A Letter from Griffin (In the Echo of this Ghost Town

Dear Reader,

Truthfully, I’m not in a good place. I really shouldn’t be writing this letter to you, because if it’s supposed to be all “Rah! Rah! Read my story,” I’m going to suck at that.

I had all these ideas about how life was supposed to be, and how I was supposed to be with friends—my chosen family—in it. I had these notions that after graduation from high school, things were just going to get better, you know? Our bro crew moving forward together in all the ways that made us close to begin with, only more. And then it detonated.

Life got smaller. I got smaller.

My friends have ditched me. I’m looking at the shrapnel of my life, unsure how that happened.

I’m angry.

I’m hurt.

I’m alone.

And for some reason, I can’t get this horrible thought out of my head that it IS all my fault.

And it sucks.

So, Rah! Rah! Enter at your own risk,

Griffin

In the Wait: Matt

Abby, my older sister, jumps up from her chair in the waiting room and draws my attention with her as she rushes across the space. I follow her with my gaze and watch her throw herself in the arms of Gabe Daniels who has walked in. It feels wrong to see him here, somehow what I think I know not connecting with the actuality of the moment, as if the power has been disconnected and the computer's waiting to reboot. What I'm picturing are video images of a fight between him and Seth playing over again in my mind. The fight all over IG and Twitter along with other crappy, ugly things said about it - about Gabe. Hashtag: CrucifyDaniels. I don't know the history between him and Seth, but it seems strange that he'd be here if there's bad blood between them.

There's obviously more to this moʻolelo than I know.

When I got the text from Williams this morning about Seth, the first person I thought of was Abby. She and Seth are close, have always been in my memory, though I'm not sure how close beyond the summer trips to Oregon when we were little and their reconnection since we moved. When we were little, Seth and Abby would play Spy Games with Nate - my twin - and me; we were always the bad guys. Nate and I rarely knew what was going on other than it was a version of hide and seek in the backyard behind Nana's house. They always found us and took us to jail where we had to stay until they told us to pretend to escape. When we moved to Oregon from Hawaii a few months ago, Abby and Seth reconnected and started hanging out once again like no time had passed. Maybe it was more than friends for a minute, but it always seemed like Abby was carrying a weight that kept her distant from everyone, including us.

Now, she has her arms wrapped around Gabe - and he around her - in the middle of a full waiting room where everyone can see. I slump a bit lower in my seat, glance away from their embrace and look at my teammates. I know it shouldn't bother me, but it does especially when one of my soccer teammates, Williams whispers to Carter, "What the fuck is he doing here?"

Carter - team captain with Seth - is watching them. His green eyes are sharp like the peaks of the Koʻolaus and his jaw pulses, clearly upset by the display; but I don't understand the context. I'm not sure what Abby and Gabe have to do with him. What I do know is that Carter and Seth are best bros.

Was the fight about Abby?

My gaze slides back to her. They're stuck together like opihi on a rock.

"I don't like what I'm seeing," I hear Carter say. "Makes me sick." He stands up and leaves the area where we've been sitting. I watch him weave his way across the room to sit against a far wall. The rest of the team follows.

And I'm stuck. Team? Family? It feels like an impossible choice. But here's the truth of me: I always feel caught in the middle. If it isn't between Abby and Nate, or my mom and my dad, it's between choosing my family or the team - a different kind of family. It's about fitting in here in Oregon or remembering what I'm missing from my homeland of Hawaii. It's like a constant tug-o-war over who I am when I'm not even sure yet.

It makes me feel like I've got a bitter taste on my tongue.

Sometimes it feels like Abby doesn't think about anyone but herself, like she doesn't consider how I feel or how Nate feels about how her actions affect us. If the roles were reversed, however, she'd call me out. I know I shouldn't care what other people think, but this is my team and she is my family. Anger surges inside me because I'm unsure what am I supposed to do about my sister dating the Freak everyone hates? But the thing is, I don't hate him. Gabe's actually pretty cool. He and Abby have become friends. He's nice, actually, and athletic as fuck, which for me is like the Bible of Existence.

I know my dad would say we always choose ohana - family over everything - but there's a lie in there. He hasn't always. He only just found his conscience to come back to us. So I'm calling bullshit on that, but I also know there's a vein of truth in it too. Abby would choose me and Nate even if she's made personal mistakes and even if she doesn't always think of us. I might give her a hard time, but I love her. I know she's got my back.

