by Laura Tims
I’m so tired. I remember how Grace almost plunged into the darkness, how the fear skinned the roof of my mouth. “At night it looks so much worse. You can’t see the bottom.”
He shrugs. “There’s nothing scarier than what you can’t see.”
We’re silent for a few minutes while the breeze throws itself over the edge. I kick a pebble, then another. The clatter’s so faint.
“I don’t like living here,” he says quietly.
“Stay after school,” I say. “Or hang out with Pres and me. We waste tons of time at his house.”
“You are the nicest person in the world,” he remarks, echoing what he said when we first met.
I wince. “You can only hang out with us if you don’t call me that.”
“You are the meanest girl in the world. The worst.”
“Levi, if you hate it here, can’t you go back to your mom’s?”
“Nuh-huh.” The silence draws itself out. “Not yet,” he adds unhelpfully. “Besides, I can’t leave before I’ve gotten to reap the full benefits of posing as the half brother of the deceased. I can wring at least two more casseroles out of this.”
“You’re not posing.”
He snorts. “I didn’t even know Adam. I suck for showing up and acting like my sadness is special because of genetics. I don’t have a right to that.”
“You don’t need a right to sadness,” I tell him. “Sadness just happens.”
“I never nailed down the trick of sadness. I’m the positive guy, you know? You can’t help people when you’re bummed out. People like Advice Levi best.”
“What other Levis are there?”
“I dunno. Bad Jokes Levi. Idealizes People Levi. Fucks Up Badly When Talking to Pretty Girls Levi.”
“That must be hard to write on name tags.”
“Bad Jokes Joy. Nice to meet you.”
I’m going to laugh and it reminds me of how much I shouldn’t be here.
“What other Joys are there?” he asks.
“There used to be only one Joy.” I look at the ground. “Now I don’t know what Joys there are.”
“Which Joy was that?”
“Protects Sister Joy,” I whisper like an idiot.
“She sounds cool. I look forward to meeting her.”
“She’s not around anymore.”
“Something happen with you and your sister?”
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“I bet there’s more to you than your sister,” he says.
“It’s like . . .” My head is fuzzy. “You know how you think there’s one thing you’re good at? Even if the rest of you sucks, it’s okay, because you’re good at that one thing? Until realize you aren’t. You never were. And there’s nothing left anymore to balance out all the bad stuff you do. There’s no point to you.”
“Whoa.” Levi looks straight at me. “There’s a point to you.”
“I don’t know what it is anymore.” Stop talking.
“Man,” he says. “Why does there need to be a point to anybody? People aren’t parts in a robot with little functions or whatever. You’re alive—who said that was contingent on being good at some big thing? Or maybe there’s a lot of little reasons for you being around, like you helping me with my dad, and like watering your houseplants.”
I scrape my hand across my eyes. “Advice Levi wasn’t gone for long.”
“That wasn’t Advice Levi, that was Ramble Levi. Normally I only bring him out for final papers.”
“He says some cool stuff, I guess.”
“I just consulted him and he says he wants to hang out with you more. Also, he thinks you’re cute.”
I blanch. “I said no flirting.”
“Sorry. I say this shit and I immediately get deeply embarrassed. Self-Loathing Levi is like, ’sup.”
“Bad Jokes Joy thinks you’re cute, too,” I say accidentally. “She’s the only one, though.”
He grins so big. “I don’t believe you. I’ll have to ask the other ones myself.”
I know who the other Joys are, and they’re not good. But he doesn’t see them.
“So, in the spirit of that,” he says, “do you want to go to the movies with me sometime this week?”
I freeze.
Grace wouldn’t be pissed if she knew how un-Adam he is. She probably doesn’t even know Adam had a half brother who goes to our school now. And I need to keep out of the house, so the blackmailer doesn’t—
I jolt. It’s the first time I’ve thought about the blackmailer since I’ve been with him.
He’s still waiting for my answer.
It’s selfish and wrong and fucked-up, but those are the other Joys. So I say yes.
Later that night, after Mom picks me up, I sit at the dining room table with her and Dad, the three of us eating carrots and chicken and mashed potatoes like nice normal people. I mash my carrots around in one of the heavy clay bowls that Grace and I made at arts and crafts camp one summer, years ago.
“Pass the carrots, Joy,” says Dad.
I pass the carrots.
“Pass the salt, Joy.”
I pass the salt. “Where’s Grace?”
“She’s hard at work on her independent project and couldn’t come down to dinner,” Mom says like it’s something to be proud of, that she’s not eating.
“What’s she working on tonight?” I ask.
They look at each other and shrug. “Research on the computer,” Mom says.
“I’m sure you know more than we do,” Dad says. “You girls talk about everything.”
One Christmas, when we were fourteen, Aunt Theresa told Mom: “Makes your job easier, having twins. My best friend has ’em. They practically raise each other.”
“Joy?” Mom says.
I jump. “What do you want? The pepper?”
“I just want to say how proud I am that you got yourself an American History tutor. I’m glad you’re getting back on track.”
“We always thought it’d be wonderful if you and Grace attended the same college,” Dad says. “You could room together.”
