by Sarah Gailey
“Uh, okay? How is this weird?” I ask, lying back on my pillows and trying, in some corner of my mind, to remember the last time I talked on the phone with someone for this long. Usually I just text with all the girls, but it’s kind of nice to be hearing Paulie’s voice. I can picture the way she chews on her thumb when she’s thinking about how to phrase something.
“I mean, it’s a little weird because she’s drinking wine by herself in the kitchen. But then, check this out, extra weird-factor: she was looking at pictures of me, but this other kid was Photoshopped into like … all of them.” She pauses for a moment. “Yeah, I know, it’s totally bananas, right? She was acting like I was supposed to know who this kid was, and I was like ‘I don’t get what you’re trying to do,’ and she got really upset. She acted like I was being mean or something, I don’t even know.” Paulie sighs into my ear.
“I don’t get it,” I say. “Who was the kid?”
“I don’t know, some little boy,” she says. “It was like she added him into my entire childhood, like she was writing fanfiction about me or something. How did she even find the time?”
I frown. “It wasn’t Drew?”
“Who?”
I feel hot and cold all at once. “Drew,” I repeat, sitting up slowly. “Your little brother, Andrew.”
“Ha,” she says, a humorless parody of a laugh. “Yeah, okay, sure.”
“What?”
“Did my mom put you up to this? And if so, can you please tell her it isn’t funny?”
“Why would you think that?” I ask. “I don’t talk to your mom. Paulie, are you feeling okay?” I’m about to ask her if I should come over, but then I remember Pop’s face, and I know that I have to be at home tonight. Even if he’s still mad at me … I shouldn’t leave.
“I’m fine,” she snaps. “I just don’t get what you and my mom are trying to do. She kept talking about ‘Drew’ too and I don’t get the joke, Alexis.”
“There’s no joke,” I say softly. I feel dizzy. “Andrew was your little brother’s name. He, um. He died a long time ago. When you were both little kids. I wouldn’t mess around with you like this. I’m telling the truth. I …” I hesitate. “I pinky-swear.”
She knows I wouldn’t swear to her on a joke. She has to know it. There’s a long pause on the line, long enough that I ask if she’s still there. “I’m here,” she whispers. “I have a little brother.” Her voice is strange, distant—it sounds like she’s underwater.
“Had a little brother,” I correct softly, because I think she needs it.
She’s silent for a long time again before she says, “What happened to him?”
I swallow hard and pull one of my pillows to my chest. “He drowned,” I whisper. “When you were seven and he was four. Your babysitter wasn’t watching him and he fell into your swimming pool. That’s why your dad had it filled in.”
There’s a loud, hard sniff. “He died,” she says evenly. “My little brother died.”
“Yeah,” I say, my eyes starting to burn.
“I can’t remember,” she says. “I try to remember and I can’t. Why can’t I remember?”
“You mean like … like he’s fading or something?” I say it knowing that’s not what she means, but hoping, desperately hoping, that it is.
“No,” she says, her voice cracking. “I mean I can’t remember him, I can’t—it’s like there’s a hole there, I can’t remember anything about him, I can’t—oh my god, my mom.”
“Paulie? Are you, I mean—obviously you’re not okay, but—”
“I have to go,” she says, sniffing again. She sounds far away. “I’m sorry, but I have to go, I have to talk to my mom, I have to look at those pictures—I don’t remember him, I have to remember him—”
“It’s okay, go, go, go,” I say. “I’ll see you tomorrow, I love you, call me if you need to, okay?”
“I will, love you bye,” she says in a rush, and then she hangs up and I’m sitting in my bedroom, alone in the silence.
How could she forget Drew? How could she forget him between the time we left school and the time she got home?
My phone lights up. It’s the group text. I check it, and even though the latest messages aren’t from her, Iris’s voice chimes in my memory. Have you noticed anything weird these last few days? Have you noticed anything missing?
Why, yes, I think to myself. I have noticed something missing.
