R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  “I heard they’re going to take all of this away and put up some kind of permanent memorial instead,” Sam says. “A bench, I think. There’s going to be a vote to decide what the marker on it should say.”

  I reach out and touch one of the posters, run my finger along the words Rest in Peace, Eliza Hart. Her life must have lacked peace, for her to do what she did. I follow Sam down the path toward Hiking Trail B. It’s warmer than I expected, so I take off my sweatshirt and tie it around my waist. The trail narrows and the trees close in around us.

  But it’s not silent. A group of our classmates—all girls, I think—is headed right toward us from the other direction. From far away, they look exactly like one of the pictures in the school catalog: friendly and smiling in the California sunshine.

  Erin and Arden are at the head of the pack. It’s my first time seeing them since the funeral, and I’m surprised to discover how much I feel sorry for them. I mean, I always felt bad that their best friend had died (though they didn’t exactly make it easy after months of having been mean to me and then more or less accusing me of murder), but it’s different now. Now I know so much about Eliza that they don’t.

  Maybe I could tell them I’m sorry for your loss, just like I told Mack. I know better than to expect them to say it back like he did. Still, it’s a place to start.

  But as the girls get closer, I see Erin’s eyes narrow in anger. She plants herself in the center of the path, blocking our way. Sam and I stand side by side. “You sure are lucky,” she says.

  I glance sideways at Sam. It would’ve been luckier if we’d stuck to Hiking Trail Y.

  “Accident is an awfully convenient word,” Arden adds, just behind her friend.

  I twist the knot holding my sweatshirt in place. “You still think I had something to do with what happened to Eliza?”

  Erin crosses her arms. “I don’t have any reason not to.”

  “But the police—”

  “Just because the police couldn’t find any evidence doesn’t mean that you didn’t do it.”

  “I’m not the one Julian saw her fighting with.”

  “I know,” Erin huffs impatiently. “You think the police didn’t tell us? Her boyfriend came forward, said they had a fight when they broke up.”

  From the way she says her boyfriend instead of Mack, I can tell that the police haven’t actually told her much. She probably still believes Eliza’s secret boyfriend was a college student.

  “So then you know it wasn’t me—”

  “I don’t know anything about you.” She turns to face Sam. “And don’t let her trick you into thinking you know her, either. Eliza said she was an excellent liar.”

  “Yeah,” another girl jumps in. Jenn Marten. “She always said so.”

  Jenn wasn’t even friends with Eliza. Erin and Arden never used to hang out with her, and I doubt Eliza ever said two words to her. But Eliza’s absence leaves an open slot among the popular girls and it looks like Jenn is vying for it. And apparently, the fastest way to bond with Erin and Arden is to join them in hating me.

  “Ellie.” I’m surprised to hear Sam use my nickname. “Maybe you should just tell them the truth.”

  “Yeah, Ellie,” Erin coaxes, “tell us the truth.” She thinks Sam wants me to confess. Arden puts her hand on Erin’s arm. Arden’s usually the one who does the talking. She looks surprised by Erin’s outburst.

  I’m not. Or anyway, I shouldn’t be. What was I thinking, that I’d tell them, I’m sorry for your loss and wipe the slate clean? These girls have hated me for months. Why would they stop now?

  Erin must lose her patience with my silence because the next thing I know, she’s shoved me to the ground. I land hard, pine needles pricking my palms and fingers. I bite my tongue as I fall, tasting blood.

  “Hey!” Sam shouts. He reaches down to help me up, but for the second time today, I don’t take his hand. I stay on the ground, crouched on all fours, trying not to cry.

  “Like I’d believe a word coming out of her mouth anyway,” Erin spits.

  Instead of looking at the ground, I look up at her. Erin’s face twists so that she looks exactly like one of the girls who locked me in the bathroom at my old school. For a second, I think she’s going to kick me.

  Except Erin’s face has something the other girls’ faces never had. Genuine sadness. Erin is struggling with the loss of her best friend.

