R.I.P. Eliza Hart

by Alyssa Sheinmel

  “Do you really think I care about going back to normal more than I care about you?” He sighs. “I know you think it’s easy for me to fit in, but—” Sam pauses, running his hand over his face and running a thumb across his lower lip. Suddenly, my roommate looks very tired. Finally, he says, “I don’t want to go back to the way it was before.”

  He leans down, his face hovering above mine. I slide along the side of the car so our faces aren’t lined up anymore.

  “I don’t need your help.” It comes out sounding harsher than I want it to. “I mean, not in that department. In kissing. I don’t want you just to kiss me because you want to help me.”

  Sam straightens. “What are you talking about?”

  “I mean the next time someone kisses me, I don’t want it to be because they feel sorry for me. I want it to be real.”

  “You think I want to kiss you because I feel sorry for you?”

  “The other night you said you were just trying to help me cross something off my list.”

  “And here I thought that was kind of a smooth line.” He’s trying not to laugh.

  I fold my arms across my chest. “I don’t think it’s funny.”

  Sam sidesteps so we’re face-to-face again. “I’m not laughing at you.” He tries to set his mouth into a straight line but he’s still struggling not to smile. “I kissed you because I wanted to.”

  “Wanted to help me, you mean.”

  Sam shakes my head, and now he looks truly serious. “No.” He bends so that his face is just centimeters above my own. “Because I wanted to.”

  “But then why haven’t you kissed me since?”

  Sam looks sheepish. “I wasn’t sure you wanted me to. I mean, you had a lot going on. It didn’t seem … appropriate to make a move.”

  “And now it does?” We just left a grieving mother behind in her empty house. We know our classmate really did kill herself. These aren’t exactly romantic revelations.

  “Not really,” Sam admits. “I guess I just got tired of waiting.”

  All at once, the gap between our faces seems huge, and I’m desperate to close it. I stand up on my tiptoes until my mouth is pressed against Sam’s. His arms snake around my waist, and I lean back against the car. Butterflies dance across my stomach.

  This time, I’m not thinking about Eliza. I’m not thinking about favors and checklists and all the nevers I have yet to complete. This time, when Sam kisses me, I don’t think about anything but Sam, and me, and this kiss that I never want to end.

  We hold hands as we cross the parking lot and ascend the stairs that lead to the dorms. We pass the spot where they brought up Eliza’s body. I stop and gaze out over the cliffs. In the darkness, there’s nothing to see.

  Eliza stood here less than two weeks ago. She was still alive. She chose to jump.

  I shiver. Sam puts his arm around me.

  “I was obsessed with Eliza. Not in a bad way, not like she told everyone. But still. I cared about her too much.”

  Sam shrugs. “Who’s to say how much we should care about anything?”

  I nod. We resume walking up the path.

  “Hey—why did you lie to me about being afraid of heights?” I ask.

  “I’m really sorry about that.”

  “I know,” I say softly. “But why did you?”

  He plays with his dreads. “I just wanted you to like me.”

  “You think phobics only make friends with other phobics?”

  Sam laughs. “I was desperate! We’d been living together since September, and you hadn’t made friends with me yet. I guess I was just trying to find some common ground.”

  I reach out and pull Sam’s face toward mine, kissing him right here in the middle of the path between the dorms, where anyone might see us.

  “I can’t believe Eliza thought she didn’t deserve this,” I whisper. Suddenly, I feel like crying.

  “What do you mean?” Sam’s fingers play with my hair.

  “I mean …” But I’m not sure exactly what I mean. Maybe when Mack kissed her, she couldn’t really feel it. Maybe Eliza couldn’t feel how good it feels to fall for someone. “It must be terrible,” I say finally. “To believe you don’t deserve love.”

  Sam takes my hand again and leads the way past Eliza’s dorm. We pause at the spot where they’re going to build a bench for her.

  “Have you decided if you’re going to tell them about Eliza?” Sam gestures at the dorms around us, our classmates inside.

