My words jolted Jonah out of whatever kind of stupor he was in. His eyes, wide and alert, stared into mine, and I slowly loosened the hold I had on his shoulders.
"But how is it possible?" he wondered out loud, his voice nothing more than a whisper, laced with confusion and uncertainty. "I saw it happen. I remember it happening in front of my eyes."
"Did you feel it, Jonah?" I asked him gently. "Did you feel the crash? The pain that came after?"
He closed his eyes as if he was trying to remember. "I can'tâI don't remember..."
"That's because you never felt it," I told him. "You were there, but you weren't in it."
He ran both of his hands through his hair as he tried to remember, his eyes closed in concentration.
"Do you remember now?" I asked, still trying to be as gentle as possible, seeing the lost look on his face. "Alright. This is what really happened: I was in a fight with my brother in the car and I lost control of the wheel. I crashed into the tree right in front of you," I explained. "My brotherâhe believes that you were the one who called an ambulance for us. And I believe that too. If you were actually there, you must've called for help. Otherwise, we'd both died that night."
Jonah heard me, but he kept shaking his head.
"And I don't know why you believed that you had hurt usâthat you had hurt me. You never did, Jonah," I said, wiping my cheeks with the palm of my hands. "You did the exact opposite. You saved me, I could've died but I didn't and it's because of you."
I tried to touch him, but he withdrew. "This is too much," he muttered to himself. "Why can't I remember anything?" He turned to me. "Is that what really happened?" he asked. "Did you know about this before? Have you already known that I wasn'tâthat it wasn't me?"
"What? No, of course not," I rushed, shaking my head.
He seemed to ignore that I was talking. "What else do you have hidden from me? Fuck, and here I thought I was the one with secrets," he muttered to himself.
"Jonah," I said, stopping his rambling, "if I had known before, I would've told you. I wouldn't have blamed you. I just found outâI hadn't seen my brother since the accident until recently andâand when you told me you were in the other car, I believed you because there was nothing else I could believe.
"And I'm sorryâI'm sorry for shutting you out. I'm sorry for blaming things on you when you had never even done anything wrong at all. I'm sorry that I've been so unfair to you. God, Jonah, I'm so sorry for everything."
Jonah was breathing hard, and slowly, he nodded at me. "You don't need to apologize to me," he said after a while. But then he turned around and said, "I need toâI really need to go home."
I followed him suit. "Wait, Jonah!"
He stopped to say, "I need to think about it." He let out a breath, not once looking directly at me. "I hope you don't mind."
I closed my eyes and bit my lip before letting out a resigned sigh. I nodded at himâafter all, he already gave me time when I asked him for it. It shouldn't hurt to do the same for him. "Okay," I said softly. "I don't mind at all."
Before he started to leave, I asked him, "Are you mad at me now?"
He looked at me for a while, but then quickly averted his eyes. Then I watched as he unzipped his bag, took out something from it, and then tossed it right at me. I caught it, barely. "I don't think I need it anymore," he said quietly.
My chest was starting to feel heavy again. Bile rose to my throat, but I managed to say, "Alright."
"Alright." His eyes found mine, and I held his stare until he gave me a slight nod and left in quick strides toward his car. I stayed where I stood with his white shirt in my hand, the one he had tossed at me, and stared at it while my mind was trying to decide what I should feel right now.
Was this how it felt for him when he'd left me all those voicemails? Was this how he felt when I walked away from him in the hallway? Was this how it felt to know that you're barely holding onto the edge as you watch the thing that meant the most to you slowly start to slip through your fingers?
Now the roles were reversed, and I didn't like this feeling. And if this really was how he felt when I'd kept pushing him away, then I'd understand if Jonah wouldn't want to come back to me this time.
It was minutes after I heard the sound of his tires screeching against the asphalt when I realized that I couldn't get home without Jonah now.
I cursed under my breath and started running toward where his car had been parked, but of course, it wasn't there anymore. I decided to just walk and follow the road, hoping that I would eventually end up home even though it was now dark and I was literally in a dead neighborhood.
I was already shivering from the cold wind when suddenly, the sky growled again and I felt something wet falling on top of my head.
"Shit," I murmured. I pulled up my coat so it covered my head and ran toward the closest house I could find. It was empty, but thankfully, it didn't seem all that scary. Still, I was constantly looking over my shoulder to make sure that this was a safe place to call a temporary shelter, and I took out my phone to dial Gina's number.
