by Kit Frick
I’d had enough. She was delusional. She was drunk. And once the words started, I couldn’t make them stop. “You’re a lying, selfish whore, Margaret Johnston. You were only helping yourself, and you know it. You are not my friend. You’re a narcissistic, back-stabbing slut.”
The words were horrible, mean. I didn’t care. I just wanted to get away from her, to forget this terrible week ever happened. I was so done. I held on to the railing with my free hand and wrenched my other arm back, yanking hard, freeing my wrist from Ret’s grasp.
One second, she was peering down at me from the top of the stairwell. Those ridiculous shoes. Whiskey rotting her breath. The red knot of her lips, a Three Alarm Fire. The next, she was tumbling fast down an entire flight of fifteen hard, vinyl stairs. Ret’s scream filled the stairwell with the echo of a thousand blades while I gripped the railing and the three of us let out one awful, collective gasp.
APRIL, JUNIOR YEAR
(SPRING BREAK, WEDNESDAY)
“Say something, please.”
“Do you love her?” I asked.
Silence. Oh my god.
I stood up, then staggered back against the couch. The blanket slipped off my shoulder and down my back, exposing my skin. I felt unsteady on my feet, but I wouldn’t fall over. I wasn’t going to faint like some poor, scorned ingenue.
“I wanted to tell you, but she made me swear I wouldn’t.” Because she knew I’d never forgive her. Because then her fun would have to stop.
All of a sudden, everything Ret had said on the phone made so much sick sense. Two kids pawing at each other in the middle of the living room floor. Not Ret and Dave. Ret and Matthias. The room was crashing down around me, or maybe I was the one crashing. I snatched the fallen blanket and clutched it tightly around my shoulders, stepping away from the couch, away from him. Who was he?
“Are you okay?” Matthias stood up and reached for my arm.
“Don’t touch me.” He jerked his hand back like I’d bitten him. Maybe I should have. “I need you to get out. Right now.”
He ignored me. “She offered to help, that’s how it started. She knew you better than anyone, said she knew how to fix things. I don’t know why I trusted her.” He said it like it was some kind of excuse, like I’d asked for an explanation.
“And hooking up factored in how exactly?”
Matthias grimaced and folded his arms across his chest. I couldn’t tell if he looked more defensive or scared. “It just happened. She was easy to talk to. It was fun, okay? Remember fun? It didn’t mean anything.”
“Please.”
“God, fine, that’s such a cliché, but you know what I mean.”
“No, I don’t,” I said, my voice hard. If he was trying to hurt me even more, mission accomplished.
His eyes narrowed. “Right. Everything’s serious with you, isn’t it? Look, I fucked up, but I guess it’s for the best. She made me realize how not ready I am for this. For you.”
His words were sharp, designed to cut to the bone. I sucked in a gasp so fast it burned my lungs and tears pricked my eyes.
“I’m sorry,” he said, more softly. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Save it.” I scrubbed at my face with the blanket. Get ahold of yourself, Ellory. For a moment, neither of us said anything. I just wanted him to leave, for this nightmare to be over.
“She said she was hooking up with Dave?” he asked finally. Had she? Had she ever really said it was Dave Franklin? There was a tinge of jealousy in his voice, and I almost laughed at the bitter irony of it all.
“She let me believe what I wanted to believe,” I said. “Now get out.”
He still didn’t move.
“I don’t know if I love her,” he said finally. “I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
Was I supposed to thank him for letting me off the hook? Fuck that. I straightened my shoulders, and the blood started flowing back down into my chest, my limbs, my feet. “You have to leave, Matthias. Now.”
He wouldn’t meet my gaze. He started to back toward the family room door. I knew that feeling. Those wobbly legs. That slow backing away. For an instant, I saw him like a vase teetering on the edge of a shelf. I wanted to watch him smash into a million little pieces.
APRIL, JUNIOR YEAR
(FRIDAY AFTER BREAK)
It was over so fast. One minute, she was flying down the stairs. The next, she was still. I screamed. I never meant for any of it to happen. I didn’t mean for her body to end up twisted on the landing, her forehead split open into a red gash, her face and shirt streaming with blood. I didn’t mean for something to snap when her back crashed hard against the stairs, something vital, something at the base of her spine.
