"I heard."
The straw dropped from between Theresa's pursed lips. She glanced across the front seat at Eddie, not saying anything, as the end of her straw hovered in mid-air.
He fingered the fast food wrapper spread in his lap beneath the steering wheel. "So if, y'know, you want to, like, talk, or somethin', I dunno..." It was incredibly hard for him to say. That much was clear.
"I don't," Theresa said abruptly. "I don't want to talk."
"Okay," he said, clearly confused, but she could tell he was relieved.
Which she found irksome. "Do you?" she asked all of a sudden.
He stared at her. "What?"
"Do you? Want to talk?"
"What do you mean?"
"I don't know." She bit gently on the coke straw. That was a lie. "Eddie... this summer... it's almost over, but..."
"I know," he said, cutting her off.
"Are you – I mean..."
He set his Whopper down and stared out the window, away from her. "I got what I wanted," he said with finality. There was a bit of ketchup on the side of his mouth. She watched it move, not saying anything. "Look, baby. I got you in my life. And I lost my dad, yeah, but I guess he's in a better place, and maybe I lost some real good friends, but wherever they are, they're gonna be okay." He looked back over at her. "They are." Eddie was trying to convince himself.
She held her coke off to the side. "I thought you said he wasn't one of those kids who-"
"Maybe I was wrong," he snapped. His voice dropped. "I hope I was wrong."
The air was turning cool again. She felt a chill setting in. Theresa slurped at the last of her soda and reached over to roll the window of the truck up.
Eddie noticed and reached to roll his side up as well. His tongue flicked out, catching the ketchup smear at the side of his mouth and swallowing quickly. All of the little things that Theresa noticed so strongly now. "I wouldn't of got through this without you," he said. He reached over to take her hand. "Thank you."
She didn't know what to say, whether she should laugh or cry now. So instead she squeezed his hand and released it to reach for another chicken tender to nibble on.
"Theresa... look at me."
She stared ahead. "What?"
"Me. Theresa." His voice sounded so lost. "I'm here."
"I know," she said, still staring out the window, across the street to the high school. The freshmen were registering today, hundreds of girls and boys flocking through the gates, and so many boys looked like Ryan to her. Small, scared, lost in the tough masks they put forth. She saw dozens of Ryans walking in to the high school for the first time, packs of Ryans, maybe Ryan was coming back to start again. But as each one turned around she could see that none of them were really him. Just millions of neglected, suspicious, sensitive tough guys. And maybe all of them would eventually be lost, like Ryan, but she couldn't bring herself to try to stop it. Not this time. Theresa couldn't live through that again, she couldn't bear it.
Soon school would start again, without Ryan, just like her colorless life went on now. Without Ryan.
After a long silence Eddie spoke up. "Let's get you home, baby."
"Sure," she said absently. "Sure."
She heard the sandwich wrapper crinkle in to a ball and from the corner of her eye she saw him toss it out the window. Ryan would never – she caught herself in the thought. Ryan would do a lot of other things. But he would never litter. He was too conscious of the landscape, too conscious of the people who would have to clean up behind him. A cigarette, sure, but never a whole sandwich wrapper.
She felt the tears starting to sting at her eyes. She wanted to jump from the car to pick up the wrapper and dispose of it properly, but Eddie had started the truck and it was moving and she would only hurt herself.
She wanted to hurt herself. She wanted to feel pain. To feel anything. She wanted to be punished for every awful thing she'd ever said or done to Ryan. She wanted to hurt everyone who had hurt him, directly or indirectly, including herself.
She hiccupped a little as Eddie steered the truck out of the parking lot. She didn't want Eddie to see her cry.
She wanted to hurt the way Ryan had to be hurting, all alone. With no brother, no girlfriend, no friends at all. No parents, no home. But she wanted to hurt alone, without him living in her thoughts all the time.
"No, really, you okay?" he asked again, this time in disbelief. Of course he didn't believe. How could she be okay? How could anyone believe she was okay? Nothing was okay now. The tears and hiccups burst forth, and Eddie pulled the car over and turned it off and held her and whispered to her and loved her. Eddie was there for her. And she curled up in his arms in the front seat of his truck and shook with sobs of release. Trying to release everything she could
It still wasn't enough.
No, it never would be.
"I heard."
Theresa looked up from her book at the kitchen table, annoyed at the disturbance. Eva was standing in the doorway, wringing her hands just a little.
"Heard what?" she asked, brushing her hair back from her face.
"That Ryan left."
Theresa felt her chin jut out just a bit. Her teeth ground together. "Yeah."
"I'm sorry, Therese-"
Theresa slammed her book shut with a loud clap. "I hope you are."
Eva blinked and took a step back. "What?"
"I hope you're happy, Mama."
"No, Theresa, I'm-" She was at a loss for words. "I'm not happy, you know that, I loved Ryan like my own son..."