"Hey," I said with a sigh once she picked up. "Sorry to bother you, but I could really use a ride."
"It didn't go well with him?" she asked sympathetically.
I shrugged even though she couldn't see me, and maybe it was the fact that it was cold and raining heavily and I was wet from head to toe and all alone in an abandoned, empty, scary-looking house after watching the boy I loved possibly giving up on me, that made the heaviness in my chest float up into my throat and the next thing I knew, I was choking on my own tears. "Not really, no." I crumpled the shirt in my hand. "I'm sorry to ruin your date."
"It's fine, Hannah. Bey will understand. We're just about to finish up, anyway. We just went out and grabbed some snacks together," she told me soothingly. "I'll be there as soon as I can, okay?"
I managed to hold my tears for a while as I waited for Gina to come and pick me up. I sat down on the abandoned porch, leaning against the wall behind me and trying to protect myself from the heavy rain. My body shivered, but at this point, there was nothing I could do to warm myself, so I just closed my eyes and let my fingers play with Jonah's shirt.
There was a sound of a car coming on the road, but it passed by the house before I could even see if it was Gina. I closed my eyes again and clenched my jaw to keep it from chattering, and the sound of the car came back only to leave again.
And all I could think about was: I didn't want Jonah to be that car.
I didn't want him to be that thing that just happened to cross path with me. I didn't want him to come into my life, stay for a short while and eventually leave me for good. I didn't want this thing that we had to be a one-time thing in my life. I didn't want us to be two lines that intersect with each other once only to never meet again.
But our lives were twisted and turned in the weirdest way possible, and I wondered if it was too much for us to handle.
Gina eventually arrived and I got into her car, profusely apologizing for making her cut her date short and also for getting her car wet, but she said that it was alright but the more she told me that everything was and would be alright, the more I thought that everything wouldn't be and then I was having a mental breakdown in her car.
Maybe it was the rain. The rain always made me sad.
Or maybe it was just because I was a fucking wimp who had to cry about every single thing that happened in her life.
Like the other times when she'd watched me have a mental breakdown in front of her, she calmly didn't say anything. She let me be; silently crying until my sobs turned to hiccups, slowly curling my body into a ball and slightly rocking back and forth, tightly holding the white shirt in my fists until it became nothing more than a crumpled mess in my lap.
She stopped the car on the side of the road once she'd seen me calm down, and she slowly rubbed my shoulder comfortingly. "You alright now?"
I shook my head, still facing away from her. "He's going to leave me. I know it."
She scoffed at me. "Quit being pessimistic."
"I'm not," I said, my voice sounding nasally and super whiney due to my stuffed nose. I turned around and showed her the crumpled mess that was Jonah's shirt on my lap. "He gave this back to me and said he didn't need it."
"I'm sure he was saying that he wouldn't be wearing it anyway and that's why he didn't need it," she reassured.
"It didn't sound that way to me."
"Didn't he tell you he loves you?" she asked me.
"He never directly said it to me," I answered. "He only said thatâhe only said that in the voicemails. When he couldn't think straight. He was rambling when he said that."
"Exactly," she said. "Even when his thoughts were a mess, he said that he loved you. He didn't even need to think about it."
I lifted my head and looked at her questioningly. "What does it have to do with this?"
"If he loves you, he will come back." I gave her a skeptical look. "What happened between you guys really sucked, but if you were still willing to forgive him even when you thought that he had hurt you in the past, then I don't see why he wouldn't do the same."
"But it's different now," I said. "He didn't really hurt me. He never did. I was mad at him for no reasonâI hurt him even more." I held out Jonah's shirt to her. "And then Operation Bite the Apple. He's mad at me. God, I screwed everything up. Can this week get any worse?"
"You didn't screw everything up," she reassured me. "I know you guys can still fix it. Where's the optimistic, bold girl that I was proud to call my best friend? Where has she gone, hm?"
I wiped my eyes and chuckled. "We need to find that girl back."
"Yeah, I think she's lost somewhere in all this chaotic mess." Gina smiled and then turned away from me to start the car. "Now go home, dry yourself up and get some rest. Give yourself and Jonah some time to cool off, and talk to him again on Monday. Don't think about it too much or it'll stress you out."
"It already does," I told her with a sigh. "But alright."
Once Gina had dropped me home, I just realized that I didn't bring my keys, so I stood in front of the door knocking and shivering from the cold. It finally opened, revealing Tony whose eyes immediately widened when he saw me.
