by Linda Gerber
Mom tugs on my arm. “Mall’s closing in five minutes,” she says. “We’d better hurry if we’re going to get that lens kit.”
“I want to go home.”
“But I thought—”
“I want to go now.”
Outside it has started to rain. Mom covers her head with one Jo-Ann bag as we walk to the car and offers another to me, but I don’t take it. I don’t care if I get soaking wet. I don’t care about anything.
We don’t talk as we get into the car. Mom tries, but I couldn’t speak even if I wanted to. How could I have been so stupid, thinking last night’s make-out meant anything to Nick? He probably knew I’d be an easy target. Naive, inexperienced.
Tears blur my vision and I blink them away. It hurts. It hurts so bad. I drive toward home on autopilot. At the intersection, I pull into the left-hand lane. I watch the light and the oncoming traffic. When it’s clear I start the turn.
Then I see the headlights racing toward us.
Mom screams.
And everything goes black.
11
The floor tilted as I stumbled to the bathroom. I barely made it to the toilet and lifted the lid before my stomach heaved. Sweat prickled under my arms and down the length of my spine. I doubled over and threw up again.
Dry heaves gave way to sobs that tore through my chest with a pain I hadn’t felt since the accident. I couldn’t make them stop. Clothes and all, I climbed into the shower and turned on the spigot. Leaning my forehead against the tiles, I sobbed and hiccuped and let the water wash over me until it ran cold.
Nothing could erase the image of Mom’s limp hand on mine. My stomach heaved again, but there was nothing left for me to throw up.
I peeled off my wet clothes, leaving them in a soggy heap on the floor of my bathroom. Even though it was barely past noon, I pulled on my pajamas without even drying myself off completely. Shivering, I hugged my arms, wishing I could make it all go away.
Then my eyes dropped to the vanity drawer. I yanked it open and rummaged through makeup brushes, powder, and tubes of mascara to find the little amber prescription bottle I tossed in there when I got back from the hospital. There were still about a dozen Vicodin left—more than enough to make me go numb. I scooped up the bottle and carried it into my room.
Dropping onto the desk chair, I wrestled with the bottle. Since I couldn’t stop myself from shivering, I wasn’t having much luck with the childproof lid. Finally, I managed to get it open, but spilled the pills across the desk in the process. I grabbed two of them—twice my prescribed dosage—and stuck them on the back of my tongue. They trailed down my throat like dual hot pebbles when I swallowed. I left the rest of the pills where they lay and crawled into bed, burrowed under the blankets, and tried to forget.
Michelle came over around six. When I didn’t get up to answer the door, she snuck around the side of the house and tapped on my bedroom window. I squinted out of my blanket cocoon to see her, hands cupped around her eyes, peering into my room. She saw me and tapped again.
“Let me in,” she called.
My head felt like it was filled with helium as I stood up. I wobbled to the window and failed twice before I was able to undo the latch and slide the sash up to let her crawl through.
She didn’t even wait until she was all the way inside before she started with the questions. “What’s going on? I heard you passed out this morning in school. Are you okay? Why didn’t you text me?”
I sank back onto my mattress. “S’no bigdeal.” I slurred. “Ahmfine.”
“Really.” She gave me the up and down. “You look like hell.”
I hunched my shoulders. It took a lot more effort than it should have.
She dropped onto Kyra’s bed and drew up her feet so that she was sitting cross-legged. Just like Kyra used to do. “So what happened in lang? Are you sick? Was it a seizure?”
I sagged onto the pillows. “It was nothing.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” she persisted. “I had to hear about it from Melody Newey in the hall.”
“Sorry . . .”
“Well, just don’t let it happen again.” She laughed and moved on to the next subject, running through the list of the day, checking off each event. “And then guess who I saw when I was at the mall? That cute music-store guy. He told me to tell you hi.”
I immediately pictured Jake, his smiling green eyes, his hand as it reached out for mine. What would he think if he knew about me? What would he say if he saw me now?
“Lynnie? Hello!” Michelle snapped her fingers. “Are you all right?” Her voice sounded far away. “I asked you if you were going to—”
And then she stopped and her eyes went to the desk. I followed her gaze even though I already knew what I would see—the bottle tipped on its side, pills scattered around it like a spotted halo. She stood slowly and walked over to examine them closer. “What’s this?”
As much as I wanted to offer her an explanation, my head was too fuzzy to come up with a plausible lie and I knew she wouldn’t want to know the truth.
“What is this, Lynnie?” Michelle said again. She picked up one of the pills like it was a rat dropping and examined the imprinted code.
“I don’t feel well,” I said simply.
“What’s going on?”
Too much. I wouldn’t know where to begin. I shook my head.
“Help me understand. Because I have to tell you, this doesn’t look good.”
“They’re prescription.”
“I can see that. But why? What’s wrong?”
“My . . . back. The accident.”
She sat on the bed next to me. “Lynnie, you were done with physical therapy weeks ago.” Her voice took on that explaining-something-to-a-small-child tone. “Shouldn’t you be off of them by now? Pain pills can become addictive.”
“Ahmfine.”
