R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  A stalker, just like she said. Now they’d all be saying it by the end of the day.

  They thought I was crazy.

  “Why did you do this?” I shouted at the door, but no one answered me. I ran down the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door without making eye contact, but the damage had been done.

  The voices outside my window grow louder. More students have joined the chorus. They must have run out of candles because some of them are holding up their phones with the flashlights turned on.

  Now I’ll never know why Eliza hated me. Was I just an easy target from the very first day, when I told her I couldn’t drive? Or maybe she was just mean.

  Erin and Arden separate from the group. They stand just below my window, their arms around each other.

  “I shouldn’t have covered for her,” Arden cries.

  “It’s not your fault,” Erin reassures her, patting her back. “We both covered whenever she cut class.”

  Wait a second—perfect, straight-A student Eliza Hart cut class? In Spanish yesterday, Arden said Eliza was sick.

  “I should’ve known that something was different yesterday when we woke up and she wasn’t there,” Arden says.

  “How could you have known? Eliza was always off hiking or swimming at all hours.”

  Arden sniffs. “Yeah, she never cared about curfew.”

  Eliza snuck out after curfew?

  “There’s no way we could we have known yesterday was different.” It sounds like Erin is trying to convince herself, not just Arden. Arden nods slowly.

  “Do you think he knows?” Arden asks.

  “It’s on the news.”

  “What a terrible way to find out your girlfriend died.”

  “Well, if she’d told us anything about him, we would have tracked him down and told him ourselves.”

  “She always said she had her reasons for keeping him to herself,” Arden says, and Erin sighs as if to say isn’t it romantic? Arden continues, “Are you gonna tell the police that Eliza had a boyfriend?”

  Erin shakes her head. “Eliza would kill me if I told!” Erin claps her hand over her mouth, like she can’t believe what she just said. “You know what I mean,” she mumbles.

  “I know,” Arden agrees. “I’m not going to tell, either. What good would it do anyway? We don’t even know his name.”

  “Did you see the email from the dean?” Erin asks.

  Arden nods. “I think it went out to the whole student body.”

  I turn away long enough to grab my phone and check my email. Sure enough, there’s a note from the dean asking whoever it was who fought with Eliza last week to come forward. He assures us that (if it’s you) you’re not in trouble; they’re just trying to piece together the final days of her life.

  Arden tilts her head, gazing upward. I step away from the window before she can see me.

  “Maybe he was the one she was fighting with.” Erin says exactly what I’m thinking.

  “He didn’t sound like the kind of guy who would grab her like that,” Arden says. I agree. Not that I have any idea what Eliza’s boyfriend was like, but I can’t imagine her being with anyone who didn’t treat her like a princess.

  “But who else would have a reason to fight with Eliza?”

  “The police will figure it out,” Arden answers finally. I inch closer to the window so I can see Arden tugging Erin back toward the other students, who hold out their arms to welcome Eliza’s roommates.

  Eliza was a model student. I’d never have guessed she cut class and had a secret boyfriend whose name her best friends didn’t know.

  Then again, I never guessed that she wanted to hurt me, either.

  The voices continue their chorus:

  “Rest in peace, Eliza Hart. Rest in peace, Eliza Hart.”

  “Rest in peace, Eliza Hart. Rest in peace, Eliza Hart.”

  Still cold. But very quiet. The pain has shifted: It still hurts but it’s more of an ache than a spasm. Is that progress? Can a person get more dead? I thought it was an absolute thing: dead or alive.

  No in-betweens.

  No ifs ands or buts.

  Ellie Sokoloff used to beg to drive my electric car. Not the hybrid they gave me for my sixteenth birthday, but the miniature convertible they gave me when I was five.

  I was an only child. I didn’t really get the whole sharing thing. I only let Ellie drive it because my nanny, Cassie, made me.

  I remember thinking that my mom wouldn’t have forced me to share,

  being angry while Ellie rode around the backyard,

  her grin so wide it looked like her face might split in two.

  Part of me was always glad when Ellie went home at the end of our playdates and there was no one I had to share with anymore.

  I wonder whose decision that was. The whole not-having-another-kid-after-me thing.

  No. There’s no need to wonder whose decision it was. Of course it must have been hers.

  Dad always went along with her decisions. He deferred to her, even when he should’ve known better. He’d shoot me an apologetic look across the room when she said no to something he would’ve said yes to. Like an unspoken apology was enough to make up for his failure to stand up to her.

  Maybe that was why she didn’t want another kid.

  Maybe she already felt like she had two.

  Or maybe she just didn’t want to keep spreading these genes around.

  She tried to leave him once. I was nine. She packed a bag for both of us. She even made it to the driveway, was lifting the bag into the trunk when he came running out of the house, sobbing so loud I covered my ears. My mother glanced around; we had a long driveway but maybe the neighbors could hear. My father begged and my mother gave in.

  I never asked her why she stayed. Was it because she loved him and couldn’t stand to see his pain, or was it because she thought it might actually be worse for me if we left?

  Once, Ellie took one of my Barbie dolls home with her. Cassie told her she could. I was so angry I didn’t talk to Cassie for days and begged my mom to fire her. I declared I’d never invite Ellie over again, but on Monday, Ellie brought the doll to school and gave it to me before lunch.