"Holy shit, what happened to you?"
"I danced in the rain," I told him as I walked in, taking off my wet shoes and coat. I was walking toward the stairs when he stopped me and turned my body around. "What? I really need to shower, it's c-cold," I said, slightly stammering as my jaw started to chatter.
He was going to say something when his eyes focused on my face and then he frowned. "Have you been crying?"
My hands flew up to my face. "No."
"Your cheeks are swollen," he said. "Why were you even dancing in the rain? That's so stupid."
"I wasn't crying." I turned around and walked toward the stairs. "Where is everyone?"
"Leann's at the diner with Dad, Mom's with Cole. He's napping. Now stop walking and tell me why you're drenched from head to toe."
I stopped walking and gave out a long exasperated sigh before turning around to him. "I went to talk to someone. It didn't go well and then it was raining," I explained vaguely.
He narrowed his eyes at me. "Is it your boyfriend?"
I avoided his eyes and shrugged.
He sighed and said, "I'm sure you guys will eventually work it out."
"Well, hopefully," I said. "I really need to get out of these clothes, though. It's really cold."
So I left him without another word, went to my room and did exactly what Gina had told me to do: dry up, get a long, well-needed rest, and not think about the worst possibilities of what might happen to me and Jonah now.
[]
Monday morning found me crawling in my bed, covered in pain from my head to toe.
I had fallen sick from being out in the rain. The whole Sunday, I was down with a high fever and I wouldn't stop vomiting. Now, I didn't feel too nauseous anymore, but my head still wouldn't stop pounding, my eyes felt sore, there was a dull pain throbbing along my nose bone, and every inch of my body begged for another hour of sleep.
Mom told me that I shouldn't go to school today, but I refused because I wanted to see JonahâI had to. I needed to talk to him. She tried to talk me out of it, but my tone was final; I was going to school today and no one could stop me.
Gina was picking me up, and I gave her and Bey a weak smile before going into the back seat of her car. I leaned my heavy head against the window and closed my eyes, trying to tell the pain in my head to disappear.
"You don't look really well today, Hannah," Bey said, her voice concerned. "What's wrong with you?"
"I had a fever the other night," I answered with my eyes still closed. My voice sounded scratchy from the endless coughing I had all night. "It's fine."
"Maybe it's better if you stay home," Gina's voice piped in, but I shook my head.
"I need to talk to Jonah."
She sighed. "You can talk to him tomorrow."
I shook my head again. "I wanna talk to him today," I opened my eyes and see both girls staring at me from the rearview mirror. "I'm alright, I promise."
"If you say so," Gina said, and then they both turned their attention away from me, and I spent the next few minutes napping in the car as their voices faded away in my ears.
Too soon after, we already arrived at school. Gina shook my shoulders to wake me up, and it hurt to open my eyes, but I did anyways. I slightly stumbled when I walked out of the car as a sudden pain hit the back of my head, but I took a deep breath and it was gone, so I continued my way toward the school entrance.
I walked through a sea of people who talked animatedly about their own short holiday break with their friends. My body was threatening to drop to the ground at any second, but I forced myself to stay awake, even when Ms. Bishop so cruelly dropped a surprise quiz on me in chemistry.
I could even barely hold myself from passing out, how the hell was I supposed to do this quiz? I laid my forehead on the palm of my hand as I scribbled whatever I could think of onto the paper. Midway through the quiz, I looked up and saw Jonah, sitting two seats in front of me and finishing his quiz with ease.
I looked back down at my paper and sighed tiredly. I did what I could do, and let Ms. Bishop collect my paper even though I was sure I had already screwed it up.
When I got into Mr. Herberg's class, it was still nearly empty. I sat at my usual desk and leaned into my seat, closing my eyes as I did so. I heard the sound of people's footsteps coming into the room, but I kept my eyes closed until finally, I heard the chair next to me move, and I opened my eyes, catching Jonah slowly sitting down from the corner of my eyes.
I sat up straight when I felt a cough coming up my throat, and I covered my mouth with the crook of my elbow until the coughing died down. I groaned a little when my throat started to feel sore again, cursing myself for forgetting to bring a bottle of water with me.
I turned my head to look at Jonah, and opened my mouth to talk to him. But then I realized that my hazy mind wasn't allowing me to form a coherent word to say to him, and I ended up closing my mouth again.
