Beautiful Redemption

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For our fathers, Robert Marin and Burton Stohl, who taught us to believe we could do anything, and our husbands, Alex Garcia and Lewis Peterson, who made us do the one thing we never thought we could.

Death is the beginning of Immortality.

—M
AXIMILIEN
R
OBESPIERRE

LENA

Beginning Again

O
ther people had flying dreams. I had falling nightmares. I couldn’t talk about it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it either.

About him.

Ethan falling.

Ethan’s shoe dropping to the ground, seconds before.

It must have come off when he fell.

I wondered if he knew.

If he’d known.

I saw that muddy black sneaker dropping from the top of the water tower every time I closed my eyes. Sometimes I hoped it was a dream. I hoped I’d wake up, and he’d be waiting
out in the driveway, in front of Ravenwood, to take me to school.

Wake up, sleepyhead. I’m almost there.
That’s what he would’ve Kelted.

I’d hear Link’s bad music coming through the open window, before I even saw Ethan behind the wheel.

That’s how I imagined it.

I’d had nightmares about him a thousand times before. Before I knew him, or at least knew he was going to be Ethan. But this wasn’t like anything I’d ever seen in any nightmare.

It shouldn’t have happened. It wasn’t how his life was supposed to be. And it couldn’t be how my life was supposed to be.

That muddy black sneaker wasn’t supposed to drop.

Life without Ethan was something worse than a nightmare.

It was real.

So real that I refused to believe it.

February 2nd

Nightmares end.

That’s how you know they’re nightmares. This—Ethan—everything—it isn’t ending, has no sign of ending.

I felt—I feel—like I’m stuck.

Like it’s my life that shattered when he—when everything else ended.

It broke into a thousand tiny pieces.

When he hit the ground.

I couldn’t stand to look at my journal anymore. I couldn’t write poetry; it hurt to even read it.

It was all too true.

The most important person in my life died jumping off the Summerville water tower. I knew why he did it. Knowing why didn’t make me feel any better.

Knowing he did it for me only made me feel worse.

Sometimes I didn’t think the world was worth it.

Saving.

Sometimes I didn’t think I was worth it either.

Ethan thought he was doing the right thing. He knew it was crazy. And he didn’t want to go, but he had to anyway.

Ethan was like that.

Even if he was dead.

He saved the world, but he shattered mine.

What now?

BOOK ONE

Ethan

CHAPTER 1