by Phoebe North
“I figured,” she begins, tugging the zipper open all the way and starting to unpack her supplies, “that we can’t wait until solstice anymore. The house might be sold by then. I was thinking we could go tomorrow morning.”
“Go?” For a minute, my mind is swimming. I tell myself that I have no idea what she’s talking about, but the sad truth is, I do.
“To the woods, silly,” she tells me breezily. She’s setting the supplies out on my bedroom floor one by one, handling them gently, like they’re delicate eggs. There’s the candles, with wax so pale that it looks like dead flesh. There’s a little baggie of ash tied with one of those plastic clips from a bread bag. A bundle of sage. And a skull—like an actual skull, it must be from a mouse or something, the bones so delicate that I worry Annie might crush it. She sets it gently on the carpet, too.
“This is what we’ll need for the ritual,” she says, putting the knife at the center of it all. And then she looks up to me, blushing brighter, and sheepishly adds, “And . . . I thought it might be easier if you could get some pot.”
I tug my T-shirt down over my naked belly, sitting straighter. “What?”
“I know that Jamie liked to smoke it. Honestly, it was kind of an interesting experience, on the Madrigals trip. Smoking. I think I get it now. I feel like it might make it easier to speak to him if we get high. Like there are holes in the veil . . .” She frowns, like she knows her explanation doesn’t really make sense. “Anyway, if you don’t have any . . .”
“No, I mean. There’s someone I could call.” I bite my lip. I haven’t talked to Neal Harriman’s friend Steve in forever. He kind of creeps me out, honestly, with his leering friends and the way they always elbowed each other, talking about me and the other kids. Neal and James thought they were cool, but I never did. Still, Annie’s expression is laser focused. I can’t say no to her. “I’ll send him a text. My phone’s downstairs.”
Annie watches me leave my bedroom. I close the door so I don’t have to look at her face. As I walk downstairs, my stomach feels like it’s stuck somewhere in my pelvis. I can’t decide if I’m worried, or afraid, or some other emotion, one I have no name for. I move through our dimly lit house. It’s almost midnight. My phone’s in the charging station, plugged in on the counter. But I stop at the doorway to the kitchen. Because Mom’s there, washing dishes.
“Vidya,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “Do you girls need some snacks? I can fix you something.”
Leave it to Mom to think of food at a time like this. Or at any time, really. I shake my head and grab my phone off the counter.
“No, we’re good,” I tell her, but when I turn on my phone, I just stare at it. Then I look up at my mom. “Actually, we’re not good. I’m not good.”
“Hmm?” she says, closing the dishwasher and turning toward me like she’s been waiting for this. I feel myself cringe. I don’t want to say it. I don’t. It hurts to say it, but I’m clutching my phone so hard that my hands are white at the knuckles. But Mom is looking at me and waiting, so finally, finally, I puke out the truth.
“Annie scares me,” I tell her.
She’s frowning. “What do you mean?” she asks, and I hate that she doesn’t even sound surprised and that she adds, “Vidya, has she hurt you?”
Has she? Well, no, not physically. Not in the way she thinks.
“No!” I say quickly, but then, because Annie is waiting, because Mom is waiting, too, the words all spill out. “She—she’s obsessed with getting her brother back, somehow. She wants to do . . . this ritual? Like a Wiccan thing, kind of? She’s up in my room with a mouse skull and this knife and some candles. She spent hours on this stuff. It’s like how I used to go on and on about Middle-earth? Except she talks about this stuff like it’s real. She lies to her parents about it and lies to her therapist about it, but it’s not right, the way she talks about her brother like she can bring him back to life. Like we’re not normal kids and like—”
I break off midsentence, holding my hands up against my face, pressing my phone against my cheek. I’m doing my best to hide from my mom’s expression, which tells me she’s taking my words very, very seriously.