I stared at him for a while, but he kept his eyes away from me. He was looking down at his notebook, and his hand was holding a pen that moved against the paper. He had his earphones on and the rest of the world around him switched off, so I swallowed and turned away from him, trying to shift my focus onto something else and not the music that I could faintly hear coming from his earphones.
I saw a familiar face walking into the room, and gave him a smile when his eyes caught mine. Spencer was the guy that was first paired with me for the baby project before Mr. Herberg decided to reassign me with Jonah, and we hadn't really talked for a long time even though he was still working at the diner.
Spencer sat down on the chair in front of me, and then he turned around to me to say hi.
I greeted him back, and asked, "I don't think that's your seat that you're sitting on right now."
He gave me a sheepish smile and told me in a low voice, "I'm trying to avoid Tracey."
At the mention of his partner project/current girlfriend, I frowned. "What's wrong with you guys?"
He shrugged at me lightly, but it obviously showed that something about her had been bugging his mind. "We broke up."
"What? Why?" I asked quietly. "You guys were so cute together."
He shook his head with a sad smile. "Things just didn't work out between us. She's a great girl, but maybe she's not for me." He rubbed the back of his neck. "We've been having huge fights for weeks now and she finally ended things with me last night, saying she didn't want to see me again."
"It sounds tough," I told him apologetically. "I'm sorry to hear that."
"Nah, it's fine. I'll somehow deal with it." Then his eyes flitted toward Jonah, and then he asked me, "What about you?"
"What about me what?"
"You and Jonah," he asked, trying to keep his voice down. "What's going on between the two of you?"
I exhaled heavily. "A lot of things," I answered just as quietly. I looked at Jonah from the corner of my eyes, making sure that he wasn't listening to this conversation. "It's really hard to explain, but long story short, it's all like..." I tried to find a suitable word and settled with, "it's like the world has been tossing and turning us around and now we couldn't find a solid ground to stand on. Or something dramatic like that. I don't know. I can't think right now."
He sighed. "It sucks, doesn't it, Han?" he murmured. "To have the whole world going against you and what you really want. I want Tracey and I still think that she wants me too, but I feel like the universe keeps telling us no."
"Yeah, I feel you." I gave him a small smile and whispered, "I don't want to let this go, though. I like him too much."
"Well, you should keep telling him that," he told me. "I have a feeling that you guys will somehow find your way back to each other."
I chuckled a little bit. "I hope you're right about that. And what about you and Tracey? Are you still going to get her back?"
He shook his head. "I'm not really sure. I like her a lot, but if our relationship is only based on these endless fights, I don't think it's gonna be healthy for us."
Then his eyes shifted to Jonah before he gave me a small smile. I turned to my left briefly and saw that he was taking his earphones off, which meant that this conversation that Spencer and I were having was probably over.
Spencer was about to turn back around when I suddenly began to cough again, this time way harder and longer that before, to the point where I almost felt like I was going to vomit. My head started to hurt again and I was groaning again once the coughing fit was over.
He immediately took a bottle of water from his bag and offered it to me. I shook my head, "You're gonna catch the flu, too."
"Don't worry about it," he insisted and I took the bottle from his hand, gulping down the water and sighing in relief. He frowned at me and said, "That's one intense coughing session right there. I just realized how tired you're looking right now. What happened to you?"
I shrugged weakly. "Just a flu."
"It looks like a really bad flu."
"That's why you shouldn't be out when it's raining," I told him. "Don't worry. It'll go away in a few days."
I caught Jonah turning his head to me briefly, before looking away again. I tried to think nothing about it, but I really wanted him to look my way once again so I could talk to him.
In front of me, Spencer said, "I hope you get well soon, Hannah." He added in a lower voice, "And I wish you all the luck with him."
I smiled gratefully. "Thanks. You too, Spence."
Not long after, Mr. Herberg walked into the class, apologizing to us for being late. He didn't waste any second before continuing the lesson he had left off last week. His voice went in and out through my ears, but I couldn't pay attention to it. Besides the fact that I was still having a mild headache and an uncomfortable feeling in my throat, I was also too busy trying to think of what to say the next time I could catch Jonah.
But then Mr. Herberg said something about the assignment we had, and he reminded us that the final presentation would start tomorrow and so we had to be ready for it. I groaned into my hands, completely forgetting that I hadn't finished the home video yetâI hadn't even talked to Jonah about finishing the project yet.
"Any question?" Mr. Herberg asked like he usually did before ending the class.
Unexpectedly, I saw Jonah's hand shooting up, and I turned to him in surprise.
