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.Blake was even shouting after her—hey, be careful, be careful.As though she’d turned into a little kid, tumbling after a treat she couldn’t wait for.Only it wasn’t a treat.It was awful, it was awful.He just looked at her dumbfounded, like he wanted to ask her a million things and couldn’t think what to start with.Of course, she knew what one of them would have been—how did you get here?—but there was something else there, too.Something as empty as this place.She recognized that, too.It said—there’s no one left, is there?And that made her want to be sorry, to hold him and say that it was okay, everything was okay.That even though there was no one left, they still had each other.Couldn’t that be enough?But instead, every bit of rage welled up inside her.Her hands did things that her mind didn’t want them to—they shoved at him and got fistfuls of his shirt and she could hear herself yelling.How could you? She could hear herself saying.Why? Why? She could hear herself saying.Her face was wet, and he wasn’t answering and when he did, it only made things worse.“I just thought…” he said.“I just thought if I had someone too, then you and Blake could be happy.I thought…”Then the world was full of white noise, and she was screaming at him about nothing, nothing at all, and Blake had hold of her, was pulling her away because God she hated Jamie—hated him hated so much just hated him, for being this stupid.Chapter SeventeenShe thought of odd things, idly.Like—now that everyone was dead and the zombies were all gone, she could safely go and get a bunch of books.Ones that she’d always intended to read, like Anna Karenina and Great Expectations.She could lie in the sun and wile away the years on nothing but books.She could go and find Kelsey’s body, too.Yeah, she thought of that all right.Go and get it and bury it and say sorry.Go and find her sister and say sorry for that, too.There were a lot of things she could go and do, but she didn’t feel like doing any of them.Instead, she stood by the front door, and listened to Jamie out on the porch, noodling around on his guitar.The song was almost unrecognizable, but after a moment of just standing there taking it in, she thought she had it.She dredged it up from the bottom of her memory, somewhere.Hit Me Baby One More Time.That’s what he was playing.Weird, that it sent chills up her spine when he got to the line my loneliness is killing me.Maybe it was his voice, which had a low, strange wavering quality about it that somehow made everything upsetting, even when it was only some dumb, bubblegum, pop song.It made her wish she didn’t need to go out for a run.Every morning since the incident on the mainland, he’d sat out on the porch right before Blake said hey, you coming for that run? Then Blake took off out the front door, and she knew he expected her to, too.And wouldn’t it be so weird if she took the back door and ran all the way around just so that she didn’t have to see Jamie?It was obvious he was sitting out there, waiting for her to talk to him.It made her feel like a weird, disturbed crazy person to not want to.He hadn’t really done anything wrong, after all.In fact, he’d done something really, painfully right in a way that made her eyes sting every time she thought about it, and oh Lord, maybe that was it.Maybe if she had to speak to him, her heart would just ache until it melted inside her.Heart melting seemed like the last thing anyone would want.Especially when he was playing my loneliness, my loneliness, my loneliness and she still hadn’t explained to him.Hadn’t said what was true above all other things.She almost managed to get right past him.Almost.But then her mind went elsewhere and her body took control and her body wanted to turn just after the steps and speak.It wanted her to say—“Why is it always pop songs?”Apparently, her body wasn’t very smart when in control.He ran his thumb along the strings, making one last long note.It made her realize he was good at it—the guitar.He really was and didn’t that make the question reasonable, after all? He wasn’t like Blake with the wooden horses.He could actually do this and do it well, so why didn’t he?She watched him lean over the instrument to speak to her—probably to say something that wasn’t about pop songs and would definitely hurt her in some way.“Honey, I didn’t mean to make you feel like that.I didn’t know you would feel like that.”She thought of that one sweet note.The birds beating their wings against the sky.“Why is it always pop songs?”He leant back then, against what had probably once been a park bench.It made her remember the man with his paper skin and his staring eyes and how he’d just sat down, like a real person.“I can play something else if you want me to,” he said.“Come on up here, and I will.”She knew what he was doing—luring her in—but she went to him anyway.And not just because she wanted to hear.There were other things in there, too—the need to talk to him, just talk to him about anything, again.The need to be near him after feeling so strongly that he might be dead.But oh no, oh no, she knew what he was playing.The other songs all came back to her slowly, but this one didn’t.It was clear right off, and he wasn’t even playing the verse that rambled on about religion and other things that meant nothing to her.He was doing the other one [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]