Free The Breakers Code by Conner Kressley

it would be all right, that he would still have me, and we’d always be friends. But I couldn’t; not yet, not now.
         “Okay…” He said, and walked away.
         Just then, Mom busted through the kitchen door, holding a package of frozen meat in one hand and a bunch of taco shells in a plastic bag.
         “How does Mexican night sound, amigos?”
         And that, that was when I started to cry.
     
         A couple hours, what seemed like two liters of tears and a plate of over salted beef nachos later, I found myself staring at the ceiling. Mom had finally gone to sleep, satisfied that her ‘if he doesn’t see how great you are then he’s an idiot and he’ll probably end up working at a Burger King, so you’re better off without him’ rant had salved the wound a little.
         It might have been enough too, if I could just go to sleep. I’d have taken the dreams. I’d have contemplated the meaning of the sevens, the circle of blood, my father’s arms; all of it, so long as it meant I didn’t have to think about Owen.
         In the end, it seemed all the questions I had compiled in my mind; the black Sedan, the empty house, the mystery parents, didn’t mean anything. They weren’t what was keeping me up tonight. It turned out the only question I cared about was the one question he had actually answered.
         He didn’t love me. He didn’t want to be with me. A phone full of pictures of me aside, he didn’t think of me as anything but a friend. His best friend, but what good was that?
         Why was I crying though? I was stronger than this. I was the girl who climbed out of the Chicago River after her car went headlong off a bridge. I was the girl who buried her father and started a new life in the middle of nowhere when her mother said it was what she needed. I didn’t cry over a guy. Of course, the pile of damp Kleenex on the nightstand would disagree with me.
         I thought about him standing in my doorway; his blues eyes hurt and regretful. He seemed afraid that things would change, that I wouldn’t be able to pull it together around him, and that our friendship would be over.
         Right now, with the sting of his words so fresh in my ears and the mark of his boot so evident on my heart, I couldn’t say with any certainty that he was wrong.
         It wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t help the way he felt, or, more aptly, didn’t feel. And I knew he had a girlfriend. That must have been what that whole ‘My life is not my own’ diatribe was about. He was being loyal to Merrin. And who’d blame him? Immature phone decorum aside, she was probably perfect. And, come to think of it, didn’t being perfect afford you some immaturity anyway?
         Whatever the case, whatever his reasoning, I couldn’t imagine myself walking up to Owen and pretending everything was fine. I’d have to find a way though. If I couldn’t, then this really would be the end of our friendship and that hurt in his eyes; I wouldn’t be able to make it better.
         If possible, the idea of that hurt even more than his rejection.
         By the time sleep found me; a deep and mercifully dreamless sleep, it was short lived.
         “Cress! Cress! Wake up, dude!”
         If I would have been awake, I would have recognized his voice immediately. I’d heard it every day for two years, plus he was the only person on the planet who called me dude. His hands were on my shoulders, shaking me. I jerked and instinctively pushed him away.
         “What the hell?!” I said, crawling up toward the headboard.
         “Dude, it’s just me.” Casper’s hair was in knotted red tufts on his head, giving him the look of a walking, talking, ‘waking-people-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night’ candle.
         “Casper, you moron. You’re going to give me a heart attack.” I threw my pillow at him; the one I’d had since I was three and one of the only things that