“Oh God,” I say through my hands. “I like her, like so, so much, but this whole thing—”
I want to tell her that it sounds nuts, but I can’t quite bring myself to say it. It feels too mean. Especially when I know how it’s hurting Annie, too, in a way. She could be making amazing art or telling amazing stories or joining the debate team or making playlists, but she’s not. She’s fixated on James instead. Dedicating her whole life to him, which feels to me like it’s not any kind of life at all.
My mother just sighs. I’m bracing myself for it. Waiting.
“I knew she was trouble. With that brother, and those parents, and how they still won’t meet us. I should have never allowed it. And then Daddy helping you to sneak around to see her. It’s no good.”
My hands are still up over my face. I moan into them.
“You knew about that?”
“Of course I did, Vidya. Did you think he wouldn’t tell me? Your father can’t lie. He’s a terrible liar.”
I pull my hands down. And despite the way it feels to have my mother notice how bad I’ve been, there’s some relief in it. She’s been watching out for me. Paying attention.
“He is a terrible liar,” I say, and want to laugh, but it’s clear from my mother’s expression that this isn’t a laughing matter.
“I went along with all this because he said you were in love. Like we were once in love. I know what it’s like to have parents who don’t approve. But Vidya—” she stops herself. I wince.
“Go ahead,” I tell my mother. “Say it.”
“Your father was never full of nonsense like this. He didn’t distract me from school, or the people who mattered. He made me feel safe. Nanaji and Naniji came to this country to give me—and you—a better life than they had. They sacrificed everything. And this might not be the life they imagined, but our family loves and supports one another to do the right thing. Does Annie do this for you? Because you haven’t been acting like yourself with her. You haven’t been acting like the child I raised you to be.”
I look down at my bare toes, biting my lip in the center. Haven’t I? I love Annie. I want to help her. But mostly lately I feel invisible next to her. Because I’m not James. Because the story of James sucks all the other air out of the room. There isn’t room for doing the right thing or the wrong thing with Annie. There’s only Gumlea. Nothing else.
“Are you going to tell me to break up with her?” I ask, almost hoping she will. I pull down to look at the phone in my hand because I can’t bring myself to look her in the eye.
“No. I’m only going to tell you to do what’s right.”
Guilt sinks into me like a fist into my belly. It’s the worst thing she could have said. Because I know what’s right. But I’m scared to do it.
“I know you care for her,” my mother says when I don’t say anything. “But on the night your father and I met, I knew that no matter what happened, he was going to help me be the best version of myself I could possibly be. Does Annie do that?”
I don’t answer. Can’t. My mother puts her hand on her cheek.
“Think about what I’ve said,” she tells me. “I know you’ll do the right thing.”
And then she leaves. Like I didn’t just tell her that the girl in my bedroom believes she can bring her dead brother back with magic and a little fireplace ash. Like I’m fully capable of handling this problem all by myself.
But am I?
I look at my phone again, then I put it back down on the counter. I go back upstairs. Annie’s put her stuff away. She’s crawled into my bed and is lying with her hands folded on top of the covers like a corpse. I climb in next to her.
“Did you call your guy?” she asks. I shrug and fake a yawn.
“Yeah, I sent him a text. We’ll see if he answers.”
“
Thank you,” she says, and it’s only when she kisses me that I feel a strong undertow of guilt, pulling me out to sea.
Twenty-One
WE DON’T FUCK THAT NIGHT, but I hold her, her head tucked beneath my chin, my hands against her rib cage. That night, mulling over what I’m going to do, I don’t sleep at all. Meanwhile she’s dead to the world, and when dawn comes, gray and feeble, I sit on the end of the bed with a cup of my mother’s coffee and wait for her to wake.
“You’re up early,” she says when she finally stirs, sitting up to watch me. She’s squinty and disheveled and so cute. I just want to lie myself down next to her and sleep forever, but I can’t.
I gather my courage up around me like I might before a concert or a performance. I compose myself, making my face serious. “We need to talk.”
Her face falls.
“Fuck,” she says, sitting up straight in bed. “You couldn’t get the weed?”
I laugh at that, a nervous giggly laugh, rubbing my fingertips over my brow and feeling the coffee steam back at me with every exhale. I can’t believe her. She’s so single-minded sometimes, so unaware of other people’s feelings. Namely mine.
