Free Fall to Pieces by Vahini Naidoo

for making me watch.
    And I hate my memory for taking me back to
that
, because it’s not something I want to think about. Because it forces me to admit that Amy wasn’t just a beautiful, reckless hurricane of a girl.
    That when she laughed her head off and convinced us to break into a supermarket at midnight so that we could do cart wheelies, her arms were as skinny as sticks. Brittle, breakable bone.
    Her mind was breaking. Her heart, too.
    And I never did anything.
    We. Never. Did. Anything.
    And I’m thinking about this, and my head’s getting all dizzy, and Mark’s still looking down at me. Looking as if he’s seen a ghost.
    The color drains from his face. “What?” he says. “What are you talking about?”
    Oh yeah, Mark’s hiding something. If he wasn’t, he’d have laughed it off. Or he’d have cried and attempted toexplain what he’d meant. Avoiding the subject: Usually only done when there’s something to cover up.
    My eyelids are still heavy with water, so I can’t narrow my eyes.
    Petal’s hand finds mine. She pulls me to my feet with strength that a five-foot-two girl shouldn’t have. “I have the gnome,” she says, pressing it into my hand.
    I love that it’s no longer a big deal when one of us nearly dies. I love that Pet knew to bring the gnome for me, even though she hates my obsession with it. I love that this last piece of memory I retrieved was longer than all the other snippets, all the other flashes of that night.
    I hate that I know they’re lying for sure now. I hate that they’re lying at all.
    I close my eyes. Breaths tear through my chest. Ragged, broken sounds that spill into the water and flow away downstream.
The gnome refs
. I open my eyes, meet the gnome’s. So how’d I do?
    The answer: not so well. Because, guess what? I just realized that I’ve been lying, too. To myself, is what’s worse.
    I’ve been pretending that Amy was perfectly fine. That everything was A-OK before she died, and it’s her death that’s fucked everything up.
    Truth: Amy was screwed up before that night.
    Truth: everyone was drifting before that night.
    Truth: I was not, am not, the good friend I’m pretending to be in my head.
    My heart is still hammering in my rib cage. Erratic, wild, rock ’n’ roll drumbeat. I’m horribly conscious of how loud my breathing is.
    And oh, my god, I’m crazy, because I can almost see the gnome nodding along with me.
    I hug the gnome to my chest. Cry for Amy. Silent tears that no one sees, because my face is wet and a few more drops of salt water don’t really make a difference.
    “Let’s get out of here,” Mark says, his voice firm, decisive.
    Petal pulls me to my feet. Mark’s already walking off, loping through the weeds with the rangy grace of a mountain lion. I’m about to follow him when Explosive Boy says, “Wait.” He runs after Mark, grabs him, spins him around.
    “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?”
    Mark raises his eyebrows. “Away from you.”
    Explosive Boy laughs, shakes his head. God. I swear I can see steam rolling from the ends of his hair. “No way,” he says. “No way are you walking away from me after you pushed me off a fucking bridge. No way.”
    E’s whole body is trembling. He always looks as if he’s about to turn into a bonfire, but this is the first time I’ve really seen him ablaze. His fists curl and uncurl.
    Mark notices and gives him a mocking smile. He does a few uppercuts and hops from foot to foot. “I may be a hippie, but I like my boxing classes, too.”
    Bullshit. Absolute bullshit. Whatever Mark knows about boxing he learned from watching the initial scenes of
Billy Elliot
. And even then, the ballet’s more his forte.
    Explosive Boy seems to have called Mark’s bluff, because he takes a step toward him. Mark steps back, but he doesn’t look worried. “Come on, E,” Mark says. “You can’t seriously have thought Pick Me Ups were going to be a tea party.”
    “You,” E says,