Now, no one can call me, and my dad can’t call Danny. There’s a chance I would have been able to get by with swapping out the SIM cards, but on the off chance that Danny had Dad’s number stored on his phone, not the card, I couldn’t risk it.
I stand staring at the trash can for a long moment, the realization that I’ve just said goodbye to my family settling around my shoulders.
Mom never recovered from losing Dad, and has been more like an unpredictable girlfriend I don’t trust to borrow my shoes than a mother the past seven years, but I still love her. Dad is so far up Penny’s ass it’s ridiculous and way more impressed with the wealth he married into than anything I’ve accomplished in my twenty years of life, but I love him, too. I even love Penny. She’s tried to do the right thing by my little brother and me, stepping in to play Mom when my own mother couldn’t be bothered, and always making sure Erick and I had the best of everything.
I love all three of my parents, but our relationships have become too complicated, and I have no idea what they’ll think when they find out the truth.
Maybe they’ll hate me, maybe they’ll pity me—either way they’ll want me to do the right thing. My parents and stepparent are all very much into Doing the Right Thing, in facing the consequences of your actions and fessing up to your failings. They would want me to stop running, but I can’t and I won’t.
It’s best to end things now, with a clean break, without even turning on my phone to listen to the messages that I have no doubt are waiting in my voicemail box.
I take a deep cleansing breath and let grief wash through me and wash back out again, like a wave lapping against the shore before being absorbed back into the ocean.
The thought of losing touch with Erick hits harder than anyone else, but eventually I loosen my grip on that regret and send it out to sea with the rest. Erick and I aren’t super close, but we have fun together and I’ve always felt obligated to look out for him. To keep him from starving to death when my mom was mired in misery, and pull him aside for a long talk about not doing dumb shit when I caught him dropping acid on the beach with his friends. But he’s graduating from high school this year and going to college next fall. He’s starting his own life and doesn’t need me the way he used to.
Besides, there might come a day when it will be okay to reach out to my little brother. He’s so wrapped up in his own life that he’s never been terribly interested in mine. There was a time when that hurt, but now I’m grateful he’s self-absorbed.
I’m grateful for all the people who don’t care enough to stick their nose into my business, who are so busy with their own personal dramas they haven’t noticed that I’m falling apart.
“Not anymore,” I whisper, shifting my gaze from the trash can to my reflection in the mirror above the sink.
I’ve been avoiding my reflection the past few months, but now I force myself to take a good, long look.
I’ve lost weight, and have faint hollows below my cheekbones for the first time in my life, but I don’t look gaunt or sickly. The new leanness gives my face structure it didn’t have before. The strong angles of my jaw are visible instead of blending into my chin, and my eyes look even larger than they used to. I’ve always thought my eyes were my best feature, but they’re also my greatest weakness. I’ve never been good at hiding what I’m thinking or feeling. It all shows in my eyes.
Or it used to.
Now, holding my own gaze, I can’t see a hint of the giddiness I felt when I entered the bathroom, the sadness I was feeling a moment ago, or the anxiety pricking at my nerve endings doing its best to convince me that crushing a couple of SIM cards won’t be enough to keep my secret safe. I look tired, which is to be expected after a flight to the other side of the world, but not troubled. My eyes are…empty, and only seem to grow emptier the longer I stand staring at myself.
Even when I start to feel disturbed by the lack of emotion in my expression, nothing flickers in my eyes. The electrical lines connecting my feelings to my face have been severed, leaving my soul adrift in my physical body, contained, but not connected.
“Sam? Are you okay in there?” Danny’s voice echoes through the empty bathroom.
“Yes, just brushing my teeth,” I call back, breaking eye contact with my reflection with a sharp shake of my head. “Be out in a minute.”
I fish my toiletry bag out of my purse and give my teeth a quick brush. I mop my face with a cleansing cloth, drip a couple drops of Visine in each eye, and smooth on sunscreen and a fresh coat of peach lip gloss before working curl cream through my fuzzy hair. I concentrate on moving through my post-plane-flight ritual swiftly and efficiently. I don’t linger over the squashed curls at the back of my head, and I don’t make eye contact with my reflection again.
It’s natural to be feeling drained after a ten-hour flight, and there’s no room for existential angst in my fresh start. I’ll just have to fake it until I make it, and one day soon the smiles I’m forcing will come naturally.
Chapter Five
Samantha
I toss my toiletry bag back into my purse and head out of the bathroom, fake smile firmly in place and lies swirling inside my head.
Lies are necessary right now, and I’m not going to hesitate to tell them.
Lies are kinder than the truth, for Danny and me both. I’m lying because I love him. The truth wouldn’t set either of us free, it would only cause more pain and make moving forward impossible. Danny would never be able to look at me the same way, and I couldn’t live with knowing I was the one responsible for bruising his big, tender heart.
“You look nice.” I loop an arm around his waist, squeezing a fistful of his long-sleeved blue tee shirt as we start toward customs. “I brought you a fleece, by the way. It’s in my pack. I figured you wouldn’t be prepared for winter.”
Danny laughs. “The season change didn’t even register until I was standing at the sink brushing my teeth and people kept giving my shorts weird looks. So is it winter here at the end of May?”
“Late autumn, I think.”
Danny hugs me closer. “Good. I love fall.”
“I can’t remember the last time I saw a real one,” I say, excitement creeping back in, banishing the lingering angst. “Probably when I was little and we went to go visit my great grandma in Pennsylvania before she died. I hope we’ll see some color on the way down to our kayaking trip.”
“Kayaking, huh?” Danny pulls his arm from my waist as we reach the end of the customs line, and shifts his backpack around so he can reach the pocket on the front. “You’re full of plans and schemes.”
“I am. I’ve got all kinds of adventures planned.” I keep my smile in place as he pulls out his passport and continues to sift through the outer compartment. “First kayaking, with a stop at a hot spring in the middle of the trip, and then a caving expedition the company calls Descent into the Abyss that sounds terrifying. Should be right up your alley.”
“What about your thing with tight places?” Danny asks, brow furrowing as he continues to shift items around.
“The caves are some of the largest in New Zealand,” I say, playing innocent as I get out my own passport and shuffle forward in line. “The guy I talked to said there weren’t many narrow parts, but there is one stretch where it’s completely pitch black and you have to find your boat with—”