  Before we left the Hart house this afternoon, I asked Mrs. Hart why she told us about Eliza. After all, she said she wanted to keep her daughter’s secrets. Mrs. Hart looked surprised by the question. “Because you already knew about us,” she answered finally. “I thought you were the only one of Eliza’s friends I didn’t have to hide it from.”

  Eliza’s mother still thought of me as Eliza’s friend—just like I did, despite everything.

  Eliza’s mother hoped that the right treatment could help her daughter, just like my mother did.

  Eliza was ashamed of her illness, just like I’ve always been ashamed of mine.

  Shame is a funny thing. Right now, I can’t quite remember why I wanted to keep my claustrophobia a secret from my classmates here.

  But I would be ashamed if I broke Mrs. Hart’s trust, if I didn’t grant Eliza her dying wish.

  So I answer, “I’m not going to tell about Eliza.”

  Sam squeezes my hand and leads the way up the stairs toward our suite.

  Maybe Eliza needs her struggles kept secret in order to rest in peace.

  I’m beginning to think that the only way I can live in peace is to be more open about mine.

  You should know, I understand that I was luckier than a lot of people. My family could afford to pay for treatment and medication. My mom didn’t spend late nights on the phone with our HMO or begging Medicaid for more coverage. When my dad had to be hospitalized, he went to a private institution where they served organic vegetables grown in a local garden and where we could visit him and sit on fluffy couches instead of hard folding chairs. The floors were hardwood and clean, not linoleum and dusty. Treatment looked nothing like it did in the movies. Not if you spent enough money, anyway.

  But the place still smelled like plastic and despair. Not enough money in the world to cover that up.

  I remembered more from “Lady Lazarus”:

  Dying

  Is an art like everything else.

  I do it exceptionally well.

  There were so many things I did exceptionally well when I was alive.

  I swam faster than my classmates and competitors.

  I dressed better and made it look effortless, and I knew how to style my hair so it looked like I’d just gotten out of the shower that way.

  I got good grades and had lots of friends, none of whom knew about my broken-down sorry excuse for brain chemistry.

  I didn’t give up.

  I tried to pull myself together.

  I even took the pills Mom gave me.

  But I was my father’s daughter. I never took the pills for long.

  How many times could they adjust my meds and try again? How many therapists’ couches could I sit on, complaining about a life that seemed so good on the outside?

  How many arguments could my mother and I have?

  How many sleepless nights could a person survive?

  I’d run out of fresh starts.

  I’d had enough.

  Pouring me a glass of milk after school, my babysitter used to trill, When you’ve had enough, say when.

  WHEN.

  It’s not cold, and it doesn’t hurt.

  The only thing I feel now is tired.

  Not the awful kind of tired I got used to when I was alive: the sort of tired that keeps you awake, that keeps your eyelids glued wide open.

  This tired is different. This is the kind of tired other people talk about.

  This is the kind of tired that lets you sleep.

&nbs
p; So I sleep.

  I can hear my heartbeat. I feel phantom water dripping down my throat and into my lungs, but it’s just a trickle, a stream instead of a rushing river.

  “You okay in there, Ellie?”

  Even though Sam can’t see me, I nod. He’s waiting on the other side of the closet door. At first, I wanted to test myself without him, but Sam suggested that I try it in stages: once with him just outside the door, once with him in the next room, and once with him out of our suite altogether.

  “Ellie?” Sam prompts.

  “I’m okay,” I answer. “I’m okay,” I repeat, talking to myself this time.

  I hear Sam move to the common area between our bedrooms just like we planned. My pulse quickens but I can still breathe.

  When the front door of our suite opens and shuts, my breathing grows more labored, but I’m still able to inhale enough oxygen to fill my lungs. I’m able to do the things that my therapists told me to: I tell myself that it’s okay, I’ll get out of here, I’m not in any danger. But I don’t try to picture myself on a mountaintop like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music or floating over the rooftops of London like Mary Poppins.

