My Deliberate Mistake

by Claire Svendsen

  69.

  The water is murky. I can’t see much more than two feet in front of my face and it dawns on me that there are other things in this lake. Creatures that would make drowning seem like a walk in the park. Snakes with poisonous flesh eating venom and alligators that would be happy to tear me limb from limb yet leave me just alive enough to suffer excruciating pain. I’m holding my breath but I have to let it out if I want to sink beneath the surface of the great lake on my own terms.

  I slowly let it out like I’m blowing air through a straw. Bubbles rise up to the surface like tiny balloons. The sun reflects through the murky water, weak rays of light that slice through like knives. I feel their warmth on my face for one final time and try to take in a breath of water, let it fill me up like an empty cup but my body won’t respond. It’s holding on to life more than I am, stopping me from inhaling death. Eventually I know I won’t have a choice. My body can only hold its breath for so long and when the oxygen runs out that final gulp will come and the water will rush in.

  It’s coming soon, I know it is. My eyes sting and my lungs burn and finally I can’t take it anymore. I gasp for air only that’s not what fills me.

  70.

  I was never really afraid of Julia. I saw how she hurt others, made them pay for reasons I couldn’t even comprehend. But I never felt scared until I saw her getting worse. The day Dad collapsed and was taken to the hospital I saw something in her, something that was broken. For the first time I knew she couldn’t be fixed. One day she was going to kill us all and the only thing that stood in her way was me.

  I only meant to look for answers. Figure out her next move so I could be one step ahead but that was when I found the kitchen knife stashed under her pillow in our room. She had the top bunk and as I climbed the stupid wooden ladder and slipped my hand under her pink pillow, I felt the sharp edge of the blade.

  “What are you doing?”

  She appeared in the doorway silently, the knack she had for going unnoticed always working to her advantage.

  “Nothing,” I stuttered.

  She walked in casually, not afraid of what I’d found, not ever afraid of anything.

  “You can’t protect them,” she said, her eyes cold and unfeeling.

  “Who?”

  “Mom and Dad.”

  “What are you going to do?” I whispered.

  She twirled around the room, her blonde hair flying out and green eyes sparkling like the pretty princess she was.

  “I’m going to kill them,” she sang out. “And I’m going to kill you too.”

  “But why?”

  I sat on the bottom bunk, my legs shaking inside my jeans. I never understood my sister but I always made excuses for her, just like my parents. I loved her. Why didn’t she love me back? Why didn’t she love Mom and Dad? I started to cry.

  “Because that’s why,” she snapped. “Because you’re weak and pathetic and I hate you. You’re a waste of space Ana. Nobody loves you. Nobody wants you. Mom and Dad don’t think you’re ever going to amount to anything. I have all the good genes. You got the leftovers. I know it. They know it. You should just kill yourself and put everyone out of their misery. It’s painful just watching you be alive.”

  She left the room with me crying in it. Later at dinner, she smiled and made nice. My sister, the psychopath. I left the knife where it was. There didn’t seem much point in taking it. There would always be another knife, another bottle of pills, another accident waiting to happen.

  With Julia bent on killing us all, I couldn’t sleep or eat but Mom never even noticed. She was too wrapped up in caring for my father after his brief stay in the hospital and listening to Julia as she wowed them with brilliant test scores and glowing teacher reports. But I was hyper vigilant, always waiting for her to make the next move. Until I realized that no matter what I did, she’d always be one step ahead of me.

  It was late one night and Julia thought I was asleep. That was the first time I heard her talking. At first I thought Mom had come into the room but when I opened my eyes Mom wasn’t there and Julia was having a heated discussion with someone I couldn’t see. I listened as she made plans to trap us inside the house and burn it to the ground. After a while there was a long pause and then my sister started to laugh. I knew then that I was the only one who could do what had to be done. I would stop her, I had to.

  Turns out I was the perfect weapon. Julia thought I was too stupid to ever really be a threat to her. She was only watchful of the adults in her life. The teachers she conned with her brilliant mind and our parents who she wrapped around her little finger with big smiles. I knew she was careful not to show them the real Julia and that kept her on guard with them. But I was just something she pushed around and stepped on from time to time.

  The car ride was her idea. She needed supplies for a science project and it couldn’t wait. Mom didn’t want to take her. She had a headache and wanted to stay home but Julia put on her sad smile and fake tears, crying about getting a bad grade and never being able to go to college. Mom eventually relented. She didn’t make me come along but I knew this was my chance. The night time conversations were getting louder, more animated. Julia was going to burn the house to the ground and she was going to do it soon. Time was running out.

  It was a Wednesday. The sun was shining but storm clouds were brewing in the distance. I guess that was irony, a taste of things to come but at the time I just thought they were pretty. Purple swells bubbling up into the blue sky like dye that had been tipped into water.