"Then how come you never cared when you heard them yelling at his house?" she demanded. "How come you never asked his mama why she drank so much, how come you never told him he could come to us for help? How come you told me to mind my own business? How come you never asked what was going on over there? How come you turn away every time something is wrong, Mama? How come your world is perfect, when nobody else's is?"
"Calm down," Eva said in an even tone. "Theresa. You're upset, you're over-reacting..."
"I am not!" Theresa screamed, leaping to her feet. She felt empowered now, she felt like a woman. She felt like an adult. For everything she had been through now, she was an adult. Her childhood was long behind her. "You're blind! You don't see anything! You don't see what's going on in your own house, you don't see what's going on in your world, you just keep turning your head, hoping it'll go away if you don't look at it, but it doesn't, Mama! It doesn't!"
Arturo was there. Arturo was always there at the right time. This time he was behind Eva, looking back and forth between them, worried. "Hey – Tita – take it down." He hadn't called her Tita in years.
She threw the blue book on the floor, and it tumbled over, pages splayed across the linoleum. "Neither one of you! All that time! He wouldn't have left if we'd just... if we'd just..." She struggled for the words.
Arturo approached her, holding his hands out cautiously, defensively, to guard himself. "Tita. Theresa. It's over."
She pulled back. "We didn't," she insisted. She turned on Eva. "You. You didn't."
"Don't talk to Mama like that," Arturo snapped.
"Mama is blind, Turo," Theresa said again, the words flying from her mouth with scorn. "You know it. You know how much you get away with under her eyes." Now his own eyes narrowed, angry. She was walking a dangerous line. "She only sees what she wants to see."
Eva struggled for the words at last. "I think," she said slowly, "that you need to go sit down, and think about what you're saying."
"I have," Theresa growled. "I have thought about it, all the time I thought about it, and I know exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that I hate you."
Eva took a step backwards, the words hitting her physically.
"You don't mean that," Arturo said, too quickly.
"I do," Theresa said. "I do mean it, I do."
Eva took a deep breath. Theresa watched her expression. She almost expected her to do the unthinkable now, to throw her out, to put her on the streets like Ryan, and then maybe she would finally feel his pain and he would sense it and he would come back to her. But that wasn't what Eva did. Instead, she did what she always did and turned away, blind to what was in front of her.
Eva walked away.
Theresa watched her walk into her bedroom - and was she shaking? - and shut the door.
She went to retrieve her Harry Potter book from the floor as Arturo studied her from across the room.
"I hope you're going to apologize," he said.
"I have nothing to apologize for," she replied. "I only told the truth."
"But it was hateful."
"But it was the truth," Theresa repeated. "Maybe Mama doesn't like the truth. Maybe that's why every word she says is wrong. And maybe you don't like the truth, either."
"If you say so, Tita," Arturo said quietly. "If you say so."
She knew that he didn't think he was telling the truth. She could tell now.
She knew the difference between a lie and the truth now.
He walked away as well, and closed his door, shutting her in the living room alone.
Theresa was alone now.
She knew other things, too. She knew the difference between friendship and love. She'd had both. Now she wondered if she would ever have either.
Theresa grabbed her jacket from the coat rack that hung beside the door, and moved outside.
She was so much wiser now. She knew the difference between pretend and real, and the difference between children and adults.
Theresa also knew the difference between Ryan and Eddie. And the difference between herself and Lily. Maybe none of them could have what they wanted, not entirely, and now she knew that.
She also knew the difference between where she was, and wherever Ryan was.
She stared through the fence, locking her fingers in to it, at the abandoned home. His house was empty now, alone and deserted. He wasn't coming back. Someone else would move in soon, and maybe they would fix the place up, or maybe it would just get worse, but it wouldn't be Ryan's house anymore, ever again.
Something else, too. She knew the difference between feeling and not feeling.
Theresa knew a lot of things now, and she knew that Ryan Atwood was truly gone from her life, and it was time to move on.
Because she knew the difference between the dream and real life. Between where she wanted to be, and where she was.
She pulled her denim jacket tight around herself as she leaned against the fence that separated their houses. It was cold, so cold for August. It should still have been summer, it should still have been warm, but fall had come early this year. It was cold for California.
The last summer of Theresa's childhood was over, and soon, school would start back. Soon, she would find out what eleventh grade would be like without Ryan Atwood. Soon, the leaves would start to change, and the pumpkins would come out, and the seasons would change.
And soon, the winter would come, and with it the holidays and lights and memories that would only remind her of everything she'd lost that last summer.
But maybe by then, if she was lucky, she would finally be okay.
FIN.
A/N: Thanks to everyone who feedbacked along the way, I really appreciate your comments and the fact that you took the time to let me know your reactions. It's an enormous help as a writer, and I received some terrific and insightful feedback over the course of this story on –Kate Monster