  Instead, I picture myself as I am: Elizabeth James Sokoloff, safe and sound.

  This isn’t the kind of activity the catalog was talking about when it promised parents the Ventana Ranch School will help your child learn and grow alongside pictures of students learning how to sail, hiking the Santa Cruz Mountains, surfing big waves up the coast.

  I take a deep breath and open the closet door. I’m covered in sweat, and my heart is pounding. I brush my hair away from my face with my fingers and wait patiently for my lungs to function normally, for my pulse to slow. Sunlight streams through my open blinds.

  “They should put this in the catalog,” I say out loud.

  “I could stay with you if you want.” Sam sits beside me on my narrow bed and takes my hand in his.

  I shake my head. “I have to do this on my own.”

  “I’ll be right next door if you need me.”

  I smile. “I know.”

  I watch him walk out of my room and close the door behind him, listen to the sound of his footfalls as he goes into his own room, the sound of his bed squeaking as he lies down and picks up a book to read. But I know he’s not going to be able to concentrate. He’ll be thinking of me. Rooting for me.

  I pick up my phone. She answers on the third ring.

  “Is everything okay?” There it is. Her Ellie tone. I guess I can’t blame her for assuming something is wrong. I almost never call her. She’s usually the one who calls me.

  There was something familiar about the look on Eliza’s mom’s face. Behind the grief and the sadness, there was something else, something I recognized: exhaustion. I’d seen it in my mother’s face every time she got called into school or took me to yet another therapist.

  And I’d seen it in my own reflection.

  My mother wasn’t the only one thinking, Why don’t you ever get better? Not the only one who said, You’ve gone to therapy, gotten you all the help you need—and you’re still sick.

  I thought those words myself a thousand times. I was just as disappointed as she was after every therapy session and every attack.

  “Ellie?” Mom prompts.

  “I’m fine,” I answer quickly. Too quickly. I’m so used to telling her that everything is fine that it’s become a reflex. “Actually”—I take a deep breath—“it’s not fine. I mean, I’m okay and everything, but things haven’t been fine here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Butterflies flutter in my belly. I could just tell her that I’ve been sad about Eliza. It wouldn’t be a lie. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth, either.

  So much of Eliza’s life was a repeating loop of secrets and shame. Even if everyone who knew her got together and combined what we know, I still don’t think we’d be able to uncover everything she kept hidden. She had too many secrets. She never let anyone see all of her.

  Secrets can be fatal.

  And I don’t want to die.

  “I haven’t wanted to tell you, but I’ve been having a hard time here. Most of the kids don’t like me and I’ve still been having attacks.”

  “Why didn’t you call Dr. Solander?”

  “I didn’t want to admit that I needed help.”

  I hear her take a deep breath. “Ellie, sweetheart, you’ve always needed help.” The tone in her voice makes my heart ache.

  “I wanted you to be proud of me.” I hurry on before she can contradict me. “I mean, I know you were proud of me for getting into Ventana Ranch and coming to California by myself, but you always seemed so disappointed, too.”

  “Ellie—”

  “No, let me finish,” I interrupt. “You were disappointed every time I had an attack, every time a therapist didn’t cure me. Every time I couldn’t just get over it and be more like Wes.”

  Mom doesn’t say anything. I think I hear her breath catch, like maybe she’s trying not to cry.

  “But something happened after Eliza died. It’s complicated.” I thought long and hard about whether or not to tell my mother what I remembered in Mr. Hart’s study. If I told, would I be breaking the promise I made to Eliza so long ago?

  But if I kept it secret, I’d be breaking the promise I made to myself more recently: I’m through with secrets.

  So I tell her. I say it fast, so that she doesn’t have a chance to break in. When I finish, Mom sounds furious. “I can’t believe Laurel never told me what happened. I have half a mind to call her and—”

  “Don’t,” I cut her off.

