R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  That Ellie is finally growing up.

  That Ellie can handle it on her own.

  I never told her that once I realized those girls—Sascha, Stacy, and Katie—weren’t going to let me out of the bathroom, I closed my eyes and thought, I want my mom, over and over again like a mantra.

  And now I know I’d rather face the police alone than face the disappointment in my mother’s eyes.

  So I add what I really want and how I really feel to the list of things I don’t say out loud. Instead, I say, “I’m fine, Mom. I’m fine.”

  Eliza is falling, just out of my reach. I shout her name.

  Eliza!

  I lie flat on the ground, my arms dangling over the edge of the cliff.

  Eliza!

  She looks up. I hold out my arm. She’s so close. All she has to do is reach up, and I’ll be able to catch her. We lock eyes.

  Eliza!

  She reaches. Our fingertips brush against one another. Her fingers lace through mine—got her! But behind me, someone is wrapping his arms around me, his muscles like steel. He squeezes me tight, tighter. I can’t breathe, the water is rushing in: I’m starting to have an attack. I twist my neck and see that it’s Mack holding me, his eyes narrowed in anger. He doesn’t even have to pull me back or pry my arms away. I can’t hold on to Eliza when I can’t breathe. My phobia has rendered me useless.

  Eliza’s hand slips out of my grasp. Her mouth twists into an O of surprise as she falls back down toward the rocky ledge.

  I hear her land with a dull thud.

  “Ellie, wake up. Wake up. It was just a dream.”

  I feel the heat of Sam’s body standing over mine, blocking the breeze coming through my always-open window. The sheets are twisted between my legs, my knees curled up to my chest, my jaw clenched tight.

  “He wouldn’t let me save her,” I pant, trying to make my body relax. My muscles are sore from our hike yesterday: My quads feel like they’re bound with ropes, and my abdominals protest as I uncurl myself from the fetal position.

  “It was just a dream.”

  I shake my head fiercely. My eyes are still closed, but I can feel tears drip down my cheeks.

  “I shouldn’t be crying.” I open my eyes to the dark room and pull the sheet back over me. I see my copy of The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway on the floor; I fell asleep with it on the bed. That must’ve been what I heard falling to the ground.

  Just a book. Not Eliza.

  “Why shouldn’t you cry?”

  “She wasn’t my friend.”

  “There aren’t any rules about these things.”

  Sam sits down on the edge of the narrow bed. His weight tightens the blanket over my torso, and I scramble away from him, smacking my back against the wall.

  Sam must understand my panic, because he folds the covers back and adjusts himself on the bed beside me. For another girl, this would be romantic—the handsome boy getting into her bed in the middle of the night—but I’m sure Sam’s just trying to ward off another attack. I may as well be his kid sister, the girl he has to protect from the monsters under her bed. The girl he puts his arm around only because it makes more room in the bed.

  “What does it feel like?” Sam asks softly. He’s not wearing a shirt, and my bare arm is touching his chest. His skin is warm despite the breeze blowing through the window. “When you’re in a small space?”

  I shake my head. “It’s stupid.”

  “Does it feel like the walls are closing in on you? That’s what I read when I Googled it.”

  “You Googled it?”

  “Sure.” Sam shrugs like it’s no big deal. “What does it feel like?” he asks again.

  I don’t know why we’re whispering. There’s no one to overhear us. But I keep my voice low as I explain. “It feels like I’m underwater. It’s not the walls that are closing in, but wave after wave of water, threatening to drown me.”

  “That’s why you cough like that, gasping for breath?”

  I nod. “I know it doesn’t make any sense.” I know it sounds crazy. Is this how schizophrenics feel, seeing people and hearing voices no one else sees or hears?

  “I didn’t say that,” Sam says. “So that’s what you’re scared of? Drowning?”

  I shake my head. “It’s not actually the drowning that scares me. Even though I feel like I’m drowning, I know I’m on dry land. It feels awful, but deep down I know I can’t actually drown.”

  “So what is it, then? What are you scared of?”

