Page 118 of Ghosts Don't Cry

“My school records, guardian contact information. All of it.” I can’t seem to stop my hands from shaking, so I curl my fingers into fists. “One hospital visit and they’d have known. One phone call, and the entire house of cards I’d built would have fallen apart.”

“But … how did you …”

“How did I know how to forge documents?” Another laugh breaks free. “Same way I learned how to forge prescriptions when I couldn’t breathe from the pain. Same way I learned to do everything. By watching my mother’s boyfriend destroy her piece by piece until there was nothing left but need.”

I watch the words land, and see the moment realization spreads across her face. Her hand is still at her throat, fingers pressed there as though she can’t get enough air.

“Your mom?—”

“Was an addict, yeah.” The truth burns coming up. “And Rick? Well, he made sure she stayed that way. He kept her dependent and scared. Made sure she kept choosing pills over food, over rent, and over me.”

I wrap my arms around myself.

“I learned young.” Each word feels like it’s being torn out of me. “How to forge prescriptions. How to hold back her hair when she threw up. How to clean up blood when Rick decided she wasn’t paying enough attention to him. How to steal from pharmacies when she needed more than the prescriptions allowed.”

Her hand moves from her throat to her mouth, but I can’t stop talking. I can’t keep this inside anymore.

“I ran away when I was fourteen, after Rick broke her arm and she OD’d. She chose him over me … Again.” My laugh splinters. “But I took the skills I learned with me. I forged papers, created new histories and made sure I was invisible. I stayed in school and tried to learn, so I could escape everything some day. When people looked too closely, I moved on and started again. Until Dan and his guys reminded me what happens to people like me who try to belong where they don’t.”

I press my hand against my side where the worst break was, the phantom pain stabbing through me again. “You don’t survive internal damage like that without help. Every breath felt like I was drowning, like there was glass in my lungs. I could feel something torn inside, bleeding where it shouldn’t. I knew … I knew I wasn’t going to make it.”

“There must have been?—”

“What? Options?” I shake my head. “I couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t take a full breath without pain shooting through me. I couldn’t sleep lying down. I had to sit propped against the wall. Each day was worse than the last. The coughing started bringing up blood.Darkblood, the kind that meant internal bleeding.”

I drag in a breath, forcing the words out. “And the pills … I started with just enough to take the edge off. But I built up tolerance too fast. One became two. Two became four. Before long I was taking them just to move. And I started seeing the same hunger in my reflection that I used to see in her eyes.”

Lily’s eyes fill with tears. She’s trembling now, arms wrapped around her torso, unconsciously mirroring my stance.

“But it didn’t fucking matter by then, because I was already dying. The infection was spreading through my body. Fever burning higher each day. I could barely walk by the end.”

“Ronan—”

I don’t let her speak. “So, I pushed you away. I made you believe you meant nothing, because I couldn’t let you watch what was coming. I didn’t want you to see me fade the way she did. And I sure as fuck didn’t want you to watch me become what I swore I’d never be.”

She makes a soft, wounded sound, one hand reaching toward me before dropping.

“And then you were gone, and I told myself it was for the best.” My voice softens. “But the closer I got to the end, to dying … I was alone, and I couldn’t?—”

“Feldman’s.” She says it so quietly, it barely crosses the space between us.

“Yeah. Not for the reasons they said, though. I wasn’t just another junkie looking to steal so I could sell it and get a fix. I couldn’t … I couldn’t let you find me here, Phare. I couldn’t let this place be where my story ended.”

“What do you mean?”

“I was drowning in my own blood. Coughing it up every few hours. The infection had my fever so high I was hallucinating.” I drag in a breath that feels like swallowing glass. “All I could think about was how you’d be the one to find me when you gotback. If the smell didn’t bring someone else first. You’d come looking for me, and you’d find … I couldn’t do that to you.”

She takes a step forward. I force myself not to back away.

“So, I chose a different ending. I dragged myself to Feldman’s and set off every fucking alarm the place had, so I could be sure they’d find me. I let them write whatever story made sense. Junkie? Sure. Thief? Absolutely. Criminal? If that’s what they wanted to call me. Anything but leaving you to find what was left of me here.”

“You had no right!” Her voice rises. “No right to make that choice for me.”

“Right?” My voice hardens. “I had no right to expect you to watch me die. I had no right letting you waste your light trying to save someone who was already dead.” I turn away from the pain in her eyes. “I lived that story once, already. I watched my mother live it. I lived with the scars of it. I wasn’t going to let you carry them too.”

“So, instead you threw away everything we had.”

“It was the only way to keep you from looking, and finding my body after?—”