A savage sound somewhere between a moan and growl ripped the night in two. “Foster, please stop,” he begged. “You’re going to hurt yourself. Please.”
I shuddered. I could feel him.
He couldn’t have been more than a foot or two behind me when I launched myself off the ground and ran as if my life depended on it. In a way it did.
I shoved through the wooden gate, hurtling stepping stones and fallen pinecones, and sprinted across the sodden grass, not caring if I was drenched in the process. My feet and sandals failed me then, slipping and taking the rest of me with them. Again I rose, and without thinking twice about it, left my sandals lying on his aunt and uncle’s lawn. I continued toward my car barefoot, and fumbling for my keys in my pocket, stepped directly onto a pinecone. It hurt badly, but not enough to make me stop and look.
Still, I felt him pursuing and gaining, and I knew that I would never make it into my car and away before he reached me. I had just barely finished thinking this when my body slammed brutally into the front end of my car. I felt the impact all the way to the bone, and seeing white, gave a cry of pain.
“God—please, Foster!” he called through gritted teeth. “Just stop—stop! I won’t come near you, but please—stop moving so quickly.”
I did. Rigid, I remained bent over Hattie, gripping her not just for balance but security.
“You’re hurt,” he said, and for a second I thought he referred to something other than my injuries. “Do you need—”
“I’m fine.” As I panted, I tasted the acrid remnants that stained my tongue, stuck to the sides of my throat. I wanted to wash my mouth out.
“I didn’t know. This just happened. They just got here tonight.” The way he spoke, the sound of his voice, it already sounded different to me; like he was already a little less the person he was when he left me. “When I got home, my entire family was sitting in the living room, and then Summer walks out—alive—with Matt—and her parents, and I . . . I don’t know—I haven’t—I’m still working through it. There’s a lot of people and a lot of information, and everybody’s talking, and crying, and celebrating all at once. I don’t understand everything yet.” I knew if I looked at him, what was left of my strength would fail, but I didn’t need to see him to know he had just taken his hair in his hands. “I texted you as soon as I could. As soon as I remembered you were waiting for me.” He inhaled sharply and I closed my eyes. “Not that I forgot you,” he said very quietly. “I just . . . I’ve only had an hour to process this. That they all survived. Summer thought it would be better . . . for me to see her for the first time—in person, rather than a phone call. She knew I wouldn’t believe it, otherwise.”
Time and shock had done little to lessen the tenderness in which Dominic spoke her name. And whereas before I could hear that tenderness and not feel slighted by it, hearing it now, hearing it over and over and over again was like being strangled slowly. Everything he was saying, his attempt to explain, all it was doing was making things worse.
“Please,” I whispered, and shook my head. “I can’t . . .”
“Foster, I can imagine what you must be thinking,” he said with urgency. He was closer now. I heard him exhale shakily. “It’s why it took me so long to tell you. I was going to, though, I swear it to you. I planned to tell you everything—”
“Nicky?”
When she called out to him, I felt a brisance, then my head split in two and reassembled; though it felt like a puzzle that had been put back together incorrectly. The appellation made him just a little more hers. I imagined she had been calling him that since they were six years old. At least I could take a small amount of comfort in knowing our voices sounded nothing alike.
“I’m . . . coming.” There was no mistaking that he was torn; a part of him didn’t want to leave me. And another part of him, I was sure of it, wanted to be with Summer. “I’ll be in,” he said in a voice like string pulled too tight. “I’ll be in soon.”
I waited a moment, hoping she had gone back inside, and blurted, “Go.” What was meant to be a command word was lost in the devastation of my voice. “Go and celebrate,” I said a little louder, holding the tears back by clenching my teeth. My voice was thin. “You should be with her right now. And your family.”
“Foster . . . I can’t just leave you like this—I won’t.” This was the first time he sounded like himself; obstinate and a little angry. “Please. I want to try and explain things to you.”