I'm a simple guy, unlike my twin, Nate, who feels way too much. Maybe we are the yin and yang of a whole being. I see the end, I walk there in a straight line; easy. Nate, though, sees all the possibilities and takes us around bends and over hills. He tires me out; but he's my other half. In all honesty, my short-sightedness usually makes me kind of a dick, but it works because Nate checks me. Like when that whole video came out and I unleashed on Abby, our older sister. Nate stood with me, but he was like, "Brah, she's our sister. We should figure out who that guy was and have his ass taken out. We can call our boys back home."

"Ask Abby," I'd snapped at him.

"She's not going to say. She's embarrassed."

"She should be."

"Why? For being drunk as fuck and then getting taken advantage of? You telling me if a girl was drunk like that you'd help her strip tease for an audience? That you'd film it?"

He was right. I might be a dick, but I wouldn't do something like that. Ever.

Nate and I chose to stand by our sister, but I'm not going to lie, it wasn't easy at first. The girl I was checking out dropped me. Going to practice and hearing all the bullshit about my sister got me into it a few times with teammates, and Brock was the worst. I'd had to actually throw blows with him. Gave him a black eye and told him to shut the fuck up or it would be worse. Everyone took a step back after that and my life on the team got better. Maybe got some weird kind of cred from it? Seems stupid, but I'm a simple guy.

I pull out my phone to text Nate. He's already sent a message.

Nate: Any word? He okay?

Me: None yet. Sounds bad. I need help.

Nate: What with?

Me: My team is icing Abby and Gabe. I feel stuck.

Nate: Stuck? Why?

Me: Having to choose.

Nate: You already know the answer bruh.

He's right. I do. I glance over at the team clumped up in a corner now and slump lower into my chair, arms crossed over my chest to follow my mantra: What would Nathan Do?

When Abby leads Gabe and the woman I assume is his mom over, I take his extended hand and offer him a dude hug. "Hey," I tell him and move a few seats down into the space my team just vacated so Gabe can sit next to Abby. I glance at her. She smiles at me and mouths, Thank you. I've made my choice. Family over everything.

________________________________________________________

Hawaiian words:

moʻolelo (moh -oh - leh - loe): a story

Koʻolaus (Koh - oh - la - ow): Mountain range on the North side of Oahu

opihi (oh - pee- hee): A small sea urchin that clings to the rocks. Hawaiians collect it to eat. It is a delicacy.

ohana (oh- haw- naw): Family

In the Wait: Jack

My son. 

My son.

My son.

My son.

I lean against the wall, shaky and nauseous, in the hallway outside the hospital room where I can hear Kate’s crying at Seth’s bedside. I wish I had a drink. I need a drink. The words - my son -  are a prayer. Head bowed, I squeeze my eyes shut. Please. Please, God, if you’re there. Please don’t take my son. But praying to an omnipotent being is a fool’s errand. A waste of time. I stopped praying a long time ago. 

A tiny voice speaks from somewhere inside me, but I can’t make out the words. It feels as if there’s a message I need but can’t grasp. Instead, I shake my head back and forth to clear it, swallow down the bile and pinch the bridge of my nose to keep the tears shut up, tight. I need a fucking drink. That is where I’ve put my faith because it numbs everything else. 

I open my eyes and look up. The hallways of the hospital is full of sounds and movement.  Nurses and orderlies, doctors and their stark white coats, and the sound of tears and machines. A place of healing that sounds like death. It makes me feel even sicker. 

The last time I was here - like this - was when my mother died, a pulmonary embolism. She’d been 51. Seth had been about five. It was a small irony. I’d dropped out of college to take care of my mother when my dad died unexpectedly and got a job at the mill. It wasn’t long after that I learned Kate was pregnant. Said goodbye to a possible return to school and a career in baseball and hello to marriage, fatherhood and caregiver.  Then Mom died. I was left with a life I’d never wanted and taunted by dreams of what could have been.

Only a few hours ago we’d been around the dinner table, the perfect picture of domestic family bliss. Except we’d fought. Seth’s goddamn disrespect a (i want s Word or expression about it being constant). The yelling. The anger. The mess. The tears. The stupid kid should have fucking listened to me. 

But his eyes, that last moment before he’d bolted out the front door, the amber color flat, tortured and cold. Exactly how I felt. I shudder now thinking about it. His last words had been: Over my dead body. I won’t. Now, he’s lying comatose in a hospital bed. 

The tears won’t stay back and drip from my eyes. It makes me mad because I can hear my father: Men don’t cry. Don’t be a baby.  I can feel his fingers digging into the skin of my arm or the sting of his backhand. 

