The Window

by Amelia Brunskill

  More flowers followed, until I could no longer make mine out.

  Finally, Mom took a deep breath. “It’s done. Let’s go to the car, sweetheart.”

  We started to make our way back to the car. Halfway there, my parents were waylaid by friends, so I turned away and watched as people continued toward their cars.

  Watched Ms. Brown pause at another grave on the way and lightly touch the stone.

  Watched one of my uncles pause at the edge of the grass and hug his wife, my aunt, close.

  Watched Charlie take a discreet look around before pulling a flask out of his car. He took a drink, then offered it to Brian and Nick. Nick shook his head, but Brian took a long swig before handing it back. I looked for Lily, expecting to see her there with them. Usually she gravitated to wherever Charlie was, leaning into him as if having any air between the two of them was too much for her to bear.

  Lily wasn’t there, though. I searched for her among the remaining crowd, wondering if she was still with the cluster of cross-country girls. Instead, I found her lingering back by Anna’s grave, finally by herself. Her hair fell around her face and her eyes were red. She was still holding a flower.

  I started to walk across the grass toward her, and she lifted her head, looking me right in the eyes. It seemed that she paused for a second, like she was waiting for me, like she wanted to tell me something I needed to know. But then she tossed her flower onto the casket and turned away, vanishing into the crowd again.

  Part of me would like to blame Lily for how it started, unfair as that may be.

  It would be so easy to tell you that she pulled me in, set me on the path.

  I think you’d believe me if I told you that.

  THAT NIGHT, AFTER MY PARENTS went to bed, I went into Anna’s room.

  I curled up on top of her quilt, my thoughts snaking around in my mind. I tried to straighten them out, to separate them into orderly piles, but they kept wrapping around each other, slithering out of my grasp.

  Anna had stopped by my room before I’d gone to sleep that night. I couldn’t remember exactly what we’d said to each other. I couldn’t remember waking up during the night either. I was a heavy sleeper, but surely I should’ve been jerked awake when Anna fell—if not by the noise, then by the sharp sensation of the cord between us being cut. It felt impossible that I’d slept through the night wrapped in blankets and the delusion that nothing had changed—that Anna was still alive, that I was still a twin.

  The weight of what had happened began to press down on my lungs like a physical force, so I sat up and got out of her bed. I walked over to Anna’s window, pulled open the curtains, and looked out at the ground underneath. I imagined opening the window and letting the cold air spill into the room. Imagined climbing out, carefully stretching my leg until my foot reached the very upper edge of the window below. Who were you going to see? I thought. Where were you going? And why didn’t you tell me?

  I put my hands on the windowsill. For a moment, I pretended my hands were her hands, that I was her and she was returning to her room, quietly closing the window again after a long night out. When my hands started to shake, I moved them back to my sides. Stop it, I told myself. Go back to bed. Tomorrow you can start. Tomorrow you can see what answers you can find.

  * * *

  —

  THE WEAK WINTER SUN STRETCHED over the bed, signaling a new day. I sat up and surveyed Anna’s room, trying to figure out where to start.

  The police had searched her room, it was true, but they had no idea what was normal and what wasn’t. I couldn’t rely on them.

  I decided to start with the obvious. I looked under the pillow I’d just slept on, felt underneath the mattress, still warm from my body. Nothing.

  I lay down on the floor to look under her bed. It was too dark to see much, so I stuck my arm underneath and swept a cascade of clutter into the center of the room.

  All told, it was pretty disgusting. Unwashed socks; dusty, dog-eared books; pens and pencils. Some of the pens had bite marks from her habit of chewing on them.

  After saving a couple of the nicer, unchewed pens—most of which I was pretty sure had been mine to begin with—I pushed everything else back under the bed.

  On her end table was a lamp and a framed picture of us. I was trying to be efficient, clinical, about this process, but I couldn’t help picking up the picture.

  It was one of my favorites of us, taken back when we were eight. We lay in the backyard grass, our heads touching, our hair swirled together, and our eyes closed, the light around us the perfect hazy gold of perfume commercials. Mom had taken it, thinking she’d captured us napping in the afternoon sun. We’d never told her that she was wrong, that we’d actually been wide-awake, trying to communicate without words, to project our thoughts to each other, concentrating so intently that we hadn’t noticed her walk up and take the photograph.

  In the photo, Anna’s lips were curled up slightly, and mine were curled down. She looked like she knew exactly what I was thinking, and I looked like I was trying to translate a foreign language.

  A tearing sensation started inside me, so I put the photograph back down, carefully placing it at the same angle to the lamp as it had been before, and opened the drawer. More pens. Several tins of breath mints. A couple of cardboard coasters with bright patterns, which was ironic considering that she—like our dad—never remembered to actually use a coaster. And that was it.

  In her closet, I didn’t find anything remarkable other than a rumpled hooded sweater with blue stripes that at first I couldn’t place. It looked familiar, but it wasn’t mine and it wasn’t hers either. I looked at it more closely. Then I remembered Anna coming back from cross-country a few weeks earlier, soaking wet from an unexpected rainstorm, and Lily careening in behind her, laughing. Lily’d been wearing this sweater. Anna must have hung it up to dry and then forgotten about it. I made a mental note to give it back to Lily.