I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean it. But I’d be straight up lying if I said that before I knew how bad it was, before I knew that she wasn’t going to get back up, before all that, when it was just her hair flashing past me in a fan of black and green streaks, one snakeskin heel flying off and careening all the way down to the first floor—I’d be lying through my teeth if I said that in that one quick second, I didn’t enjoy it.
I will never, ever forgive myself for that second.
Then, everything was a blur of noise and motion and slick, deep red. I was screaming and everyone was screaming and teachers were pouring out of classrooms and I was on the landing, my hands and knees against the cold, tile floor, and everything was slippery with Ret’s blood. It was in my nose, my eyes, everywhere. I pressed my face into her chest and screamed and screamed until someone pulled me off her, and the street outside the school erupted into a roar of sirens.
I looked up at my friends, frozen at the top of the stairs. Bex clutched at her stomach, her mouth hanging open in a silent O of horror. Jenni’s eyes were a steel flash. An accusation, a blade cutting me in two.
She’d heard every word I said to Ret. Every unforgivable, mean thing. Bex might absolve me in time, but not Jenni. She knew what I felt in that quick second. She saw straight through me.
I wanted to tell Jenni that I didn’t mean it. That Ret probably did believe she was trying to help me, in her own twisted way. I was only trying to get away from her. I definitely didn’t mean to hurt her. But Jenni was all the way at the top of the stairs, and the words wouldn’t come.
Then, there were paramedics everywhere, and we were all being hurried away from the stairs.
Then, Ret was on a stretcher and I was back in the math room, my face pressed against the window. I got blood on the pane. I couldn’t even see Ret, there were so many people and machines hovering around her like a swarm of bees.
Then, Ret was gone.
Somehow, I was downstairs, in Principal Keegan’s office. The clock said 10:47. I should have been in third period. I was getting blood on the orange fabric. They’d have to replace the chair. It had soaked though my shirt, streaked my hair. My hands were covered in a deep red brown. It looked like a thin coat of enamel. I turned them over and over, transfixed by the dark half-moons beneath my fingernails. They were somebody else’s fingers, somebody else’s hands. In the hallway outside, everyone was sobbing and talking and I couldn’t figure out why my mom was there, wrapping me in the old flannel we kept in the back of the car in case of a breakdown. The receptionist had to tell me over and over that they had called her, that I could go home now.
APRIL, JUNIOR YEAR
(SPRING BREAK, WEDNESDAY)
I willed myself to stay standing until he was in the hall. Don’t cry. Don’t move a muscle. I stood perfectly still until I heard his footsteps stop ringing against the flagstone, the thud of the front door. I clutched the blanket around my bare skin until the slam of the truck door, the sputter of the engine, the hum of the tires told me he was really gone.
Only then, only when the house was entirely silent and there was no trace of Matthias left anywhere, only then did I collapse onto the floor, the blanket falling in a heap around me, the sobs heaving out of my lungs in frantic, painful waves
of water and sound.
APRIL, JUNIOR YEAR
(SUNDAY)
Everyone agreed it was an accident. I was told over and over and over. No one blames you. It was a terrible accident. There were so many witnesses. Bex and Jenni, and two seniors ditching class. Three sophomores watching the commotion from the base of the stairs. Everyone saw. Everyone agreed. It was an accident. It would take time for the full toxicology report to come in, but they had found her flask in her bag at the hospital. Her blood alcohol level was 0.11—about three shots of whiskey. Enough to smash through reason, depth perception, reaction time. In combination with hard, vinyl stairs and five-inch heels, enough to be fatal.
On Sunday morning, Mom sat on the corner of the bed and told me that Ret’s funeral would be later that week. I didn’t have to go. She’d lived for almost two days in the hospital, if that dark place where Ret’s brain had gone could be called living. Traumatic brain injury. Severe damage to the spine. The part of her brain where Ret had lived—real, breathing Ret, my Ret—had been gone from the moment she’d hit the landing.
