“What?”

“You’re off the hook, Ang. I know you tried to be a friend to me last year, but let’s just admit this. It was hard being my friend. I get it.”

Her tears started falling again. She crumpled to the ground and began to rock back and forth. She just kept crying.

I knelt beside her. I didn’t touch her. I wasn’t going to comfort her, but I knew she needed to be released. “I know you tried to be my friend. I think you did a good job, but with the whole mess of my family, I wasn’t a normal person. I’m still not a normal person. Pain and grief, loss and mourning, then being abandoned, a person can only take so much. Eventually, if they don’t get support or love, they’re going to fall under all those strikes, you know?”

She started sobbing, deep gut-wrenching sobs and she buried her head in her knees. Her shoulders jerked forward with each sob.

Frowning at her, she was the one crying while I had been the one hurting. It didn’t make sense to me, but I still said, “You have a good future ahead of you. I know that I was holding you back. I was like an anchor with all my stuff. I get it. I do. Beth and Hannah, they’re like me. They get it and they’re not scared to be around me. Neither’s Jesse. I get him, no one else does.”

She looked up and wiped at her face. “Have you told him?”

“About?” But I knew. It had never been put into words. I was still scared of what would happen.

“Alex, I was at your house. Your parents were never there. I mean, come on. Stop playing dumb. Just say it,” she snapped.

Reeling, not from her tone, but that she really knew. She actually knew. My heart began racing, pounding in my chest, and panic started again. It was rising.

“We live in a small town, Alex.” She kept going. I tried to shut her out, but I couldn’t. “My mom’s cousin works at the law firm you’re parents used. I know about the stipulations on their stipend for you. That you can’t communicate with them? That you can’t even call them or visit them? That if you want to hear how they’re doing, you’re supposed to send an email to your dad stating your reasons for even asking in the first place. Are you kidding me?”

I couldn’t hear anymore. I wanted to box my hands over my ears. My heart was trying to claw its way out of me.

“I know, I know. Blah, blah, your f**king parents blah. They’re horrible people. They’ve been horrible to you. I saw them last weekend and I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to go over and smack your dad. I wanted to shake common sense into your mom and ask why they could do this to you? You haven’t done anything to them!”

“I could’ve…” I couldn’t have. A storm was inside of me. I could’ve peed my pants and I wouldn’t have felt it, but I forced myself to stay there. Everything in me screamed to run, to hide, but I couldn’t. I stayed put. I stared straight ahead and I made myself hear what else she was going to say. Angie was going to rip the Band-Aid of denial I had put over myself. I had started to peel the ends away, but she was about to rip it all clear.

All the agony from last year and summer was about come flooding back. My hands curled into my legs and I held on, waiting for it.

“You were the most perfect daughter they ever could’ve asked for. Your brother died. You worshiped him. You gave your virginity to his best friend and I know some of that was because of Ethan. It wasn’t all about you and Jesse. I don’t know how, but I know some of that was about Ethan. Maybe you were trying to connect to another person who loved him like you did, I don’t know, but your parents should’ve been there for you. They weren’t, Alex!” Angie was shouting now. She was still sitting in the driveway and she was yelling, but it wasn’t at me. It was for me. “And your mom, come on. You really think she tried to kill herself? I don’t. I think she wanted attention. I think she wanted a reason to leave and to justify it in her head that she couldn’t care for her daughter anymore. I know those nurses that took care of her. They said she hadn’t taken enough to kill herself, just to put herself to sleep for a while. She’s the one who called the ambulance. She told the 911 operator to call her husband, but her daughter could not be told a thing.”

I was faintly aware of a door opening, but I couldn’t look. The tears were blinding me now. Searing pain paralyzed me as I tried to breathe. The breaths grew shallower and shallower. I was struggling to breathe as the agony filtered in.

Angie’s disgust came out, loud and clear, as she continued, climbing to her feet now. “And you never said anything! Why didn’t you say something? I would’ve been there for you. I would’ve gone to the counselor if I knew for sure. I didn’t know for sure. I thought maybe, but it took all last week to ask around. Finally, people started talking about it, but I knew. I knew something was going on. They were never home. Every time I came over, they were never there. And you could go anywhere. You came over all the time. You never had to call your parents for permission for anything. And that depressing house. I mean, seriously, Alex. They left you in that house? All alone in that house?!”

I shot to my feet now. “I wasn’t alone.” My chest was being split open. A hole had formed and she was ripping it to pieces. “Ethan was there!”

“Ethan’s dead!” she shouted back. “Newsflash, Alex! Your brother’s been dead for two and a half years now. It’s time to move on!”

“What do you think I’m doing here? I’m trying, Angie.”

Her face clouded over and more tears came. She began shaking her head, “I can’t. I just, I tried to be a good friend to you, but I knew something was wrong. I knew it, but you never said anything. I couldn’t be there for you if you didn’t tell me. Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because you couldn’t handle it! Your parents love you. Your boyfriend worships you. You don’t know what it’s like to feel as much pain as I did and to watch everyone else have what I didn’t. You don’t know what that was like.”

“Because you didn’t let me,” she whispered, pressing the back of her hand to her mouth again. “You didn’t let me in. Why didn’t you let me in?”

The truth slid free in me. I hung my head as I whispered, “Because if you had known, you would’ve left me too. I only had you.”