“Fine? You’re so stoned you can’t even talk straight. Is that what was wrong with you at the mall the other night? And in class this morning?”
“I’m . . . not stoned.”
She shook her head. “Have you seen yourself? You’re seriously wasted.”
Sure, that’s what it must look like through her eyes. My hair hung in a stringy, tangled mess—a result of not drying it before I climbed into bed. I could barely sit up straight. My mascara was probably smudged all over. And I guessed from the way they stung that my eyes were seriously bloodshot. But I wasn’t wasted in the classical sense. All I needed was to sleep it off. That’s all I wanted to do. I lay back down on my pillow again and let my eyes drift shut.
“That’s it.” I felt the mattress shift as she stood up. “These things are gone.” I could hear her sweeping the pills across the desk. Heard her footsteps thud toward the bathroom. Heard the toilet flush.
I pried one eye open. “Michelle . . .”
She was by the bed then, pulling back the covers, yanking on my arms. “C’mon. In the shower. We need to get you sobered up.”
I wrenched my arm out of her grasp with more force than I had intended and she stumbled backward a couple of steps. The wounded look on her face twisted like a knife in my gut. “I . . . can do it,” I said. “Thanks.”
She managed to rearrange her expression so that it was almost a smile. “I’ll make you something to eat.”
“Thanks,” I murmured again. Eating was the last thing I wanted to do, but I wasn’t going to argue with her if it would keep her busy. She wouldn’t leave the room until I got up, though, so I pushed off the bed and staggered into the bathroom.
I took a real shower this time, scrubbing my hair and scouring my skin with the loofah until it was angry and red. When I was dressed, I padded out into the kitchen, where Michelle had made scrambled eggs and toast.
“I didn’t know what you could eat, but I figured you should have some protein in you,” she said.
“This is great, thank you.” I sat at the table and she put a plate of food in front of me. The smell of the eggs made my s
tomach sour.
Michelle scraped a chair next to mine and sat. “Is this because your dad is gone so much?” she asked.
My mouth fell open and I stared at her. “Those pills have nothing to do with my dad.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say . . .” She took a deep breath and started again. “I’m just looking for a way to understand. I mean, if it’s hard being alone, you could always come hang out at my house when he’s gone. . . .”
I speared a bite of eggs angrily and choked them down to keep from saying anything. She had no idea how wrong she was.
“You remember my aunt Tricia?” she said. “The chiropractor? She works with a lot of whiplash patients and she said it’s really common to get hooked on pain medication, so you shouldn’t feel too bad. The important thing is to get off of them.”
I set my fork down with a clatter. “I am not hooked.”
“Good.” She smiled at me like I was a three-year-old. “That’ll make it easier to give them up.”
I pushed back from the table. “Wow.”
“I just want to help,” she said.
“Then leave,” I snapped, “because I really don’t need this right now.”
She looked at me like I’d just smacked her across the face and I wished I could reel my words back in. I sighed and reached for her. “Michelle, I’m sorry. I’ve just had a really bad—”
“I should go.” She pushed away and stomped from the room. The front door slammed and I felt the concussion deep in my gut.
Dad got home around eleven. By then I had cleaned up the wet clothes in the bathroom, made my bed, and gotten dressed. I had just about finished my homework when I heard the garage door opener crank into life. I quickly checked my room to make sure nothing was out of place. All I had left to do was to sit at my desk with my books appropriately spread about and wait.
I heard the familiar sound of him filling the house with his presence again—his keys jangling into the Italian ceramic bowl on the end of the counter, his briefcase hitting the kitchen floor with a thunk, the creak of the closet door where he would be hanging up his suit coat, his footsteps in the hall coming toward my room.
He swung open the door and I expected his usual, “Hey, Ash. I’m home.” Instead he said, “What’s this about you skipping school?”
So instead of my usual, “Welcome back,” I said, “Huh?”
He took a couple more steps into my room. “School, Ashlyn. I got a call from Mrs. Briggs. She said she saw you coming home midday today, so I checked my voice mail and I had a message from the school and from your coach saying the same thing. Are you sick?”
Perfect. Leave it to Mrs. Briggs. “Oh, yeah. I—”
“So it’s true?”
My voice shrank. “I wasn’t feeling good.”
“You weren’t feeling well.”
“That either.”
He didn’t even smile. “You need to call me if you’re going to miss school. I shouldn’t be hearing about it secondhand.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“I need to be able to count on you, Ashlyn,” he said. “With your mom gone . . .” He let the lecture die there. We both knew it by heart. With Mom gone, I needed to be dependable. Pitch in. Help out. And I did try. I took over the jobs Mom always did, like pay all the bills and organize his travel. I made sure the checkbook was balanced and there was food in the fridge. I did everything I could do so that my dad wouldn’t have to worry—which was one reason I didn’t demand right then that he explain to me why he had never told me where Kyra was.
“I’ll need a note tomorrow,” I said softly, and we let it go at that.
The sky outside my window was still on the purple side of pink when I got up the next morning. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, not knowing if Michelle would even show up for our morning run. I had sent her a text to apologize for the day before, but she never responded.
