Inferno (Page 88)

‘You don’t have to spend all your time here with me, Mil.’ I gestured around me – at my messy room, my messy life. ‘I know it’s depressing. I know I’m not exactly performing in the friend department. I haven’t been for a while.’

‘Soph,’ she chastised. ‘You know I’m not going anywhere. What kind of friend would I be then?’

‘The kind I’m being?’ I shrugged. ‘You shouldn’t have to be in the darkness with me.’

‘I think the whole point of being a good friend is being in the darkness. I’ll be your light, until you can be it yourself again. How about that?’

I mustered a smile, and for a moment it felt like my heart was swelling just a little. ‘You’re very good at this,’ I told her.

‘Well.’ She flashed me a grin. ‘I do like to overachieve at all the important things.’

I leant back against my pillow and let the silence fall around us. Millie shifted, examining me in the falling light, and I knew it was coming even before she said it – the inevitable. ‘So,’ she began, tracing circles on the duvet. ‘School starts back next week.’

She might as well have dropped a fresh heap of trash on my face. I grimaced. ‘I’d rather gouge my eyes out and eat them.’

‘It’s our senior year. It’ll be fun.’ There was little, if any, conviction in her reply.

I imagined the dull thud of my feet in the hallways, the thunderous clanging of lockers between classes, the mindless nattering filling the air, the soul-destroying existence of my life inside those walls. If I was a source of interest before, I’d be the main attraction now. ‘I’m not ready.’

Millie gripped my leg through the duvet. ‘You have to make yourself ready, Soph. You have to grit your teeth and do it, you know? It’s the last year. And then everything changes. You can do it. We both can.’

I didn’t answer her. The conversation had tired me out, and I didn’t feel like wading into the matter of school just then. After a while Millie accepted defeat and rolled off the end of my bed. I burrowed further in, feeling vaguely embarrassed by my petulance. She got up and crossed over to the doorway. I could feel her hovering, her fingers scratching lightly on the wood.

‘What is it?’ I asked.

She measured her words, starting out slowly like she was still unsure of whether to say anything at all. ‘I know you told me you don’t want to talk about that night yet. And I’ve tried to respect that. But I don’t see how I can keep this from you any longer …’

I sat up. ‘Keep what from me?’

‘The Falcone boys are downstairs. They’ve been here for a while, actually, but I knew you didn’t want any reminders of … of what happened …’ She trailed off, examining her shoes. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think you should know. They won’t go away. They don’t want to leave you unprotected … in case …’

In case he comes back for me.

Millie had thought me crazy for not telling the police about Jack and Donata. I had considered it, in my darkest moments, but I wanted two things that snitching couldn’t assure me: a fate worse than prison for them, and my own survival.

Millie looked uneasy. ‘Nic says he won’t leave until he sees you. Mrs Bailey has been swatting him with tea towels all week.’

All week.

I frowned at my duvet, zeroing in on the swirls. The pain had regressed to a dull thud in the base of my chest again. I hadn’t thought about Nic much since the fire, but there were things that needed to be said, and maybe it was time to deal with that. ‘Can you tell him to come up?’

Millie bounded into the hallway and down the stairs. ‘Nic?’ she called, and for the first time I registered the low timbre of a new voice and realized it had probably been there all along.

When Nic appeared in my doorway he was paler than I’d ever seen him. His hair was messy and his jawline was marked with the dark shadow of week-old stubble, making him seem much older. He had a bandage running the entire length of his arm and another wrapped around his hand.

He didn’t move to come inside, though I could tell by the quiet shuffling that he wanted to. What must I have seemed like to him? A wild animal waiting to pounce, or something wounded and caged?

He fiddled with the cross around his neck, pulling it up and down the chain so that it made a faint grinding noise in the silence.

‘How are you?’ The words rasped in his throat. The smoke had gotten him bad.

I spread my arms wide by way of explanation: I looked like I had been dragged through a field of manure backwards and then dressed in a dumpster by a blind person.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said softly. ‘I’m sorry she’s gone.’

Don’t think about her. I scrunched my thoughts down and looked at Nic instead. It was impossible not to think about the last time I had seen him. I remembered the dumpster-groove in the kitchen’s metal door, the way Nic’s eyes had flashed as he faced off with my uncle. Don’t think about Jack.

I had dragged Nic’s lifeless body away from the fire that destroyed my life … Don’t think about the fire. I had gone to help him instead of making sure my mother was safe. I should have checked, but I didn’t. I should have helped her first, but I didn’t. Don’t think about her. He had pulled me away from her white sneakers when I was almost close enough to touch them.