I shook my head, both as an answer and because I could feel that he was another step closer. “I need time,” I said desperately. “And so do you.”
“But you—”
I didn’t know what he might say, but time was running out. “I’ll be fine. I just need time.” Both of these statements were lies, but I thought for once he might believe . . . because he had no other choice.
“Can I call you tomorrow?”
“I . . . I dropped my keys,” I said.
Silence. I couldn’t even hear him breathing. Then a voice like a flatline spoke up behind me. “I’ll find them for you.”
I moved not a single muscle as Dominic searched for my keys. Getting away from him was my only objective; as soon as I could do this, I would be okay. I closed my eyes and repeated this over and over again. He moved stealthily; so much so that I didn’t feel him when he was suddenly standing directly behind me. His warm and gentle fingers brushed my shoulder, and a piece of me died.
I caved inward. “DON’T TOUCH ME!” I shrieked, and pressing my cheek to the freezing cold hood, wrapped myself around Hattie. I would have given anything in that moment to have not started crying. The sobs shook me, made it impossible to breathe.
I saw his hand and it was enough. His fist opened and he placed my keys on the hood, a foot away from my face. I stared at them with wild and frightened eyes, so scared he might touch me again.
“I’m so sorry, Foster.” I wasn’t the only one crying, I realized.
It was sometime before I knew that I was now alone, or more alone than I had been; the perceptible weight of eyes rested on my back. I peeled myself off my car, but didn’t dare turn around. I moved as quickly as I could, considering that everything throbbed, that I was bleeding from several places, and possibly had incurred a fractured pelvis. None of that mattered, though. Without a functioning heart, I wouldn’t feel any of it.
Chapter Thirty-seven
How very wrong and foolish I was.
Pain: it was a word that until now, I had used to describe a stubbed toe, a particularly heinous sunburn, the extreme discomfort of having your fingers slammed in a car door. Until now, I was certain I had experienced pain hundreds and hundreds of times—more so than the average person even.
Until now . . . I knew nothing of pain.
For even if every one of those injuries happened all at once, along with biting down on my tongue, drawing blood on aluminum foil, or an earring ripped straight from my ear—none of those would I label painful. Not anymore.
Pain—real pain—gnaws at your flesh and nibbles on your bones, taking heed to leave enough of you to feel every time it devours a little more of you. Only your nerves remain, so that you may experience the stealing away of all warmth, all joy, and all hope. This loss is what I now understand, and have heard it referred to as “a broken heart.” I might have found this underestimation both asinine and laughable, if not for its macabre existence. The word “broken” implies that it can heal, be put back together, that restorations might still salvage or save the doomed thing.
My heart was not broken. It was still there, in one piece. I imagined that anyone touched by the same pain might agree that their heart had not broken either, only that it simply hurt more than it ever had before . . . more than I had once thought humanly possible, more than what one person should ever be allowed to bear—more, more, more.
And so I wept for the more. And I wept for the loss. They felt exactly the same.
Mostly I woke to my screams. And tho
ugh I never left my bed, except to use the restroom when I must, I couldn’t seem to move beyond that place preliminary to sleep. A wired somnolence was the furthest I made it toward actual slumber. Consequently, I was exhausted, remaining constantly in a state of depravation and purgatory, half-dreaming and half-awake, and never knowing which was worse.
Because of this, I was compelled to exercise my mind, to try and think of something else. Of course I couldn’t think of anything else but how much I hurt, so I made do with that, classifying my pain—three kinds to be exact. And in some deranged way, it comforted me to know which of the “Pains” I was experiencing at any given moment.
The first and most benign of levels, “pain,” was the one I would choose if I had any say in the matter. Experiencing “pain” left me almost numb, though still incapable of feeling the nothingness. It was the hungriest and greediest of levels, swallowing me whole and not allowing any mending to take place.