I sniff and swipe the weakness from my eyes and  replay the events if only to try and make sense of things. 

Seth had run from the house and I chased him. I’d slipped down the stairs, maybe a little tipsy. He’d gotten in that truck. He’d driven away. When I returned to the house, Kate had looked up at me. “What have we done?” She’d said.

I’d yelled something at her. Something stupid. Something about how disrespectful the damn kid is. She’d stood and left me alone in the kitchen with the remnants of our war. An overturned dinner table, food littering the floor. A lamp on its side. A broken end table. 

I righted one of the dining table chairs and sat down. I needed a beer- actually a whiskey sounded like the better option - but I didn’t get up to get one, not right away at least. Instead, I studied the mess, willing it to fix itself.  With my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands, I fisted my fingers together in my hair and pulled. The pressure, the pain, relieved the ache inside of me. I wished with every uncomfortable and raw feeling swirling like a storm within my body that the mess littering the room like a debris field around me wasn’t an accurate picture of my family. 

I’m incapable to fix it. 

I’m a failure. 

I’m no good, nothing and a sham of what a man should be. 

Nothing works. 

Nothing is right.

I eventually got up, pulled a glass and the whiskey bottle from the cabinet and gave myself a health pour. I figured it would calm my nerves, refrigerator cure the rolling stomach and shave off the edge of my headache. It did, fixing the tremble and numbing what hurts. I left the mess and sat in the living room with my back to the chaos.

And then - sometime later - someone rang the doorbell. 

My blood boiled at first, thinking it was Seth, but why would he ring the doorbell? I shuffled over to the door. “Coming,” I said to the insistent knock.

I heard Kate’s padded footsteps in the hallway behind me.

When I opened it, two police officers stood on the other side of the door.

I didn’t let them in, but one of them glanced at Kate and then around the house behind me.

“We’re looking for Jack and Kate Peters.” The taller one looked down at his notes.

“I’m Jack. Can I help you?” I asked. I hoped my voice didn’t give away my drinking because I could feel that perhaps I was tilting on my feet, but what could they say about what a man does in his own goddamn house.

Kate stepped up to my side. I glanced at her and then back at the officers. It felt like slow motion.

“Mr and Mrs Peters, do you own a red 1972 Chevrolet pick-up?” He read from his notes and then looked up at us.

“Yes.” I nodded. My brain felt heavy and my heart became an anchor.

“We pulled your name from the registration in a car matching that make and model involved in a car accident earlier this evening.”

“Seth?” Kate asked. She reached for me, her hand curling around my arm and squeezing, even though I knew I was the last person she wanted to cling to for support. 

“The driver was transported to Cantos Medical.”

“Oh my god,” Kate began chanting. “Oh my god.”

I put my arm around her to steady myself.

Now, I take a deep breath. 

My son. 

Swallow the nausea. 

My son. 

I need a drink. I can’t. I want it. I can’t. 

Pushing away from the wall, I take a few steps down the hallway. When I make it to the doorway, I lean in, but I hesitate. Kate is sitting next to the hospital bed. She’s crying.  Seth lays in the hospital bed, his prone body hooked up to machines and breathing. His face is bruised. Some from the accident, but those aren’t the ones that suddenly jump out at me. It’s the older ones I note. Shame slams against me like I’ve run headfirst into a wall.

I’m afraid.

I walk across the room and lay a hand on her shoulder. “Kate?”

She draws away from me, as if she’s been burned, and she says, “I won’t speak in anger in front of Seth. He can hear. The doctor thinks so.”

I misinterpret her anger. “I know. I’m angry too.”

She swings around to look at me. “You’re angry?”  She’s seething. Her eyes are filled with emotions I recognize because I have felt them of myself: hate, loathing, sadness, regret. All of the blame.

Her look pushes me back, and I step away from her. I take another step, backing out of the room unable to hold my head up.

I eventually find myself in the waiting room, the whisper of voices spinning a web around the space, intersecting, crossing. My son’s name on their tongues. Seth. Seth. My son. When my eyes focus on the faces I see the girl - Abby. The reason for Seth’s change. She stares unseeing at the floor. I can’t seem to help the anger that explodes inside me when I see her. Someone to blame for my hurt. “You,” I say. It’s more of a whisper. “You!” This time a shout, and I’m pointing. I stalk across the room toward her as she looks up at me. “This is all your fault. You changed him.”

A man blocks my path, and then a second one, he looks like a priest. “Hey now,” one says. 

