“What are you doing?” I finally asked her.
“Oh, you’re awake. Good. I’ve decided I have to give away some of these things that once belonged to Alena. They’re too good to waste, and there are many young girls who could benefit. What good are they doing anyone hanging in this closet? Alena would be the first to agree.”
I looked at the window and saw it was nearly twilight. “Didn’t I get up this morning?”
“What’s that? Oh. Yes, you were up.”
She put one of the dresses down and came over to sit on my bed. She smiled and took my hand.
“You’ve had a terrible shock.”
I shook my head. “No, that was just a nightmare.”
“How I wish it were,” she said.
I felt my lips trembling. “It was,” I insisted.
She patted my hand gently. “You’ll get stronger, Sasha. I used to sit with Alena in the early days of her illness and tell her that, and she would agree. It was because she had that attitude that she lasted as long as she did.”
“Alena died,” I said.
“Yes, she did, but she made sure she gave me as much as she could before going.”
“Ryder’s not dead.” I shook my head, hoping to see her shake hers as well, but she didn’t.
“I don’t care who they are,” she said. “They’re suffering. If anyone knows how deeply that suffering is, it’s Donald and I.”
“No,” I said.
“Now, we don’t want you to blame yourself for this in any way. Donald is very insistent about that. He wants me to set up therapy for you to make sure that doesn’t happen. He says the seeds for this were planted long before you met Ryder Garfield. There’s a lot of history you don’t know about, I don’t know about, and no one on the outside knows about. This incident recently just set off a tragedy that was bound to happen. If it hadn’t been you there at the time, it would have been some other girl. Donald’s right.”
I turned my back on her.
She put her hand on my shoulder. “I want you to know I’m here for you, Sasha. You can cry on my shoulder, talk to me, ask for anything you want or need, and I’ll get it for you.”
I didn’t say anything. I closed my eyes so hard that my forehead ached.
“Mrs. Duval will bring you something soft to eat, some eggs, maybe, or hot cereal, okay?”
If I don’t talk, I told myself, this will all go away. It will be just a dream.
“You need something in you. I don’t want to have to send you to the hospital or something. Please eat something,” she said, and stood up. “You poor dear.”
I thought she had left, but when I turned around, she was still standing there looking at me.
“When I see you like this, I see Alena again. It breaks my heart.”
“Alena didn’t lose someone she loved,” I said. Maybe that was a terribly cruel thing to say to her, but I was suffering too much to care. Anyway, she didn’t look angry about it. She smiled, in fact.
“Of course she did,” Jordan said. “She lost us. But you still have us. You still have me. Make sure you eat something,” she said in the tone of a warning, and then she left.
I lay there for a moment, and then I heard a ping on my computer and sat up slowly. I didn’t remember turning it on, but I had probably forgotten to turn it off when I had left to meet Kiera. I was sure all of my school friends were writing to me. It amazed me that my phone hadn’t been ringing continually, but when I looked at it, I saw that it had been unplugged. That’s good, I thought. I didn’t want to speak to any of them, ever.
I got out of bed. I felt wobbly but flopped into the seat at the computer. The e-mail list was full, but there was one that caught my attention.
Kiera’s.
I opened it. For a moment, the words looked fuzzy, but then I leaned closer and read it.