by E. Lockhart
Texts. Sent on the eighth day Adelaide worked on her Fool for Love model.
Adelaide.
Toby.
Can I ask you a favor?
Adelaide didn’t answer.
She was fine to send her brother cute pictures of dogs. That was just being a good sister. She did that kind of thing for lots of people: her parents, Stacey S, her other friends from school. She texted them something small to make them happy. A reassurance, or a joke, a gif, a photo, a good morning.
She thought of it like giving tiny gifts.
But she didn’t want to do any favors for Toby.
Adelaide.
Toby.
Can I ask you a favor?
Of course.
She didn’t want to be a bad sister.
Can you Venmo me some money? For a present for Mom. Just a loan.
…
…
Adelaide?
Adelaide.
Toby.
Can I ask you a favor?
What?
Can you Venmo me some money? For a present for Mom. Just a loan, of course.
I love you too much to send you money, Toby. No.
What do you mean?
Just no.
What the actual F, Adelaide. It’s for a present, I swear. I’m going to start a junior counselor job at this gaming place. Then I’ll pay you back.
What do you want to buy Mom? I’ll order it online and have it shipped to you. You can give it to her.
I’m not sure exactly. I want to surprise her.
…
…
It’d be easier if you could just loan me the money so I could go shopping. I think maybe $200. I know it’s a lot. But I can pay you back soon.
…
…
Adelaide, are you there? $150 would be okay too.
She texted her parents.
Toby wants money off me. You should call his sponsor. And check his room and his bag. And his pockets, if you have to.
* * *
Sophomore year, Adelaide found her brother. In the bathroom.
She had come home to the Boston house on a Saturday afternoon with sticky fingers and a stomach full of popcorn. She’d dumped her things on the couch and stripped off her jacket.
“I’m home.”
No one answered.
She went to the kitchen, where Rebecca usually left a handwritten note. Sure enough, on the table it said Yoga class, back at seven. Dad back seven-ish. Please press start on the rice cooker.
Adelaide pressed start. She drank a glass of water. “Toby?” she called.
No answer. His bedroom was in the basement now. The room had small, high windows and a vinyl floor covered with a rug. They had moved him down there when he was nine and Adelaide didn’t want to share with him anymore. The room was big, though it had a low ceiling and still felt like a basement. Toby had about a third of it devoted to Lego vehicles he’d made and refused to dismantle.
Adelaide went to the top of the basement stairs and called again. “Toby? You home?”
He didn’t answer, so she figured he was out. She threw herself onto the couch and checked her phone. She was bored. She knew she should clean her room, but maybe she’d watch a movie and clean it later. Hmm. What movie? Maybe Amélie. Maybe The Royal Tenenbaums. She couldn’t decide.
Adelaide got up to pee and pushed open the door to the downstairs bathroom, the one Toby used.
There he was. And a needle on the floor.
He was hardly breathing.
Maybe not breathing.
Maybe not breathing.
Toby was slumped against the shower stall, awkward, as if he’d fallen off the toilet. Limp. He wore an orange-striped shirt that made him look like a little boy. He didn’t have shoes on, and his white sweat socks looked bright and new. His eyes were closed and his mouth was open, blueish. He was wheezing.
Adelaide shook his arm. “Toby!”
He didn’t wake. His arm felt like there were no bones in it. She touched his face and neck, feeling for a pulse. It was there, but the beat didn’t seem normal.
She fumbled for the phone in her pocket. Called an ambulance. “My brother,” she kept saying. “My brother, my brother.” The dispatcher said help was on the way.
God. Toby still had a stuffed panda in his bedroom. He read books about Dungeons and Dragons. He still wanted to know if they could get a dog. Asked for leftover cake for breakfast.
Adelaide waited for the ambulance, seven long years. A hundred years.
Toby’s lime-green electric toothbrush lay on the vanity. The cap was off the toothpaste. Hair gel, acne cream, deodorant—nothing had its top on, actually. His shampoo and body wash lay on their side in the shower stall, the washcloth wet on the floor.
Adelaide kept her fingertips on the spot underneath Toby’s ear, feeling for a pulse that was soft and uncertain. She couldn’t sense her body at all, though she was kneeling on the hard floor. She could only feel her fingers against that fragile pulse.
