The frosting shirt from your cake fight weeks earlier – just like the one you have in your closet. It was hanging inside his closet door, blue and crusty. It’s probably still in there.”
I smile, picturing Matt hanging his frosted shirt behind the door that night at the same time I was stuffing mine into its plastic bag in my room next door, totally freaked out about what had just happened.
“I didn’t think you recognized it,” I say. “That day we went through my closet before the trip. You wanted me to throw it out.”
“I didn’t recognize it that day. But once I saw the picture in your journal, it started to come together.

Dear Matt, We finally made it to California, and it’s just like you told me. I feel you here with us
– I think Frankie does, too.’ How dare you write about me in here! How dare you write to my brother!
You think just because you fooled around a few times he cared about you? You think he wouldn’t have ditched you the second he found some new girl at Cornell? Get over yourself!

Sorry.” I’m surprised and glad she doesn’t recognize it. I run my thumb back and forth over a crusty bit on the shoulder strap as a five-second version of the cake fight flashes behind my eyes like a movie stuck on quick search. Don’t cry over spilt frosting, Anna. “I just – I like this one.”
“What for?” she asks.
Just tell her.
“It’s from the – it’s just the–” I bite my lower lip.
Tell her.
“Anna? What’s wrong?”
Oh, it’s nothing, really. Just that it’s from the first time your brother kissed me and made me promise not to tell you. And I was in love with him forever, and he was supposed to tell you about it in California, and we were all going to live happily ever after. I still write him letters in the journal he gave me, which he doesn’t answer, since he’s dead and all. But other than that? Honestly, it’s nothing.
“Anna?” She watches me with her sideways face again.
“Huh? Oh, sorry. Nothing. I’m fine. I – I’ll get rid of it later.

How can you say it was all a lie?” I ask, just above a whisper. “Matt was my best friend. I loved him that way always. ‘We have to look out for her.’ That was the last thing he said to me alone. And then he died. What was I supposed to do, Frank? Tell me?

So just over a year ago, there was this guy. I really liked him. I mean really – since I was a kid.”
“Did Frankie know him?”
“The three of us were best friends. We basically grew up together.”
“Complicated.”
“Very. So anyway, last year on my birthday, he finally kissed me.” Sam stays quiet, focused on his feet taking off and landing against the sand. It feels strange to tell him about this for so many reasons, but the words are coming too fast for me to stop, even if I want to. “We started hanging out all the time –
even more than before. Every night. Only we didn’t know how to tell Frankie, because we didn’t want her to freak or feel left out or whatever.”
“Makes sense,” Sam says.
“He thought it would be better if he told her himself, so I promised him that I wouldn’t say anything. But before he could talk to her about it, he–” I almost choke on the word, holding my hand against Sam’s arm to stop our forward motion along the shore.
“What did he do?” Sam asks.
“He just – he – I’m sorry. Wait.” The words of this story have passed a thousand times from my hand to the pages of my journal, but never from my lips to the ears of another living soul. I take a few deep breaths before I’m able to meet Sam’s eyes and say it. “He died, Sam.

He was always worrying about me – even when we were kids. If I scraped my knee or fell off my bike, he was the first one to help me up and make sure Mom got a Band-Aid.”
“I remember.” I smile. “He was the quintessential big brother.”
“He was. But that’s just it – he’s not here to protect me anymore, Anna. And you don’t have to be, either. I know I let stuff get crazy. I didn’t mean to be like that – it just kind of happened. You couldn’t have changed that. I – it was something I had to go through myself.”
My throat tightens. “I felt like I let him down,” I say. “All that stuff with smoking and Johan and Jake – I didn’t take care of you. I couldn’t even keep that one simple promise.”
“Anna, my brother died. There’s no way you could protect me from that. It’s up to me, now. I let him down. I let me down.