STRIPPED

by Brooklyn Skye

  I look away from the blur of colored glass. “I don’t want to see her.”

  Mom’s still crying. She hasn’t stopped for the last week and I’m starting to get tired of it. She sniffles and grabs my hand.

  “Come on. I’ll walk you up there.”

  I can’t feel her touch, but I pull away anyway.

  “I can go myself.” I make my way to the front of the chapel, my arms cradling the gaping hole in my chest. I will never be whole again.

  Carefully, I lean over the wooden casket. Zoe’s in a blue dress with white lace on the neck. It’s hideous and Zoe would freak if she saw herself. Her eyes are closed and so is her mouth and I can’t look at her face anymore.

  A thin silver chain hangs on her bony wrist; a bracelet I’ve never seen before. A bracelet so plain and simple Zoe wouldn’t be caught dead in. Only she is.

  I’m up here alone, and I just want to go back to my seat. But I have to make it look like I’m saying goodbye, even though I already did that at the hospital. That way Mom’ll get off my back.

  So I lean down and press my lips to Zoe’s forehead and say, “Thanks for the warning.”

  This is stupid. This is so, so stupid. I sit up and throw the bottle of aspirin as hard as I can. It rebounds off the wall above Nikki’s bed and lands with a clack on the floor.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  SOLD!

  I stare at the sign stuck to the wooden post in our grass for a full ten seconds and then I punch it. The metal clangs and swings and I punch it again. Fuck, fuck, fuck!

  Stomping through the grass, I pass a red car on the driveway. I don’t recognize it. It’s not my parents’. Aside from the fact they’re flat broke and couldn’t afford a new car, there’s a USC sticker stuck to the back window.

  A handful of voices boom from the kitchen, and I’m not sure what I expect: a realtor, maybe, or the future owners of this house, my house, hanging out with my parents.

  Nobody’s anticipating me so I latch the door quietly and slip off my shoes.

  It could be my parents’ closest friends, Julie and Mark Rider, who lived next door for a full decade before they moved across town last year or their neighbor, Mrs. Tyagi, who Mom entertains occasionally with mint tea and old photo albums from her childhood. Maybe it’s someone Dad met at the unemployment office or—

  “Evan?” I don’t mean to interrupt his conversation with my parents, especially in the whimper that just escaped my mouth, but the sight of my sister’s boyfriend—ex-boyfriend—rams me like a ten-foot wave. “What are you doing here?”

  Mom sets her spatula down, stealing a nervous glance to Dad and then Evan. Some unsaid that speaks louder than a bullhorn. This is something I’m not supposed to see.

  “Quinn,” she rushes over to me, assessing me up and down. “What are you doing here? Is everything all right? Did something happen?”

  I stare blindly at Mom’s face.

  A full year has passed since I last saw Evan and it’s strange how the sight of something or someone can drench you with emotions. Not much has changed on him: tawny curls, green eyes, the slight depression in the middle of his chin that he used to rub with his thumb when he was nervous.

  Not much has changed, but a lot has changed. Evan isn’t wearing a ratted rock band tee or jeans with holes like he used to every day. Trimmed facial hair now covers his chin, making him look less like the nineteen-year-old I remember him as. His smile is different too. Past and present mingling together in a tight-lipped way.

  I hold up my arms to stop Mom’s anxious hands from reaching for me.

  “I’m fine. Why’s he here?” Tofu sizzles in a pan behind her, alongside a steaming pot of rice. Dad rises up from behind his laptop, says nothing.

  “Hey, Quinn.” Evan nods with his chin. “Look at you. All grown up.”

  It hurts to look at him, standing there behind the counter. Not because his long, lanky body dwarfs the same counter that always seemed too tall. Or because he’s comfortably chopping celery on a wooden cutting board. It’s because when I look at Evan, I see Zoe. His arm draped over her shoulders, their bare feet covered in suds as they washed his yellow Jeep which he’s apparently since traded for some ugly red sedan, the two of them sitting face-to-face on Zoe’s bed doing homework together…

  They’d been together for two and a half years before Evan broke up with her.