  I’d thought she was going to keep it.

  I would’ve kept it.

  I asked if her parents made her bring it to school. Her parents were the type of people who thought the Hart family could afford to buy their princess a million Barbies, what did one more or one less matter? But Ellie said no, her parents didn’t even know about the doll.

  She just gave it back all on her own.

  Barbie’s hair was even smoother than it had been before.

  Ellie told me she’d spent the whole weekend brushing it with her own hairbrush.

  Ellie told me once that she wanted a little sister, but her parents said no every time she asked.

  I remember everything about her.

  It’s ironic, when you think about it. She’s the one who was stalking me, isn’t that the way it was?

  Or anyway, the way I said it was.

  Classes are still canceled. Would they have canceled classes if it had been another student who died? Someone less popular, less beloved?

  I guess it’s not fair of me to think like that. This is a small, tight-knit campus. It says so in the catalog.

  My old school was a lot bigger, but there wasn’t a single student or teacher who didn’t know about my phobia. I’d gone there starting in second grade, and there were kids I was friendly with, but no one I was so close to that it seemed worthwhile to stay in touch after I came here. Sometimes I got invited to study groups and sleepover parties, but I never had a best friend because a best friend is someone you can whisper your secrets to when no one’s looking, and someone was always looking at me because they all thought I might freak out at any second.

  I couldn’t blame them. I had freaked out a few times over the years. Not that many, when you think about it—just six times between second grade and sophomore
year. (Six times at school, that is.) It didn’t take much: Once, someone accidentally knocked me into a tight corner as he rushed to the head of the lunch line; another time, a taller girl pushed me into the closet when she was getting her own coat before recess. In eighth grade, a teacher once caused an attack: She sent me to get the basketballs from the closet beside the gym. It was an enormous room, and she undoubtedly thought I’d be fine. I thought I’d be fine. But there were no windows and the balls for each sport were divided up by chain-link fences that looked like cages, and when I didn’t come back after fifteen minutes and they all came looking for me, I was curled up into a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth and gasping for air, unable to even move the three feet to the door.

  Outside of school, I did my best to avoid crowds and rooms without windows, which isn’t exactly convenient when you live in the most populous city in the country, where real estate is at such a premium that people turn closets into bedrooms.

  So last spring, I came up with my Ventana Ranch plan. This place is so prestigious (according to the catalog, 85 percent of the student body attends top-tier universities after graduating) that I knew if I got in and won a scholarship, my parents wouldn’t say no.

  It’s easy—or anyway, easier—to get straight As when you don’t have any friends to distract you. There’s plenty of time to spend your weekends working on your application, crafting a packet of short stories to submit to the admissions board.

  Ventana Ranch was going to be my chance to make all the friends I’d been missing out on. No one here knew about my phobia. But I’d barely been on campus a day before the other students were looking at me the same way they had at my old school. Like one wrong move could send me over the edge.

  By the time I understood why they were looking at me like that, it was too late to do anything about it.

  The problem with classes being canceled is that there’s nothing to do. (Well, there’s a makeshift memorial service in the student center, but I don’t know if I should go.) I had an English paper that was due today, but I’m scared that if I email it to her, Professor Gordon will think I’m callous for worrying about grades and due dates at a time like this. I’m still in bed when my phone rings.

  “Hey, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey. How are you?” She’s speaking in her special Ellie tone, the one she used for talking to my teachers, my therapists, and me over the years. Concerned, but also exhausted. She tries to cover up her reluctance, but it’s obvious she’d rather be doing anything other than worrying about how her already-fragile daughter is going to handle an actual tragedy.

  “I’m fine,” I assure her, knowing that the administration sent emails to all the parents, alerting them to the situation on campus.

  “I’m glad.” I can hear the relief in her voice. She probably had to psych herself up to call me, steeling herself to hear all about her daughter’s latest crisis.

  She’s not a bad mom or anything. When my claustrophobia started, she was really concerned but full of hope, certain that we just needed to find the right therapist who could cure me. But then I failed to get better.

  I change the subject to something I know will make her happy. “Wes has his basketball finals next week, right?”

  I can practically hear her face break into a smile. When she speaks, her voice sounds completely different—brighter somehow. It’s not like I don’t know that my little brother is her favorite. Wes—unlike me—is cool and popular and athletic. (I never tried out for a team, not even sixth-grade basketball, when the teachers admitted everyone who wanted to be on the team. A team huddle is a bad place for a claustrophobic.) Wes is tall, like his dad. Even his name is cool: Wes isn’t short for anything. His actual full first name is Wes. And his last name is Ross, not Sokoloff. Wes Adam Ross.

  A few years ago, Mom tried using Wes to cure my phobia. “Set a good example for your brother,” she’d say, as though he actually looked up to me or something. Wes never looked up to anyone, least of all me. As far as he was concerned, I was the lame big sister who was to blame for his getting the smaller bedroom, who ruined every rare family vacation by insisting we stay on low floors in hotels. On our last trip—to Florida, over a year ago—the bellman was walking me past the elevator toward the stairs when a woman in a wheelchair crossed our path.

