“I am not depressed all the time.”
“Yeah, you are.”
“No, I’m not.”
“You’re depressed a lot.”
“My parents are getting divorced.”
“You’ve always been like this. I can’t do it anymore.”
My arms are wrapped around my stomach now, and I’m leaning forward as if I need to hold my internal organs in place. Finny’s car is blurry.
“How long have you felt this way?” I ask.
“A couple of weeks.”
“A couple of weeks? You want to throw away what we’ve had for four years after a couple of weeks? That’s stupid.”
Jamie sighs, and for the first time, I do not hear pity in his voice.
“I knew you were going to say that,” he says.
“Look, all your reasons are really stupid,” I say. “People in relationships need each other like I need you. I know it’s exhausting taking care of me, and I’m sorry. I can try to give you a break, and we can use this summer to get back on track. I really think this is just a rough patch.”
Jamie shakes his head. I finally turn and look at him. He’s looking at his hands again.
“So that’s it? You’re not even going to try? After all this time together?”
“I can’t do it anymore, Autumn.”
“You said you would love me forever.” I’m not going to let him off easy.
“I do love you, just not that way anymore,” Jamie says.
“You still love me,” I say. “You just can’t feel it right now. Sometimes that happens to me, and I just wait and it always comes back. I don’t break up with you. I just give it time.”
He shakes his head again. He sighs. I wait.
“There is something else,” he says. My veins fill with ice water, and I feel like I am looking at him from very far away.
“What?” I hear myself say, and I think how silly it is that I’m asking when I already know.
“Sasha and I have discovered that we have feelings for each other.”
Finally, the laughter that has been building up in my chest bubbles out. My head drops between my knees and my shoulders shake.
“Discovered?” I say. My laughter begins to sound strange to me and I swallow in an attempt to hold it back again. I laugh once more and shake my head. “‘Discovered’? How very fucking special that must have been for you both.”
Jamie puts a hand on my shoulder.
“We both still love you so much,” he says, “and we’ve been so worried about you. Sasha really wants to talk to you—” I shrug his hand off.
“No, no, no,” I say. “Just stop. Give me a minute.”
I take a few deep breaths. Jamie watches me respectfully, his whole aura radiating sympathy. I sit up straight again and take one last deep breath.
“Okay,” I say. Jamie leans forward expectantly. “Did you sleep with her?” I ask.
Jamie draws back as if I pinched him. He says nothing.
I blink. “Really?” I say. “When?”
“We never planned on any of this,” Jamie says. “We feel really awful about how this has all turned out and—”
“Tell me when!” I say.
His face hardens like it did when he said he knew what I would say. “A couple of days before prom. After she went with me to order your corsage. It was an accident. We felt awful about it and we swore that it wouldn’t happen again. But last week, we both admitted that we can’t pretend anymore. We care about each other, but we haven’t done anything about it yet. And we didn’t want to ruin graduation for you.”
“And you guys want a damn medal?” I say. I go over every memory of the six weeks since prom. It’s only in the past two weeks that I can see anything being different. I thought we were all stressed about the end of school. I trusted that Jamie would always want me. I never thought I could be free of his love for me.
“We’re sorry that we’ve hurt you, Autumn,” Jamie is saying. “But we still really care about you, and—”
“Do you want to know something funny?” I say, “I always thought you loved me more than I loved you. I always thought I would be the one to end it if it ever happened.”
“For a long time, I believed that too,” he says. For a moment my confession and his agreement give me a small feeling of camaraderie; together we’re looking over our relationship and seeing the same thing. Then the feeling is gone, and I am alone. A strange calm has come over me. I focus on Finny’s car again.
“You can go now,” I say. My voice is even and quiet. I’m ready to go to my room and be done with this.
“What?” Jamie says.
“You should go now. There isn’t anything else to say. You guys are assholes and that’s it.”
“I know you’re angry and you have a right to be, but we didn’t plan any of this—”
“I don’t really want to hear anymore, okay? Let’s just be done.”
“Okay.” Jamie stands. His face is hard again. At the bottom of the steps, he turns and looks at me. “Sasha wants you to know that she’s sorry. She wants to talk to you, but she’s going to wait for you to call her.”
“I’m not going to call her. You can go ahead and tell her that.” I stand and start toward the door.
“We really hope someday we can all be friends again,” Jamie says. “We care about you so much. I think you should—” I open the door and turn to face him.
“Jamie,” I say, “since you’re the one breaking up with me, I think I should get to have the last word. And I want you to know that I will never, ever be your friend again.”
I slam the door and go to my room and cry where no one can hear me.
65
On day three, my mother comes and sits on the edge of the bed. It’s midafternoon but I’m still in my pajamas. I’ve worn them for two days now. I’m wearing my glasses and my hair is greasy. I know staying in bed for most of the day isn’t helping my argument that I just need to be left alone, but I can’t summon the resolve to do anything else. As long as I can sleep, I feel numb, and numb is good; numb doesn’t hurt.
“Autumn,” my mother says.
“I already know what you’re going to say, so can we just skip it?”