Johnny. Johnny wanted to run a marathon. He wanted to go mile upon mile, proving his lungs would not give out. Proving he was the man Granddad wanted him to be, proving his strength, though he was so small.

His lungs filled with smoke. He has nothing to prove now. There is nothing to run for.

He wanted to own a car and eat fancy cakes he saw in bakery widows. He wanted to laugh big and own art and wear beautifully made clothes. Sweaters, scarves, wooly items with stripes. He wanted to make a tuna fish of Lego and hang it like a piece of taxidermy. He refused to be serious, he was infuriatingly unserious, but he was as committed to the things that mattered to him as anyone could possibly be. The running. Will and Carrie. The Liars. His sense of what was right. He gave up his college fund without a second thought, to stand up for his principles.

I think of Johnny’s strong arms, the stripe of white sunblock on his nose, the time we were sick together from poison ivy and lay next to each other in the hammock, scratching. The time he built me and Mirren a dollhouse of cardboard and stones he’d found on the beach.

Jonathan Sinclair Dennis, you would have been a light in the dark for so many people.

You have been one. You have.

And I have let you down the worst possible way.

I cry for Mirren, who wanted to see the Congo. She didn’t know how she wanted to live or what she believed yet; she was searching and knew she was drawn to that place. It will never be real to her now, never anything more than photographs and films and stories published for people’s entertainment.

Mirren talked a lot about sexual intercourse but never had it. When we were younger, she and I would stay up late, sleeping together on the Windemere porch in sleeping bags, laughing and eating fudge. We fought over Barbie dolls and did each other’s makeup and dreamed of love. Mirren will never have a wedding with yellow roses or a groom who loves her enough to wear a stupid yellow cummerbund.

She was irritable. And bossy. But always funny about it. It was easy to make her mad, and she was nearly always cross with Bess and annoyed with the twins—but then she’d fill with regret, moaning in agony over her own sharp tongue. She did love her family, loved all of them, and would read them books or help them make ice cream or give them pretty shells she had found.

She cannot make amends anymore.

She did not want to be like her mother. Not a princess, no. An explorer, a businesswoman, a Good Samaritan, an ice cream maker—something.

Something she will never be, because of me.

Mirren, I can’t even say sorry. There is not even a Scrabble word for how bad I feel.

And Gat, my Gat.

He will never go to college. He had that hungry mind, constantly turning things over, looking not for answers but for understanding. He will never satisfy his curiosity, never finish the hundred best novels ever written, never be the great man he might have been.

He wanted to stop evil. He wanted to express his anger. He lived big, my brave Gat. He didn’t shut up when people wanted him to, he made them listen—and then he listened in return. He refused to take things lightly, though he was always quick to laugh.

Oh, he made me laugh. And made me think, even when I didn’t feel like thinking, even when I was too lazy to pay attention.

Gat let me bleed on him and bleed on him and bleed on him. He never minded. He wanted to know why I was bleeding. He wondered what he could do to heal the wound.

He will never eat chocolate again.

I loved him. I love him. As best I could. But he was right. I did not know him all the way. I will never see his apartment, eat his mother’s cooking, meet his friends from school. I will never see the bedspread on his bed or the posters on his walls. I’ll never know the diner where he got egg sandwiches in the morning or the corner where he double-locked his bike.

I don’t even know if he bought egg sandwiches or hung posters. I don’t know if he owned a bike or had a bedspread. I am only imagining the corner bike racks and the double locks, because I never went home with him, never saw his life, never knew that person Gat was when not on Beechwood Island.

His room must be empty by now. He has been dead two years.

We might have been.

We might have been.

I have lost you, Gat, because of how desperately, desperately I fell in love.

I think of my Liars burning, in their last few minutes, breathing smoke, their skin alight. How much it must have hurt.

Mirren’s hair in flames. Johnny’s body on the floor. Gat’s hands, his fingertips burnt, his arms shriveling with fire.

On the backs of his hands, words. Left: Gat. Right: Cadence.

My handwriting.

I cry because I am the only one of us still alive. Because I will have to go through life without the Liars. Because they will have to go through whatever awaits them, without me.

Me, Gat, Johnny, and Mirren.

Mirren, Gat, Johnny, and me.

We have been here, this summer.

And we have not been here.

Yes, and no.

It is my fault, my fault, my fault—and yet they love me anyway. Despite the poor dogs, despite my stupidity and grandiosity, despite our crime. Despite my selfishness, despite my whining, despite my stupid dumb luck in being the only one left and my inability to appreciate it, when they—they have nothing. Nothing, anymore, but this last summer together.

They have said they love me.

I have felt it in Gat’s kiss.

In Johnny’s laugh.

Mirren shouted it across the sea, even.

I GUESS THAT is why they’ve been here.

I needed them.

83

MUMMY BANGS ON my door and calls my name.

I do not answer.

An hour later, she bangs again.

“Let me in, won’t you?”

“Go away.”

“Is it a migraine? Just tell me that.”

“It isn’t a migraine,” I say. “It’s something else.”

“I love you, Cady,” she says.

She says it all the time since I got sick, but only now do I see that what Mummy means is,

I love you in spite of my grief. Even though you are crazy.

I love you in spite of what I suspect you have done.

“You know we all love you, right?” she calls through the door. “Aunt Bess and Aunt Carrie and Granddad and everyone? Bess is making the blueberry pie you like. It’ll be out in half an hour. You could have it for breakfast. I asked her.”

I stand. Go to the door and open it a crack. “Tell Bess I say thank you,” I say. “I just can’t come right now.”

“You’ve been crying,” Mummy says.

“A little.”

“I see.”

“Sorry. I know you want me at the house for breakfast.”

“You don’t need to say you’re sorry,” Mummy tells me. “Really, you don’t ever have to say it, Cady.”

84

AS USUAL, NO one is visible at Cuddledown until my feet make sounds on the steps. Then Johnny appears at the door, stepping gingerly over the crushed glass. When he sees my face, he stops.

“You’ve remembered,” he says.

I nod.

“You’ve remembered everything?”

“I didn’t know if you would still be here,” I say.

He reaches out to hold my hand. He feels warm and substantial, though he looks pale, washed out, bags under his eyes. And young.

He is only fifteen.

“We can’t stay much longer,” Johnny says. “It’s getting harder and harder.”

I nod.

“Mirren’s got it the worst, but Gat and I are feeling it, too.”

“Where will you go?”

“When we leave?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Same place as when you’re not here. Same place as we’ve been. It’s like—” Johnny pauses, scratches his head. “It’s like a rest. It’s like nothing, in a way. And honestly, Cady, I love you, but I’m fucking tired. I just want to lie down and be done. All this happened a very long time ago, for me.”