The second level, “Pain” (big P) was significantly less endurable. It was what I felt when every perfect, lucid memory surfaced simultaneously—detailed and undiminished—in one unrelenting loop: our first kiss, the way my skin felt when he touched me, his laugh, the way he smelled, the hooking smile accompanied by loud eyes speaking solely for me.
Though, I knew better now. I now understood that those eyes were never for me. They were for her. The one he loved. Summer.
And this is where “The Pain” had made itself known to me. The others, I thought, were more wrathful and obvious, and thus more merciful. I always knew when “pain” or “Pain” was on me. “The Pain” possessed a subtleness that swelled like a tsunami. Just when I was certain there was nothing there, that’s when it took me. And in one clean sweep, I was caught and trapped—tumbling into rocks, drowning on salt and water, aspersed until the waters finally receded, discarding me onto a shore wetted by my own tears of grief. During the tumbling and drowning, it shows me things: Dominic and Summer laughing, holding hands, kissing and loving each other in a way we never could because I wasn’t first. Because I was only the copy, the spatter of scent sprayed onto the paper. The one that, if you rubbed hard enough, you could deceive people into believing was actual perfume.
My eyes felt heavy again; they opened and shut, and though I resisted the harbinger of languor, they were staying closed for longer periods of time. I was slipping into something. Or something was slipping into me. Not sleep, though. Never sleep. But something.
Puddles formed at the creases of my eyelids, caused by tear ducts that refused to cease spitting salty wet. I felt like a once stalwart iceberg who, grown accustomed to the safety of tranquil waters, had turned her back unsuspectingly, woken to her death by a stern’s gelid scimitar. Scattered and ravaged, there was too much of me to save, ripped apart into thousands of crying shards. Here I would be left to float in fragments until, slowly and inevitably, I dissolved, swallowed into oblivion by the hungry sea.
I uttered a very quiet prayer where I lay, asking what was very close to have mercy, to be anything other than, “The Pain.”
~
For the first time, Summer came to me alone. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t have to. The message was delivered on lips and eyes, hair and nose, chin and eyebrows. She came to show me her face like mine, but not.
Though I made not a sound, I heard myself laugh. At the irony that her name would fit her so well, while mine had never wanted me; taken to hiding under mistakes and similar autonyms.
Summer: a warm glowing radiance, promising flourishing flowers and fruit, and a breath of life to all it touched.
Foster . . .
What was a Foster?
As if I needed more proof of her luminous existence, Summer’s golden skin began to emit a soft dewy light. Mine seemed to grow very cold, like milk in ice. The hair—a tangle of offensive curls on my head—lifted from her cheeks, its wildness a salute to the noble girl it decorated. I was aware of a dimming in my green eyes as Summer’s set to sparkling shamelessly—two clovers hewn with precision into a face like spun silk—but without malice. She could not help but be beautiful, be exceptional. Without speaking one word, I knew she was worthy of him. I harbored no hatred or ill will for this girl of Dominic’s. She belonged to him, and he to her.
I stared into her loving eyes, confounded. I wondered how he had been able to fool himself? Day after day, enduring the pale comparison, pretending that I measured up to the heights that would forever stretch above me. How did he manage? I suppose . . . I suppose grief will inure to a great many compromises if it has to. Something, after all, was better than nothing.
Summer had her head tilted to the right, staring at me with a face so full of empathy and compassion, I nearly had to look away. I could see that she shook her head very slightly, and that both her eyes glistened with unshed tears. I watched her inhale deeply; the slight chest rise up, then down. With something akin to determination, she made to come forward, arms bent at her sides and palms forward defensively. I was shocked. Did she think I might hurt her? I would never, I thought toward her, but gave a small cry of alarm when she stopped almost immediately—was forced to, I saw, when glancing at the flesh of her palms—slamming to a halt. The skin of her hands was stretched and pressed flat, as if she had come up against a glass wall. Frustrated, and eyes brimming with tears, she glanced up and down, studying and perceiving the barrier. I could see no such thing, though. If I wanted to, I thought, I could walk straight to her. As if hearing this, Summer’s eyes suddenly locked on mine. She nodded—just once. One palm slid down to rest beside her thigh, while the other motioned me forward.