  Next, I sat cross-legged on the floor with Anna’s backpack and pulled everything out, starting with her notebooks, looking for anything that might be useful. The first three contained only notes for school and the occasional abstract doodle.

  The fourth, her English notebook, was more promising. In the back were pages of notes between her and Lily. One page started off with Lily writing a paean to her boyfriend, Charlie (I mean, those eyelashes of his—they go on for miles! SO CUTE!! And he brought me flowers on Friday! FLOWERS!). I tried not to imagine Anna smiling as she read it, laughing.

  Farther down on the page, Lily wrote: You like anyone? It’d be so fun for us to all go out.

  Unfortunately, Anna’s response was vague: I’ll think about it.

  Fine, Lily wrote. Better do it soon or I’ll come up with a list. Make you pick one.

  I flipped to the next page, but it was blank.

  Two sheets later, the notes started again.

  Lily: Oh my God, half the class is asleep, but you’re so into this. You and Mr. M should just get a room already.

  Anna: Not funny.

  Lily: Tell me about all the great books, you bespectacled man hunk. Tell me about them slow.

  Anna: You’re an idiot.

  Lily was an idiot, I thought.

  The rest of the notes weren’t anything special, mostly complaints about it getting cold, having too much homework, and being sore from cross-country. So I set the notebooks aside and I moved on to Anna’s bookshelf. My books were organized by genre, and then alphabetically by the author’s last name. Anna’s didn’t seem to follow any system.

  On the lowest shelf, there were some sheets of paper, folded small. I gently unfolded them, and on the open pages I recognized Anna’s handwriting.

  It was poetry. I hadn’t known she wrote poetry.

  I’d seen her sitting in the bleachers, waiting for cross-country to start, a notebook in her lap a
nd a pen in her hand. She’d write and then pause, considering her next word. I’d assumed she was doing work for class, or maybe writing a story.

  The poems were all about nature. The changing colors of the leaves and the promise of snow, the sound of dry grass, the feel of damp earth.

  At least until I got to the last one. The last one was different.

  It wasn’t about nature—it was about a person.

  It was a love poem.

  It lacked any concrete details, such as names or physical descriptions, but it was obviously about someone she knew well. About a relationship that had been going on for some time.

  I’d missed even more than I’d realized.

  THERE WERE DECISIONS TO MAKE.

  Green sweater? No, she’d worn that for her school picture.

  Gray turtleneck? No, she’d borrowed it all the time. It probably even smelled like those mints she’d been obsessed with. I picked up the turtleneck and breathed in. Yes, mint. It was hard to put it down.

  Today was going to be my first day back at school after four weeks away, and it was important, I thought, not to wear anything people might associate too closely with Anna. I’d made that mistake a few days after the funeral, when I’d worn a red sweater of hers and Mom immediately started crying when she saw it. I’d forgotten she’d knitted it for Anna—that they’d picked out the pattern and the wool together. There were land mines, I was discovering; land mines everywhere.

  I ended up deciding on jeans, a black, long-sleeved T-shirt, and a navy hoodie. As far as I could remember, Anna had never borrowed them. They were absent of memories.

  Which was good. Because today I didn’t want memories. Today I was going to talk to Lily. I was going to make her tell me what really happened. I had waited long enough.

  * * *

  —

  ANNA AND I HAD BEEN packing our own lunches since we were nine, but this morning Mom insisted on packing one for me. She offered me a ride to school too, although I’d always taken the bus.

  “It might be easier that way,” she said, her eyes searching mine. “And I can pick you up if you want? Leave work early?”

  While I knew the offer was sincere, I couldn’t help feeling that it also served as a probe of my emotional state, like her and Dad’s suggestion that maybe I should speak with a counselor—an offer I’d politely and firmly declined. So I shook my head and told her I’d be fine.

  * * *

  —

  I EXPERIENCED A PANG OF regret over my decision after climbing the steps of the bus. Standing beside the driver, I felt the weight of people looking at me, the weight of people not looking at me, pretending to be fascinated by something out their window or in their lap. I’d been naïve to think that what I wore might provide some shield, to think that my having the same face wouldn’t trump all other details.

  I sank into the nearest empty seat I could find.

  * * *

  —

  AT SCHOOL I KEPT MY head down as I navigated through the mass of bodies in the hallway. I’d almost reached my first class when I saw Anna’s locker.

  Or, at least, the small amount of it visible behind a mountain of painted crosses, carnations, and stuffed animals in various shades of Pepto-Bismol piled in front of it.

  I stopped and stared.

  A sound rose from deep within my throat. A sound that was half sadness and half rage.

  I reversed course.

  * * *

  —

  ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, THE BATHROOM wasn’t a terrible place to spend the morning. The sterile white tile, the strong smell of cleaning products, the relative lack of people were all reassuring. It felt safe.

