Ripple

Chapter Thirty-Three

A week later, I step through the gates of Seaside Cemetery, my sneakers crunching on the leaves that line the paths. I pull Cole’s sweater tighter around me as a sharp October breeze bites through. It’s a brisk, chilly walk to Steven’s grave, a walk I’ve made so many times before. But this time is different.

This time I’m not alone.

We navigate between the headstones, the world silent around us except for the sound of our shoes on the frosty grass. We make our way to the stone with the football engraved in the middle, a meticulous piece of solid-white perfectly polished granite. It will last forever, so much longer than Steven.

We stop in front of it, and Cole puts an arm around my waist. I lean into him, and we stand in silence as I purse my lips and stare at the stone for a long time, my eyes staring at the dates, at the year I killed him.

He’s been resting in the earth for two years. Two years the world has gone without that goofy, crooked smile, without his jokes. It still aches to think about him, to picture the light in his eyes and know that I’m the one who extinguished it.

Sienna will never be my friend again. I had to beg and plead, but I was able to transfer out of her English class. Cole and I eat lunch in the library now, reading books and whispering. I feel bad for taking him away from his friends, but he understands. He knows I don’t want it like this, but there’s nothing I can do to change it. So he chooses me over them.

Steven will never come back. What I did to him . . . I can’t undo. Their whole family is broken because of me.

But somehow, I have to find a way to move on. With Cole, it’s actually possible. I don’t have to swim anymore. I haven’t since that night at the lake with Erik. As psychotic as he was, it seems that not everything he said was a lie.

Cole really did break my curse.

With each sunset, it gets easier to believe that the curse is really broken, easier to look forward instead of back. I’ll do things just as I always said—go to college, find a way to give back to the world the things I took.

I step forward, brush my fingers against the top of the grave marker. I’m not sure I can meet Cole’s eyes. “Talking to Steven is the only thing that kept me sane these couple of years.” I chew on my lip. “Which is kind of ridiculous, since killing him is what broke me in the first place.”

“It’s not ridiculous.” Silence. And then, “You know it’s not your fault, right? You’re not a murderer. You didn’t know what you were doing.”

I blink. I know that, even though sometimes I question it. I always will. Yet hearing Cole say it aloud is comforting.

“You okay?” he asks.

I turn to face him, smiling a little. I wonder if he’ll ever stop asking me that. “Yeah. Can you give me a second?”

Cole nods, steps away, and goes to stand under the weeping willow. It’s bare now, what’s left of its thin leaves littering the lawn between the graves.

I crouch in front of the grave. There’s nothing left to say to him, because I’ve already told him everything I can. I’ve apologized, I’ve cried, I’ve made promises. I’ve told him every secret, every ache. He’s been there for me in a way no one else could be.

But the words don’t matter anymore.

It’s time to move on.

I exhale a ragged breath of air as I stand, pressing my fingers to my lips, and then brush them against the cold marble of his grave.

“Good-bye, Steven.”

This time, I mean it.