Dare Me to Live

Chapter 23 (Part two)

I wondered if this was how Danny felt: excited, nervous, on edge, like a shaken soda bottle ready to burst. If it was, I could see why he had become addicted to the feeling.

Short of sprinting to Vanessa's, I restrained myself to a run-walk, finally breaking into a jog up the flight of stairs that led to her floor. She answered my knock at the door after several seconds. The television was on in the background and a half-dozen lay open on the floor fanned out in a semi-circle where she had been studying.

"Dash—are you all right?" she asked. Her question brought on the worst case of déjà vu as I heard every time I had been asked that question echo back through the past months. "You look like you haven't slept in days."

"Weeks," I corrected her.

I walked past her into the living room. The air was laced with the scent of cinnamon candles, and a memory surfaced of Tyler making a face and saying "I never liked cinnamon."

I pulled on my fingers to keep them from twitching. My knuckles popped one after the other.

"Is everything all right?" Van asked again, tracking my indecisive movements around the room. My mind couldn't seem to hold onto one thought.

"No—well, yes. Yes and no," I said, distractedly. An old episode of Grey's Anatomy was on TV and I stopped to watch for a minute.

"Do you need to talk?" she asked, taking my hand and pulling me towards the couch.

By the way she searched my face and the set of her mouth, I could tell she was worried that I might collapse at any moment. I ordered myself calm so she wouldn't get the wrong idea.

Beeping accelerated in the background as a patient coded on the show. It reminded me forcibly of the weeks I spent in the hospital.

"I've been talking to Chris," I said, a little too loudly to drown out the all-too-real sounds from the television.

"I've been meaning to ask you about that," interrupted Van. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. She only ever wore them to study. "I thought you guys were done—like no contact, nothing, but I keep seeing and hearing..."

I made a dismissive movement with my hand. "We've been talking a bit. He's been helping me."

Vanessa made a noise of contempt.

"Anyway," I said. "I've been talking to him and I've realized something."

"Which is....?"

I quickly told her my idea—of why I thought I was so thoroughly entangled in Danny's death, of how I thought I could set both of us free.

Vanessa's brow furrowed the more I talked until she was downright scowling and shaking her head.

"What?" I asked, frustrated.

"Dash, I know how hard this is for you—especially after the Tyler thing. But you're exhausted. You're not thinking straight—and I don't think that's what Chris meant."

"This isn't about the Tyler thing," I retorted through gritted teeth.

"Whatever it's about, jumping off Needle Rock Ridge is not going to help you. You could get yourself killed."

"But—"

Van held up her hand as though she could physically stop the words coming from my mouth.

"I know you were going to jump with Danny, but this is different. I think you need to take a few days—sleep on things. And maybe, you know, seeing a new therapist might not be so bad." She looked guiltily away as she said this.