Free Paper Valentine by Brenna Yovanoff

stone. Behind me, Lillian is standing so close I can almost feel the chill of her in my own blood, like our skins are running together, getting all mixed up. “I’m okay.”
    He doesn’t say anything, but suddenly I like so much that he climbed up here just to check on me. I reach toward the window, almost meaning to touch his hand. As soon as my fingers brush the screen, though, he jerks away.
    “See you around,” he says.
    I listen to him rustle down through the branches until he’s gone.
    Then I cross to the bed and sink down onto the rug, pulling the sheet with me. On the floor, with the sheet over me, I sit with my knees pulled up and my head on my arms. My heart is beating in huge spasms, but under the sheet is safe, like I’m the ghost and Lillian’s the real live girl.
    “Hannity,” she says, from somewhere above me. “Are you really all squishy over Finny Boone? He’s a total delinquent.”
    I don’t answer. The word
delinquent
is sort of right. Finny is a troublemaker and a lighter-thief, and probably a lot of other things, but those parts aren’t everything. He’s also the boy who cared enough to bring my bracelet back, and once, when I was very sad, he stood up out of his seat and pulled Connor Price off me.
    Lillian reaches down and twitches the sheet away. The shadows around her eyes are deep purple. “You really, truly like Finny Boone? Oh my God, I thought you had better judgment.”
    Her voice is mocking, and I flop down so I’m lying at her feet. Me and her, staring at each other in the dim rainbow light.
    I’m choking on all the things I never could say when she was alive, at first because she was always Lillian and I was just Hannah and then later, when Trevor got bad, because I was supposed to be strong and supportive—because I didn’t want to do anything to make it worse. This whole list of bad, forbidden things: Never say,
Be reasonable
. Never say,
You’re too thin. Never say, Eat a goddamned Twinkie and I’m not stupid, Lillian! Chewing up food and spitting it into your napkin isn’t fooling anyone! Why do you have to control everything? So you don’t run the universe. So what? So the world is big and scary and chaotic. You know what? Deal with it. I do.
    I never said those things, and when they bloomed in my head like huge, toxic flowers, I pushed them down again. I did everything I was supposed to. I nodded and listened and never bullied her. I went to her house after school and made crochet arm warmers and shared pieces of my bagels and my granola bars, because if it was mine, then it wasn’t the same as her eating it.
    I did everything I was supposed to, which is such a lie. Whatever thoughtful, comforting things I said, whatever effort I made, it wasn’t enough. She died anyway.
    And if I go downstairs now, Decker will be in the kitchen making paella, and Ariel will be standing on the corduroy ottoman and singing “Mamma Mia” and “Girl Anachronism” for our mother. There will be a broken Alice in Wonderland bracelet waiting out on the steps, because Finny Boone might be big and quiet, but he isn’t stupid, and I spent the last four months of tenth grade looking sad.
    Lillian is blocking the door, standing over me, with her cadaver’s jaw and her sunken, bloodshot eyes. I take a deep breath and yank my sheet out of her hand. With the fabric draped over my head, the light looks dim and I can barely see Lillian at all.
    I open the door and walk right past her.

PAPER HEART
    CHAPTER SIX
    O n Tuesday morning, I wake up late and can’t remember if there’s something I’m supposed to be doing. The sunlight makes a crisp yellow square on the wall.
    I’m lying there with my chin on the edge of the mattress and my pillow wadded up under me when Ariel comes tiptoeing in, holding her hands behind her back. “I have something for you.”
    I roll over but don’t raise my head. “What is it?”
    She turns her palms up to show empty hands and smiles slyly. Then she jumps