  I scowl. “Why are you here?”

  “Oh.” He scratches his temple. “It’s Monday. I’m here for dinner.”

  I cross my arms and look to Mom. “Monday?”

  “Um…” Mom tugs the worn-out ties of her apron tighter. “Well, Evan gets out of class early on Mondays. And you know what it’s like to miss a home-cooked meal when you’re away at school.”

  Home-cooked. Huh. So eating spongy alien matter atop rice and celery is desirable?

  News to me.

  “And how long has he been coming over on Mondays?” Suddenly, I hate Mondays. I hate post-weekend talk on Mondays, the blare of my alarm clock on Mondays, the heavy load of homework, the dinner my parents have been eating with the boy who, in some sense, has to do with the empty bedroom upstairs.

  “Since he started USC.”

  Biting the inside of my cheek, I focus on the pain instead of the overwhelming urge to scream.

  “Which was?”

  “Shortly after you left for Loyola.” Her shoulders wilt. Is she ashamed about replacing me with Evan? Or is she replacing Zoe?

  “Hm.” I kick at where the carpet meets the hardwood floor, loosening the lip of burlap which for some reason gives me satisfaction. “You’ve been having dinner with Evan since August? And no one thought to invite me?”

  Not that I would’ve come, but still…

  “Quinny,” Dad says, stepping forward with his hand set casually in his pocket. “We didn’t want to burden you with that responsibility to make it home every week. School’s tough enough on you these days.”

  “Right. Because apparently you know everything that’s going on with me at Loyola.” I spin on my heels and stomp out of the kitchen I now hate too.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  It’s raining again by the time I reach the end of our street. Not hard, just the drizzly sort that sticks to my eyelashes and tickles my neck. Around the corner, past Tyler Shore’s house, the one with the tire swing in the front yard Zoe fell off of when we were younger, I call Nikki to vent. She says maybe Evan and my parents use the time to share memories of Zoe. “Like a memorial dinner or something.”

  I tell her that theory doesn’t make any sense because he didn’t love her as much as she loved him and why would he waste one day a week with them? “It isn’t like the food is that great.”

  “Maybe he feels guilty.”

  “Guilty?” Behind me, tires squeak lightly against the wet asphalt.

  “He probably feels like he owes your parents or something. Not that your sister could be replaced, but you know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.” Evan pulls the car up to the curb, rolls down the window and looks at me. “Nik, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  Evan’s hand drapes over the steering wheel in the same casual way it used to fall across Zoe’s shoulders.

  “Your mom wanted to come, but I needed to get out of the house. The smell of tofu makes me a little queasy.”

  At this I chuckle inside—he was miserable in there, even if it was only from the smell. My hard expression doesn’t break.

  “Like paper.”

  “Exactly!” He taps his nose. “The only name I could put to it was my old couch, but that sorta tripped me out when I tried to eat it. Paper. That’s exactly how it smells. The recycled kind.” He shoves open the door. “You know, it’d be much easier to have a conversation if you got in the car.” His voice is deep like Torrin’s only with a hint of twang, evidence of his childhood in Texas. I scold myself right there for allowing that thought and Evan must mistake it as irritation toward him because then he adds
, “I get it, Quinn. You’re mad about the dinners. You’re jealous about me spending time with your parents. I’d be jealous too.”

  Screw the dinners.

  “Is your guilt too much,” I snap, “and coming to my house is your way of proving to my parents you’re not really the prick we think you are? Does it make you feel better?”

  “Guilt?”

  I swallow hard.

  “You’re not feeling guilty?” My stomach lurches; nature’s funny way of telling me things aren’t quite right in the universe. Or with me, standing on the curb in the rain. A squiggly crease grows across the middle of his forehead.

  “About what?”

  “Breaking up with my sister!” I jerk my hands into the air. “The whole reason she killed herself, Evan!” I can’t do this right now. I throw him one last death glare then plod back toward my house, but after a few steps I stop. Don’t want to go home. I don’t want to see my parents. So I about-face and, fully conscious of my idiotic move, walk in the opposite direction. The bus stop is only a few more blocks. I just need to hurry.

