Around dinnertime I order pizza and then Tristan and I sit back down on the couch in the living room and eat while we continue to talk.
“So you’re doing okay then?” I ask, opening up the pizza box. “I mean with being out in the real world.”
He shrugs, reaching for a piece of pizza. “Well, I’ve only been out for a week, so I’m still not sure…I’m still not sure about a lot of things, like what the hell I’m going to do with my life…I’m supposed to be making goals.” He rolls his eyes. “I tried to tell my counselor that I didn’t have goals but she didn’t seem to believe me.”
“You could go to school,” I suggest, picking up a slice of pizza. “It’s a great place to start.”
He smiles amusedly. “Nova, no college is going to accept me. I barely graduated high school.”
“That’s not true,” I tell him. “Sure, Ivy League schools probably won’t, but my college is pretty easy to get into. In fact, Lea, my friend you met in Vegas, well, her boyfriend didn’t even graduate. He got his GED and still got into my college.”
He picks at the cheese on his pizza as he leans back in the sofa. “I guess I’ll think about it, then,” he says. “But I never did like school.”
“Neither did I in high school,” I agree, relaxing back against the armrest with a slice of pizza in my hand. “But college isn’t so bad.”
He seems surprised. “You always seemed like you liked high school.”
“Yeah, but I was good at faking how I felt.” I take a bite of my pizza.
“Really?” There’s playfulness to his tone. “I always sort of thought of you as an open book.”
I roll my eyes. “You did not.”
“I did too,” he says. “I could always tell when you were angry or upset, which was a lot. Like that time we kissed.” The corners of his lips quirk. “I could tell seconds afterward that you regretted it.”
I’m not sure how to respond. I don’t quite think he’s flirting with me, just being cheerful, but at the same time we’re just sitting here joking around and it feels wrong.
“Well, I’m not angry and upset a lot anymore,” I say, taking a bite of my pizza. “And I’m sorry about the kiss thing, but I was going through some stuff.”
“I know,” he says, picking a string of cheese off his chin. “And if you’re not angry or upset anymore, then what are you?”
“I’m not sure,” I say honestly, staring down at my pizza. “Most of the time I just feel normal, but sometimes I feel sad.”
His chest sinks as he blows out a slow breath. It grows silent between us, the only sound the chewing of our pizza, as my thoughts drift to what’s making me sad—Quinton. I wish things could be different. I wish he could be sitting here with us in the awkwardness, eating pizza, and talking about everyday things for the most part.
“Do you still think about him a lot?” Tristan finally asks, giving me a sideways glance.
I blink my gaze off my pizza and look at him. “Think about who?”
He picks a pepper off his pizza and tosses it into the box. “Quinton.”
I nod. “All the time.”
“Me, too,” he utters.
“Have you heard anything from his dad, by chance?” I ask, setting my half-eaten slice of pizza down on the plate on the coffee table in front of us. “My mom said he went down there for a while to look for him, but with how hard she worked to get him there, I’m not so convinced he’ll really look for him.”
He swallows a bite of pizza. “Yeah, he took a week off from work and went down there. I guess he put up flyers and everything…” He pauses, picking at a string of cheese hanging off the pizza. “I hate to say this, but I have to…no one’s going to find Quinton.”
A massive lump forms in my throat as I force a bite of pizza down. “Do you really think that?”
Tristan tosses his crust in the pizza box as he puts his feet up on the coffee table and leans back in the sofa. “I think he’ll only be found when he wants to be found.”
“And do you think he’ll ever get to that point?” I tuck my foot under me, turning sideways on the sofa.
Confusion vanishes from his face as he folds his arms across his chest. “Honestly, Nova, I’m not sure. I know that if you would have asked me a few months ago if I wanted to be found, I’d say no. In fact my parents actually tried to call me a couple of times and I blew them off.” He pauses, staring at the window across from us, where I can see Landon’s house just outside. “But after almost dying…well, things changed a little.”
“So you were glad you were found?” I ask. “Glad you’re here instead of Vegas?”
He contemplates this deeply. “I’m not going to lie.” His fists tighten as he crosses his arms. “Even after all that shit happened, I still crave it…crave the solitude drugs gave me.” He pauses again. “But I prefer being here at the moment.”
“Because you’re sober,” I say. “And can see things a little clearer now.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s it…but I don’t think that helps with Quinton, since I was forced to get sober and someone would have to force him to get sober.” He searches my eyes for something. “You managed to walk away from it once. How did you do it without anyone forcing you?”
I don’t want to tell him, but at the same time I’m the one who brought up the subject, so I decide to just be honest, even though it’ll probably sting a little. “It was a video Landon—my boyfriend who died—made. It made me rethink what I was doing and reminded me of who I used to be.” My hands shake as I pick up my soda, thinking about how watching the video this summer had the opposite effect and kind of made things worse, because I wasn’t letting it go. Letting go. A really big problem for me.
“Are you okay?” Tristan asks, noting how emotional I’m getting.
I nod. “Yeah, it just gets to me sometimes…I mean, I still feel guilty for leaving Quinton down there.”
He considers something for a moment while I take a sip of my soda. “I feel guilty, too, because I think he’s out there somewhere thinking what happened to me is his fault and it’s not. Just like he blamed himself for my sister’s death and his girlfriend’s. I think he’s been spending two years blaming himself for everything.” He starts picking more peppers off of his pizza and dropping them on top of the pizza box. I can tell he’s trying to internally work through his thoughts. Processing something. Finally he slumps back in the sofa. “You want to know what I think?”
I nod with eagerness. “Yeah, I do.”
