I keep drawing because it’s the only thing that’s keeping me hanging on. Motions. Simple lines. A task to keep my thoughts centered. “No…I don’t have a home.”

“Then what? You’ll just stick around? With me?”

I don’t answer and silence drifts by. I can tell I’m making her uneasy. I’m not even sure whether she wants me to say yes or no but she keeps wiggling around and then finally she crawls down to the bottom of her mattress. “Are you about ready to try this?” she asks.

I force the nervous lump down in my throat, continuing to move the pencil across the paper. “You sure that it’ll help me forget everything?”

She smiles at me as she returns to my side with a box in her hand. “Baby, it’ll make you feel like a god.” She opens the box and starts to take my hand.

I jerk away. “But will it help me forget?” I need her to say yes before I commit. “I want to forget. All of this.”

She pulls out a folded-up white piece of paper and a syringe. “Sweetie, this will give you all of your heart’s desires and more. You’re not even going to be able to think about forgetting because you’re not going to be able to think.”

I nod, still focusing on my drawing, nervous, thinking about the last time needles entered me and all it did was f**k me up more by bringing me back to life. Hopefully this time it’ll take my life away. “Okay, I’ll do it.”

She smiles elatedly. “You won’t regret it.” She removes a spoon and lighter from the box, along with a rubber band, then starts working to melt the smack with the lighter. I keep drawing through the entire process, trying not to think about it, because if I do I’ll chicken out and then I’ll be left stuck in my thoughts and I need quiet.

When Nancy says she’s ready for me, I take the lighter from her hand, then lean over to the side, hold the paper out, and light it on fire. I watch it burn into black ash that flutters to the floor, feeling my memories fade with it, and soon I hope they’ll be gone. Lexi. Nova. Tristan. My guilt. Me.

“Give me your arm,” Nancy instructs as I sit upright on the mattress.

I stick my arm out onto her lap, trembling with nervousness, not just because of the needle, but also because of what this means. That I’m going to forget about everything and fully accept that this is what my life will be until I can finally rot away.

“Lie back down and get comfortable,” she tells me, and I obey, lying down on the lumpy mattress, which smells damp and smoky.

Her cold fingers brush my arm as she ties the rubber band and then flicks my skin a few times. “Try to relax.”

Easier said than done. But I try my best and take a deep breath. Then another. Then start sucking in air by the lungful. She shifts toward me, then the tip of the needle stings against my arm. I almost back out, shout at her to stop, but I keep silent and then the needle’s sinking deep into my skin.

“Come back to us, Quinton,” someone whispers. “Open your eyes.”

“No…” I mutter with my eyes shut. “Just let me go…please…”

“Don’t give up on us yet.” I hear the beeping of machines trying to breathe life into me—life I don’t want. I want to stay cold. Feel nothing. Disappear into the stars.

“Please just give up on me,” I beg, but they continue to pump life into me and I know that as soon as I open my eyes, I’ll have to accept that I’m alive and that Lexi’s dead. I wish they’d just let me go. I want to let go. I want to give up, tear my chest open, let it bleed out, but they keep sealing it up.

The needle plunges deeper into my vein and seconds later the smack enters me, potent, toxic, burning through my bloodstream, scorching its way to my heart. I feel a rush where I think about everything all at once and then suddenly I’m falling into the darkness and I can’t remember a single thing. I drift further from everyone still living, and move closer to the people who have left me. The pain disappears. My thoughts and memories disappear. Everything disappears and I disappear right along with it.

Chapter 14

May 28, day thirteen of summer break

Nova

“So it’s been two days since I lost Quinton,” I say to the web camera. My eyes are really large and there are bags under them because I’ve barely slept at all. My hair’s pulled up into a messy bun and I’m still wearing my pajamas. I feel like I’m tottering on the edge of falling, and clawing to hold on. “And I’m not going to lie, I feel like shit, which you can probably see from watching this video…” I trail off, not wanting to concentrate on my looks too much, but I don’t want to concentrate on the other stuff I have to say either. I drag my fingers down my face as a loud breath slips out of my mouth. “God, I don’t even know what the point of recording this is, other than to tell you that I’m giving up—that I can’t see hope anymore…so I’m giving up.” I choke and immediately want to take it back, but I can’t because it’s really happening. “My mom’s here to take me home. I could have fought her more but I think it might be time. Not to give up but to let go…because I can’t handle it like I thought I could…but God it hurts…knowing that I’m about to walk away and he might be out there somewhere hurting or even dead…”

“Are you ready to go, sweetie?” My mom sticks her head into the guest room of Lea’s uncle’s house, where my stuff is packed and ready to go.

I shut the computer. “I guess so.”

She gives me a sad look as she enters the guest room. “Look, Nova, I know that you’re really disappointed that you didn’t get to help your friend, but we can’t make people do things they don’t want to do. Sometimes you can’t help people no matter how much you want to.”

I get up from the chair and bend down to unplug my computer. “I get that, but sometimes it takes another person to wake you up from what you’re doing and make you realize that you want help.”

“Yes, but you can do it by yourself, too,” she says, rounding the foot of the bed. “Like you did.”

I start to wrap the cord around my hand. “I didn’t do it by myself.”

She looks puzzled. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, I had help,” I say, putting the balled-up cord in my laptop bag. “From Landon.”

She’s even more lost, so I decide to explain. “I watched his video, the one he made before he…before he killed himself, and he said some stuff that sort of woke me up and made me realize I didn’t want to do drugs anymore…made me see what my life had become.” I think Lea’s been trying to make me see what it’s become now, but I’m fighting to open my eyes and accept everything.

She pushes up the sleeves of her shirt. “Why didn’t you ever tell me that…that you watched his video?”