“Jack. You’re hurting,” the religious one says.

Yes, goddammit! I’m hurting. God! I’m hurting, but I don’t yell it like I want to. Instead, I crumple against them, unable to hold myself up and weep.

Like a baby.

I’m a baby.

I think of my son. 

My son.

My son.

My baby.

Oh, what have I done?

In the Wait: Carter

Williams's text has thrown me off, in a big way. I'd planned to get to school early and work out. It's what I do, after all, because I've got goals. My phone went off a few minutes before my alarm and when I opened my messenger app to read it, I figured it was a prank.

Williams: Seth's been in an accident

Me: FO, you prick

Williams: Srsly bro

I'd sat up in my bed, brought my knees up and rested my elbows on them, phone in my hands.

Me: For real?

Williams: Yea dude. My dad picked him up early this morning. Alive. Said it's bad

Me: WTF!?!?

Williams: I'm shook

Me: hospital?

Williams: Yeah. Headed there soon. Texting team

Me: C U there

I scoot to the edge of my bed still looking at my phone to try and find information and rereading the texts. Then I sit on the edge in shock, figuring something's off. I scroll through IG. Several videos of Seth and Gabe's fight the day before are there. Twitter. Someone's posted:

Peters in critical. WTF? #Freakchallenge messed him up. #crucifydaniels

The idea of Seth in the hospital isn't adding up in my head. I get up, drawing on some joggers, a t-shirt and my team jacket.

After brushing my teeth, I go downstairs.

"Morning, Carter," my mom says from the kitchen bar. "You just missed, Dad."

I back up and glance through the doorway. She's holding a cup of coffee.

"Something wrong?" She asks as her brows shift over her eyes.

"I just got a text from Williams. He says Seth is in the hospital." Saying it out loud doesn't make it any more real, less perhaps. I picture Seth - team captain, scoring leader, jokester - full of life. He's my best friend. There has to be a mistake.

"What?" My mom sets down the coffee mug. "Is it serious?"

"I don't know," I tell her and step fully into the doorway instead of leaning around the jam. "He said his Dad took Seth in and it's bad. I'm going to the hospital now."

"I needed you to take Michelle this morning-" Mom starts referencing my little sister and then shakes her head. "No. That's okay. I got it. Want me to meet you there?"

I tap the door jam with my fist. "No. That's okay. I'll text you."

"I'll call the school and let them know."

I pause not having thought about that. I nod. "Yeah. Okay." I turn and grab my keys from the dish in the hallway.

"Text me," Mom calls after me. "As soon as you hear something."

When I get to the hospital and find out where to go, I'm numb, like I'm not in my own skin but just watching my body walk through the spaces. The hospital is teeming with people, but they're all faceless entities. When I step into the waiting room, I see a lot of people. Matt Kaiāulu - freshman on the varsity team - gets up from a center group of chairs and walks toward me.

"Hey," he says and holds out his hand.

I take it and we offer one another a one armed hug while our hands are still connected.

"This is messed up," he says as he draws away. He has an accent in his voice which I think has something to do with being raised in Hawaii, but it isn't because he speaks Hawaiian.

"Heard anything?" I ask him.

"Not yet."

"Williams just said it was 'bad.'"

"Yeah. That's what I heard too."

I glance past him and see his sister, Abby. She's curled up into herself and holding onto their dad. I recall the fight yesterday, the instagram stories - Gabe and Seth trading blows - Abby on the periphery of it.

"There's room," Matt tells me, and I follow him into the chair grouping. He introduces me to his dad.

We talk about soccer which seems a strange thing to grab onto, but is like grabbing hold of the earth when gravity just failed. It's like I've touched a live wire and everything around me, movement, sounds, visuals, are bursting like cartoons. I don't feel like I'm here.

I glance at Abby when I pass her on my way to a seat. She doesn't offer me any words but raises her dark eyebrows over her brown eyes in acknowledgement. We haven't talked much before, so I don't interpret her interaction as rudeness. I'm reminded again how pretty she is - her soft brown skin, cute freckles across her nose and those brown eyes - and understand why Seth has it bad for her.

I remember when we all first saw her, the way we laughed and teased one another, because she was new and mysterious. Seth trying to be nonchalant but looked like an opened-mouth fool. The memory makes me smile. Then I think about her walking through the hallways with the Freak lately, sitting with him in the cafeteria. I frown. My boy's been hurt, and because of that, my loyalties lie with him.

Matt and I sit and talk and as we do more people arrive.