I stare at my phone for half an hour or so, not doing anything, just waiting to see if Paulie texts me to say that it was all one big misunderstanding or some kind of very inappropriate joke. But she doesn’t—all the messages that come in are from Maryam and Marcelina, who are planning some kind of hair tutorial video for Maryam’s channel.
Eventually, I realize that Paulie is probably not going to be getting in touch with me tonight. She’s probably sitting with her mom and relearning everything she’s somehow suddenly forgotten about Drew. I take my phone off silent and put it on vibrate, tucking it into my bra so I’ll know if she tries to reach me. I could leave it behind, but I don’t want to miss a call from her. Not right now.
Then I walk out of my room and down the hall. I knock on Nico’s bedroom door. He opens it and stands in the doorway with his hair mussed and one headphone in, wearing pajama pants and a ratty T-shirt with a band I hate on the front. I grab him and hug him tight enough that he grabs me back.
“You okay?” he says, sounding less weirded out than he could.
“I’m okay,” I reply. “I just love you, is all.”
He pushes me away and looks into my face. “Are you crying?” His eyes are wide. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”
“Nothing happened, Nic,” I say, but I wipe my eyes on the hem of my shirt. “Sorry I got your shoulder all wet. When did you get tall enough for me to get your shoulder wet, anyway?”
He grins at me. “Like … a week ago? All my bones hurt.” He laughs, and I laugh, and then I hug him again and he hugs me back. I cry on my too-tall, growing-up-fast little brother until I stop being scared to let him go.
13.
ON THURSDAY MORNING I WAKE up to a dozen texts from Iris. I’m so sorry, can we talk, call me, call me, call me. A thousand sad and embarrassed emojis.
I don’t know how to feel about Iris talking to my dads. On the one hand, I know I shouldn’t be mad. She wasn’t trying to get me in trouble—she was just worried. I probably would have done the same thing, and hearing about how I made Dad and Pop worry by going AWOL makes me understand even better why she would be so stressed by my disappearance. Besides, I’m not even grounded. The only thing that happened was that my dads got upset and I had to apologize, and then I had to apologize again to Pop this morning and have a whole big talk with him. And I spent last night feeling guilty. But that’s about my thoughtlessness, which isn’t Iris’s fault. It’s nothing to be upset about, really. That’s obvious and reasonable.
But on the other hand … I know I’m supposed to be mad. I know that’s what a girl in my situation is expected to do. If I watched a movie where this exact situation played out, the girl playing my role would be outraged that her friend got her in trouble; she would make it a huge thing, force Iris to apologize, hold it over her friend’s head as relational leverage. You owe me, she’d say later, and she would use that for as long as she could.
I know that I’m supposed to be angry with Iris. I’m supposed to not speak with her, and I’m supposed to start a lot of turmoil about it. I have a free pass right now to be pissy and dramatic, and I know it’s what everyone expects from me. Not because of who I am and how I act, but because that’s how these situations go. She got me in trouble. I’m supposed to pitch a fit.
But I’m just not mad at her. I know that she did the right thing, even though it got me in trouble. I keep looking for any part of me that might be angry with her, but it’s not there. I completely understand where she was coming from, texting my dads, and even though I wish she hadn’t, I get it. And I be
t I would have done the same thing, if Roya or Paulie or Maryam or Marcelina or Iris had vanished without notice.
It would be easy to just feel what I feel and not be mad at her, except for the guilt. I feel so awful for making Dad and Pop worry, for making them think that I didn’t care about their feelings. I was an asshole to them—there’s no way around that. I didn’t consider them, the fact that they love me and notice me. I got so wrapped up in my own world that I basically forgot about them altogether—these men who devoted their lives to raising me and loving me. I forgot them. And I feel so awful about it, and it would be so much easier to blame it all on Iris instead of feeling awful.
But Dad and Pop raised me right, which means that I recognize the way I’m looking for an out, which means I can’t really take it. Right?