  I don’t hear Evan’s car door shut. Or maybe I do, but choose to ignore it. And his footsteps on the cement behind me, I tell myself, aren’t really his footsteps. He lurches in front of me, hands up in surrender.

  “Quinn, I didn’t break up with your sister.”

  “Fuck off, Evan.”

  “She broke up with me. Two days before she…” He doesn’t say it, but the words are loud and sharp like glass shattering at our feet.

  “But…” My voice strangles and I can’t move because this is one of those moments in time when whoever’s in charge of the world decides to flip this maze we call “life” on me just as I’m about to find my way out, shutting one door and opening another sending me in a completely different direction. “I don’t understand.”

  Thinking back, I’m not sure why I thought he’d ended their relationship. No one ever told me he did, but at the time it made sense: Evan and Zoe weren’t together anymore. Zoe spent the afternoons in her room crying instead of out with Evan…

  “Why?”

  “She never said why.” He stares down at his hand, blinking hard. “Honestly, I think it was because of her disorder. Not me. Or at least that’s what I keep telling myself—”

  “Disorder?” The stupid maze flips again and now I don’t know if I’m standing up or lying down or maybe hanging by my ankles a hundred feet above ground. I feel like I’m falling and can’t find anything steady to grab on to. Zoe didn’t have a disorder. She was perfect, in every sense of the word: beautiful, funny, smart, athletic, popular. “What disorder?”

  He looks at me like I should know something and then his brow falls when he understands I don’t.

  “Your sister was bipolar.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  “Quinn. Hey. You all right?”

  I clench my eyes tighter, trying to pretend for a second—a millisecond—Evan’s voice is Torrin’s. I allow that one tiny forbidden desire for one tiny forbidden second, and then push it away, somewhere down deep to a place below my subconscious where even I will, hopefully someday, forget it’s there.

  Wet air seeps around me. Without a word, Evan leads me to his red car and sits me in the front seat. Hanging out the opened door, my feet bump against his. Water trickles down the gutter, slowly pooling up against his shoe.

  “Why’d you sell your Jeep?” I only half-listen to his answer, still distracted by what he’d said: Zoe was bipolar...bipolar. Bipolar. His hands fidget. One rakes through his curls.

  “Had to. Everything about it reminded me of Zo.”

  He got rid of everything, moved on. Mom and Dad too. A strange silence settles over us, even as old Mrs. Sapp whizzes by in her Lincoln.

  “Will you tell me what happened?” I sit up, straighten my shirt. “You know, between you and my sister?”

  He nudges my legs with his shoe, then shuts the door and walks behind the car. The mirror magnifies his crinkled expression.

  We don’t drive anywhere, just sit parked along the curb as he explains how my sister, in the weeks leading up to her suicide, had withdrawn from him. She claimed she was sick a lot, missing classes and staying home on the weekends. Evan didn’t grasp it at the time, but Zoe’s depression was worsening. She was letting the idea of it consume her and the stress of feeling worthless made her physically sick to the point she was throwing up.

  Evan tried everything to get through to her, but she eventually broke up with him, shutting him out completely. And then, two days later, she emptied the bottle of Mom’s sleeping pills.

  He tried to get through to her…why couldn’t I have done the same?

  “I don’t understand how I could go this long and not know she was bipolar. Not pick up on the signs. God, why wouldn’t she tell me?”

  He shrugs, wiping a layer of dust off the dash with his finger, that crease still lingering on his forehead.

  “She didn’t want anyone knowing. Shana didn’t even know.” Shana Goetz. Zoe’s best friend from middle school. They knew everything about each other.

  Or so I thought.

  “This sounds stupid, but I feel left out that I didn’t know.” I press the moisture in the corners of my eyes with my fingertips. “Like she was just my big sister, not anything more. Not my friend.”

  “That’s exactly why she didn’t want you to know.” He looks over at me. “She tried everything to be a good role model for you, Quinn.”

