He wanted to stop evil. He wanted to express his anger. He lived big, my brave Gat. He didn’t shut up when people wanted him to, he made them listen—and then he listened in return. He refused to take things lightly, though he was always quick to laugh.
Oh, he made me laugh. And made me think, even when I didn’t feel like thinking, even when I was too lazy to pay attention.
Gat let me bleed on him and bleed on him and bleed on him. He never minded. He wanted to know why I was bleeding. He wondered what he could do to heal the wound.
He will never eat chocolate again.
I loved him. I love him. As best I could. But he was right. I did not know him all the way. I will never see his apartment, eat his mother’s cooking, meet his friends from school. I will never see the bedspread on his bed or the posters on his walls. I’ll never know the diner where he got egg sandwiches in the morning or the corner where he double-locked his bike.
I don’t even know if he bought egg sandwiches or hung posters. I don’t know if he owned a bike or had a bedspread. I am only imagining the corner bike racks and the double locks, because I never went home with him, never saw his life, never knew that person Gat was when not on Beechwood Island.
His room must be empty by now. He has been dead two years.
We might have been.
We might have been.
I have lost you, Gat, because of how desperately, desperately I fell in love.
I think of my Liars burning, in their last few minutes, breathing smoke, their skin alight. How much it must have hurt.
Mirren’s hair in flames. Johnny’s body on the floor. Gat’s hands, his fingertips burnt, his arms shriveling with fire.
On the backs of his hands, words. Left: Gat. Right: Cadence.
My handwriting.
I cry because I am the only one of us still alive. Because I will have to go through life without the Liars. Because they will have to go through whatever awaits them, without me.
Me, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren.
Mirren, Gat, Johnny, and me.
We have been here, this summer.
And we have not been here.
Yes, and no.
It is my fault, my fault, my fault—and yet they love me anyway. Despite the poor dogs, despite my stupidity and grandiosity, despite our crime. Despite my selfishness, despite my whining, despite my stupid dumb luck in being the only one left and my inability to appreciate it, when they—they have nothing. Nothing, anymore, but this last summer together.
They have said they love me.
I have felt it in Gat’s kiss.
In Johnny’s laugh.
Mirren shouted it across the sea, even.
I GUESS THAT is why they’ve been here.
I needed them.
83
MUMMY BANGS ON my door and calls my name.
I do not answer.
An hour later, she bangs again.
“Let me in, won’t you?”
“Go away.”
“Is it a migraine? Just tell me that.”
“It isn’t a migraine,” I say. “It’s something else.”
“I love you, Cady,” she says.
She says it all the time since I got sick, but only now do I see that what Mummy means is,
I love you in spite of my grief. Even though you are crazy.
I love you in spite of what I suspect you have done.
“You know we all love you, right?” she calls through the door. “Aunt Bess and Aunt Carrie and Granddad and everyone? Bess is making the blueberry pie you like. It’ll be out in half an hour. You could have it for breakfast. I asked her.”
I stand. Go to the door and open it a crack. “Tell Bess I say thank you,” I say. “I just can’t come right now.”
“You’ve been crying,” Mummy says.
“A little.”
“I see.”
“Sorry. I know you want me at the house for breakfast.”
“You don’t need to say you’re sorry,” Mummy tells me. “Really, you don’t ever have to say it, Cady.”
84
AS USUAL, NO one is visible at Cuddledown until my feet make sounds on the steps. Then Johnny appears at the door, stepping gingerly over the crushed glass. When he sees my face, he stops.
“You’ve remembered,” he says.
I nod.
“You’ve remembered everything?”
“I didn’t know if you would still be here,” I say.
He reaches out to hold my hand. He feels warm and substantial, though he looks pale, washed out, bags under his eyes. And young.
He is only fifteen.
“We can’t stay much longer,” Johnny says. “It’s getting harder and harder.”
I nod.
“Mirren’s got it the worst, but Gat and I are feeling it, too.”
“Where will you go?”
“When we leave?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Same place as when you’re not here. Same place as we’ve been. It’s like—” Johnny pauses, scratches his head. “It’s like a rest. It’s like nothing, in a way. And honestly, Cady, I love you, but I’m fucking tired. I just want to lie down and be done. All this happened a very long time ago, for me.”
I look at him. “I’m so, so sorry, my dear old Johnny,” I say, feeling the tears well behind my eyes.
“Not your fault,” says Johnny. “I mean, we all did it, we all went crazy, we have to take responsibility. You shouldn’t carry the weight of it,” he says. “Be sad, be sorry—but don’t shoulder it.”
We go into the house and Mirren comes out of her bedroom. I realize she probably wasn’t there until moments before I walked through the door. She hugs me. Her honey hair is dim and the edges of her mouth look dry and cracked. “I’m sorry I didn’t do all of this better, Cady,” she says. “I got one chance to be here, and I don’t know, I drew it out, told so many lies.”
“It’s all right.”
“I want to be an accepting person, but I am so full of leftover rage. I imagined I’d be saintly and wise, but instead I’ve been jealous of you, mad at the rest of my family. It’s just messed up and now it’s done,” she says, burying her face in my shoulder.
I put my arms around her. “You were yourself, Mirren,” I say. “I don’t want anything else.”
“I have to go now,” she says. “I can’t be here any longer. I’m going down to the sea.”
No. Please.
Don’t go. Don’t leave me, Mirren, Mirren.
I need you.
That is what I want to say, to shout. But I do not.
And part of me wants to bleed across the great room floor or melt into a puddle of grief.