I’m all tangled up. I think about it all morning instead of texting Iris back. I zone out in more than one class, trying to figure out if I’m mad at her or not. I think about Paulie’s reaction to what happened, and it feels like an open door to doing the wrong thing. Why would Iris snitch on you?
Every time I replay last night’s conversation in my head, though, I stop thinking about Iris altogether. I think about Paulie every time I come back around to the talk we had—her forgetting her brother, her finding out that he was dead. Every time I think about her, I send her a check-in text. She doesn’t respond. She’s not in school and she’s not posting on social media. Between classes, I ask Maryam if she’s heard from Paulie, and she says no.
“I haven’t heard from her or Roya since yesterday,” she says, tucking her hair behind her ears. “But I’m sure they’re okay. We would have heard if they weren’t.”
I chew on my lip. “I don’t know if Paulie’s okay. Can I tell you what’s going on with her? I promise it isn’t gossip.”
Maryam purses her lips for a second. She doesn’t listen to gossip. It’s something that’s important to her—a principle she stands by, no matter how hard it can be to navigate high school without tuning in to rumors. Ultimately, though, she trusts me enough to nod.
I tell her about Paulie’s lost memories of Drew. Her eyes go wide.
“That’s messed up,” she says softly. I nod, biting my lower lip. She pokes my chin with a manicured finger. “Stop it.” I stop biting my lip, then immediately start again. Maryam rolls her eyes and pulls a dark red tube out of her purse. She holds my chin while she applies the contents to my lips with an expert hand. “If you don’t leave it alone now, you’ll have lip stain on your teeth all day,” she mutters.
“Are we sure Paulie’s even in school?” I ask, trying not to let my lips touch while the stain sets. She shakes her head.
“I’m not sure who’s here right now,” she says. “That cop from the cafeteria has been pulling people out of my classes all day.”
“What? Shit.” I didn’t notice it happening. I was too busy trying to figure out what my stupid feelings are, when I should have been paying attention to the goddamn police investigation. “Shit. Is Roya here today? You guys have bio together, right?” I ask.
“She’s not here,” she says, laying a gentle, magic-warm hand on my arm. “We usually have bio, but she’s out sick or something. Don’t worry about her.”
“I’m not worried about her,” I say, too fast. Mercifully, she ignores me. She keeps her hand on my arm, though, sending a wave of calm through me.
“Have you talked to Marcelina?”
My stomach twists with guilt. “Not for a few days,” I say, and Maryam frowns at me.
“Are you guys fighting?”
“No,” I answer truthfully. “I guess I’ve just been really distracted, and I haven’t seen her since lunch the other day.”
“When Iris went with the cop?”
“Yeah. That cop. I don’t know, Maryam.” The bell rings, but we both ignore it. All around us, people are hurrying, scooping up backpacks and shoving past each other to get into classrooms, but Maryam is frowning at me, so I don’t budge. It’s her “I don’t know how to say a thing but I want to say it but what if you get mad at me for saying it” frown. It’s a frown I’ve been seeing from her a lot lately.
“What’s up?” I ask gently.
“You should talk to Marcelina,” she says, her eyes sliding away from mine. “I think she needs you right now.”
“Why?” I ask, but Maryam shakes her head.
“She’s having a hard time,” she says. “But it’s not my news to share.”
We hug each other tighter than usual and then head off to class. While the teacher hands out the day’s worksheets, I sneak my phone under my desk and text Iris.
Meet you after school? Soccer field?
Her response is so immediate that I wonder if maybe she had her own phone under her desk—if she was about to text me again.
Yes yes yes.
I also text Marcelina, asking if she wants to hang out soon, telling her that I miss her face. She doesn’t reply, because Marcelina never has her phone out during class. I still wait, though. I wait, and I fidget, and I try not to bite my lip.
At the end of the class, I turn in a blank worksheet. I don’t even put my name on it. Roya’s not here. Paulie’s not here. Something’s going on with Marcelina. It feels like things are falling apart.
I just don’t know why.