The EMTs rang the doorbell. She ran to open it. They bustled in, a man and a woman wearing thick belts and uniforms.
Adelaide pointed to the bathroom and they didn’t ask many questions. They booked it through the living room.
Somehow the running made it all seem real.
They needed to run. The few seconds they’d save were seconds that might save Toby’s life.
Adelaide watched as they bent over her brother. The man gave him an injection. Then there was a pause. All movement stopped. They were waiting.
Toby’s eyes flickered open.
“Okay then, yep,” said the woman.
“Good news,” said the man, looking at Adelaide.
They loaded Toby onto a stretcher. They took him out the door.
Adelaide called her parents. She couldn’t say the word overdose. She couldn’t say drugs or anything like that. She just said Toby had stopped breathing right, and his heart rate was weak, but the EMTs had come and he was okay now. She was going with him, in the ambulance, to the hospital.
* * *
There is a universe in which Tobias Morrison Buchwald died that day.
Adelaide never got up to pee. Instead, she watched a movie. She found him too late.
The family sat Shiva and the neighbors brought fruit baskets, casseroles, and bottles of wine. Adelaide’s friends, Ashlee and Veronica, and her short-term boyfriend Mateo, sat in her bedroom while the friends and neighbors milled around the house, talking in grave voices. The four of them ate thick, powdery Italian cookies with jam inside. They listened to music and talked about how great Toby had been, shared funny memories they had of him.
The Buchwald family remained in Boston. Levi continued teaching public school and going to conferences, writing his book about Shakespeare in the curriculum. Rebecca kept her yarn store, teaching classes and working through her grief with intensive therapy. Adelaide spiraled into guilt and nearly unresolvable fury, but she did it in the heart of her family, with friends she had known most of her life.
She never met Ling and Joelle, never called Baltimore home.
She never went to Alabaster.
She never met Jack Cavallero or Mikey Double L, and therefore
never fell for either of them.
She was a Boston girl, a public school girl, a girl so steeped in sadness that no antic charm or easy distractibility developed to compensate for the milder sadness and worry that was her personality as we know it.
But also, the worst had happened. Toby was dead. This Adelaide didn’t carry around the f
ear for him, the dread of him, that haunts her in other possible worlds, and that she works so hard to conceal.
* * *
There is also a universe in which Tobias Morrison Buchwald
never
got pulled along to parties with senior girls at all.
He said yes, early in his freshman year, to a skiing trip with a friend from middle school,
a trip he didn’t really want to go on. He wasn’t much of a skier, and this friend and he were growing apart.
But he did go, out of obligation to this old friendship, and he broke his collarbone on a downhill slope.
High school is a place where a neck brace can be the difference between people finding you adorable and the same people finding you unworthy of their notice.
Toby fell immediately off the radar of the girls who had been so charmed by him and instead found himself gaming on Friday nights with a crew of ardent nerds who taught him to master the Rubik’s Cube.
His vulnerable brain chemistry did lead him to depression and self-loathing during his ninth grade year. It was a bleak time. But one of his friends spoke up, and Toby’s parents were able to get him therapy and eventually, some medication.
He still became a stranger to Adelaide. She reached out, and he didn’t respond.
She reached out again, and he didn’t respond.
But they were there in the same house, together. They ate dinner together, most every night. One day, when Adelaide was a junior and Toby was a sophomore, she found him rebuilding his old Lego airport and sat down next to him. She used random bits from the Lego bin to make a diorama of the pool at their YMCA. “This is Mom.” She put the Poison Ivy Lego character into the pool. “And this is Dad.” She put a postal worker. “This is me.” She put Wonder Woman. “And this is you.” She put the Joker.
“I want to be Harry Potter,” said Toby.
“Okay, bring it on. Can you find him?”
Toby found Harry Potter. They put the four characters into the swimming pool together.
“Do you want to eat some butter and brown sugar?” said Toby. It was a thing they used to do when they were younger.
“I don’t think it’ll be as good as it used to be,” said Adelaide. “But sure.”
They cut a stick of salted butter into eight small squares and sprinkled brown sugar on each square. It wasn’t too bad.
* * *
Texts. Sent three hours after she ignored his first set of texts on the subject, on the eighth day Adelaide worked on her Fool for Love model.
Adelaide.
Toby.