Sara - who looks like her world has been crushed - gives Abby the evil eye when she walks in. I look at Abby again, who isn't even paying attention to Sara, but I know they've got bad blood. Abby went after Sara after the video was shared. I didn't get it from Sara, but it wouldn't surprise me if it started with her.

Coach arrives, teammates and we clump up in the center grouping of chairs. Waiting.

"He said that the front of Seth's truck is crushed," Williams says. "Head on collision with another car. They had to get a second ambulance for that driver. Seth wasn't responsive."

I swallow down the nausea climbing the walls of my stomach into my throat hearing the details. It's easier not to know. "He was alive though?"

"Yeah." Williams nods.

"Any news, yet?" Someone asks.

Someone else says, "no."

Silence descends, and I figure we're all contemplating the big What If. I know I am. What if Seth doesn't survive?

Someone changes the subject to school - wrestling and basketball tryouts coming up. Safe.

I see Abby jump from her seat out of the corner of my eye and look up. Gabe Daniels has walked into the room. My stomach dips toward rage. I don't know why, really. Daniels has never done anything to me (we were once friends), but I'm thinking about that fight yesterday. I'm thinking about the way he's got his arms around Abby and his head buried against her neck. I'm thinking about my boy, Seth, who's fighting for his life, and it isn't fair. How does this guy get to be walking around and acting like he fucking cares. It makes me want to puke.

I stand and my teammates' faces swing toward me which I suppose is how things will go for a while. Seth is captain, and with him down, someone has to take the lead. "I don't like what I'm seeing," I say. "It makes me sick." I move across the room. The team follows. 

In the Wait: Sara

Sara is a character in the Cantos Chronicles and is instrumental in Abby’s narrative in Swimming Sideways.

---

I slump into the green chair against the ivory wall of the waiting room. My mother sits down next to me. I push a hand through my dark hair and move locks around to find a place the strands feel perfect that way if anyone is watching, it can't be said I don't take care of myself. I glance around the room to see who's here. Many of the faces in the waiting room are strangers but many are not. Carter is by Freak 2 and it makes my stomach churn with hatred. Maybe if I'd put out a slutty video of myself on the internet, all the guys would like me too. Anger slithers through me looking at her, rolled up into a ball on her seat, her head against a large man's shoulder - her dad probably - if she has any right to mourn Seth. She looks like shit. Her dark hair drawn into a messy bun, dressed like she just rolled out of bed. I don't understand why Seth -

But I push the unfinished thought away. I don't want to think about that now. I'm sitting in a hospital where Seth is and I don't know any more than what Britney's call had told me this morning: Seth was in a car accident. He's at the hospital. I'm here to be what a girlfriend would be - even if that isn't what we are. Right now.

"Are you okay, Babe?" My mom asks. She places her warm hand on my arm.

I shake my head and whisper, "No," instead of what I want which is to scream: NO! Seth is in the fucking hospital. MY SETH. That bitch doesn't deserve to be here!

I close my eyes shutting out what's around me and picture him: his beautiful golden brown eyes, his brown hair streaked with sunlight. His dimpled smile. I remember that night - our first night together - when he'd finally seen me. It was all I'd ever wanted: to be seen by Seth Peters. It had been at a summer party - end of June - at the lake. I'd ridden up with Cara. Drank. Danced. Bumped into him. He'd smiled at me.

"Hey there, Sara," he'd said and leaned forward to give me a light hug. He smelled spicy and my heart leapt being so near him. He'd been wearing a white t-shirt stamped with a rainbow and the word Hawaii; the cloth stretched around his lean body, the cotton taut in all the right places. I was sure he could hear the breath catch in my throat.

I offered him my own version of his smile. "Hi," I'd said. "I haven't seen you at any other parties this summer." I'd pressed my lips against his ear to tell him because the music was loud. It hadn't actually been necessary, but it allowed me to get closer to him, my hand on the bare skin of his arm. His hand was on my waist - my skin exposed to his because of my cropped top - and the warmth of his hand on me caused sunbursts to explode in my chest and heat my nerve endings.

"You've been looking for me?" He asked, the whisper of his breath on my cheek. I could smell the alcohol spinning a magical spell between us.

I leaned back so I could see his eyes and smiled. I didn't care that he knew I've wanted to see him. We were both alcohol loose and I wanted to jump into this ride and follow the loop-de-loops. I wanted him. I'd wanted it for so long. He was the reason I'd attended every party I'd ever been to. Seth. He was looking at me.

