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He smelled like death when she first saw him. Metallic blood and the rot of sewage, a stench that clung to his skin as though it had soaked through to the bone. The hospital had scrubbed him clean twice already, the nurse told her mother in hushed tones, but the smell lingered. It would fade with time, they said. Everything would fade with time.
But he was here. Alive. There could be no doubt it was him, even with the overgrown hair and hollowness in his cheeks that made him look older than he was.
Lilly stood in the doorway of his room, her fingers clutching the strap of her canvas bag, and tried to remember how to breathe. Matty Clements lay propped against thin pillows, his head wrapped in gauze that was already yellowing at the edges, his left leg suspended in a cast that looked too heavy for his small frame. His eyes were closed, his chest rising and falling in the slow rhythm of sleep or exhaustion, she couldn't tell which. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting everything in a sickly pale glow.
She hadn't been sure if she should come. They hadn't exactly been close, not in the way that mattered. They were both outcasts, yes, but being thrown together by circumstance wasn't the same as friendship. And then there was New Year's Eve. The water tower. The fireworks.
Three days later, he'd vanished. Just gone. His mother had come to school, frantic and pale, asking if anyone had seen him. No one had. The police found his coat near the highway, and everyone assumed he'd run away.
But then they found him in May, crumpled near a storm drain with his skull cracked open and his leg twisted at an angle that made grown men look away. He should have been dead. The doctors said as much, though not to his face. Injuries like that killed in minutes, maybe an hour if you were lucky. The paramedics estimated he'd been lying there at least two days before a pair of teenagers wandering near the drains stumbled across him.
Divine intervention, some whispered. A miracle. Lilly's mother and the other practical types shook their heads and talked instead about resilient young bodies, about how kids could survive things that would kill an adult outright.
Lilly knew better, but she told herself she was doing the right thing by not correcting them.
Matty stirred, his eyelids fluttering open. For a moment, he stared at the ceiling, disoriented, and then his gaze found her. His expression shifted, surprise, then recognition, then relief so profound it made her chest ache.
"Lilly?"
His voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper. She managed a smile and stepped into the room.
"Hey, Matty."
He tried to sit up straighter and winced. She moved closer, setting her bag on the chair beside his bed. Up close, the smell was stronger, but she didn't let herself flinch.
"I wasn't sure if you'd want to see me," she said quietly.
His brow furrowed. "Why wouldn't I?"
Because I pushed you away. Because you left and then this happened and maybe if I hadn't—
"I don't know," she said instead. "I just wasn't sure."
He looked at her for a long moment, and she wondered what he remembered. Did he recall the water tower, the almost-kiss, the way she'd frozen? Did he blame her?
But all he said was, "I'm glad you're here."
Relief washed over her, warm and unexpected. She sat down in the chair and pulled a comic book from her bag— The Flash, one of his favorites. "Thought you might be bored."
His face lit up, and for the first time since she'd arrived, he looked like himself. "You brought comics?"
"Just a couple. I can bring more tomorrow if you want."
"Tomorrow?"
"If that's okay."
He nodded, and the corner of his mouth lifted in a tired smile. "Yeah. That'd be nice."
The awkwardness between them faded gradually, worn away by routine. Lilly came to the hospital every day that summer, often before his own parents arrived and usually staying long after they left. His mother visited in the afternoons, bringing nervousness and forced cheer. His father came once, stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed, and didn't return. Lilly filled the spaces they left empty.
She brought him comics — Batman and The Flash and strange science fiction titles she found at the back of the drugstore. She brought him books from the library, picked half at random because she didn't know what he liked to read and discovered he didn't much care as long as the pages turned. Her mother sent baked goods, still warm in their wax paper wrappings, and Matty ate them with an appetite that grew stronger each week. The first time he asked for seconds, Lilly felt an absurd surge of pride despite the doctors' warnings about sugar.
"They're trying to keep me from anything good," he complained one afternoon, crumbs dotting the blanket across his lap.
"They're trying to keep you alive," Lilly replied, but she slipped him a paper bag the next day anyway. Inside were two dozen lollipops —cherry, grape, lime — and Matty's face split into a grin.
"You're the best."
She shrugged, but warmth bloomed in her chest. He always had one in his mouth after that, the stick poking out from between his lips as he read or dozed or stared out the window.
The cast on his leg became a canvas. Lilly filled it with doodles during the long stretches of silence: tiny turtles marching in a line, stars scattered across the plaster, snippets of dialogue from the comics they read together. Matty watched her work, his head tilted to the side, and sometimes he'd point to an empty spot and say, "Put a rocket ship there," or "Draw a dinosaur eating a car." She obliged every time, and the cast became a patchwork of their shared world, something bright against the sterile white of the hospital room.
They didn't talk much about what had happened. Matty's memory was fractured, pieces missing or blurred beyond recognition. He remembered deciding to leave, remembered climbing into a stranger's car somewhere outside of town. After that, nothing. Or almost nothing—sometimes he'd wake in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, his hands clutching the sheets. He told her about the dreams once, haltingly. Red lights. A feeling of falling. Darkness so complete it pressed against his skin.
"The doctors said it's normal," Lilly told him, keeping her voice steady. "Head injuries mess with your memory. It'll get better."
