Faster We Burn

said my name, or even when he was in the same room. It was love. Yes, it started out as lust, but that changed pretty fast.”
    “You said you weren’t going to give me any advice,” I said, moving closer to her. My fingers were numb and any moment, my teeth were going to start chattering.
    Her eyes went wide an innocent. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I was just telling you about the first time I met Adam.”
    I rolled my eyes and wrapped the blanket tighter.
    “We should go inside. My ass is officially frozen,” Kayla said, getting up. “Come on. You can hide downstairs with me and Adam. We could play Hot Lava.”
    Mom’s furniture obsession had started before she had us, so when we were kids we assumed everyone else had a basement full of furniture they couldn’t use. We often spent rainy afternoons hopping from chairs to dressers to get from one side of the room to the other, pretending the floor was lava.
    “I think we’re both a little too big for that. I’m not sure Mom’s new table, oh excuse me, sideboard, could take us standing on it.”
    “I think she has a problem,” Kayla said as we walked slowly back into the house. The blast of warm air was so shocking compared to the air outside that it almost hurt. I flexed my red fingers to try to get some feeling back into them.
    The living room was quiet except for Adam humming to himself while reading a book that I knew didn’t come from my house.
    “Where’s Mom and Dad?” Kayla said, rubbing her arms.
    “They went to their room. A little chilly out there?” He closed the book and took Kayla into his arms.
    “I’m going to my room,” I said. I wanted to try Stryker again, but I didn’t want an audience.
    “I’ll bring you some tea or something,” Kayla said.
    “Thanks.”
    I heard Mom and Dad talking softly in their room as I went upstairs. I shut the door and called Stryker again, sitting back on my now-bare bed. Nearly all of my pillows were on my bed at school.
    “Hey, it’s me again. I just wish you would come back. Or I could come to you. Did you go back to school? I really wish you’d answer your phone. I really wish you were here. I really wish things could have been different. I wish we could back to when you dared me to eat the pie. You still owe me a date, by the way. So just…call me back. Even if it’s to tell me to leave you the fuck alone. I just don’t want it to end like this. It can’t end like this.”
    I ended the call and looked around my room. Stryker was always asking me why I was obsessed with pink.
    Yeah, I had to stop thinking about him. I grabbed my phone again and called Lottie.
    “Hey, roomie! Are you in a turkey coma yet?” Her Thanksgiving had obviously been better than mine.
    “Well, it kind of blew up in my face and Stryker stormed out.”
    “He did what? What happened?” I heard Trish talking behind her, asking if she was talking to me because Stryker hadn’t called her back.
    “Trish, seriously. I can’t hear her when you’re yelling in my ear,” Lottie said, and moved away from the noise.
    “Okay, I’m alone now. So what happened?”
    “It was so stupid. My mom was completely unprepared for him, and I knew she was going to freak out, but I hoped she wouldn’t and then she did, and then I tried to fix it and we ended up fighting and he got pissed and left. I’ve called him a million times, but he’s gone. I’m such an idiot.”
    “What did your mom say?”
    “Oh, she didn’t really say anything specific. She just treated him like he’d just gotten out of prison, and wouldn’t stop glaring at him. Honestly, I don’t blame him for leaving. He wanted this perfect Thanksgiving and it got ruined.”
    “That’s not your fault.”
    “Yeah, it kind of is. I shouldn’t have let him come in the first place. I knew Mom would react like that. I should have told her, but what then? She wouldn’t have let him come, so then I would have told him he couldn’t come, and I couldn’t do that. Lottie, what am I going to do?”
    “I’ll get Trish to call him and see where he is. He’ll probably answer for her. Let me tell her the situation and I’ll call you back, okay? Don’t worry, this is fixable.”
    I said goodbye to Lottie and stared at the pictures of my high school friends and me that were plastered all over my wall. I took a shit ton of pictures, I realized. I got up and looked at them. God, there were a bunch with Zack in them. I pulled one after the