“God, Annie,” I say, like I’ve suddenly found faith. “No. Seriously?”
Confusion furrows her brow. “What?”
To be fair, I’ve never talked to her this way. It’s the way that she talks. Blunt, like my patience has all run out, if I ever had any patience at all. I’m usually gentle and accommodating, just like my mother. But I don’t want to be gentle now. I need to be strong.
“No,” I tell her. “God. I didn’t even text the guy. I lied, okay? I can’t help you with the ritual today.”
Won’t would be more accurate. Don’t want to would be the truth. But can’t will do well enough for now.
“. . . Why not?” she asks. Her tone isn’t accusatory at all. It’s baffled, like she can’t even imagine why I wouldn’t want to stand in the woods and chant with her.
“Christ.” More God stuff. I didn’t know I had it in me. “Because it’s not real. And it freaks me out. Annie, James is gone. He’s dead. No amount of playing with knives or smoking pot in your backyard is going to bring him back. I like you so much, Annie, but—I can’t do it.”
I can’t get sucked into this Gumlea stuff anymore. It’s not good for me. I know it’s not. Even worse, I know it’s not good for her.
“I think you should tell your therapist what’s going on with your mom,” I tell her firmly. “She’s there to help you. And you can—you can tell her about the ritual stuff, too. She’ll know how to help you move on from it. You should be focusing on your art. Thinking about colleges . . .” I trail off. Annie’s face is a twisted mask of horror. It’s like I’m watching her heart shatter in slow motion. She flinches with every single word.
“Not James,” I add, and I’m trying to speak gently, but from the way she grimaces I can tell that my words hurt her. Still, I go on and on. I tell myself I’m doing her a kindness. “You can’t think about James anymore, or this ritual. You need to be thinking about yourself. That’s why I can’t help you with this. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
“But I need you,” she tells me. Her chin is quivering. She’s not quite on the verge of tears, but almost there. Desperate. When she says it, my heart lurches. But then she adds: “I can’t do the ritual alone. I’m not a whole person, Vidya. I’m—”
“This is what I mean,” I snap. Suddenly, I’m angry, like really, really pissed off. I stand up and go to my window, drawing in a few breaths. I can’t be cruel to her, not after all we’ve been through, even if she thinks that I’m being cruel by saying it. “You’re not half a person. You’re a perfectly good person on your own. A beautiful person.” I’m not looking at her. I’m gazing out the window at the neighbor’s lawn, all littered with leaves. “I love you, Annie. But I can’t make you whole. No one can. Not me. Not James. You have to do that.”
There’s an excruciating pause. I hope, maybe, that she’s considering my words. That she’ll give up everything that has to do with this crazy ritual thing, give up on James, and finally, for once, believe in herself. But instead, when her words come, they’re sharp. Angry. All she says is “Fuck. Fuck.”
I hear her get up and scramble around for her shoes and her bag.
“Where are you going?” I ask her.
“Where do you think I’m going?” she demands. “The door is closing, Vidya. Whether you’re there with me or not—”
“You can’t be serious,” I say softly, but I see the look on her face and I know that it’s true. She’s going out there to the woods without me.
“He’s not coming back,” I try to tell her.
She’s stuffed everything into her bag and thrown it over her shoulder. “I have to try,” she says. “I have to—”
She puts a hand over her mouth, because what comes out then is a gasping sob. I take a step toward her, putting a hand on her shoulder. She shrinks away from my touch. She shakes me off like my hand is a fire poker and I’ve burned her. That’s when it hits me: I can’t help her with this. It’s up to her to fix it, not me.
Which means it’s over, doesn’t it? If we can’t work together, then we are fundamentally alone.
“Okay. I guess that’s it, then. Goodbye, Annie,” I tell her in a soft voice, and we both realize then what I’m really saying.
I hadn’t wanted to break up with her. I promise you I hadn’t. But I see now that there’s no other road forward. I can’t be with her and believe that she’s a broken shell of a person without her brother. She can’t be with me and let James go.