  When lunchtime rolled around, I considered and then rejected heading to the cafeteria, largely because I had no idea where I’d sit once I got there. Anna and I had always eaten together—always had all our classes together too, until they’d enacted that moronic school policy last summer about siblings not being in the same classes together. I had always resented that policy, and now I truly hated it.

  My hands began trembling at the thought of all the time we’d been forced apart. It took a while for my hands to steady enough to unwrap my sandwich and take a bite.

  When I did, I almost spit it right back out again.

  It had the right kind of bread, the right kind of mustard, and yet something was wrong. I tasted bread, mustard, lettuce, and…I peeled back the slices to check. Yes, bread, mustard, and lettuce. That was it. Mom had officially made me a mustard and lettuce sandwich.

  If I hadn’t been so hungry, it might have been funny.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T LEAVE THE BATHROOM until calculus.

  Just like last semester, Mr. Erickson had assigned seats, posting the list by the door. This time, Lily was slated to sit right in front of me. Perfect.

  Yet when Mr. Erickson started class, Lily’s seat was still empty. For the entire period, I kept a steady eye on the door, expecting her to come in, mouthing a silent excuse to Mr. Erickson and flopping into her chair with a grand flourish. The door never opened. Lily never showed.

  When the bell rang I slowly packed up my things, waiting for all the other kids to leave. Then I took a deep breath and went up to the front of the room, where Mr. Erickson was cleaning off the dry-erase board.

  “Is Lily out sick?” I asked.

  He turned, eraser in hand. His eyes went soft when he saw me. “Jess. I…I was so sorry to hear about—”

  I cut him short. “Lily Stevens,” I said. “Is she out sick? Or did she drop this class?”

  He opened his mouth and searched my face, like he was figuring out how to get the conversation back on track. Then he shook his head. “Neither,” he said. “I made the chart before I heard—Lily’s gone to live with her dad in Florida.”

  “Florida?” I repeated, taken aback. Yet, Lily had always made a big deal out of her trips to Florida, like they were proof she was far more exotic and interesting than the rest of us. Given a chance to live there, it made sense that she’d jumped for it, even though it meant leaving her boyfriend and her friends behind.

  “Yes,” Mr. Erickson said. “I guess her parents decided it would be better for her to go live with him for a while.”

  I thought about Lily at the funeral, how she’d hung back in the group, how later she’d seen me coming and walked away. I’d thought she’d been overwhelmed, needed some time.

  Apparently, I’d given her too much.

  No, I shouldn’t blame anyone else. I should tell you the truth. I should always have told you the truth.

  So here it is:

  Somewhere along the line, I got tired of the constant comparisons.

  Tired of being the one who was nice, but boring.

  The one always seen as normal, not special.

  Always sitting beside you, getting Bs to your As.

  Well, except in English, of course. I was always better than you at making up stories.

  WHEN THE BUS ARRIVED THE following morning, I planned to do the same thing I had the day before—collapse into an empty seat near the front. That morning, though, the only empty seats were at the very back, which felt like miles away. Defeated, I took only a few steps in before turning to the seat closest to me.

  “Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked, before I even saw who I was asking. Which turned out to be Sarah Hinter.

  I knew Sarah only to the extent it’s impossible not to know someone who has been in the same grade as you since kindergarten. I knew that she’d been on the cross-country team with Anna, that her personal style consisted of three constants: thick black eyeliner, black jeans, and large (black) headphones, and that her mom was widely considered the most beautiful woman in Birdton.

  Sarah looked at me with a blank expression, her headphones still firmly se
cured to her ears. I pointed at the seat.

  “Oh,” she said loudly. “Sure.”

  She moved her coat, an enormous puffy thing that appeared fully capable of doubling as an airbag, into her lap to make room.

  As I slid in next to her, the bus groaned and began moving with a jerk. I grabbed the edge of the seat to avoid pitching forward.

  Sarah put her headphones around her neck, releasing the tinny sounds of a low repetitive beat. “You all right?” she asked, looking at my white knuckles still clutching the seat.

  “I’m fine,” I said, releasing my fingers. “I’m just concerned this bus is going to fall apart.”

  It wasn’t really meant to be a joke, but she laughed. “What gave you that impression—the rattling noise or the lurching?”

  “Both.”

  “Well, if it makes you feel any better, it’s not just you. The driver claims he can’t hear it, but I’m pretty sure he won’t admit anything is wrong with this bus until it spontaneously bursts into flames.”

  “Thanks for that comforting image.”

  “Anytime,” she said, flashing a quick grin as she pulled up her headphones again.

  Okay, I thought as I closed my eyes, hoping to nap for the rest of the ride. You found a seat, talked to another person. That’s a good step. That’s good practice for what you’ll need to do next. Which was getting Lily’s phone number from the person I knew would have it: Charlie.

  * * *

  —

  BY LUNCH, I STILL HADN’T managed to find Charlie. Or, rather, I’d found him—twice—but the first time he’d been surrounded by other basketball players, and the second, he’d been walking so fast that I’d have had to literally sprint down the hallway to catch up. And it’s hard to casually ask for a phone number when you’re struggling to breathe.