by Amber Smith
The thing was, I didn’t even want to help. I’m sure that makes me a terrible person, but what would I say, what could I say?
If you’ve always been defined not as a full-fledged person but solely as another person’s polar opposite, and that person no longer exists, do you also cease to exist?
Those were the words I really wanted to paint on the surface of that rock. That was the question that had been on my mind, the one I knew I wasn’t supposed to ask out loud. Not that I was some kind of loser, or anything. I was just average. Not popular, not disliked either. Not short or tall, thin or heavy, ugly or pretty, smart or stupid. I’ve always just done what was expected of me—no more, no less. So I grabbed the paintbrush that someone was holding out to me. The instrument was clumsy and foreign in my hand, and I smeared out a big, crude, blob-shaped heart. Average. Mediocre. Unremarkable.
They patted me on the shoulder and said I was strong and brave and such a good sister, and all kinds of things that weren’t really true. It made them feel better to think certain things about me. They were the ones who needed to feel better, after all—they were her friends. They wanted to make me their friend too, like they could hold on to something of her through me. But it didn’t take them long to see I was no substitute, no connection to the friend they loved.
Sudden death. That’s what they call it when someone just dies and there’s not a good explanation as to why, or at least not one that makes sense.
Apparently she was on fire in gym class that day—they were playing volleyball, and volleyball was always her game. She spiked the ball over the net perfectly time after time, they said, scoring point after point. We were told she was laughing when it happened, right before she suddenly stumbled and went down.
Fainted, they thought.
But she was already gone by the time the school nurse got there. She was gone before the ambulance came blaring down the road, before it came to an abrupt stop at the south entrance of our school. Already gone, as the paramedics rushed inside with their equipment. Gone as I watched it all unfolding from the row of windows in fifth-period chemistry—the whole class, even the teacher, had gathered to see what was happening.
Because nothing ever happens in Carson.
Sudden cardiac arrest. The autopsy showed that she’d had an undetected heart condition, an electrical problem. Her heart just stopped. It’s extremely rare, they told us. Of course it would be.
• • •
I was late to work again, so I was assigned to the clearance aisle.
Crouched in the overcrowded lane of miscellaneous junk no one wanted, armed with a pricing gun, I was retagging all the spring merchandise that was never going to sell. Sickening amounts of after-Easter candy, chocolate eggs and bunnies, marshmallow chicks, and egg-painting kits: marked down from 75 percent off to 90 percent off. Then the Mother’s Day leftovers: cards, boxed chocolates with the fillings no one likes but for some reason they keep making anyway—like strawberry cream and that weird liquid cherry stuff that tastes like cough syrup—all marked down from 50 percent off to 75 percent off.
For hour after mind-numbing hour, I was at it. The sound of the pricing gun was nicking away at my concentration, never letting me think but never letting me really rest. Every last cell of my brain was emptying out into the monotony of the task, slipping from me and spattering to the shelves of unwanted holiday-themed leftovers.
This was going to be my whole summer.
When my lunch break came, I realized I had rushed out of the house, leaving the brown paper bag containing a cheese sandwich with mustard and a baggie of goldfish crackers sitting in my refrigerator back home. But thankfully, since Bargain Mart sells everything imaginable, from house paint to tires to toys, and makeup and cleaning supplies and food, I bought one of those Styrofoam cup-of-noodle soups, a banana, and a bottle of Dr. Bargain (Bargain Mart’s very own Dr Pepper imposter) before heading back to the break room.
I was standing in the microwave line when three kids from my school came in and sat down at one of the big tables, talking loudly about a party that was happening on Friday. I knew all of their names—in a town of only 5,479 people, you tend to know mostly everyone’s names—but I didn’t really know them. They knew me, the way everybody knew me, as Mallory’s sister, the sister of the girl who died last year.