No one would press charges. She’d been drinking, a lot. I’d been careless, yes, but it was a freak accident. It wasn’t my fault. I was told over and over. My mom started calling what happened the fall. It was a kindness, a shortcut, a way of taking something hard and shaping it into two little words that can slip off your tongue. As I lay in bed, my brain riffed on the possibilities: fallout, fall from grace, fall guy, fall apart. There was a piece of truth in each and every variation. But of course what she actually meant was much more literal.
Principal Keegan suspended me for the rest of the year. He made it very clear that the suspension was for fighting in school—not because they blamed me for Ret’s death. My parents might have fought it, but everyone agreed I needed time away from Pine Brook after the accident. They said the word over and over and over. Accident. But they didn’t know what it was like in that moment. How good it had felt to say those terrible things. How for an instant, I’d enjoyed watching her fall. Accident, fall. The words rested like a hot stone on my tongue. I gagged. I swallowed. The stone was on fire. It burned straight through me, leaving a charred-up, blacked-out, gaping hole inside my chest. Crackle, pop.
38
JUNE, SENIOR YEAR
(NOW)
I pick Tuesday because Tuesday doesn’t seem like a day people visit cemeteries. You go on a Sunday or holiday, not on a spring evening, three days after graduation. I pick Tuesday because I don’t want company. Because if I am going to really do this, I need to be alone.
I drive through the entry gates, past the shop selling artificial wreaths and bright orange and yellow pinwheels. There’s nothing there I can imagine being loved by the living. Why would we choose it for the dead? There are only a few cars parked along the wide asphalt drive. Good. I drive past the older parts of the cemetery, the ones that have graves with looming stone angels, the ones with crumbling headstones and lush grass.
There’s only one part of Saint Aloysius where she could be. The part with fresh dirt and glossy, new stones. The part at the end of the drive. I pull the Subaru up along the shoulder and step out of the car into the low-hanging sun. What if she doesn’t show?
I force my feet to move away from the car, onto the grass. She’ll show. As much as I don’t want to be here, to see the new grass, to stand in front of her stone, I need to say goodbye. It’s been a year. One year, one month, and two weeks to be exact. I am a coward. I am overdue.
I start at the end of the first row and walk along, reading the names. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in a cemetery, since my grandpa’s funeral. I don’t remember a lot about it. We were in Maryland. I thought we’d all throw a shovelful of dirt on the grave, because that’s what happened in movies, but no one did. I remember it had rained the night before, that my shoes were caked in mud.
Some of the stones have intricately etched portraits of the deceased, or the whole family. Some have poems, songs, memories. They look almost painted on. The patches of grass in front of the graves are decorated with artificial sunflowers and bright streamers and wreaths shaped into black and gold Steelers helmets and red, white, and blue Phillies diamonds. I guess there are a lot of sports fans among the dead. I keep walking.
One grave has an entire Barbie tea party set up in front, complete with little yellow and white teacups and saucers. I stop to read the headstone. The girl who died was only four. Her stone is etched with a detailed likeness of the Magic Kingdom. It makes my stomach twist. I keep going.
Then, in the sixth row back, I see her. She’s wearing her graduation gown, sitting on top of her headstone, her legs swinging in the wind. Her shoes peek out from the bottom of the gown, a pair of snakeskin heels stained with deep, red blood. I shudder. Even in death, Ret still knows how to make a scene.
“Ellory May,” she calls, waving to me like nothing has happened, like we’re just two friends hanging out in a graveyard on a sunny afternoon. “About time you showed up.”
You’re in my head, I think, but she’s still there, the maroon gown fluttering around her. You’re not real. She kicks off the bloodstained shoes and grins.
“Poor taste, right? Veronica sued the shit out of Hot Topic, not that it was their fault. Wouldn’t want to disappoint her from beyond the grave.” She laughs, then slides down from the headstone, bare feet sinking into the grass.