He nodded, wanting to believe her. "Yeah. Probably."
She hated lying to him. But the alternative was worse.
"I think I must've decided to come back," Matty said one afternoon, his gaze distant. "Maybe I got scared or changed my mind. And then I fell somewhere, hit my head..." He trailed off, his fingers tracing the edge of his cast. "That makes sense, right?"
"Yeah," Lilly said softly. "That makes sense."
He looked at her then, his brown eyes searching her face for confirmation, for certainty. She held his gaze and didn't waver. After a moment, he nodded and let it go. He didn't press. The gaps in his memory frightened him, she could tell, but not enough to dig deeper. Maybe some part of him didn't want to know.
The summer unfolded in increments. Matty learned to sit up without wincing, then to stand with the help of crutches, his knuckles white as he gripped the handles. Lilly stayed close, her hand hovering near his elbow in case he stumbled. He never did, but she kept it there anyway.
The schoolwork surprised her. After everything he'd been through, the idea of catching up on five months of missed classes seemed absurd, but Matty insisted. He copied her notes in careful handwriting, worked through math problems with a concentration that furrowed his brow, read the assigned books even though the school year was over and none of it mattered anymore. Lilly helped him, their heads bent close over textbooks in the afternoon light, and found a strange comfort in the ordinariness of it.
There were harder moments, too. Days when Matty was too tired to sit up, when his leg throbbed and the pain medication left him groggy and irritable. Days when he stared at the wall and didn't speak, and Lilly would sit by his bed and read aloud until he fell asleep.
Sometimes the silence stretched between them in a different way, heavy with things neither of them would say. New Year's Eve lingered in the space between words, unacknowledged but impossible to ignore. Lilly thought about it more than she wanted to— the way he'd looked at her on the water tower, hopeful and nervous, the way she'd flinched. She wondered if he thought about it, too. She wondered if he blamed her.
But he never brought it up, and neither did she.
The turtle bracelet still hung around her wrist, hidden beneath her sleeve. Matty noticed it once, his fingers reaching out to touch the silver before pulling back.
"That's pretty," he said.
"Thanks."
He tilted his head, his brow furrowing slightly, as though trying to recall where he'd seen it before. But the memory didn't surface, and he let it go.
By late July, the doctors cleared him for discharge. His leg had healed enough to bear weight, though he still limped, and the scar on his head had faded to a pale line beneath his hair. He looked thinner than he had before, his frame more fragile, but he was alive. He was whole, or close enough.
Lilly helped him gather his things on the last day—a duffel bag of clothes his mother had brought, the stack of comics they'd accumulated, a tin of cookies that had gone stale. The cast had been cut away the week before, and Matty had stared at the drawings covering it with something like regret.
"Wish I could've kept it," he said.
"I can draw on your shoe instead," Lilly offered, and he laughed.
They walked out of the hospital together, Matty leaning lightly on a cane the doctors had insisted he use. The late afternoon sun was warm on their faces, the air thick with the smell of cut grass and summer heat. It felt surreal, stepping back into the world after so many weeks confined to that small room.
"What now?" Matty asked.
Lilly glanced at him. "What do you mean?"
"I don't know. Feels like I should do... something. Say something."
She thought about it. "You don't have to."
He nodded slowly, his gaze fixed on the pavement ahead. "Okay."
They spent the rest of August the way they'd spent the summer — together. Matty's mother fussed over him constantly, her anxiety manifesting in casseroles and phone calls to the doctor, but his father had grown colder, more distant. But he didn't beat Matty anymore and stayed sober, at least for now, and that was more than enough for Matty.
They went to the park on good days, spreading a blanket under the oak trees and reading comics until the sun dipped low. Matty's limp was less pronounced now, though he still favored his left leg. He didn't talk about the nightmares anymore, but she saw the shadows under his eyes and knew they hadn't stopped. He kept a lollipop in his pocket at all times, reaching for it whenever his hands started to shake.
One evening in late August, they sat by the river, their shoes kicked off and their feet dangling in the cool water. The sky was streaked with orange and pink, the last light of day clinging to the horizon. Matty leaned back on his hands, his head tilted toward the sky, and for the first time in months, he looked at peace.
"I'm glad it was you," he said quietly.
Lilly glanced at him. "What?"
"This summer. I'm glad it was you who came to see me. I don't think I could've done it without you."
She looked down at the water, watching the way it rippled around her ankles. "You would've been fine."
"Maybe. But I'm still glad."
He turned to her then, and his smile was so open, so unguarded, that it made her chest ache. He looked happy. He looked whole. She wanted to believe it.
She reached over and took his hand. His fingers were warm, slightly sticky from the lollipop, and they curled around hers without hesitation.
She thought about the sewers.
She would never tell him. She couldn't. He deserved this — this peace, this lightness, this version of the story where he'd simply fallen and survived. She would never let him remember those months in the dark, never let him know about the horror his mind had mercifully locked away.
Lilly looked at him and made a silent promise. Whatever it took, whatever she had to carry, she would keep him safe from the truth.
She didn't smile as easily as he did anymore. She wasn't sure she ever would again. But that was fine. She could carry the weight for both of them.
Matty squeezed her hand, and she squeezed back.
"Thanks, Lilly," he said softly.
"Anytime," she replied, and she meant it.