He pauses, then he takes a deep breath. “I think that what Quinton needs is to realize that all of the stuff wasn’t his fault—that shit just happens sometimes and is out of our control.”
Easier said than done. I’ve heard how Quinton thinks about himself, what he thinks people think of him—how he thinks everyone hates him. I know he needs to be freed from those thoughts so he can breathe again, but I’m still not 100 percent sure how to make him see that. I spent the first part of the summer trying to get to him, make him see that he was a better person than he thought.
I stare down at the backs of my hands, worried about what I’m about to ask, but needing to ask it nonetheless. “Do you think he’ll ever be able to get to that place? Be able to forgive himself for what happened? Realize that it wasn’t his fault?”
Tristan doesn’t say anything right away. I wonder if it’s because he’s actually thinking about the answer or if it’s just hard for him to talk about things related to his sister’s death. “I’m not sure.” His voice slightly trembles and he clears it. “I want to try, though…help him if I can find him…help him realize it’s not his fault, like I should have been doing instead of injecting my veins with poison.”
I bite at my lips. “So you don’t blame him for…for the accident? Like your parents do?”
He shakes his head. “I’ve never really looked at it like that. Yeah, it kind of made me angry the first few times I saw him after I lost my sister, but at the same time, I got that it was an accident. He wasn’t drunk or high or anything. Shit just happened. It was no one’s fault.” He pauses, rubbing his hand tensely down his face. “Besides, if it wasn’t for Quinton I wouldn’t even be here right now, I don’t think…he called the ambulance when I OD’d…he did CPR…” He trails off, seeming distracted by the memories. “And he tried so hard to save me even before that. Get me to stop doing stupid shit. Tell me that I was better than it…help my sorry ass when I got us into trouble.”
God, what I would give for Quinton to be here and hear that. I wonder if he’d see it that way—that he saved a life. Not took one. That he did good. Helped someone. “You could tell Quinton all that,” I say. “We just have to find him.”
He turns his head for a moment and I’m pretty sure he’s wiping away tears. But I don’t say anything and when he turns around to me, his eyes are dry. “You know, you’re one of the most determined people I’ve ever met,” he says.
“Not determined enough,” I say, thinking about how I left Vegas—left Quinton there.
“Hey.” He puts a hand on my knee and I flinch. “You staying there wouldn’t have done any good. Like I said, Quinton needs to stop blaming himself before anything can change, and realize there are people that care about him. And even then he still has a lot of shit to work through.”
“Do you think there’s still hope?” I ask. “For him? That he could still get better?”
I hold my breath as I wait for the answer and I swear it takes hours when really it’s probably only seconds. He nods and I breathe again.
“I think as long as he’s alive still, there will always be hope,” he says softly. “And if we could get him sober, or at least give him an intervention and get him to a place where he could get sober, like my parents did with me, then maybe he could start working on forgiving himself.”
It grows quiet between Tristan and me, as soundless as that day I spent with Quinton on the roof. I wonder if it’s quiet where he is, if he’s enjoying the quiet, or if he even realizes it is quiet. I wonder if he has a roof over his head. I wonder if he’s eaten anything. I wonder if he still looks at things from an artist’s point of view. I wonder if he still draws. I wonder if he still thinks about me.
There are so many things I wonder but the biggest question I’ll always have is if he’s okay.
Quinton
I have lost track of time. I can’t remember what month it is, what day. I can barely tell it’s night. I’m down to my last pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I lost one of my shoes somewhere, but I can’t remember where. I’ve barely had any water to drink in days and I’m starting to feel it, a slow ache in my throat and belly, but I can’t bring myself to leave the roof, so I stay up there most of the time. Nancy complains about me being a lazy-ass junkie, leaving it to her to make all the money, dealing and whoring herself out. I always tell her to go and I wish she would so I’d finally rot all the way into nothing, yet she always comes back and keeps me going when I’m on the verge of dying.
Nancy’s been on her cell phone for a while, something she came back with the other day, telling me it’d help her with her clients, but I look at it as money wasted on the phone and the stupid card she paid for to get minutes. We’re getting low on our stash, only a hit or two left, and she’s trying to find more for cheap. She’s yammering away in the background, but her voice is barely there as I stand on the edge of the roof, staring down at the vacant houses and stores below, the wind against my back and my arms out to the sides. I don’t have a shirt on or shoes and my pants barely stay up at my hips. There’s hardly anything left to me, but I’m still here, wasting away.
One more step and I could be free. One more step and I could finally just fall and crash to my death. The lights would go off. The guilt would be gone. This personal hell that I live in would end.
“Why the hell are you always standing on the edge of the roof?” Nancy weaves around the signs and walks up to me with the phone in her hand.
“Because I’m wondering if I can fly.” I shut my eyes and breathe the air in, freedom just in front of me if I dare take it.
“Don’t be crazy.” She grabs my arm and pulls me down from the edge. “You’re just tripping. If you’ll relax for like five minutes, I can get you another hit ready and you’ll feel better.”
I stumble to get my balance as I turn around to face her. “But we’re running out.”
“I found us more,” she says, backing toward her backpack in the middle of the roof and stopping near the VIVA LAS VEGAS sign. She’s not wearing shoes and some guy hacked off her hair while she was passed out so it barely touches her chin. “But do you have any cash left on you at all?”
Even though I know I don’t, I still take my wallet out of my back pocket and open it up. Then I tip it upside down and dump the contents onto the ground: a few quarters, my driver’s license, which I thought I’d lost, and a piece of paper. Nancy quickly gets down on her knees and snatches up the quarters, then hands me my driver’s license. She picks up the piece of paper and starts to throw it to the side.