Chapter 31

"You knew it was him," I say to Jacey, staggering until my hand finds the armrest of the chair in the corner. I sink onto the cushion, my tunneling vision taking a slow-motion, jagged course around the room, finding the machine that blinks and beeps beside the bed. On the opposite side, white curtains hang immobile, no breeze to breathe life into them, only sifted sunlight trickling through.

Noah's back is still to us, shoulders sagging.

"No," Jacey says, crying now. "I mean, not until we saw the truck in the school parking lot. Then I remembered Noah sometimes borrows Nate's truck when his is in the shop. But even then, I hoped I was wrong."

Noah said the last time he spoke to Piper the day she fell was during sixth period. He said he sat around at home after school.

But he lied. He was parked at the school even after Piper's car was gone.

"I don't understand." I clutch my head in both hands, wincing as my fingertips brush the crust on my scalp where blood has started to dry.

"It was an accident," Noah says, his voice breaking. He turns around, bloodshot eyes rimmed dark blue with exhaustion. "You two played me. You lied to draw me here." He tugs on the neck of his shirt. "She was never awake, was she?"

Jacey only sobs harder. Frankly, I'm surprised she didn't crack earlier. After I was hit and it was clear that someone was onto us, we needed to act fast. We thought we could draw Sam or Abby out by pretending Piper had woken up. Jacey played her part up on the mountain, saying my sister was awake loud enough for all to hear. Loud enough to lure the guilty party to the hospital so they could tie up their last loose string.

"And if she had been awake?" I ask. "What would you have done then?"

"I would've tried to talk to her." He rips at his collar until the fabric frays and lies misshapen. "To apologize."

"Get out of here, Noah," I say, using the armrests to push myself up.

"Just listen."

I shake my head. My eyes flood, and I feel just how drained I am—from the hike, from learning that the boy who was once like my brother may have taken my sister away from me forever.

Beside me, Jacey's crying so uncontrollably that my head feels like it's going to split in half. "Go outside and call Grant," I say, nudging her arm. "Tell him we made a mistake."

She nods, glancing at Noah, her face streaked with tears. Who knows if she'll actually tell the truth about him, but at least she'll keep Sam and Abby from getting dragged into the police station.

Once she's out the door, I turn on Noah. "You left her there." My voice is calm, like a windless sea. But a tremor racks my body, and it takes every ounce of strength to stay on my feet. "She could've died." An even darker truth hangs between us like a barrier as I struggle for air. The doctors have given up on her. She's already gone.

Noah is slouching so much that his head is at my level, but his gaze doesn't meet mine. "It's the worst mistake I've ever made, Savannah."

I try to step back, but my leg bumps the chair. "You let everyone—my parents, me—think she tried to kill herself. How could you do that? I thought…" I rub my hand over my wet eyes. "She was your closest friend."

"I know, and I was a coward! I wasn't sure what she'd say when she woke up and I…I freaked."

I look down at my fingertips, stained with the blood from my head wound. "Did you hit me today?"

Noah winces and then grabs at a chunk of his hair, his hand covering half his face. "I panicked." His voice drops. "I knew it was only a matter of time before you guys figured out I was the last person to see Piper."

"So you tried to sacrifice Sam?" The memories are sharp shafts of light, mottled by black tar. Sam's phone in my hand. Splitting pain. Darkness. Alexandra helping me up. Sam coming back to camp with his phone back in his pocket. "You hit me and then passed the phone back to Sam so we'd think he did it."

"He's a drug dealer," Noah spits.

"And you? Who are you, Noah?" In the dim afternoon light filtering through the hospital blinds, I can barely make out the green in his eyes. But I see his face, angular and taut with worry. And the most gut-wrenching part isn't that I never really knew him these past ten years.

It isn't that he broke my sister's heart.

It's that I knew him all along.

I recognized him then, and I recognize him now, even with the familiar green leached from his eyes.

Because we're the same.

We understand each other. We both reach for things that will cost too much. Things that will cost everything.

We both reach anyway, until finally, we grasp a great big handful of nothing.

"This was never what I wanted," Noah says. "I just wanted everyone to…" His head drops into his hands.

"You just wanted everyone to forget about her." With a quivering hand, I twist the doorknob, my own words—my last text message to Piper—smothering every thought. You don't exist . Then I push open the door.

Noah watches in silence, eyes shimmering jade again in the fluorescent glow of the hallway lights. And he walks out.

I watch him go, wiping the tears from my cheeks. I shut the door and turn to face the room, the necklace charm pressed between two fingers. Then I pad to my sister's bedside.

"Piper?" I whisper. But she's silent, her body still. Even weeks after her fall, the sight of her twists my insides. A bandage covers her forehead. Every inch of her body is healing from cuts and bruises. "Piper, I'm sorry."

Her chest rises and falls, thanks to the machines. But in every other respect, my sister looks like a corpse.

I move to the other side of the bed, lowering into the chair my mom usually occupies. I take Piper's cold, thin hand in my dirty, bleeding one and squeeze it. "Thank you for what you tried to do at school. I know I didn't deserve it. And I'm sorry I wasn't there for you that day."

I sniffle. "I wish it hadn't been a lie." I wish she'd really woken up. I wish it with everything in me.

A tear falls into her hair. Then another. I let go of her hand to wipe at them and to straighten the once-pristine bedsheet, now marred by tears and dirt. With each drop, something in me starts to yield. Some part that was steely and invincible, but somehow anything but strong. It wears and fractures until I give in. When I do, the tears come harder. I let them.

For once, I'm not trying to be tough in front of Piper. I'm just trying to be her sister.