"Yes, Jonah?"
"Can we do the presentation separately from our partner?" he asked our teacher, and I felt this horrible feeling of disappointment weighing down my chest. Why didn't Jonah want me to do the presentation together with him? Did I repulse him that much that we had to do it separately?
Mr. Herberg raised his eyebrows at him, and he gave me a brief look before saying, "As long as every single one of you here give me a presentation, yes, of course you can."
No! Mr. Herberg, why are you allowing him to do this presentation individually? How could you do this to me? I turned my attention to Mr. Herberg and gave him my best betrayed expression, the one that he blatantly ignored. Traitor.
Jonah nodded next to me. "Thank you."
I tried not to let my hurt expression show, but I didn't know whether or not I succeeded. Once the bell rang, I immediately crouched down to get my bag from the floor so I could leave as soon as possible, but I paused when I felt my head throbbing again.
I didn't remember how much I hated to be ill until this moment.
I held my head with my hand and took deep, heavy breaths as I waited for the headache to fade away. I looked up and see Spencer looking down at me with concern.
"You okay?"
I nodded weakly and slowly stood up with my bag in my hand. I stumbled into a desk when my legs started to wobble, almost falling onto Spencer who was walking in front of me. "Sorry," I muttered.
"It's fine. Are you sure you're okay?" he asked again.
"Yeah."
It was then until I realized that Jonah was still at his desk, silently watching me. I, still feeling this weird mix of disappointment and betrayal at him for not wanting to do the presentation with me, decided to ignore the way his eyes were focused on me, even though it was the first time he was willing to look at me all day and that I had been waiting for it to happen.
Instead, I half-stumbled my way out of the classroom, trying to pretend that I didn't feel the way the earth shook underneath my feet, even when Spencer said goodbye before separating ways with me to go to his next class.
Once I was out in the hallway, I finally realized how much I wanted to talk to Jonah. I turned around and tried to find him, hoping that he hadn't gone too far. I forced myself to forget about my brief annoyanceâand confusionâat him about the whole presentation thing, because our relationship meant so much more than one stupid presentation anyway.
Then I caught walking him in the middle of the hallway that was now empty, carrying his half-open bag in front of him as he put his notebook inside. I started to walk toward him, but paused when this group of girls came out from a classroom, and one of the girls bumped right into Jonah who wasn't paying attention, making the bag and everything inside fell onto the ground.
If it had been three months ago, he would've been showing his deep scowl at that girl. But instead, he simply sighed to himself and crouched down to not only gather his own belongings, but the stuff that the girl had dropped as well. Willingly.
Even though it was just a small, probably insignificant gesture, it made me smile to realize how much he'd changed over these past months. There was also a part of me that wanted to believe that he had changed because of me, but I knew that it really wasn't that. He had always been a good person. He just didn't think that he had a reason to show it to the world. Maybe I helped him find that reason, but it was always him.
If he hadn't been a good person, he wouldn't have stuck with me anyway after all the stupid things I'd done to purposefully annoy him. And hopefully, he would still do the same nowâstay with me even after everything that had happened recently between us.
I watched as he spoke to the girl before walking away again, and when he looked up, our eyes met.
I paused for a while, letting all these feelings rush into my chest. My heart was pounding with billions of different emotions and I felt as if I was a girl falling in love with a boy for the very first time in her life, the beat fighting off the pounding in my head. But before I could do anything, Jonah blinked and turned away from me, and then he was gone without a word.
I was hurt. If my heart was a piece of glass, I was sure that right now, it would've been scattered all over the floor. My heart felt like a balloon that got popped as soon as it was blown up. My lips trembled because I was holding in the sobs that fought to come out, and I turned around to walk toward my locker.
I ignored the way the floor started to spin beneath me again, and I closed my eyes, leaning my forehead onto the cool metal of my locker door. I didn't know how long I stood there with the ground shaking and the walls closing in and out around me, but it took too long for me to realize that I wasn't feeling okayâphysically, not just emotionallyâand that my body was starting to feel too light and too heavy at the same time.
I wiped my wet cheeks and opened my eyes. I saw white dots forming in front of me, and winced at the bright light from the lamp above my head. The hallway was too empty and there was no one and nothing else, except for a faint sound of footsteps coming toward me, that would help me when my vision turned to complete darkness and catch my body as it turned into a feather falling onto the ground.
In simpler words, I passed out, like I seem to always be doing lately, right there in the middle of the hallway.