I knew I probably wouldn’t be much good to her as a running partner anyway; I was still pretty shaken about the phone call with Kyra. Still, I hoped she would want to stick with the routine. There were so few things left I could count on; I didn’t want to lose this, too.
I waited out front, stretching and warming up, for at least fifteen minutes past our appointed meeting time, but she didn’t show, so I set off on my own. The first couple of blocks weren’t that bad since we never talked at the beginning of the run anyway, but by about half a mile in I realized that it wasn’t so much the running I had wanted to hang on to; it was the conversation. Already I missed it. I missed Michelle. But I missed a lot of other things in my life, too, and moping about them was not going to bring them back.
My feet hit the pavement in a quicker cadence. So I was on my own; that was nothing new. By now I should be used to it.
I admit I was feeling rather sorry for myself—which, I can tell you from experience, is never a good thing. All it does is make you more miserable than you already are. It’s just that I couldn’t help but feel abandoned. I didn’t have anyone to turn to who really understood what I was going through. Not just that morning, but as a running theme for my life. My mom was gone. My sister had left and wouldn’t even speak to me. From the time I was a little kid, none of my friends stuck around once they discovered what a freak I was. Except Michelle, and now she was gone, too.
I was so absorbed in my self-pity that I didn’t realize how far I’d run until I passed the front gates to the Bristol Commons subdivision, which was well past our halfway point. I had just turned around to go back when I heard a woman’s voice yell, “No! Bad! Get back here!”
If that wasn’t surprising enough, all of a sudden there was a little dog practically under my feet. It was one of those little yip-yip things that looked like a hairy rat—a miniature ball of energy and indignation—yapping and nipping at my ankles. I danced to the side to keep from tripping over it.
The woman raced over and scooped up the dog. “Bad boy, Brutus!” And then to me, “I’m so sorry about that.”
Brutus? No wonder the little rat was so indignant. He trembled in her arms, staring me down from underneath his stringy hair. “It’s okay,” I said. “No harm do—”
“Excuse me,” she interrupted, “but don’t I know you?”
I squinted at her, but she was backlit by the morning sun so I couldn’t really see much beyond her hair rollers and her fuzzy robe. “I don’t think—”
“Yes.” She took a step closer and Brutus growled. “I know you; you’re Ben and Margaret’s girl.”
My heart clenched at the mention of my mom’s name. “I’m sorry, I—”
She gestured to herself with her free hand. “Sister Eaton. From church. You probably don’t recognize me without my makeup.” She batted her eyelashes and laughed . . . until she remembered, and then her face went white. “I’m . . . uh . . . I’m so sorry about your mother.”
An icy knife slashed through my chest. This is where I should have murmured my polite thank you and been on my way, but instead I said flatly, “You don’t know me.”
Her plucked brows creased and she coughed. “Well, it has been a while. Maybe you don’t remember. . . .”
But I did remember her. I remembered every long Sunday morning going to church with my mother while Sister Eaton and the other ladies from my mother’s prayer group whispered behind their hands, casting scandalized looks in our direction. I remembered how they gathered forces when Janelle’s mom told everyone how Kyra had claimed to see her husband’s heart attack before it happened. I remembered how she was the one who convinced my mother that trance writers were like mediums and received messages from dead people. Mediums, she said, were of the devil. Good little girls did not commune with dead people. I remembered her and another of the ladies stopping by our house to lecture my mother when she finally gave up and stopped dragging us to church.
Yes, I knew Sister Eaton. But that didn’t mean she knew me. Not by a long shot.
“Oh. Well . . .” She fidgeted w
ith Brutus’s collar, obviously unsure of what to say. “It was nice to see you again.”
“I have to go,” I said, and turned away.
“Tell your father I said hello,” she called after me.
I just ran. I ran until my thighs ached and my lungs grew hot and tight. It was no use. I could try to forget who I was, but I would never outrun it.
12
Dad was still asleep when I got home. His snores rumbled down the hall in a steady rhythm. I considered waking him—he had a flight at ten—but I didn’t want a repeat of the tension from the night before. Besides, he didn’t have to be to the airport for another couple of hours and he’d already signed my note for school, so I tiptoed past his room and let him sleep.
I did a lot of that, I realized—a lot of tiptoeing around Dad. It just seemed easier that way. Neither one of us wanted to look too closely at what had happened. But neither one of us seemed to be able to move past it, either.
I got ready quietly so I wouldn’t disturb him and then slipped out the door to walk to school.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Michelle rolled alongside me in her car, leaning over to yell at me through the passenger window.
I shaded the sun from my eyes. “I’m walking to school.”
“Get in here.” She stopped and tried to push the door open, but she couldn’t reach far enough to get the momentum she needed, so it kept opening just a few inches before closing again.
“You’re talking to me, then?”
“Of course I’m talking to you. What kind of question is that?”
A silver Honda rolled up behind Michelle’s car and honked.
“Get in!” she yelled again.
I slid into the passenger seat and she stepped on the gas before I had even shut the door.
“What did you mean, am I talking to you?” she asked, sliding me a quick glare. “You’re the one who’s not talking to me.”
“What? I texted you yesterday and you never texted back. And you didn’t come running this morning.”