  Wes shook his head. “I can’t believe you need as much special treatment as someone with a real disability.”

  He had a point. Sometimes I used the bigger stall in public bathrooms, set aside for people with disabilities, and when I emerged looking fully abled, people often gave me dirty looks. The strange thing about claustrophobia is that even though I don’t want people to know about it I also wish I had a sign around my neck so that people would know without my having to explain. They’d walk me past the elevator to the stairs without asking a single question or needing any explanation.

  Wes rolled his eyes as the bellman opened a door that said For Emergencies Only and pointed to the stairs: dingy and gray, nothing like the brightly decorated hotel lobby. Mom used to insist on taking the stairs with me, because she worried about me being alone. I don’t remember exactly when she decided I was old enough to be by myself.

  “Wish Wes luck for me,” I say now, imagining him making slam dunk after slam dunk.

  Mom’s voice slips back into her Ellie tone. “You sure you’re okay?”

  I shrug, feigning nonchalance even though she obviously can’t see me. “It’s not like I was friends with Eliza Hart anymore, Mom.”

  I imagine Mom nodding, trying to decide whether to say what she says next. “If you start to feel …” Mom pauses. “Bad about it, you know you can call Dr. Solander.”

  Bad is Mom’s code word for claustrophobia, and she says it as though the word itself tastes bitter and weighs about a thousand pounds. Dr. Solander is a friend of a friend of a friend of my stepdad’s. He works in San Francisco, and my stepdad gave me his contact info before I started school. “I told him all about you,” he said stiffly. “Anytime you feel the least bit stuck, you can just go in for a session.”

  I looked Dr. Solander up online. He doesn’t specialize in claustrophobia, and he doesn’t usually work with teenagers. Plus, San Francisco is at least a two-hour drive from Big Sur. But I didn’t point any of that out because it’s not like I wanted to go to therapy anymore. I was sick of therapy. It had never done me any good.

  Anyway, Mom didn’t want to go searching for another specialist. I heard her complaining to my stepdad once: “If I could get back all the time I spent searching for specialists,” she said, “I could have learned a new language. Gotten my master’s in psychology and cured her myself.”

  Now she says, “The dean’s email said that the school is going to have on-campus grief counseling.” I nod, even though she (still) can’t see me. “Not that you’re grieving,” Mom points out quickly. “Like you said, you barely knew Eliza.”

  That’s not exactly what I said, but there doesn’t seem to be any reason to mention it.

  It’s the least of the things I haven’t said to my mother. I never told her about the rumors. Never told her I haven’t made any friends here. I don’t want to give her another reason to be disappointed in me.

  I wasn’t the only one who wanted Ventana Ranch to be a fresh start.

  Someone knocks on my door. Probably Sam.

  “Mom, I gotta go. My roommate wants to talk to me.”

  “Good, that’s good.” We hang up without saying good-bye.

  “Come in,” I call out. Sam opens the door and leans against the doorframe. He’s almost always leaning on something, so he always looks casual and comfortable.

  “You’re not coming?” he asks.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “You’re still in your pajamas.”

  Sam’s dressed in black jeans and a black sweatshirt, like he’s going to a very casual funeral. Though a memorial service isn’t a funeral. Eliza’s body still hasn’t been released from the po
lice.

  “Everyone’s going to be there,” Sam says.

  I shrug. I’m used to not being wherever everyone else goes.

  “It’ll look strange if you don’t come.”

  It’s the closest Sam’s ever come to mentioning the fact that Eliza Hart hated me. Or maybe he means I had plenty of reason to hate her.

  “It’ll look strange if I do come. Everyone knows Eliza hated me.”

  They all hate me, I think but do not say. In January, not long after I pounded on Eliza’s door, we had a school-wide trip to an aquarium in Monterey. There was a tank with two dolphins who’d been rescued from one of those swim-with-the-dolphins places in the Caribbean. The aquarium was rehabbing them in the hopes of eventually setting them free. I made the mistake of asking why the dolphins had needed to be rescued. “Aren’t those places nice?” I asked. Arden answered before the tour guide could. Some of those places bought dolphins who’d been kidnapped from their families. Dolphins in captivity have shorter life spans than dolphins in the wild. No matter how big the tanks, they aren’t nearly big enough or challenging enough for animals as athletic and intelligent as dolphins.

  “I thought dolphins liked humans,” I said dumbly.

  “Would you like the species that had hunted and imprisoned you for hundreds of years?” Arden answered back.

  “But I’ve heard stories about people who were rescued from sharks by wild dolphins. Dolphins playing in the wake of a boat.”

  “Have you also heard stories about dolphins being herded into coves for slaughter?”

  I shook my head. I hadn’t.

  “Figures you’d be the kind of person who thinks it’s okay to keep animals in cages,” Arden said.

  I spent the rest of the trip trailing behind the group, missing most of the tour. When we got back to school, I did a little bit of research. Arden was right. (Of course Arden was right.) There was even an award-winning documentary about the cove she’d mentioned. That’s the problem with studying the world inside a book when everyone else was studying the world around us.