  I finally understand why Erin needs to believe that I hurt Eliza. Because the alternatives are accepting that it was just a freak accident—which hardly seems like a good reason for someone you love to die—or accepting that the girl she lived with—studied with, ate with, gossiped with—was depressed enough to kill herself and Erin never saw it.

  “Let’s go,” Erin says finally, gesturing for her friends to follow her. I sit back on my heels and watch them leave.

  When they’re gone, Sam kneels on the ground beside me.

  “They still hate me,” I manage finally. Understanding why doesn’t make it feel any better. “And don’t say that they don’t know me well enough to hate me because they don’t have to know me to hate me for something I didn’t do.”

  “I’m sorry, Ellie.”

  “They wouldn’t have believed me if I told them the truth.”

  Sam tucks his dreads behind his ears. “Probably not.”

  I’m worried that if I talk about it any more I’ll start crying, so I say, “You’ve called me Ellie twice today.” I manage a weak smile. “You must really feel sorry for me.”

  Sam shakes his head. “Actually, I’m starting to like the way it feels to call you Ellie.”

  I push myself up to stand. “Let’s go home.”

  Sam nods and leads the way up the trail. Without turning around, he says, “At least now we know why you felt the way you did.”

  “Yeah. There’s a straight line from what happened that day to my phobia.”

  “Yeah, but I mean the way you felt about Eliza.”

  I stop in my tracks. “How did I feel about Eliza?”

  “How obsessed you were with her, you know?” The word obsessed comes out easily, like it’s been on the tip of his tongue all this time. “It’s like your subconscious was trying to tell you something. To point you in the direction of the memory you lost.” Sam keeps walking, like the words he’s saying are no big deal. I start walking again, but I don’t try to match his strides.

  There’s still traces of yellow crime-scene tape stuck to the trunks of the trees beside the cliffs. “Cooper said they’re going to put up a fence here.” Sam walks toward the edge of the cliff, pointing. “All along here, and down on the other side of the dorms and the cafeteria, too. They don’t want any more accidents.” Sam stretches his arms out wide, looking out over the ocean, his back to me.

  At once, I realize something. “You lied to me about being afraid of heights.”

  Sam spins around gracefully and without fear. “What?”

  “After the memorial service, when you told me you knew about my claustrophobia, you said you were afraid of heights.”

  Sam looks sheepish. “Ellie, I was just trying to—”

  I don’t give him a chance to finish. “You must’ve thought I was a freak just like they did.” I wave vaguely at the buildings up the path, dorms where our classmates study and sleep. I gesture back at the path where Erin pushed me to the ground. “The crazy girl with the phobia, obsessed with her former best friend.”

  “I don’t think you’re a freak.”

  I shake my head and say softly, “I don’t believe you.”

  I run away before he can say anything else, sprinting up the path so fast that my chest hurts, so hard that my knees scream in protest with each footfall. The pine needles that were stuck to my leggings fall off, trailing behind me as I run.

  I don’t want him to see me crying again. I don’t want him to know that this time, he made me cry.

  I take the stairs in our dorm two at a time, huffing and puffing as I go.
>
  Sam didn’t just lie about being afraid of heights. All this time, he believed I was obsessed with Eliza and he never admitted it.

  A lie of omission is still a lie.

  And Sam’s omission isn’t nearly as big as hers.

  Her lie is the reason that everyone here still thinks I might have pushed Eliza over those cliffs.

  Her lie is the reason they hate me.

  If she would just come clean, everything would be different.

  Everyone would finally understand that I had nothing to do with what happened to Eliza.

  She’s probably relieved that Eliza’s death was ruled an accident. Maybe she even bribed the police to ensure their conclusion, just like she got Mack and Riley off the hook.

  If she’d only let her daughter get the help she needed.

  If she’d only let Mack help.