I took a step backward.
I cannot, I thought, knowing she would hear me. And again she nodded, this time with an understanding sadness that managed to cripple my already keening heart.
She lifted her arm, her fingers loosely fisted, and I understood that it was my attention she wanted. But she didn’t speak. She didn’t say a word. I think she knew that if she tried, her voice would never make it past the invisible barrier. So she raised both arms again, placed her hands to her cheeks, and cupped them so firmly that her shoulders almost touched the bottoms of her ears. Then she began to blink—over and over again. Open, close, open, close. She was telling me something; but without words, without something I could hear or see, I didn’t understand.
I swam through the stupor of un-sleep to the sound of buzzing. My phone was ringing again. I couldn’t bear to look at it, though. The last time I had checked, it told me I had a hundred and seven missed calls and forty-three text messages. I reached over and, without looking, did what I should have done a long time ago: I turned it off and went back to un-sleep.
The next time I roused, it was by the cool hand of my mother, stroking my forehead. There was more light in the room now than the last time I had waded into the rogue darkness. I gathered she must have opened a curtain or two before coming to stir me.
Her hair was braided beneath a yellow bandana, and she was sitting on her haunches, eye-level with me, carefully dabbing my face with a damp cloth. One of my arms hung flaccid over the side of the bed—the one part of my body that had succeeded in falling asleep—propping up my slippery cheek covered in a sticky mixture of sweat and tears.
“Hi, baby,” she whispered, deep worry lines racing across her forehead.
I blinked numbly and tried to say it back, but found that my throat was dry as bran. Glimpsing at a glass of water on the floorboard beside my mother’s foot, my lips began to smack together involuntarily. I didn’t want it, but my body needed it badly.
My mother didn’t say a word but swung into action, draping the cloth over her shoulder and rising from the floor. After helping me into a sitting position, she placed the glass carefully into my hands. I could tell by the way she hovered for a moment that she would have preferred to hold it for me. Instead, she stood back and watched me with astute eyes.
The water plummeted down my esophagus roughly at first, then began snakin
g through my body like a snowball gaining momentum, eventually landing at the bottom of the bare plateau of my stomach, where it rested hard and cold. Though it hurt a bit at first, I drained the entire glass in four gulps.
“Thank you,” I said in a voice I didn’t recognize; someone detached, who spoke from somewhere other than inside a dim bedroom.
She took the glass into her hands, asking right away, “Another one?”
I shook my head gently as a backlit silhouette appeared at my bedroom doorway—my father. I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined it couldn’t differ much from the scared and helpless expression plastered over my mother’s.
“How about something to eat? I could make you some soup or whatever you’re in the mood for.” She tried smiling, and seeing the attempt hurt more than the water.
“Thank you.” I swallowed, rewetting my throat. “I’m not very hungry right now.” It was the truth; it had been the truth for the last three days. “Maybe in a little while,” I said, wanting to give her something and trying to sound optimistic. But there was no optimism in me, and I sounded as bleak as the empty glass.
She pressed her lips together; then, as if she were steeling herself for something momentous, inhaled deeply. “Do you think you might want to come downstairs today?”
I stared at her through unseeing eyes, wondering if it would ever stop hurting long enough for me to catch my breath. I could hear it . . . passing through my nose; I could feel it, too, expanding the perfectly functioning lungs inside me. But it was as if the oxygen were laced with a potent arsenic; every breath cut into my skin, melted my bones. It neither soothed nor restored, but kept me in a state of acute awareness.
“Foster.” My mother called and took to the floor once more. She searched my face with an intensity determined to heal me, to rip the ache from my bones like it was a root she unearthed from the ground. She looked at me like this for a few minutes, knowing she possessed no such ability.
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