She’s different today. This isn’t the girl in AP English that only I could see, the pair of lapis eyes following me down the hall, the shadow waiting at the riverbank, where no one was around to watch me slip a fresh bottle of my mom’s amaretto out of my bag, unscrew the lid, and try to forget. This Ret knows she’s dead, knows our dance is over, the lights have come up. Which means, of course, that I know. That I’m ready to face the truth. Because there’s no moving on unless I let her go.
I will my legs to carry me through the grass.
When I reach her headstone, I’m surprised to see how simple it is compared to so many of the others. Ret’s is unadorned with etchings or quotes. Carved into the sleek face are simply her name and the dates that bookend her short life. Margaret Sara Johnston. It looks wrong written out in full. A plain name for a plain girl, and Ret was never plain. The grass in front of the stone is freshly trimmed, and two pretty pink wreaths rest against the base of the stone. They’re the pink of little girls, of party dresses, of ballerinas. They’re all wrong for Ret.
I look over at her. Her head is tilted to one side, her arms folded across her chest. Her hair is streaked bright cherry red, and falls almost down to her waist. She looks me up and down like I’m an antique at auction, and she’s appraising my worth. Then her lips part into a smile. They’re coated in her favorite Three Alarm Fire gloss. God, I miss her.
“You’re not real.” I force myself to look her in the eyes. She purses her lips and slides a pair of red plastic sunglasses down across the bridge of her nose, blocking me out.
“Damn, Ellory. Haven’t you already hurt me enough? You don’t have to go hurting my feelings too.”
Ret. You were wild and bold and absolutely maddening. Selfish and demanding and more scared than you’d ever admit. You were adrenaline rushes and tested limits and fierce, bright light. And now we have to say goodbye.
I feel the tears coming all at once, and there’s nothing I can do to stop them. I don’t want to stop them. I hate Ret for dying and I hate myself even more. I sink onto the ground in front of the wreaths and sob and sob until my breath is a hard, chafing rasp against my throat. Until there are no tears left.
When I look up, she’s still standing there, looking embarrassed for me. I reach into my bag and pull out her red leather notebook. Then I hold it out, an offering.
“Don’t you know ghosts don’t read books?” she mocks me.
“We both know you’re not a ghost.” My voice is steady. “I made you, and now I need you to leave so I can say goodbye to Ret.”
She takes a step back.
“I am Ret,” she says.
“No,” I say through gritted teeth. “Ret died last April. Ret is buried beneath this stone.” I know, on some level, that I’m talking to a figment of my imagination, but that doesn’t make this any easier. This figment has a face and a voice and a name. And I need her to leave.
“I made you up because I wasn’t ready to forgive myself. And because it was easier than admitting you were really gone. I needed you, and you were right there, waiting.”
“I’m still here,” she says. Her voice is a whimper.
I reach out and take her hand in mine. “I love you. And now I need you to let me say goodbye.” Then I let her hand go.
She takes another step back. She wavers. Through her maroon robes, I can see rows of graves. I can see grass and sky.
I close my eyes and count to ten, fifteen, twenty. There’s no magic number here. There’s only me. I’m the only one capable of moving on. Ret’s death was a terrible tragedy. A horrible, ugly thing. She was drunk, and I was angry, and Matthias was a coward. We were all responsible.
For over a year, I haven’t been able to forgive myself. I said awful things. The last words I said to her, the last things she ever heard. And for one second, before I knew how bad it was, before I knew that she wasn’t going to get back up, I enjoyed her pain.
But I am not a criminal, hideous. I hate the word, but it was an accident all the same. I can admit that now. I didn’t mean it, and that does mean something after all. It means I deserve my own forgiveness. I picture my face on a giant balloon. Sharp features, sharp chin. Fine blond hair, fluttering in the wind. I twist the string around my hand, and then I release it into the sky.
When I open my eyes, you’ll be gone. When I open my eyes, you’ll be gone.
I open my eyes. I’m alone.
I turn back to the grave and rest the notebook at the base of the stone, between the wreaths. Then I reach into my pocket and pull out the black band I never used to take off my wrist. Veronica wears Ret’s now. And now mine will be with her. I open the notebook and slip it between the pages.