  By the time I reach our floor, I can’t catch my breath. I’ve never been so angry in my entire life. Not at Wes for making fun of me, not at those girls who locked me in the bathroom, not at Eliza for starting those rumors. My heart is pounding, and sweat is pooling at the nape of my neck. My hands itch as I ball them into fists. I’m grinding my teeth so hard it’s giving me a headache.

  I feel trapped. Not, like, attack-trapped, but trapped on this campus. Just like Eliza said I’d be. I’m sick of the trees and the trails. I miss asphalt and honking horns and the ability to stick my hand out to hail a cab that will take me anywhere.

  I could borrow Sam’s car. I mean, I don’t have a license, but driving doesn’t look that hard. One pedal for go and one pedal for stop and blinkers for changing lanes. Right? The 107-mile drive to Menlo Park (I looked it up before the funeral) is plenty of time to become an expert driver. How else do you learn, anyway?

  I throw the door to our suite open and head for Sam’s room instead of my own. I hesitate for a split second before stepping over the threshold. I’ve never actually been in his room before. I take a deep breath. It smells like salt water and soap, spice and boy sweat.

  The keys to his Camry are on his dresser beside a framed picture. I recognize my roommate even though he looks like he’s only about six or seven years old in this picture. He’s next to a woman whose skin is a few shades darker than his. She’s holding his hand. He’s already up to her chest, and I wonder if she knew even then how tall her son would be.

  Another framed photograph sits beside it. A more recent picture of Sam towering over two little kids. His sister and brother from his dad’s second marriage. I never asked Sam what their names were, how old they are. They must be important to him if he displays a picture of them next to a picture of his mom.

  I take another deep breath, let it out slowly.

  This is crazy. I’m not going to steal Sam’s car. I can’t even drive. Instead of picking up the keys, I lift the frame off the dresser and sink onto Sam’s unmade bed, my shoulders slumped.

  I hear the door of our suite open and shut. When Sam sees that I’m in his room, he stops in the doorway, like he’s the one who shouldn’t be here, not me.

  “Avery.” He nods at the picture in my hands. “That’s my little sister. She’s eight now. And my brother is Matt. He’s six.”

  “They’re really cute.”

  Sam grins. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Do you miss them?”

  Sam nods. “It’s the only part of living in Mill Valley that I miss.”

  “That’s nice. I mean, not that you miss them, but that you love them that much.” I wonder if Wes and I will ever feel that way about each other.

  Sam crosses his arms and leans against the doorframe. “What are you doing in here, Ellie?”

  I stand up and put the frame back where I found it. “I need a ride,” I say finally.

  “Where?”

  “I have to talk to Mrs. Hart,” I explain.

  Sam presses his lips together. I can see him struggling to find the right thing to say, the thing that will stop me: What are you thinking? (Too vague.) Are you sure that’s a good idea? (Too open to interpretation.) Leave the poor woman alone. (Too accusatory.)

  Or maybe, Like I said, you’re obsessed with Eliza.

  “Please, Sam. I know you think I’m just obsessing—”

  “I didn’t say—”

  “But I need this,” I interject. “It’s important to me.”

  Sam nods, then reaches up and toys with his hair. I can tell when he makes up his mind before he says anything because he pulls a couple of dreads from the front and knots them around the back to hold his hair in place.

  There’s no talking me out of this, and he knows it. I’m going to Menlo Park even if I have to hitchhike all 107 miles.

  But that won’t be necessary because my roommate’s going to give me a lift.

  I told Mack more of the truth than I had anyone else:

  the truth about my dad,

  the truth about the lies I spread when Ellie Sokoloff came to Ventana Ranch.

  But I couldn’t tell him the whole truth.

  He wouldn’t have understood, no matter how hard he tried. Unlike me, he didn’t grow up in a house where the word Depression was always spoken with a capital D.

  Mack never lived with a father who went to a dozen therapists and tried more medications than a cancer patient.