* * *
I slip out of fourth period five minutes early by telling the teacher I need to use the restroom. She waves me off without a hall pass. I wait outside of Marcelina’s class and catch her as she’s walking out the door.
“Hey, are you okay?” I wince even as I’m saying it, but then again, Marcelina’s never been one for subtlety.
“No. Definitely not,” she replies. See what I mean?
“What’s up?” We walk toward the senior lockers and I grab her textbooks so she can use both hands to open her sticky combination lock. She bangs on it twice with her fist before it pops open.
“I’m all fucked up, Alexis.” Her voice is calm, but one of her eyes is twitching. She’s hardly wearing any eyeliner at all, and she’s only got four earrings in each ear. She looks like half of a Marcelina. “Like, really fucked up.”
“What is it?” I hand her books over and she shoves them ungently into her locker. She braces herself against the shelves.
“I wasn’t sure until this morning, but now I’ve definitely got it figured out.” She looks up at me and I notice the heavy layer of concealer under her eyes. The thick makeup has settled into creases, making her look older than she is. “I can’t forget anything.”
“What?” I feel like I’ve misheard or misunderstood, like I missed a stair. “What does that mean?”
“It means,” she says slowly, “I can’t forget anything. I remember everything that’s happened to me in the last …” She counts on her fingers. “Five days.”
“I don’t get it,” I say. I move out of the way of her locker-neighbor. Marcelina slams her own locker door shut and spins the lock, and we start toward the cafeteria. She’s walking fast, not looking at anyone we pass. Her eyes stay on the linoleum like she’s watching for landmines.
“Normally you forget like … half the things that happen in a day, right?” she says, her voice low and urgent. I shrug. I guess I know what she means, although I never really thought of it that way before. “Well, I can remember it all. In like … really intense detail. Everything. Even my dreams, Lex. Not just the highlights, like when you describe a dream to someone and you jump between the good parts. I can remember every moment of every dream I’ve had in the past week. Every feeling. Every person who appeared in the fucked-up situations my brain invents while I’m asleep.” She shakes her head hard. “All of it. I can remember all of it.”
“Your—wow,” I say. I think back over my own past five nights with a growing sense of unease. I haven’t had a single dream. Not even the kind that I don’t really remember but that leaves a lingering cloud of emotion for me to wake up to—not even that. “That sounds intense.”
“Iris thinks it’s the spell,” she mutters. “She said that ‘every action we take has a reaction, like ripples in a pond,’ and that she can ‘feel the ripples running back along the threads of the spell every time we sever one.’ ” She says it all in a perfect imitation of Iris’s voice. The pitch and cadence are unmistakable: it’s Iris’s voice coming out of Marcelina’s mouth.
It’s eerie.
“Whoa,” I whisper. “That was … interesting.”
“I know,” she says in her normal voice. “I guess when you can remember every single inflection of how someone talks, it gets easier to do impressions.”
I loop an arm around her shoulder. “I’ll talk to Iris, okay?” I tell her. I try to imagine what Maryam or Roya would say to make her feel better. Not to make her feel like things are solved, but to make her feel better about the fact that everything is messed up. “We’ll figure it out.”
“She’s already trying,” Marcelina answers, but her voice is a little softer. Her face is a little calmer. She bumps her hip into mine and almost smiles. “You don’t have to fix it, you know. We’re already working together. All of us.”
Oh, I think. They’ve been talking about it. Without me. I try to push aside the pang of hurt. Of course they talk without me sometimes, that’s what people do. They talk to each other without me sometimes. That’s normal. It doesn’t mean that they’re excluding me. Be normal about this, I scold myself.
“I know,” I lie, then redirect. “Are you okay?”
“No. I’m freaked out and I didn’t sleep last night because I didn’t want to remember my dreams all day. But … we’ll figure it out,” she says, echoing me in an exact imitation of my voice.
“Okay, but you can’t do that voice thing. I can only handle so much weirdness in a day,” I say, and she lets out a small laugh.
“That’s the least-weird part of this whole thing,” she says. “You’re just gonna have to deal with it.”