And get jobs at the same company, and have a joint wedding, and give birth in the same month, and live next door, and never find out who we are without each other. Except I’m already finding out who Joy Without Grace is. And she’s not good.
“I’m finished.”
If I eat too much, I regain the ability to think. I get up and go upstairs.
Every time I open my bedroom door, I half expect to have to fight a nightmare figure. But when I go in, the blackmailer isn’t standing there. Grace is.
“Hi,” she says nervously. “Sorry.”
She buffers sentences with apologies. Like Levi.
“Don’t be sorry.” I close the door slowly behind me. I don’t want her in here, when the blackmailer knows my address and there’s a knife under my pillow and notes under my mattress, but at the same time I do want her in here.
“What’s up? You okay? It’s been, like, a thousand years since I’ve seen you,” I say.
I’ve been avoiding her, unsure if I could hide the blackmail from her. But I think I can. I think I can hide more things from her than I ever knew I could.
“Of course I’m okay.” She tucks a pale blond strand of hair back. “I have to talk to you.”
I’m not going to screw this up. What was it Levi said about advice?
“I found this in your backpack.” She takes out one of my empty minibottles.
“Why were you in my backpack?”
“I needed a pen.” She sets the bottle on my desk, looks at me all solemn. “You’re drinking these at school.”
“It’s just to—” Stop thinking. “I needed—” Shit. “It was before he died.”
“So why’s it still in your backpack?”
“I never clean it out.” I pause. “And don’t you have pens in your room?”
“Joy.”
“I can’t believe you’re mothering me,” I burst out. “How are you the one m
othering me?”
“You can’t drink these at school. Or anywhere. You shouldn’t.”
Why can’t she be the mess for once?
“Bad things happen when you drink, Joy,” she says.
I go numb. She starts to hunt through my drawers, finds another bottle, pockets it. “Any more?”
“No,” I lie.
“All right. We cleared that up.” The awkwardness returns. “So, um. Where’d you go today?”
“Boy from class is tutoring me in American History,” I say tiredly.
“A boy? I could’ve tutored you in American History.” She tries to push her hair behind her ear again, forgetting she already did it. “What boy?”
“Just . . . some dude from class.”
“And you’re alone in his house.”
“His . . . his dad’s there. What’s with this third-degree questioning?”
“American History’s not that hard. You don’t need a tutor.” She scowls. “Also, stop spending all your time at Preston’s house. You’re always there now. Is he your boyfriend?”
“No.” I blink. “Pres isn’t like other guys.”
“Every guy is like other guys.”
“Grace, you know you can talk to me, right?” I say in a rush. “Should I ask how you feel, like, about him dying—”
“I told you, I don’t feel any way about it,” she snaps.
“That can’t be true.”
“Why are you always trying to force things out of me?” She locks her hands together behind her back. “Just let me be okay.”
“I know you’re okay, I just wanted you to know that you can talk—”
“There’s nothing to talk about! Do you want me to be messed up? So you don’t feel like you’re the only one?”
I wince.
“I’m sorry,” she says, squeezing her eyes shut. “I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No,” I say hopelessly. “You’re right. That’s exactly what I’m doing. Trying to get you to be the fucked-up one so I can be the one who’s not. I’m garbage.”
“No, no, Joy.” She does a motion like she’s gonna hug me, then lets her arms fall back. “You think you’re capable of all these bad things, but you’re not.”
“You’re not the one supposed to be comforting me.”
She sighs, exasperated. “We can’t both need comforting.”
“You’re the one who has a right to. And I’m taking it away. I wish I was like you.”
“Someone has to be me and someone has to be you,” she says strangely. Then she shakes her head. “You’re acting like it’s my crisis and it’s not. It’s yours.”
“Girls?”
We stiffen. Mom’s knocking.
“I just checked the mailbox and there was a letter for you, Joy,” she says excitedly through the door. “I think it’s a college recruitment newsletter.”
What would happen if Mom and Dad listened harder, walked in at the wrong moment, reached into the wrong pocket of my backpack? There’s a whole world they miss by inches every day.
A thick manila envelope zooms under my door. Grace has been getting them for months. It’s my first. They must collect student names by GPA.
“What are you talking about in here? Boys?” Mom only gets this girlish teasing voice when she finds Grace and me alone together. “Can I come in? I have a thing or two to say about boys.”
“Homework,” I manage.
“All righty then.” She’s not hurt. She’s always assumed that our world was whole and safe and she didn’t need to be a part of it. “Don’t stay up too late.”
Her footsteps disappear.
“College, huh,” Grace mumbles.
Safe topic. “You still getting all those emails from Brown?”
“I don’t think I’m going to go.”
“To Brown?”
“To college.”
I stop in the middle of opening my envelope. “Oh thank God, that’s the first joke you’ve made in ages.”
She shrugs. “Who’s joking?”
“College has been your main hobby since we were, like, five.” When I was thirteen, I had posters of boy bands. She had posters of Dartmouth.