  I pause. Eight therapists, and no one ever really asked me that. They all thought it went without saying: Claustrophobics are scared of being trapped. They may not have always agreed about why: a cry for help after the divorce, a bid for attention after Wes was born (even though the claustrophobia had been around longer than Wes). One therapist suggested that I’d felt trapped as a baby in the birth canal and recommended rebirthing therapy. (I only saw him once.)

  “I’m scared that no one will find me. That I’ll be left behind all alone.”

  Just like Eliza on the ledge.

  “What do you think will happen if no one comes to save you?”

  “I’ll be trapped forever.” Sam opens his mouth, but I speak before he can. I’m not whispering anymore. “I know it’s irrational. Eventually someone’s going to knock on the bathroom door. Sometimes I’m not even alone, like when I try to take the subway or an elevator.” Or when there’s a group of girls on the other side of the door, holding it shut.

  Sam shakes his head. “I was going to say that you can find yourself. You know where you are.”

  “I’m not sure I do. I mean, obviously, I know where I am. But I don’t believe I can get out on my own. And I’m not wrong—when I’m having an attack, I’m pretty much paralyzed. Turning a doorknob feels as complicated as long division.”

  “What if I promise to always come looking for you?” In the darkness, Sam’s teeth almost glow when he smiles.

  I smile back. No one—not the therapists, not my parents—has ever offered that before.

  “This is the closest I’ve ever come to a sleepover,” I say suddenly, surprising myself.

  “What?”

  “You know how girls start having slumber parties in the third grade? Where they stay up all night and tell each other secrets, that kind of thing?”

  “Sure. I used to hide in my bedroom when my little sister and her friends took over the living room.”

  “I never went to one of those. Couldn’t risk the whole sleeping-bag scenario.”

  Sam furrows his brow. “Couldn’t the parents have found a way to make you feel comfortable? Let you sleep in a bed or something?”

  I shake my head, but the truth is, I never asked.

  “So you never told anyone your secrets?”

  I shrug, feeling my left shoulder rise against his right one. “Therapists.”

  “They don’t count.”

  “No,” I agree. “They don’t.” I close my eyes, remembering the way Eliza, Arden, and Erin sat close in the meadow when they painted their nails, whispering to one another and giggling.

  “Tell me a secret now,” Sam says softly.

  I open my eyes. “I wanted to be Eliza’s friend.” I guess it’s not a secret if you believe the rumors Eliza spread: that I was a stalker, obsessed with her since kindergarten. But if you don’t believe the rumors, you’d probably wonder why I wanted to be friends with a girl who was so mean to me. I wondered it, and I was the one wanting it.

  “Your turn,” I say. “You tell me a secret.”

  Sam adjusts beside me. I lean back, his arm like a pillow beneath my neck. Quietly, he says, “I didn’t want her to die.” It takes me a second to realize he’s not talking about Eliza. “She was in pain constantly. The doctors had already told us it was hopeless, only a matter of time. My aunt prayed for her to be taken quickly, mercifully. But I just couldn’t. A good person would’ve wanted it to be fast, wanted her suffering to end. But I—” Sam takes
a deep, raspy breath. “I didn’t care how much pain she was in—I mean, I cared, I hated it—but I would’ve let my mom live with all that pain just to have her with me for another day.”

  “That doesn’t mean you’re not a good person.”

  “It doesn’t?” Sam chuckles. It reminds me of Mack’s laugh: sour and joyless. I suppress a shiver.

  “Of course not. You loved her. You didn’t want to lose her.” Sam nods, but I can tell he doesn’t entirely believe me. “What was wrong with her?” I ask finally.

  “Cancer. Esophageal cancer.”

  “It sounds awful.”

  “It was.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “I guess these aren’t the types of secrets they tell at sleepover parties.”

  I smile. “I wouldn’t know.”

  He pauses. “What else did you miss out on because of your claustrophobia?”

  “Let me think … actually, my parents stopped hugging me at some point. They were scared I might freak out.”

  “Your parents don’t hug you?”