  Julia was in a good mood and Mom was too. They were both singing to some stupid song on the radio and when Mom actually encouraged me to join in I did, singing loudly with my out of tune voice. Tears pricked behind my eyes because finally, on the day I was going to take care of everything, Mom recognized I was there. Even if only for a moment she acknowledged she had two daughters instead of one. That was the moment I almost changed my mind. Perhaps I could try again, convince someone that Julia needed help, that she needed to be locked up so that we would be safe. There was also a small part of me that thought maybe she wouldn’t go through with it. That the crazy talk of fires and the knife were just Julia playing games. Bluffing. But the pills hadn’t been a bluff. The hamster she buried alive wasn’t a bluff. And when she lit my hair on fire and laughed as she waited for me to burn, that wasn’t a bluff either. I didn’t want to believe that my sister was an evil person but I knew evil lived inside her and it was trying to claw its way out.

  71.

  Mom was always afraid her car was going to run out of gas and leave her stranded. She never let the gauge get below half. Despite Julia’s cries that the store would close before she got the supplies for her volcano, Mom insisted on stopping for gas. She never usually left us alone in the car but the storm had drawn in closer. Thunder rumbled all around and flashes of lightening lit the dark sky. The storm wiped out the machines at the gas pumps and Mom had to go inside to pay. I took it as a sign from God or whoever was up there looking down on us. First he sent me the storm, and then he sent Mom away. The rest was up to me.

  I scrambled over the front seat as Julia suddenly started talking to her invisible friend.

  “I’ll do it tonight,” she said, her voice a low whisper. “I told you I’d take care of it.”

  I looked at my mother in the store, tired and worn as she paid for gas and candy that she would smuggle us later so Dad wouldn’t see. Only there wouldn’t be any later. I turned the key and stepped on the gas.

  The car barreled towards the lake a lot faster than I anticipated. I didn’t have to do much, just hold onto the steering wheel and press the gas pedal down as hard as I could. Behind me I heard someone scream but it wasn’t Julia. She was silent, as if she had known this fate was always waiting for her. It was as if her silence gave me permission and so as the car approached the retaining wall, I didn’t swerve away at the last minute or step on the brake. I pushed the gas pedal down as hard as I could and the car la
unched into the air with the ease and grace of a plane.

  72.

  “What happened when the car hit the water?”

  “What?”

  “I said what happened when the car hit the water?”

  I open my eyes to see Big Sally staring intently at me. There is a smirk on her face. She knows I’ve had a break through and she’s not going to let it go now. She’ll pull the truth right out of me like a festering splinter, no matter how much it hurts. But the truth is that it doesn’t really hurt, at least not anymore.

  I lean back on her couch and let the cushions settle around me, then I take a deep breath. For the first time since it happened, I prepare to tell the truth.

  “We hit the water with a smash of metal. I’d never felt so much pain in all my life. The seat belt snapped my collarbone and I hit my head on the steering wheel. I think I passed out for a moment or two. The next thing I knew water was climbing up the windows and the car was sinking.”

  My hands start to sweat. I look down and notice they are shaking.

  “It’s okay. Take your time. We don’t have to rush this.”

  But we do. The words are aching to spill out of me. I can’t vomit them out quick enough. If I don’t get them out they’ll fill my lungs and drown me. The floodgates are open and there is no going back, just like there wasn’t that day.

  “I sat there in the driver’s seat, holding the steering wheel like my life depended on it. I was too scared to move, I couldn’t even look around but I knew Julia hadn’t been wearing her seat belt. She’d been sprawled out on the back seat like she owned it and the force of the impact tossed her around the car like a rag doll. I clung to the one hope that she was already dead, that she’d snapped her neck or something, hoping she’d gone in an instant and would never know what I’d done.”

  “But she didn’t snap her neck, did she?”

  “No.” I take another deep breath. “As the car started to sink and the world grew muffled and dim around us, I heard her laughing. Just a quiet giggle under her breath, the kind you’d make if you didn’t want anyone else to know that you thought something was funny.”

  “The kind of giggle you’d make if you were a little bit mad,” Big Sally says gently.

  I nod. “I didn’t want to see her or talk to her. I just wanted her to die and for me to go in peace but then she started calling my name the way she used to when we played hide and seek and I couldn’t help myself. I undid the seat belt and crawled back to be with her.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I threw up.”

  “You had hit your head, you were in shock.”

  “No. Yes. That’s part of it I guess but it was Julia. Her head had been torn open, a huge flap of skin hung over one eye and blood poured down her face. Her arm was twisted and bone stuck out at the elbow like a grotesque Halloween costume. I couldn’t look at her but I couldn’t look away, you know?”

  “What about her legs?”

  I shake my head. “I can’t.”

  “What about her legs, Ana?”

  I know Big Sally has read the police report. She knows what Julia’s injures were but here and now, saying them out loud, I still feel like the little girl who vomited all over the car seats.

  “They were trapped,” I say. “Pinned beneath the driver’s seat.”

  “She couldn’t get out,” Big Sally says.

  “No. She couldn’t get out.”

  73.

  “Wanting someone to die and watching someone die are two entirely different things,” I say.

  “It’s hard when that person is right in front of you. Sometimes you want to take it back but you can’t,” Big Sally says.

  “But I didn’t want to take it back,” I say softly. “Even there with the blood and the bone, I still wanted her to die. I just wanted it to be over. But she kept looking at me with her one good eye, smiling at me. Then she took my hand in hers.”