  Most people who don’t live with it think that therapy and pills will fix it. I believed that the first few times we sent Dad off to get his medication adjusted: Just a little tune-up and a little time off, and he’d be back better than ever.

  Surely that’s what Mack believed when he begged me to go to therapy and take meds.

  Do it for me, he said.

  Mack didn’t know that I’d said the same thing to my father when I was younger: Didn’t he love me enough to be well for me? Wasn’t I enough to make him happy?

  Get better for me.

  It was years before I understood that treatment for mental illness isn’t that simple. It’s like living with cancer that goes into remission after a course of chemotherapy: It’s under control, but it could still metastasize.

  And like a cancer patient, Dad underwent a succession of treatments. We tried ECT (electroconvulsive therapy) and TMS (transcranial magnetic stimulation). Every time the doctors suggested something new we were optimistic. There were good periods, times when he must have found the right therapist, the right pill.

  But eventually, his meds would need to be adjusted. Or we discovered he hadn’t been taking his meds at all. Or a therapist called the house to tell us he’d missed two sessions in a row.

  Mom always said it wasn’t his fault.

  I read books about depression and studies about suicide. I was surprised to discover there was such a thing as the American Association of Suicidology. I was surprised that suicidology was a word.

  In fifth grade, I read somewhere that the life expectancy of a person with mental illness is twenty-five years shorter than someone without it.

  I memorized that particular fact without even trying.

  If people knew what I was really like, they wouldn’t feel sorry for me. Popular pretty rich girl, they’d say, what does she have to be depressed about?

  The thing they don’t understand is that I agree with them; I don’t have any reason to be depressed. I could have a terrible day or a great day, and I’d end up feeling just as bad the next morning.

  That’s the worst thing about this disease. It feels like there’s no way out. I’m trapped, stuck feeling like this.

  There were plenty of good things in my life, even toward the end.

  I got into Ventana Ranch.

  My SAT scores were high.

  My parents got me a shiny new car for my sixteenth birthday.

  I won gold medals for swimming,

  ate delicious food,

  hiked through the woods on gloriously sunny days,

  met a boy who loved me.

  But Mack would never understand that none of those things felt good to me anym
ore.

  None of those things felt anything to me anymore.

  I’m wide awake again. Wired. Buzzing.

  In tenth grade, we read a poem called “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath. I don’t remember the whole thing. Just bits and pieces.

  Like this:

  I have done it again.

  And like the cat I have nine times to die.

  When would my dad’s ninth time come?

  Kindergarten began just a week after Dad’s first attempt. Maybe there had been other attempts before. But that was the first one I saw.

  Dad was still in the hospital—a mental institution that was more like a fancy hotel except for the locks on the doors—when Mom dropped me off on the first day of kindergarten. Her floral dress rustled when she walked, and I concentrated on the sound of it: Swish, swish. Swish, swish.

  When Mom kissed me good-bye, she told me that everything would be all right, and I believed her. Her long blond hair—she still wore it down back then—tickled when it brushed against my face.

  By recess, Ellie Sokoloff and I had decided that we were going to be best friends. When our mothers came to pick us up after afternoon snack, Ellie and I insisted that they arrange our first playdate. I leaned against my mom’s legs and felt the smooth material of her dress on my cheek.

  “Feel how soft,” I said, holding the dress out for Ellie to touch. Our moms laughed.

  When we got home, my dad was there, a surprise just for me. I ran to greet him, shouting, Daddy! just like I knew he and my mom expected me to.

  It wasn’t that I wasn’t glad to see him. It was just that our house seemed so much heavier with him in it.

  Like the cat I have nine times to die.

  We were silently waiting for his ninth time.

  I grew up both with and without a father. He was present, physically healthy, but absent at the same time.

  There was a girl in my class whose father had congestive heart failure, and sometimes I recognized the look on her face because I’d seen it on my own. Our fathers were alive, but their presence was fragile. One wrong step—a missed dose, a skipped beat—and we could lose them forever.