Page 108 of Ghosts Don't Cry

I don’t understand this. I don’t understandhim. I don’t know when he did it orhowhe did it. But at some point, between all the words, and all the ways he broke me, he slipped this into my pocket.

A final note.

A final goodbye.

My fingers crumple the paper, then smooth it out again.

In the front seat, Mom and Dad talk about the New Year’s Eve party my aunt is planning, not noticing that their daughter is quietly falling apart on the back seat.

I fold the note carefully, and tuck it back into my pocket. And then I let the tears come, while the world rolls past the window, taking me far away from Ronan.

Chapter Forty-Three

RONAN - AGE 18

I don’t moveuntil the sound of her footsteps fade away. Until she’s gone, leaving me alone again, and half-wondering if she was ever here in the first place.

Maybe none of it was real.

No.No!

I slam my fist into the wall. Pain explodes through my hand, bone meeting brick with a sickening crack. But it’s nothing compared to the fire inside me, or the way each breath feels as though I’m swallowing razorblades. The world tilts, fades out at the edges, so I hit the wall again … and again. Until blood is smeared across its surface, and my hand is as broken as everything else about me.

My legs give out. The floor rushes up to meet me. Every word I said to her replays in my head. Each one had been chosen to cut the deepest, designed to make her hate me, and stop her looking at me as though I’m someone worth saving.

You’re exhausting.

The lie burns in my throat, mixing with bile. She wasneverexhausting. She was air in my lungs when I was drowning. Lightleading me home when I was lost in the dark. Hope when I’d forgotten what it felt like to want more than survival.

Playing the savior.

Another one. This one tastes of blood and shame. Because sheneverplayed at anything. When everyone else looked through me, or saw a kid living on the poverty line, a problem that made them uncomfortable, she looked deeper. She found parts of me I thought were dead. She made me believe I could be more than just another kid dying in the cracks.

I don’t need you.

That was the cruelest lie of all. Because Idoneed her. Like breathing. Like poetry. Like everything that made life more than just existing. But that’s the reason she had to go. It’s why she has to hate me.

And why she can’t be here to watch what happens next.

My undamaged hand is shaking when I pull the pill bottle out of my pocket. It’s the third prescription I’ve picked up since the first one I forged, and most of them are already gone. They barely touch the pain anymore. I shake out two tablets, then a third, chasing relief that gets further away with each dose.

I remember forging that first prescription. How easy it was to fall back into the same pattern I’d learned watching my mom. Hearing the same excuses she used to make while I wrote the second.

This is different. It’s just to handle the pain. Just until I can breathe again. Just until …

But ‘just until’ turned into ‘just one more.’ Then ‘just two more.’ Then watching the bottle get lighter while the pain got worse, and shame burned heavier in my veins.

Baby, sometimes you need help.Mom’s voice whispers through my head.Sometimes the pain is too much to handle alone.

A memory hits me harder than Dan’s fists. Mom on the bathroom floor, blood on her lips from coughing, and track marks covering her arms. Me, ten years old, helping her count pills. Her voice breaking as she promised it would be the last time. She’d get clean. She’d get better. She’d be my mom again.

NowI’mthe one making promises to myself I can’t keep. The one watching pills disappear too fast.

The one becoming everything I ran away from and swore I’d never be.

The factory spins around me. I can’t tell if it’s a fever or the pills anymore. Both probably. My reflection catches in a window—hollow eyes, skin stretched too tight, slight tremors wracking my body. I barely recognize the person staring back at me. I see my mom, and the desperation her face always wore.

This is why I couldn’t face her. This is why I couldn’t let her touch me.