Book One
Prologue
Past
“YOU have to get up.”
I hear May’s voice from what seems like a long way off. That makes no sense, I realize, through the haze of depression in my head. She’s sitting right beside my bed.
“Livvie?” I open my eyes at the insistent tone of her voice. She’s looking at me, her brow creased in a worried frown. Vaguely, I notice that her back-length curtain of black hair has disappeared, replaced by a short spiky do. When did that happen? When did my best friend change her look? I know the answer. While I was lying in bed feeling too sorry for myself to be a real friend.
The realization makes me all the more miserable, and I indulge the self-pity, feeling the tears that are never far away stinging at the back of my eyelids.
“You can’t go on like this,” May is saying, “I’m worried about you, Chace is worried about you.”
Chace is my roommate. Where is he? He’s neither in the room with May, nor hovering by the door looking as helplessly worried as May does now. The last time I saw him, he was picking up the pizza boxes that have littered the floor of my room ever since I started alternating between long periods with no appetite and times when I get so ravenous, I stuff a whole pizza in my mouth so I can feel miserable about it afterwards.
I sigh as the first tear leaks out of my eyes and travels down the side of my face to leave a wet mark on the pillow. Chace deserves a better roommate than someone who can’t even get up to clean her own room. May deserves better than a best friend who’s been lying in bed for weeks with no intention of ever getting up and facing the world again. They all deserve someone better than me.
May is still looking at me, expecting me to say something. I consider lying. I could tell her that I’m all right, and that she shouldn’t worry about me, the sort of things people say when they want you to leave them alone in their misery, but what’s the point? I’m not all right, and anybody can see that.
“Livvie?”
I ignore her and turn to my other side, away from her, closing my eyes against the light from the window. I keep the curtains drawn to block out the sun and the view, but every small ray of sunlight that finds its way inside adds to the bruised feeling in my heart. The worst thing about being depressed is seeing the sun rise and set every day, and knowing that the world will go on as always, no matter how you’re feeling. I bury my face in the pillow. I don’t know exactly how long I’ve been like this, a few weeks, maybe more. It feels like forever. It feels like I’ve always been in pain, like the pain will never go away.
“Livvie?”
Why won’t she leave me alone? Why does she want me to get up when it feels like I’m held down with heavy chains binding all my limbs? I just want to close my eyes and block out the worst of the pain, to try to forget that every moment I’m awake feels like a curse. At least in sleep I can escape the torture. Even if my dreams are painful, they’re nothing compared to waking up and realizing that I’m really trapped in the hopelessness that’s my life.
“You haven’t been showing up to your classes. You’ve missed deadlines, tests. I know it hurts, but you can’t just lie down and hope to die. You have to fight whatever it is you’re feeling.”
It’s easy for her to say. What does she know about pain? I think resentfully. I don’t care about school, deadlines, tests, or exams. I don’t care about anything.
“What would your parents say if they saw you now?”
Her words conjure my mother’s face, her dark hair, and deep green eyes, so like mine. She’s smiling, and my dad is with her, laughing happily, his untamable curly blond hair disheveled as always. They look exactly as they always do in my dreams, but when I try to talk to them, they never hear me.
I start to cry, painful, racking sobs that shake my whole body.
May sighs. “I’m sorry Livvie, but I’m not going to let you throw your life away.” She lays a soft palm on my shoulder, “You can catch up with your courses if you try. You can get your life back, and it’s my job as your friend to make sure you do?”
Good luck. I think silently. Does she think I don’t want to get up from this bed? Does she think I wouldn’t like to clean my room and make my bed, dress up and even put some make-up on, remember what it’s like to be young and happy? It’s not that I don’t want to get up. It’s just that every time I so much as consider it, the black cloud in my head envelopes me, and I just know that nothing is worth it, that nothing is worth getting up again.
“Have you looked at your phone?” She demands softly, “You have thousands of missed calls. I had to lie to Constance and tell her you’re fine, and that you just want to be left alone for now. Blythe thinks you’re still mad, and you don’t want to talk to her.”
What about Jackson? I almost ask. But I don’t, because I know he’s not one of the thousands of missed calls. I know he’ll never call. He hates me now, and there’s nothing I can do about it.
“I don’t know how long you plan on lying here, but I’ve decided to put a stop to it, and Chace agrees with me.” She pauses, as if waiting for me to react, to ask her what her plan is. I don’t.
“I’m going to call Jackson.” She says.
I stiffen, my whole body freezing into a bundle of hope, pain and fear. Jackson. His name conjures me
mories of a different time, a happy time, but all that has been destroyed. Whatever we had is now lost in pain and ashes.
No. My protest is desperate but silent, trapped in my head.
“Maybe you need to see him,” May continues, “maybe if you tell him everything, you’ll feel better.”
“He won’t come.” I whisper. Why should he? I don’t mean anything to him anymore.
“Well I’m going to try,” May replies, her voice determined.
No. I make another silent protest. I’d rather die than have Jackson see me like this. I already hate myself, and how pathetic I am, but Jackson’s hatred, especially when he finds out exactly what happened, it would kill me.
Nausea rises like a wave in my stomach, and I spring up from the bed, pushing past May to get to the bathroom. I retch for what seems like hours while she holds up my hair and rubs my back. It feels as if I’m letting go of everything inside me, and when I’m well and truly empty, I turn my tear-stained face towards her.
“Don’t call him.” I tell her.
She looks at me for a long time, and I meet her stare, letting my face convey the resolve I’m feeling. She must have seen it too, because, after a while, she nods silently and leaves me to clean up my face.
Chapter One
Present
“I know I’ve asked you a hundred times, but I’m going to ask one more time,” May says, her voice full of friendly concern¸ “Do you really think you can do this?”
I let my eyes drift to the windows, where the sparkling surface of the Hudson River and the rich vegetation on the banks are rolling by at the speed of the train. In less than an hour, I’ll get to my stop, only about fifteen minutes’ drive to Foster, a small town on the Hudson River, where I lived from when I was fourteen to just before my eighteenth birthday.
I sigh and move the phone to my other ear. May is still waiting for me to say something. She’s already in Long island, planning to spend most of the summer at the fifteen-room ‘cottage’ she shares with her husband Chace. I could have chosen to be there with them, taking advantage of their hospitality, enjoying a pressure free stay with friends, and teasing May about her growing belly. Instead, I’m on my way back to Foster to face a past that should stay buried.
Can I do this?
Of course, I can. I want to tell May, reassure her as well as myself. It’s just another job, another high profile photo shoot in a beautiful house. I’ve done many of those.
Only this time, it’s not just any house. It’s Halcyon, the house I left seven years ago, feeling as if I would never be happy again.