  “What else?”

  I shake my head. “I remember the blood everywhere, and the water covering the windows. It started to trickle in and I prayed for it to come faster. I wanted it to swallow the monster beside me. I snatched my hand away from her and huddled in the corner, waiting to die while her laughter rang out all around me.”

  I’m shaking and Big Sally leans forward and hands me a blanket even though I know it’s not cold in the room.

  “We can stop if you’d like,” she says.

  I shake my head. I’ve come too far to stop now and it’s almost like it’s happening again. My eyes close and I’m back in that drowning car.

  “I hear a thud,” I whisper. “Open my eyes and there is a guy outside the car in the water. He has something in his hand, a metal tool and he tries to break the window but the glass won’t budge. He pounds again and again and I just want him to go away but he doesn’t. Then the glass smashes. Icy water rushes in. It hits Julia first and her eye rolls up in her head. She starts convulsing, foam coming out of her mouth. I can finally breathe again. I know in my heart she won’t make it. The water pours in, it’s up to my neck and then it covers my head. I close my eyes and start to panic. Julia is dead. Maybe I can live after all.”

  “Maybe you don’t have to die too.”

  “Exactly. So I reach for the guys hand and I grab tight. He pulls me out the window and up to the surface but the water is in my lungs. I’m choking, I can’t breathe. I swallow some and it comes back up but the rest stays down, filling my lungs as I’d prayed it would only now I’m not so sure I want it to. The sky is falling with rain, it pelts us as he carries me to shore and lays me on the sandy ground. Then I’m floating away from him. Away from the lake. Away from everything.”

  “You died,” she says.

  “Just a little,” I say.

  74.

  “You were trying to save your family,” Big Sally says. “You were only twelve years old, your resources were limited. No one would listen to you, let alone believe you. You did what you had to with what you had at the time. That is all.”

  The words I thought I’d never say out loud come easy now.

  “But I killed my sister.”

  “I know,” she says. “And you’ll have to live with that for the rest of your life.”

  She pauses and sits back in her oversized chair, placing her hands in her lap and looking at me thoughtfully.

  “We can’t change who we are or what we’ve done. Our lives are the combination of all that has happened to us. We have to accept that in order to move on.”

  Tears run down my face.

  “I can’t believe I’m crying,” I say.

  “You’re beginning to let go. This is a good thing.” She smiles and hands me a tissue. “You’ve made some real progress here today. I think you’ve finally had the breakthrough we’ve been waiting for.”

  “Thanks for putting up with me,” I say. “I know I haven’t always been the easiest patient to deal with.”

  “It’s all right,” she puts her hand on my knee. “It’s all right.”

  I see the clock behind her head and know it’s time to go.

  “I have another appointment to get to,” I say.

  “Yes, of course,” she smiles. “Same time next week?”

  “Sure. That sounds great. Thanks again for putting up with me.”

  “You’re welcome sweetie.”

  As I stand she leans in and gives me a hug. She smells like Ivory soap and common sense.

  “Next week we should probably talk about your summer,” she says gently.

  My throat closes up and I pull away from her.

  “I can’t,” I say. “Not yet.”

  “It’s alright. Whenever you’re ready.”

  But I don’t think I’ll ever be ready for that. If she knew about the nightmares, she wouldn’t be smiling as I leave the office and step out into the bright sun. The sky is blue with a few fluffy, white clouds bobbing along. The breeze whips my hair and for a moment I let the sun catch my face and close my eyes
. Despite everything it does feel good to be alive.

  75.

  “I’m sorry I’m late,” I say as I rush through the doors.

  “It’s all right, don’t worry,” the girl behind the desk says. “Dr. Bright is running late anyway.”

  “Oh good,” I sit and try to catch my breath. “I was worried.”

  “You don’t need to worry,” she says. “Everything is fine.”

  The other women in the waiting room smile politely at me before going back to their magazines and phones. Most of them are fat and happy. They have the glow everyone talks about. I shift uncomfortably in my plastic chair, wondering if I have it too. The minutes tick by and I’m starting to wish I hadn’t come. That itch is back, the one that tells me I should bolt, run away and never come back to this place but I grip hold of the plastic chair with both hands and force myself to breathe. No one seems to notice I’m having an issue. Eventually they call my name and before I know it I’m sitting on a table with nothing to cover me but a paper gown.

  “Hi Ana, how are you?”

  Dr. Bright dashes into the room, looking at her chart instead of me.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “Nervous.”

  “It’s okay. Don’t be nervous. We’re just going to take a look and see what we see all right?”

  I nod and lie back, noticing a stain on the ceiling. Maybe it’s the shape of a lake or maybe it’s just a blob of nothing. I tell myself it’s not a sign. That I shouldn’t read anything into it but my heart starts to race.

  “This is going to be a little cold,” she says and squeezes the gel onto my belly.

  Then suddenly my insides are up on the screen. She’s looking for something. Something I know is in there. I felt it weeks ago even though I know it’s impossible but I did. I just knew. You know that sort of thing, everyone says so. But she’s taking too long, she’s looking too hard. Why can’t she see what I know is there? Why is it taking so long?