I still need that favor. Can you text me back?
Please?
…
…
…
Adelaide?
What do you want?
There’s a girl I like. Darcy.
…
…
And what do you want?
Advice, I guess.
That’s the favor you want?
Yeah.
…
Okay. Did you shave your mustache? That is the first step toward getting any girl interested in you, Toby.
My mustache is ancient history.
Does she know you exist?
She is a junior counselor at RPG day camp with me.
You’re ahead of the game, then.
It’s just. Aggggghhhhhhhh.
What’s she like?
Hmm. She goes to a different school from me. Doesn’t drink or anything. She likes the campers. They make her laugh so hard she loses it and can’t talk. Um, what else? Blue stripe in her hair. She’s black. Good at strategy games. Cool handwriting. She makes all these posters for camp. She seems, I don’t know, she seems like she likes herself.
K.
So what I think is, you see her.
That’s what I think people want. Romantically.
They want to be seen.
This guy I’ve been going out with—or was going out with—maybe still— Anyway—
He sees me. And he let me know.
Do that, and I bet she likes you back.
I was hoping you’d just say something like make sure to brush your teeth.
Make sure to brush your teeth. That’s actually crucial.
Noted.
Oh, try bringing her some bacon.
Bacon, seriously?
Yes. Seriously.
Good luck.
* * *
—
Texts. Two days later.
Adelaide.
Toby.
Do you remember the Halloween when Mom and Dad ate all our Snickers?
Yes.
They had to buy a whole bag of them to make it up to us.
Yes. OMG.
Do you remember our zucchini battle?
Mom was so mad because she had guests coming over and she was supposed to make ratatouille.
But yeah. It was epic.
Also you stuck that Tic Tac up your nose.
Minty! Terrible minty! That’s what I kept yelling.
Why would you do that? Every kid knows not to put something up your nose. It’s like, a thing people tell kids, all the time. Don’t put stuff up your nose.
I am a person whose character flaw is that he sometimes tries new experiences that are VERY BAD IDEAS.
…
…
Sorry. Too early for jokes?
Maybe never is a good time for jokes on that subject.
Sorry. Sorry. You know, I had a fear of Tic Tacs after that.
You did?
I had to go to the hospital!
Don’t be a baby. It was just urgent care.
I still won’t go near them. Nasty little things.
Ha.
We should have another zucchini battle someday. Next time I see you.
…
…
Adelaide didn’t answer him, this time.
She didn’t want to start making plans with Toby. It was much too early to trust him.
Can I be serious for a minute?
Okay.
When I was at Kingsmont the second time, everything was very bleak.
It sucked to be back.
And the very annoying (but also sometimes helpful) group therapy leader said
Think of your happy memories. Know they are still in you.
They are part of you.
And maybe even they ARE you.
It was corny.
Well, just a little.
What I mean is,
the Halloween candy story is inside of us both. And the zucchini. And the terrible minty.
One Friday evening, Adelaide went to the Factory on her own to see an exhibit titled “Also Known As.”
The artist, Danitra Solo, had blown up false identification documents to enormous sizes. Various passports, driver’s licenses, and student ID cards were printed ten feet tall on canvas. They looked pixelated to the point where you could only recognize the photographs as people when you stood back and squinted. Text on the wall said that all of these items were copies of fake documents Solo had acquired through extensive research.
In the corner of the room, a man with a handlebar mustache sat at a desk. A sign on the desk read “Identification.”
“I’m available to make you a document,” he tol
d Adelaide when she approached.
He asked her to take things out of her wallet. “These are the paraphernalia of your identity,” he said.
Besides her student ID and her bus pass, Adelaide’s wallet held punch cards for the coffee shop and the bubble tea place, some money, a receipt from the drugstore, a receipt for the tacos she’d eaten with Jack, a vintage-store receipt, two gum wrappers, and the poem Jack had written when she met him two years ago.
She unfolded the poem and showed it to the man with the mustache.
Cerulean dress and
wide eyes, like a lion.
A raging wave of disobedient hair.
She contains
contradictions.
“Someone loves you,” he said. “Or admires you very much, at least.”
She wasn’t at all sure that was true, but looking at the poem reminded her that it had been true, once. Jack had seen her, briefly, at least. Really seen her. The poem was proof.