“Fuck!” she says one more time, and she lets the door slam shut behind her. I hear the rattle of her body on the stairwell, and her heavy sneakers on the front porch. I go to my bedroom window to watch her leave, but she doesn’t look back at me as she streams down the sidewalk, her hair a blazing fire in the gray gray day. She either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that I’m watching her, or that my heart is breaking, too.
Twenty-Two
MY STOMACH IS A CHEWED-UP pile of dog crap. I don’t eat all day, and when Mom brushes my hair out of my eyes, I flinch away from her touch.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I tell her, and I hate how kindly her eyes regard me.
“Okay. I’m here if you need me,” she reminds me. Even though I can tell she wants to kiss me, she doesn’t. She’s giving me my space.
I know I’m lucky. That’s the worst part of it. When I go upstairs to my dad’s office and he lets me hang out in there while he’s grading papers, when he lets me take his old Epiphone Casino down from the wall and listens to me strum a few chords, he doesn’t ask me any questions. He gives me my space, too. But his presence is safe and steady there, unwavering.
It’s everything that Annie’s never had.
I think about how her house used to feel at night. Empty and sharp, the angles from the lights jagged as knives. Her mom was hardly ever home, and when she was, they barely spoke to each other. Now I imagine Annie trudging around the woods alone, humming, chanting. Coming in from the cold to a lonely house with a “For Sale” sign on the curb. Maybe she puts on the TV just to fill up the silence. Maybe she puts on the playlists I’ve made her and cries. My parents don’t even need to ask what happened; they take one look at my face and they know. But Annie? All she’d have to do is wipe away her tears after her mom comes in and fake a smile and her mom would have no idea. Because she doesn’t care. Nobody cares about her. Not her mom or her dad or Elijah, not really. Not like I cared. And I did. Do.
But I don’t call her. I can’t. The things I said, I meant them. And I can’t take them back now.
That night, around two in the morning, when I’m in bed not sleeping and not feeling anything except dead and awful and suck, my phone vibrates on my desk. I get up and go look at it, hoping it’s Annie, hoping it’s not.
Fuck. It’s her.
Annie: Hey. Don’t answer.
I don’t. I hold the phone at arm’s length, like it’s a Fourth of July sparkler and it might burn me, like it’s a snake, like it’s a knife.
Annie: I tried the ritual. But it didn’t work. So I got rid of everything. I went out into the woods and I buried the knife and the skull and everything. You can forget about it. Maybe you’re right. Maybe there is no magic.
I still don’t answer. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with all of this, whether it’s supposed to change things between us, whether I’m supposed to take her back. But then my phone lights up again, and all my hopes are dashed.
Annie: And even if you’re not right, I can’t do it alone, anyway. That’s the problem with Gumlea. It only works if there’s two people. Otherwise it’s just like I’m talking to myself, and then what’s the point?
Annie: I’m talking to myself right now, aren’t I? Ugh. Fuck.
I imagine her face in my mind’s eye, frustrated by her own slow, deliberate typing. She hardly ever keeps her phone charged. She’s not good at pretending like she’s the rest of us. Because she isn’t.
Annie: I don’t expect anything to be different. For us to be together. I’m still a big weirdo, lost in my stupid stories. Same as before. And you’re beautiful. Amazing. Talented. Normal. We are who we are, and you deserve someone who is normal, too, and who can love you like you should be loved.
I want to text her back: You, too! You should be loved! You shouldn’t bury yourself in this fucked-up bullshit just because your brother—
But what good would it do? None. No good at all. So I just stand there, shivering in my underpants and T-shirt, crying and trembling and watching the messages roll in.
Annie: Anyway, I thought you should know. I thought it would make you, I don’t know. Happy or something.
Annie: I want you to be happy.
Annie: I’ll see you in school tomorrow, but we don’t have to talk. Not tomorrow, not ever. Not unless you want to.
Annie: Good night.
Annie: I love you. I know I never said that before, but I thought you should know that, too.