I caught bits and pieces of their conversation: “Bonfire, in the woods,” one guy said. “At Bowman’s?” the girl asked. “Yeah, at Bowman’s, where else?” the second guy answered. “Kicking off the summer right,” the first guy added, clearly trying to impress the girl.
They talked about Bowman’s like Bowman was a linebacker on the football team. But Bowman’s isn’t a person, at least not anymore; it’s a place.
“Oh, hey, Maia,” the girl offered when they saw me standing there.
“Hi!” I smiled my big fake smile, and I raised my arm to wave, gestured to my Styrofoam lunch, then the microwave, so they’d know I wasn’t just standing there eavesdropping.
“So did you hear about the party at Bowman’s?” the girl shouted across the break room.
“I think so,” I called back.
“You should come,” she said, then quickly looked to her right and left, as if she was silently asking permission, as if she had forgotten what happened the last time I was invited to a party.
No one said anything for several seconds, and then the first guy chimed in, uncertainly, “Sure, I mean, come if you want.”
“Thanks,” I managed, also pretending I didn’t remember about that party last spring. “I’m pretty sure I’m busy that night, though.”
“Bummer,” the girl replied, but I could see them exhale a collective breath of relief. It wouldn’t do for a trio of underclassman to invite an unwanted guest to a party thrown by our newly graduated senior class.
“Yeah,” I agreed, and sighed like it really was a bummer.
Thankfully, the microwave beeped just then, the person in front of me retrieved their food, and I could finally extract myself from this conversation. I turned away from them, placed my cup of noodles on the rotating glass tray, shut the door, punched in three minutes, and stood there, watching it spin around and round.
CHRIS
I STABBED AT THE CHICKEN breast, and juice oozed out of the puncture holes left behind by my fork, forming a puddle on the plate. Mom was cutting up her food into tiny bites, working the knife back and forth like she wanted to saw through the kitchen table itself.
Dad was on his second beer and so was Isobel. It seemed like they were silently racing each other. Only, Dad didn’t normally drink, so he was already getting slow and goofy. Mom, on the other hand, did normally drink. If it was after seven o’clock, you’d be sure to see a glass of red wine attached to her hand and a flush to her cheeks that crawled up from her neck, lasting until she went to bed. But here, she adamantly refused as if it were suddenly a matter of principle. Instead, she had only a glass of ice water that was rapidly collecting condensation in Isobel’s non-air-conditioned house, which Mom had already commented on several times.
“You’ll need to update this place or it will never sell,” Mom told Isobel. Mom was always giving people unsolicited home advice because she was a real estate agent. But this was not simple friendly advice; it was a judgment.
Isobel, ever cool and levelheaded, came back with, “Good thing I’m not selling, then.”
Mom held up her hands in front of her, like she was some kind of martyr surrendering a fight, even though she was the one who was trying to get it started. It’s always unnerving to see my parents out of context like this, to realize that they’re not only my parents, but real people who existed before me, outside me.
It was so quiet, all I could hear were the sounds of each of us chewing; the more I tried to tune it out, the more focused on it I became.
“Well, you made great time,” Isobel offered, trying to break the walls of silence surrounding each of us. “Must not have hit any traffic.”
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Those were the longest ten and a half hours of my life. I considered saying it out loud, but instead stared down at my food.
“You know, Chris,” Isobel continued, after no one answered. “I promise there really are things to do here. There’s some stores, a few restaurants, a movie theater, even. You could drive into town; it’s only about ten minutes or so. The theater only plays old stuff, but still.” She paused and looked at me like I should be impressed, then added, “There are kids around who are your age. You might even make some new friends.”
My mind rewound the list of small-town amenities, before it replayed the key words. “Wait, did you just say I could drive?”
“He coulddrive?” Dad echoed, the beer gently slurring his speech.
Mom dropped her fork abruptly and pushed her plate away. She rolled her eyes, which she did every time my dad referred to me as “he.” I wondered if she even realized she was doing it, or if it had just become a reflex.