He tugged me closer, and we danced. He held my hips to his and we moved with a rhythm I'd once only imagined. The music wrapped around us like a blanket and everyone else seemed to disappear. The stars were out, bright and twinkling in the night sky. I thought about the water of the lake, and other revelers in it, doing their own dance and wondered if Seth would ever see me like that - as someone he'd want to slip into the cool water with. I'd been infatuated with him since eighth grade when my girl-clan had clumped at the edges of the basketball court watching our crushes and hoping they would look our way. That night he did, both of us tipsy. His hands slid over my body and I wanted him to. I kissed him so he wouldn't wonder about my want.

Opening my eyes, I return to the hospital waiting room from my mind and glance around again. The bitch who messed up everything is across the room. Abby with a-last-name-no-one-can-even-pronounce. More of the soccer team has congregated around her while I'm alone against the wall with my mom. They should be with me instead of an internet whore. I'm popular and he was MY SETH, not hers.

Tears burn against my eyes and then fall. My mom holds out a tissue to me. I take it and press it to the corners of my eyes.

Seth and I had been fine before she showed up.

That first kiss had been everything I'd imagined. The feel of his tongue. The rhythm of the way we could work together. It turned out I was a girl that Seth could see slipping into the water with. It hadn't happened that night, but at a summer pool party I'd thrown a week or so later. After everyone else had left or passed out, we slipped into the pool and then up to my room. My heart still trips around in my chest thinking about his hands on my body, the way we connected, the cadence and sway of our bodies together. Then I became the girl he held at every party after that. And sometimes - when I invited him over - he'd show up at my house and we'd find one another again in the frenzy of want. Always us. Seth and Sara. Sara and Seth. Exactly as it was supposed to be. Sure - we were always drunk, but it made it hotter and sort of perfect. He was finally my Seth just like I'd always wanted. All summer and into the first weeks of school.

Until that day in the hallway at school a couple weeks after classes started and he said: Look Sara, we aren't really together-together. My heart crashed into my chest and then he'd offered hope when he showed up at my house one more time. Hungry for me and what I could give him. Me. Then he stopped talking to me, stopped seeing me as if everything between us had dried out. He started seeing the bitch, brought her to a party even, and I tried to get his attention back, but even then, he was jaded by her.

I was left behind in the wake, floating untethered to anything as if a strong wave had rushed through and broke me. I couldn't find anything to hang onto. I'd given him my everything - every part of me. I wasn't ready to let it go, so when I found that horrible video of her. How could I not share it? I was certain it would bring Seth back - away from her. It hadn't gone the way I imagined.

Then, unexpectedly, Seth showed up at my house. He'd thrown pebbles at my window to draw me out to the pool house. I'd been shocked but that part of me who still wanted Seth and Sara was elated. He'd talked strange and disjointed. That conversation a few weeks ago has been running like a loop in my mind since. This was after his surfing accident, after I'd shared bitch's internet shame that made her Freak 2, after everything had changed. He'd asked me that stupid question: Why do you like me?

A fresh bout of tears start thinking about it, and faces in the waiting room swing toward me. I turn my face into my mother's shoulder and her arm comes up around me.

Why do I like me?

The truth was I couldn't believe that he liked me, that he ever had, but when he kept coming back, I could feel the stitching of the parts of me fortified. I'd always liked him. He was Seth Peters. I'd written his name on my folder and signed my name as Sara Peters in my diary. I'd imagined he and I together because it just was what I'd constructed in my mind. He was perfect. Good looking. Popular. Athletic. Funny. And his question - his stupid question - opened up a fissure inside me because why would he like me? I'd thrown the same question back at him. And then instead of saying why he might have liked me, he'd said: I'm sorry I used you, for hurting you. The gap had widened and suddenly I was falling through.

But I can't believe it. I won't believe it. He's my Seth. Has always been MY SETH!

There's movement across the room drawing me back into the waiting room, and I look to see who it is.

Freak 1 - Gabe Daniels - steps into the doorway and Freak 2 gets up and walks into his arms. They cling to one another like they have a right.

My eyes narrow.

The rumors have been burning about them leaving everything else smoldering with smoke. Freak 1 and Seth got in a fight the day before. Was it about her? That stupid bitch who's ruined everything. Why the fuck does Freak 1 think he has any right to be here? What if it's his fault Seth is here in the hospital?

Freak 2 is clinging to him like she's an extension of him. What about Seth?

I pull out my phone and text Cara and Bri: you wouldn't believe who has the nerve to show up at the hospital.