  “She fucking killed herself.”

  “Yeah.” He pats my hand. “I know.”

  ~*~

  “You can all fucking fuck off for all I fucking care!”

  It’s not one of my better entrances.

  “Quinn!” Both my parents gasp. Mom’s holding a plate of wiggly tofu which pisses me off even more.

  “I can’t believe you wouldn’t tell me my own fucking sister was bipolar!”

  “Watch your language,” Dad says, all parental. A tall glass of Coke rests in his hand. If I were into gambling, I’d bet the arsenal of TVs in this house there’s whiskey mixed with that Coke. Then I could sell them and have enough money to stay at Loyola for another quarter.

  Mom’s gaze slips behind me.

  Evan clears his throat. “I’m sorry—”

  “Obviously, he thought I knew!” I wasn’t planning on defending Evan, but whatever. “What kind of family is this? She’s my sister for Christ’s sake! And that’s something I have a right to know! Family business!”

  Fuck, now I can’t breathe again. All these liars in the room are stealing all the air. I hate them for that. And I hate them for lying.

  I rush to the door and stand outside in the cold air and breathe, breathe, breathe as deep as I can. A second later Mom comes out and starts smoothing my hair in her mama lion way.

  “Don’t touch me.”

  “Quinn, sit down. There’s something I need to show you.” She lets out a long exhale, looking so small and I guess that softens me a bit so I sit on the porch swing.

  Beside me, she lowers and slips a folded piece of paper into my fingers. My mind races to figure out what it is, automatically skipping over what it really is because since the day Mom found Zoe’s body this paper has not existed.

  I unfold the square and see my sister’s handwriting. I lift my head, stare at Mom.

  “You said she didn’t leave a note.”

  “She stuck it in my jewelry box. I told you that because she didn’t want anyone else to see…and I knew you would’ve wanted to read it.”

  With delicate fingers, I hold the corners of the paper taut against the breeze.

  Dearest Mom,

  Remember when I was little and told you I wanted to be a veterinarian? The look on your face, I remember, was priceless. A proud mom. Dad, too. Your little girl was going to grow up and do great things. Bet you never expected your little girl was going to be a huge disappointment.

  I want you to know what I’ve chosen to do is not you
r fault. It’s nobody’s but my own. I am not STRONG enough to live with myself this way.

  With my life and my heartbeat and my soul, this disorder goes too. I do NOT want to be known as the girl who couldn’t handle living with this, even though that’s who I am. THE BIPOLAR GIRL. That’s all I will ever be and I don’t want to be that girl anymore, Mom. You have to understand that.

  I can’t tell you how sorry I am for ending my life this way. I hope you can find it in your heart to see it as a way for me to not suffer anymore. Please forgive me for taking my life so early. I know you and Dad had bigger and better dreams for me, but I cannot stand to let you down anymore.

  I love you and everyone who I call family. You have all touched my heart. Please rest assured that I will be much happier by the time you find this, and I will be watching over you from above with a smile on my face.

  Love,

  Zoe

  ps. Please don’t tell Quinn.

  “There were traces of alcohol in her blood,” Mom whispers as I lay the note on my lap. “Which is what pushed her over the edge, I think.” By the pale worn creases in the paper, I bet Mom’s read and reread this letter a thousand times.

  She wipes a tear from my cheek and I search the numbness in my head for words.

  “I feel like this person…” I glance down at the note, blurrily skimming over her last thoughts again. “…And the person who was my sister are two separate people. This isn’t the Zoe I knew.”

  Mom’s hand rubs my arm. “That’s the way she wanted it. She was protecting you.”

  “From what? Reality? The idea that people aren’t always perfect?” I look to the street. It’s raining hard now. “Killing herself sort of did the opposite, don’t you think?”

  “She wasn’t happy. This disorder affected every moment of every day.”

  “How can you sit here and sound like you’re okay with it?” I hold up the paper, my stomach giving its opinion of the matter with a nauseous roll. “With this?”