“Seriously?” Mom snapped, glaring across the table at Isobel.
“Why not?” Isobel’s voice turned high and sharp, ready to challenge. “I have my old station wagon just sitting there out back.”
“That rusted tin can piece of junk?” Mom said, shaking her head. “No way.”
Isobel grinned at my mom like they were playing a game and it was just getting interesting. “Hey, it’s what’s on the inside that counts, little sister.” Then she kicked my foot under the table and nodded discreetly, as if to say: Don’t worry. I got this. “Besides, I just had it inspected the other day. Had to throw on some new brakes, is all. It’s perfectly safe, I promise.”
Dad nodded to himself and smiled slowly, absently moving the food around on his plate. When he looked up at Mom, her face was a stone—hard and cold and unyielding.
She narrowed her eyes at him, crossed her arms tightly over her stomach, and sat back in her chair. “I’m sorry, is that your way of asking what I think? Since when does that matter?” she asked him. Then suddenly the legs of her chair scraped against the floor, fingernails on a chalkboard, and she was on her feet. For a moment she looked like she wanted to knock my dad over in his chair. But instead she carried her plate to the sink and said, “Excuse me. I have a headache.”
Dad watched her walk away, and for a second I thought he was considering going after her. But then he shifted his eyes to Isobel, and lowering his voice, mumbled, “Thanks a lot.” And then they both started giggling like they really were still teenagers.
Isobel leaned into me so that I could smell the beer on her breath, and whispered loudly, “All right, I give up. What crawled up her ass?”
I shrugged, but I knew exactly what her problem was. She’d drawn a line between us, and she couldn’t stand the fact that this time I wasn’t going to cave in and cross back over to her side. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to—Mom didn’t get that.
“So?” I tried to refocus the conversation on the car subject. “Dad, can I?”
He gave me a long hard look, and sighed through the words. “I’ll talk to your mother about it, all right?”
Isobel raised her arm out to me for a fist bump, and then went to the fridge for another round of beers for her and my dad. I finished my salad while they volleyed remember when stories across the table, swapping secrets they’d already told each other a million times, laughing while reliving the best moments of their youth—the time she crashed her father’s car, the time he snuck out of the house to come see her and got caught, the time when they started a fire in their high school chemistry class, and of course, the inevitable, that time her little sister had a secret crush on her boyfriend and stole him out from under her.
When I left to go upstairs, they barely noticed.
The old floors creaked under my feet as I walked up to my room for the summer. My bags and boxes, mostly full of books—just the essentials—that had served as my friends this past year, were lined up against the wall. The room was furnished with a dresser, a nightstand, and a twin bed, all made of a dark, heavy, clunky wood that looked old yet indestructible. I sat down, and the mattress whimpered, buckling, then bouncing back up.
I grabbed my phone off the nightstand where it had been charging. Coleton had texted me hours ago with a video of a chimpanzee escaping from its enclosure at a zoo. I couldn’t help smiling, even though smiling was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do right then.
I responded: Haha, very funny
He texted back immediately: thought you’d appreciate! :) Then, after a calculated pause: soooo . . . you doing ok?
Was I okay? I had no idea, but I couldn’t deal with him worrying about me again.
I’m fine, just preparing to be bored to death for the next two months
I saw that he was typing a response—we still hadn’t discussed what had happened the other day, or how angry he was, how scared I’d made him. I didn’t want to have that conversation right now, so I cut him off before he could send it: thanks for the video. I’m beat, though. Going to bed (the passive aggression of the day was exhausting)
Cole’s typing stopped, then started back up again: OK, later.
I made my way over to the pile of things that were mine, but, like my parents downstairs, they seemed out of place, not really mine anymore. I sifted through until I found my telescope, its tripod, the eyepieces safely stored in their cases. It made me feel better knowing it was here. I’d bought it secondhand with my own money, saved from ten- and twenty-dollar bills stuffed in birthday cards from various relatives over the years. My parents would’ve bought it for me new, they said, but I wanted to make sure something this important was really all mine, something that they couldn’t take away from me.
