took off. My mom's so worried, and that's the last thing she needs, to be worrying about Conrad. He's the most selfish person I know, besides my dad."

He's hurting too, I thought, but I didn't say it out loud because it wouldn't help anything. So I just said, "I wish I had known. If I had been paying attention, it would have been different."

Jeremiah shook his head. "She didn't want you to know.

She didn't want any of us to know. She wanted it to be like this, so we pretended. For her. But I wish I could have told you. It might have been easier or something." He wiped his eyes with his T-shirt collar, and I could see him trying so hard to keep it together, to be the strong one.

I reached for him, to hug him, and he shuddered, and something seemed to break inside of him. He began to cry, really cry, but quietly. We cried together, our shoulders shaking and shuddering with the weight of all of it. We cried like that for a long time. When we stopped, he let go of me and wiped his nose.

"Scoot over," I said.

He scooted closer to the wall, and I stretched my legs out next to him. "I'm sleeping in here, okay," I said, but it wasn't a question.

Jeremiah nodded and we slept like that, in our clothes on top of the comforter. Even though we were older, it felt just the same. We slept face-to-face, the way we used to.

I woke up early the next morning clinging to the side of the bed. Jeremiah was sprawled out and snoring. I covered him with my side of the comforter, so he was tucked in like with a sleeping bag. Then I left.

I headed back to my room, and I had my hand on the doorknob when I heard Conrad's voice. "Goood morning," he said. I knew right away he'd seen me leave Jeremiah's room.

Slowly I turned around. And there he was. He was standing there in last night's clothes, just like me. He looked rumpled, and he swayed just slightly. He looked like he was going to throw up.

"Are you drunk?"

He shrugged like he couldn't care less, but his shoulders were tense and rigid. Snidely he said, "Aren't you supposed to be nice to me now? Like the way you were for Jere last night?"

I opened my mouth to defend myself, to say that nothing had happened, that all we'd done was cry ourselves to sleep. But I didn't want to. Conrad didn't deserve to know anything. "You're the most selfish person I ever met," I said slowly and deliberately. I let each word puncture the air. I had never wanted to hurt somebody so bad in my whole life. "I can't believe I ever thought I loved you."

His face turned white. He opened and then closed his mouth. And then he did it again. I'd never seen him at a loss for words before.

I walked back to my room. It was the first time I'd ever gotten the last word with Conrad. I had done it. I had finally let him go. It felt like freedom, but freedom bought at some bloody, terrible price. It didn't feel good. Did I even have a right to say those things to him, with him hurting the way he was? Did I have any rights to him at all? He was in pain, and so was I.

When I got back into bed, I got under the covers and cried some more, and here I was thinking I didn't have any more tears left. Everything was wrong.