Page 174 of A Dead Girl's Guide to Living
Jedd put his head in his hands, his shoulders shaking, and my heart ached—for him, and for Liv, who sat just below him, her eyes unblinking at the ceiling.
“She saved Bri’s life,” Ellis whispered. “And gave up her own.”
Liv shook her head back and forth, as if the truth was almost more unbearable to hear than the idea she had been sitting with all this time.
“No,” she whispered weakly. “I made it to the door. I did. I made it.”
“She says she made it to the door,” Ellis whimpered, rubbing her eyes.
My chest tightened as I watched Liv’s crumbling emotions and her complete inability to portray them.
Jedd’s gaze was steady as he looked at us, his eyes and face red from where his palms had been pressed. He shook his head, sniffing. “She didn’t make it out,” he said, the pain radiating through his words. “Bri only lived because Liv didn’t let her die. If she had been running, she came back. She came back for Bri.”
Liv’s eyes were wide, almost lost, as she looked to me and Ellis, as if trying to claw back at memories that just weren’t there anymore.
“So Bri… is Bri still alive?” I asked, my hand still resting on Ellis’s leg as her sniffles subsided.
“She’s alive.” Jedd nodded. “It fucked her up bad, though—the aftermath too. It didn’t help that we had this small moment of hope, when we realized she wasn’t dead yet, that she had a pulse. So when she was in that coma, we all just hoped and prayed... and then... then we had to accept it. Bri just fell into depression afterward, months of it. She only opened up to me once, after a night of heavy drinking. She’ll always regret screaming Liv’s name—that if she hadn’t, Liv would still be here. That if she hadn’t frozen and just run, maybe both of them would still be here.”
Jedd shook his head and ran a hand through his hair.
“She stopped leaving the house, wouldn’t get out of bed. Then one day she left a note, packed a bag, and disappeared. She’s been traveling, from what I’ve gathered. I get a postcard every now and then—nothing written on it, just her name. I think she’s trying to… I think she’s working through it in her own way. Making sense of it.”
Liv looked down at her hands.
“The last card I got was from a small town in outback Australia.”
Liv’s head snapped up, a small smile on her face. “She always wanted to go to Australia.”
I exhaled slowly as I thought of Bri, this person I had never met, my mind painting her anyway. The resemblance wasn’t in Ellis’s features but in her spirit, in that relentless pain of all-consuming survivor’s guilt. My eyes shifted to Ellis beside me, her hand now gripping mine so tightly I could feel the slighttremor in her body. She was pale, her eyes fixed on the floor, and I knew she saw the resemblance too.
Two women alive when someone else wasn’t, both crushed under the invisible weight of why.
“Is Kyle alive?” Liv asked weakly.
“Kyle…” I asked as Jedd met my eyes. “Is he alive?”
“He’s alive,” Jedd said with a nod. “He’s getting there. He’ll—he’ll be okay. Eventually. We still hang out—a lot, actually. Neither of us can really handle being alone.”
I nodded gently as I felt his pain—his anguish and sadness clinging to him like an ever-present gray cloud, holding him back from truly existing, leaving him in the limbo grief traps you in, where you spend more time searching for a way out before realizing it’s right in front of you.
If you’re brave enough to take the step.
“Livishere,” I told Jedd softly, using the tone I used in the shop—the kind that put people at ease. “She’s sitting beside your chair. On the floor.”
Jedd sat forward, his elbows once more braced against his knees, as if he were holding himself together by sheer force of will. His eyes flicked to the spot Liv occupied, raw and red-rimmed, his lip trembling.
“She wants to talk to you,” I murmured as Liv’s eyes met mine.
His throat bobbed, and he gave me the faintest nod he could muster, his jaw locked as he fought to hold his emotions in check.
“Tell him I’m sorry,” Liv said softly, leaning her head back to look at him. Her hand reached up behind her, as if to touch him but knowing she couldn’t.
“She says she’s sorry,” I whispered, tears burning behind my eyes.
Jedd’s jaw clenched, and he shook his head fiercely. “No. No, she doesn’t get to say sorry. She doesn’t owe anyone any sorries.”
“Stop,” Liv whispered, and I echoed her words. “I clearly made a choice. I heard Bri, I saw the gun, and I didn’t think—I acted. She mattered to me. You all did. And I would have done the same for anyone. I know that.”
