I don’t know if what Emily said is true or not, but something deep inside me believes it.
It’s crumbling.
Everything I thought I knew.
This life that Niko thought was so perfect.
“Are you okay?” Niko asks her.
“Do I seem okay? I fucking hate my life.”
I feel like someone has a vise around my heart, squeezing it until it nearly breaks.
No.
Not my little sister.
How can everyone good hate their lives so much?
“I hated absolutely every aspect of my life when I was getting near the end of high school,” Niko starts to tell her, and I’m amazed he can summon the will to form a coherentthought right now at all. “Hated my parents, even though my dad wasn’t part of my life at all. Hated my mom for being so cold to me. Despised the idea of college.”
“If you’re trying to make me feel better, it won’t work,” Emily says.
All I can picture is how happy she seemed the last time I saw her, just this last August before I went to Crimson.
She had just gotten back from a beach trip. She was sad to see me go, but wished me a good first year.
“You’re not going to feel better,” Niko says. “You’re going to feel completely fucking powerless.”
“Sure fucking do,” she says before looking at me. “Mom and Dad are fighting every night. They’re playing nice because you guys came home. And tonight, I just wanted to go have fun with Cheyenne, but we got drunk and she told me that she fucked Darien Brown last night. I dideverythingwith Darien. All year. And he fucking told me last week that I could be the first girl he falls in love with?—”
She breaks off into a sob, and as I realize how personal this all is, some small piece of tension unravels in me.
She’s hurting.
She’s not going down some awful path.
She just wants love, and got her heart broken.
“Emily,” I say as I wrap my arms tight around the blanket surrounding her shoulders.
She sobs against me as I hold her tight.
“I fucking hate him. I hate her. I hate them all.”
“I hate him for that, too,” I say.
I reach over and turn on the small patio heater next to us, and for the next half hour, Niko and I listen to every detail that Emily wants to spill.
We let her complain about the asshole boy that brokeher heart. About her friend Cheyenne, who’s probably now an ex-friend.
And eventually, as she breathes deep and stops crying, she talks about our parents.
“I don’t know if it’s going to be divorce,” she says. “But shit’s just different since you left, Ollie. You were like… the glue. Of this entire house.”
I’m astonished.
“I didn’t think anybody cared about my presence at all,” I tell her. “I was just… there. I didn’t do anything special.”