  “Not really. I got a one-armed nonhug at the airport before I left.”

  “That sucks.”

  “My mom wouldn’t let me hold Wes when he was a baby just in case I had an attack with him in my arms. And I never had a best friend, not since first grade.” Suddenly, I can’t stop listing my nevers. “Never had an inside joke. Never snuck out after curfew. My parents didn’t even have to give me a curfew.” Sam grins. “Never slow-danced. Never held hands with a boy. Never been kissed.”

  I feel Sam’s arm stiffen beneath me. Even though it’s dark in here, I’m sure he can tell I’m blushing because my skin is hot.

  I started practicing kissing on the pillow when I was ten, after I saw a girl on a TV show doing it. Back then, I didn’t know that my status as the class freak would keep me from getting kissed at school dances and parties in middle school and high school. I didn’t know that I wouldn’t actually attend school dances and parties. Back then, I still believed that one of my therapists was going to cure me. I still thought I’d be normal like everyone else by the time I turned thirteen. But thirteen came and went, and therapist after therapist came and went, but my phobia stayed, and the boys stayed away.

  “Sorry,” I mumble, looking down at the lump my knees make under the covers. “I didn’t mean to make things super awkward.”

  Sam laughs, a real laugh this time. “You didn’t. I’m just surprised.”

  Now it’s my turn to laugh.

  Sam sits up, bringing me with him. “No, I mean, now that you say it, it makes sense—I see how you must’ve worried it might bring on an attack, being that close to someone. It never occurred to me, that’s all.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know …” Sam pauses, and now I feel his skin getting warmer. “Because you’re so … because of how you look.”

  “How I look?”

  “Come on, Elizabeth, don’t make me say it.” Sam groans. “Because you’re so pretty.”

  I open my mouth to laugh again, but no sound comes out.

  “I mean, I don’t mean to sound sexist or anything. But I just mean, oddswise, I’d figured someone at your old school asked you out. You’ve got that long dark hair and your eyes—”

  “Are nothing like Eliza’s,” I finish.

  Sam furrows his brow. “What do Eliza’s eyes have to do with it?”

  I can’t remember a time when I didn’t compare my eyes to Eliza’s. Mine are ringed with brown and hers are ringed with blue. “Hers are prettier,” I explain simply.

  Were prettier.

  Sam shrugs. “Hers were different.” A cool gust of wind blows into the room. Sam pulls the covers over us. “Not better.”

  “Anyway, it wasn’t, like, a choice I made. I wasn’t avoiding boys because I thought getting too close to them wouldn’t bring on an attack. I’m close to you now and I’m okay.” I bite my lip.

  I feel Sam’s muscles shift as he nods. “True.” He pauses, then turns to face me suddenly, his mouth barely an inch away from mine. I feel his breath on my cheeks. “Maybe I can help you with another one of those nevers.”

  Before I can answer, his lips are on mine. Warm and soft, and gentler than I’d imagined. He moves slowly, waiting for me to open my mouth before he opens his. His left arm was already around me, but now he brings his right arm to meet it, keeping his grip loose just in case. He presses his hands onto my back, and I lean against him, letting him hold me up.

  Sam shifts so that his hands are on my cheeks. The ends of his dreads brush my shoulders. They’re softer than I thought they’d be.

  Does this actually count as my first kiss? Sam’s just doing me a favor, crossing one of those nevers off my list like he said. But I guess a favor-for-a-friend kiss is better than nothing.

  Was this how Eliza felt when Mack kissed her? Did she feel his kisses in her belly? Did the skin on her fingertips tingle when she pressed them against Mack’s chest?

  Sam pulls away finally, leaning his head against the wall behind us. He falls asleep before I do, his arms still around me. The breeze keeps blowing through my open window, but I feel warm.

  I roll over, my back against Sam’s front. His arm drapes over me, loose and warm. Nothing like Mack’s grip when he dragged me into his house this afternoon, nothing like Mack squeezing me so tightly in my dream.

  Sam’s breathing is steady and calm. I can feel his heartbeat.