  “But all these years, all the pain it caused you—”

  “No,” I say firmly. “She has enough to worry about.”

  Mom doesn’t argue.

  I know I’ll probably never be all the things Eliza was, all the things I admired her for. I’ll probably never show up in just the right clothes, or be the girl who always knows the right thing to say, the girl who draws people to her like a magnet, always the most popular, the most beloved.

  I’ll probably never understand how Eliza lost hope so completely that she killed herself.

  I’ll probably never stop wondering whether there was something I could’ve done or said that would have changed her mind.

  I picture Eliza’s gray-blue eyes, her long wavy hair, the perfectly painted nails on her hands and feet.

  I’m going to tell my mother the truth about Eliza’s death eventually. I promised myself: No more secrets. But I won’t tell her today—not because it’s a secret, but because right now I need her to hear me when I say something else.

  “The claustrophobia wasn’t my fault,” I begin.

  “I never said it was,” Mom insists, but even she must know the words sound hollow.

  “I want to start going to therapy again.”

  After all these years, Mom doesn’t exactly have the highest opinion of therapists. “All that therapy and none of it helped you. You uncovered this memory yourself.”

  “Maybe,” I agree. “But I still need to work through it.”

  “All right.” Mom takes a long breath. “I’ll call Dr. Solander.”

  “No,” I say firmly. “A specialist. Someone who knows about repressed memories and claustrophobia.”

  “So what are you saying, Ellie? Do you want to come home?”

  “I’m not sure,” I answer honestly. Everyone at Ventana Ranch—except for Sam—still hates me. And Big Sur is kind of in the middle of nowhere. It’ll be a whole lot easier to find a specialist in Manhattan.

  I walk to the window and look outside. Someone threw away the flowers and electric candles outside Eliza’s dorm, clearing a space for the bench that’s going to go in its place. As always, my window is open, and I can smell the ocean and the redwoods. I don’t need to see the rest of the world to know that Sam was right: This is the most beautiful place on earth.

  At least, it is to me.

  That night that
Sam and I spent together, I told him that I’d never had a sleepover because I was scared of sleeping bags, but the truth is, I was scared to ask the grown-ups to accommodate me.

  It would’ve been too embarrassing if the grown-ups did try to make it work, leading me off to a special bed while everyone else slept snugly in their sleeping bags on the floor.

  It was easier to stay home than face that.

  It would be easier to go home, now.

  Finally, I say, “I’d like to try to stay. With therapy. See if things get better.” Because it seems like Mom deserves some good news I add, “The claustrophobia is already a little better.”

  “It is?” Mom’s voice sounds a little bit lighter, the Ellie tone receding.

  “It is,” I promise. “But I still need help.”

  “All right, then,” Mom says firmly, and I imagine she’s sitting up straighter. “We’ll get you help.”

  I’m still looking out the window when Mom and I hang up. I open it wide and stick my head outside. I feel the ocean breeze, smell the moss on the ground below. The sun’s setting and the fog’s rolling in, making my hair wet. There’s still a chill in the air, but it’s already warmer than it was a few days ago.

  It’s spring.

  I don’t say it loud enough that anyone will hear me. They’d probably shout at me to be quiet, insist that I have no right to wish her well. But I know the truth, and wherever she is, I hope she knows how much I mean it when I whisper:

  Rest in peace, Eliza Hart.

  Rest in peace, Eliza Hart.

  Rest in peace, Eliza Hart.

  When I first had the idea for this book, it was Eliza’s voice I heard: sharp and biting, brief and to the point, even a little bit funny. The truth is, I just really liked her.

  I knew the story would include Ellie’s perspective as well, so I began researching claustrophobia. Personally, I’ve always found small places more comforting than terrifying, so I wanted to make sure I could understand someone like Ellie.

  Over time, it got harder and harder to write Eliza’s chapters. I researched her illness, reading books about people who’d experienced depression, people who’d attempted suicide, people who’d lost family members to suicide.