“What’s in college? Guys? Parties? I don’t care about that stuff. I can learn on my own. I’m proving that now. And no college is going to want someone who took her junior year off.”
A new panic rises in me. “You can go back to school next semester.”
“There are still guys there. And all guys are like him.”
“No, Grace. You can’t throw away college—”
“You never cared about college, either.”
“So what? That’s me!”
“And it’s fine if you don’t have a future as long as I have one?”
Yes.
“Maybe this is your turn to be the good-grades twin. Is that why you got a tutor?” She chuckles. “Maybe I’ll turn my room into a mess so you’ll clean yours for once.”
“Nothing bothers you anymore,” I say.
“You get bothered for me.” She touches my nose, like I used to do to her when we were little. When we were little. I never knew a phrase could make me long for something so much.
“I was just worried about you drinking in school,” she says by the door, like the rest of our conversation didn’t happen. “Don’t do it again.”
And then she leaves.
I cry for a few minutes, mostly to get it out of the way. I used to cry loud, so Grace would come. Now I don’t want her to know I’m still stealing the sadness that should belong to her. I’m sucking the heart out of her and I don’t know how to stop.
I go to throw away the stupid college envelope, but then I notice there’s no return address. What college is it even from? Mom probably glanced at it, saw it was for me, and hoped. I dump the contents onto my desk.
A DVD, and a note.
Joy Morris—
I slam my hands over the note, covering the words. I need to focus on my sister, I can’t do this, I can’t—
I tear through the bottom drawer of my desk, find a full minibottle of Schnapps. I’m sorry, Grace. Levi’s dad flashes into my head, but I force him out and I down the bottle, swallow, swallow, good.
Then I call Preston.
“I can’t do this anymore.”
“What’s wrong? Did you get another note?”
“I give up.” My voice is strangled, wet. “I’m making things worse for you and Grace and I need to take myself away so you guys are safe from me, but I’m too scared to be alone. It’s the worst thing to hate how you are but not know how to change.”
“Joy—”
“I deserve all this, you know? I deserve all of this.”
“Shut up.”
I shut up because I don’t think he’s ever said that to someone before in his life.
“Shut up and stop being a jerk to yourself,” he says, all wavery. “I’m standing up for you.”
“I’m not a bully.”
“Right now you are.” He breathes out. “Read me what the note says, and I will help you figure it out.”
“I don’t want anyone to have to help me anymore—”
“Too bad! That’s life. People help people. Now tell me what it says.”
Grace doesn’t need help.
But instead of saying that, I smooth out the note, blink until my eyes are clear, and start to read.
TWELVE
July 29
Grace
THE RAZOR CLATTERS TO THE BATHROOM floor. Blood wells on Joy’s knee. She groans, balanced on the edge of the tub. “I never shave my knees. But apparently you have to be all slippery smooth like a dolphin if there’s even a chance of a chance that a boy might see you naked.”
There’s less of a chance than that. But Joy and I have spent the last two hours in the bathroom anyway, preparing to go to Adam’s house. I feel sanded down, purified. We change into the outfits we bought for this night: Leggings and a loose, sheer shirt for me. A summer dress for
Joy.
In her room, she throws herself on her bed, opens her laptop. “I was doing research. Listen to this. ‘Here’s how to ask for what you want in bed without bruising his ego . . . or anything else.’ That’s ominous.”
I crowd in beside her. “‘Top ten shortcuts to orgasm.’ Like keyboard shortcuts?”
“Command D.”
And then we’re both snorting. She collapses against her pillow, chest bouncing. I collapse with her. We’re sisters again. Better: friends.
“We’re not really going to have sex,” she admits.
“Obviously.” But I have this tiny thought: What if I do and she doesn’t? What if I finally pull ahead of her? I haven’t told her about the nude modeling.
If I can tap my heel against her bed thirteen times before she gets up, it’s my turn to lead her by the hand to wilder places.
She stares up at the smiley-face stickers she plastered all over her ceiling in third grade. It would never occur to her to scrape them off. “I’ve talked to Cassius, like, a grand total of never.”
He hasn’t shown me the painting yet—he says it’s not done. I’ll tell her when it’s done.
“I look at Cassius, and he’s wearing clothes, and then in my head, he stops wearing clothes. I thought it was a guy thing, thinking about naked people all the time.” She presses her palms to her eyelids, messing up the mascara I did for her.
“I mostly just think about me and Adam . . . talking.” I sink into the mattress.
She toys with her hair for a silent minute. “Are you in love with him?”
“No!” And yet. “I just . . . I want to, like, ask him if . . . It’s hard to explain.”
If I could take a damaged person and love him better, wouldn’t that fix me, too?
“Is it bad to want to have sex with someone and not be in love with him?” Joy asks the ceiling after a minute.
“It’s just sex.” It’s so easy to sound like I know what I’m talking about.
“Are you too young for this?”
“For what?”
“I don’t know. This. Alcohol. Boys. The sentence ‘It’s just sex.’”
“Joy. We’re the same age.”
“I’m eighteen minutes older,” she says, but she’s younger than me. She always has been. Just like she’s taller than me, even though we’re the same height.