They can take a lot, and they have, but not my telescope. And they can’t take away the feeling I get when I look up into the night sky at the stars I’ve come to know so well, all at various stages between being born and dying. “ ‘We are made of star-stuff,’ ” I whispered to myself. Carl Sagan famously said it decades ago; I have a poster with that quote hanging on my bedroom wall back home. That’s what I think about when I feel alone. That’s what I see when I look out there into the universe. It means we’re all connected. Everything we are and everything we know, everything we see and touch and feel, life, all of it came from out there. Except the real beauty of it is, when you get down to it, there is no out there or in here.
When a star goes supernova, expanding until it can no longer withstand its own gravitational force, it collapses and explodes, and from its remains comes all of this. We exist—everything we are—because a star died. Sometimes I wonder if maybe this is what religion feels like. It does for me.
I stood in the center of my new bedroom for a moment, not sure what to do. I thought of Mom downstairs in one room, and Dad and Isobel in another, me up here, and Coleton 687 miles away. I thought of this house sitting by itself in the middle of nowhere, and I wasn’t feeling very connected, not feeling one with anything, not even myself.
I opened the narrow closet door and pulled on the string that dangled down in front of my face. Attached to the end of it was a rabbit’s foot key chain, with tie-dye-colored fur. A bare bulb flickered to life, illuminating the stash of empty wire hangers swaying gently on the rod. I pulled on the rabbit’s foot again, feeling the tiny claws press into my palm, and the light went back out. For a second I wondered if maybe this was my mom’s bedroom when she was growing up here. I wasn’t sure if I could bring myself to ask her, though.
I shut the closet door, and when I spun around to face the other side of the room, I realized that there was another door, this one with a lock and an opaque, stained glass window in the center. The setting sunlight was glowing dimly through its mottled surface. I walked over, turned the dead bolt, and pulled on the handle. The door stuck like it hadn’t been opened in a while, suctioned shut with moisture and wind and time. But finally the seal cracked and the door popped open with a low moan. It led outside to a small square deck suspended in
the air. I stepped out cautiously, taking mental note of the busted railing on one side. Like everything else in this house, the deck looked worn and tired. It was held up by what appeared to be flimsy wooden stilts, planted in the ground below. But as I took small steps toward the edge, I realized it was sturdier than it appeared. A ladder had been built in between the beams that supported it, and when I leaned over the edge, I saw that there were several rungs missing.
I looked across the field, and, to my surprise, there was another house. This one sat far back from the road and had a paved driveway instead of gravel and dirt. Landscaping and blue siding and shutters flanked each window. Even in the fading light I could tell it was a lot newer than Isobel’s house. Though there was also an old barn sitting adjacent to the house that looked more like an antique: some odd choice of lawn decoration or house accessory. It was missing bits here and there, making me doubt there were any livestock residents.
I’m sure my mom would have an opinion about it, something to do with curb appeal.
Sitting down on the old planks of wood, I took a deep breath and looked up. Aside from Coleton and my books, the stars had been my friends too—probably my most reliable friends these past few years. They’re constant, even when everything else is changing. Though I guess they’re changing too, just more slowly. I lay down on my back and kicked off my sneakers, folding my arms behind my head as a pillow.
The sky out here was so clear, so wide open.
I could see Jupiter overhead, and Saturn rising up above the tree line in the southeast, Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Polaris, each one exactly where it was supposed to be, each one telling me exactly where I was.
MAIA
A SLOW ACHE WAS BUILDING in my chest as I rode my bike away from Bargain Mart. Past the school, with its Spirit Rock that never ceased to make me feel like the shittiest sister on the face of the earth. Then past the gas station where that graffiti was still taunting me, even hidden around the back of the building where I couldn’t see it. As I pedaled on, I wished hard that I had somewhere else to go but home.