I shrug as I slide my laptop into the bag. “Because I wasn’t ready to talk about it back then.”

“But you are now?”

“I guess.” Honestly, I’m not really sure why I’m telling her unless it’s because I’m emotionally drained. “But you should probably know that I told Quinton first, which I think says a lot about how much I care for him,” I say, zipping up the bag. She opens her mouth to protest, but I cut her off, holding my hand up. “Look, I know you don’t get it and I don’t expect you to, but just trust me when I say that I care for him and I probably won’t ever completely stop caring about him…he’ll always be a part of me.”

“Nova, I understand that you care about him,” she explains, picking up my duffel bag from the floor. “I just don’t want you to be unable to move past this. I don’t want to see you pulled under like you were with Landon’s death, and Lea said things were getting really bad.”

“They were…are,” I admit as I slide the handle of the laptop bag over my shoulder. “But it’s going to be hard to get over this when I have no idea where he is and I was the only one looking out for him, so no one’s going to even try to find him anymore.”

She walks up to me and puts an arm around my shoulder. “Well, we can still keep working on his father. Maybe if we tell him what you told me happened…that he might be hurt and in trouble, he might want to help him a little more,” she says, heading toward the door and guiding me with her. “And maybe we can get Tristan’s parents involved, too.”

“I don’t think that’ll work,” I tell her as we go into the living room. “I think they blame Quinton for Ryder’s death.”

“Yeah, but I’m sure they care about their son,” she says. “And maybe if they go looking for him, they’ll find Quinton, too.”

“And what if they won’t? Or what if they do and they find Quinton and make things worse?” I’m wary of her optimism, partly because of what I said and partly because I’m worried there’s no Tristan and Quinton to find.

“I don’t think they will,” she assures me, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze. “And it’s their son too that’s out there and as a mother, I know that despite any angry feelings I’d have, I’d want everyone to be safe.”

I start to cry because I have no hope at the moment and my mom hugs me while I cry, letting me feel the pain because she knows it’s better than keeping it trapped inside. Whether she realizes it or not, she helps. It’s so nice to have so many people in my life who do, and it hurts to think about Quinton who has no one, just wandering around waiting to die like he told me that night. I wish I could stay and search for him, but my mom loves me too much to let me stay and deep down I know that I’m not strong enough at the moment to take on such a huge task. I thought I was when I started this. Thought I could handle this. I’d been doing good, helping at the suicide hotline. But the problem is that I have huge, massive feelings for Quinton, ones that remind me of my feelings for Landon. They make this so much more personal and trigger too much instability inside me.

It’s one of the hardest things to do, getting into my car and driving away from that noisy city, knowing that he could be out there lost in a sea of people who barely acknowledge his existence, who don’t want to see the ugly, dark, messed-up part of life, so they pass by it without giving it a glance, like the lost part of the city Quinton showed me. Forgotten by the brighter side of town.

As my mom drives the Chevy Nova down the freeway, I watch the city behind us, turning on the song Quinton and I were listening to that night we danced in front of the car, the one good time when everything seemed like it was going to be okay—when I thought maybe, just maybe, I was helping him. I mutter the lyrics underneath my breath as the buildings and hazy sky slip farther and farther away until Vegas disappears completely and all that’s left to do is turn around in the seat and face the future.

Chapter 15

June 30, day forty-six of summer break

Quinton

Time is becoming nonexistent. Even major events, like the apartment building burning down a couple of weeks ago. Such a big thing, but I barely remember stumbling out of the apartment in the middle of the night, while flames engulfed the building.

No one really knew what happened. Someone said they’d heard gunshots coming from where Dylan and Delilah were living. I’d seen them a couple of times since the whole thing with Trace. Dylan and I even got into a fight. But he was too high to really do anything and so was I.

I wondered if maybe one of them started the fire, but I didn’t stick around to find out—I couldn’t. The cops and fire trucks showed up and that was Nancy’s and my cue, along with everyone else’s who was doing illegal shit there, to bail out and take to the streets.

And that’s where I’ve been living ever since. Sleeping behind Dumpsters, in vacant buildings when we come across them. We sometimes crash at people’s places when we have the opportunity, but that’s rare.

All we really have left is the clothes on our backs and a limited amount of drugs that we buy after stealing stuff when we can, and sometimes Nancy prostitutes herself out, when we’re running really low.

I’d hate my life at the moment, if I could feel hate, but I can’t feel anything except the hungry monster living inside me. He’s taken over every part of me and almost killed off the old Quinton entirely.

“Don’t shoot up right here,” I warn as I pace the alley between a strip club and a pawnshop. There’s a stack of crates at the back, concealed by a Dumpster, and it’s where Nancy I spent last night after the cops showed up at the vacant warehouse we’d been staying at for the past week.

“Why the hell not?” Nancy asks, glancing up at me with starvation in her eyes as she searches her backpack, looking for the one thing that can feed her hunger. Just seeing the look on her face—seeing the need—makes me salivate.

“Because first off, the last thing you need to do is pass out in an alley,” I tell her. “Then I’ll have to stay awake and keep an eye on you.”

She laughs at me from the ground, this hysterical laugh that she gets when she’s super sleep-deprived. “Is someone a little greedy?” she asks. “Afraid you’re going to have to watch instead of taste?”

I stop pacing and glare at her. “Can we please just go somewhere more private?” I glance nervously down at the end of the alley, at people walking by. Always looking over my shoulder, worried someone might show up. I’m not even sure who I think will show up or maybe deep down it’s that I want someone to—a blue-green-eyed girl I still think about no matter how much numbness I put into my veins. I don’t even know if she’s in Vegas anymore or if she went home. And that’s how it should be. I should know nothing about Nova Reed. “Somewhere we can just lie down and enjoy getting high?”