  But when I close my eyes, Mack’s icy blue gaze is still there. I still see him looking over the cliff, watching Eliza plummet.

  Sam might be right. It’s possible that Mack had nothing to do with what happened to Eliza.

  But might isn’t a good enough reason to keep quiet.

  Why can’t I sleep?

  Why do I feel more and more awake?

  To pass the time, I think about Mack.

  The first time he kissed me, I didn’t mean to kiss him back. He caught me by surprise. After all, until then he’d seen me mostly in the wee hours of the morning when I was in my pj’s or workout clothes with my hair in a messy bun, using my ID to open the gate so that they wouldn’t have to scale it, which made getting wood off the property significantly easier.

  So much easier, in fact, that I managed to negotiate a 12 percent split with Riley, who’d offered me 5 percent to begin with. I didn’t need the money, but driving up my price made me feel as though I’d done something productive.

  On this particular day, I’d driven up to the guys’ bungalow in Capitola to collect my share.

  When I got to their house, Riley was nowhere in sight.

  Mack’s lips tasted like salt water and sunblock; he’d been out surfing before dawn that morning.

  By the time I realized what he was doing, it was too late. I was already kissing him back and putting my arms around him, like my brain had no control over my lips or my tongue or my hands.

  Though I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised that my body was rebelling against my brain.

  By that point, my brain had become completely useless.

  Well, not completely.

  I still managed to get out of bed every morning—even if I barely slept—and still got dressed and went to class and studied and hung out with my friends.

  I still breathed in and out and ate at mealtimes and laughed at jokes and teared up at those ASPCA commercials with the underweight puppies in cages.

  But all those things had become reflexive somehow, like the doctor knocking your knee with a hammer.

  Was that why I returned Mack’s kiss?

  Was it just a reflex?

  In the days that followed, I tried to undo what we did.

  I laughed when Mack said I was special.

  I told him I could line up a dozen girls from the junior class at Ventana Ranch exactly like me.

  Girls who were just as smart and pretty and rich.

  Mack said I was crazy if I thought that was why he called me special.


  You might have me there, I said. I tapped my forehead. Certifiable.

  Mack laughed, then kissed me again. And again, I kissed him back.

  Still, over the months we spent together, I tried to show him all the things that were wrong with me. It wasn’t easy because my disease didn’t look like it did in the movies: I still went to class and got straight As and laughed with my friends and was the life of the party. I’d read enough on the subject to know that I wasn’t the only person whose depression looked like this. Depressives like me were like highly functioning alcoholics: no one knew our dirty little secret, no one could have guessed the self-destructive thoughts that took root in our minds, the sleepless nights where our broken brains kept us endlessly awake.

  It was so easy to hide in plain sight.

  Sometimes I wonder how things might have ended up if my disease looked different from the outside.

  Eventually I told Mack all about my family: my overly medicated dad,

  and my shallow mom,

  and the uncle running for Congress whose seat had practically been bought and paid for.

  I told him that I hardly slept and sometimes didn’t shower for days at a time. (I’d told my roommates I was conserving water and soon they were skipping showers, too. They never knew that sometimes the simple act of showering seemed overwhelming.)

  I told Mack I didn’t care whether the trees we cut up lived or died and that I didn’t need the money, hadn’t spent a cent, had stashed it all beneath the thin mattress in my dorm room because money was meaningless to me, just pieces of paper that had always been there when I needed them. I didn’t offer to share my cut with Mack, because I knew he’d interpret the gesture as more proof that I wasn’t as bad as I said I was.

  But no matter how selfish and screwed up I was, Mack didn’t care. Or maybe I should say he didn’t mind, because he certainly seemed to care.

  About me, I mean. He cared about me.

  He shook his head and laughed, hugged me tight and kissed me until I forgot what I’d been trying to tell him in the first place. Mack never complained when I called, wide awake, in the middle of the night, and he held my hand when we walked around Capitola, where I was spending more and more of my time, but he never asked to meet my friends or my parents.