Something about that idea makes sense, though. Perhaps that’s the only way she can still punish me for what I’ve done to her.
I think it’s kind of funny that I don’t have any of her tastes. I mean, I haven’t suddenly started to listen to old 1960s protest songs and I haven’t developed tastes for lacy clothes or rocky road ice cream.
And thankfully, aside from the vague whispers left by her dreams, I don’t have any of her memories. I can’t imagine having to relive all the crap that went on with her mom. Lizzie was way stronger than I am. I don’t know how she put up with all that shit and I’m not sure I could do it. Not even now.
The one thing she hasn’t let go of are her feelings for Spencer. I get it. But the dreams are making me crazy. And it isn’t like I can just give up sleeping.
Lizzie’s voice. LIZZIE’S VOICE is like some background noise in my head. What sucks the most is that I have no way of talking to her without feeling like a total idiot. I’d do anything to be able to tell her how sorry I am. I wouldn’t even ask her to forgive me because I know that would be impossible. But I’d still want to tell her.
I’m so tired when my alarm goes off that I can barely force my eyes open. I’d love to ditch school today, but then I’d have to explain it to my teachers, and worse, to Spencer and I don’t want to be that kid—the one too sick to come to class, the one who needs special considerations.
According to my calendar, the team is having fielding drills today in advance of next week’s opening game. Just thinking about it makes my muscles want to make that throw to first. It’s funny, I like batting. My average, which now might be frozen like I’m Babe Ruth or some other dead slugger, is .312. I’m one of the team’s top hitters in a pretty competitive division, which is rare for a shortstop. But there is something about standing in the field, bent down, waiting for the pitch to be thrown, watching the concentration of the batter and that expectant feeling of waiting for the ball to be hit to me, that I really love. A perfectly turned double play, short-to-second-to-first, is one of the most beautiful things I can think of.
On the field, I’m not afraid of anything. Baseball makes me brave. I trust myself. I trust my teammates. When I’m out there during a game, I don’t notice the spectators or anything else. It’s just me and the ball and the machine that I form with the rest of the guys.
And now Justin Dillard will be taking my place at short and that thought kills me. It isn’t only that I won’t be playing, it’s that he will. He can smack the hell out of a ball even if he can’t field one effectively half the time. In fact, his average is only slightly lower than mine. I get that Coach Byrne really has no choice but to play him. That just doesn’t make me feel any better.
Ultimately, it’s personal.
Earlier this year we were doing these drills where you throw the ball while down on one knee one time, and then from a standing position the next, only you need to keep your body aligned with a stripe on the floor. It would have been fine. Boring, but fine. Except that Dillard kept deliberately throwing the ball slightly off so I had to get up and chase it down through the gym.
“Man, I wouldn’t have thought that even you could get this rusty in just a couple of months.” Really I should have known better and just kept my mouth shut.
“Well, at least I know what side of the plate I’m batting from,” he sneered back at me. I knew his words had nothing to do with baseball.
I remember biting the inside of my cheek to keep from saying anything and whipping the ball at him hard enough that it forced him to take a few steps back. He was the loudest of those who still cared about keeping the gossip about me, Spencer, and Lizzie alive.
What really did it was his next comment.
“Cat got your tongue? Or perhaps you left it in Yeats’ mouth.”
I was usually able to ignore Dillard’s blather. But he pushed it when he mentioned Spencer, and it had been building up inside me for so long that I couldn’t just write his words off as the same bullshit he was always spouting.
I landed a hell of a punch before Coach pulled me off him.
He ordered us to the showers and then into his office.
“Which one of you wants to talk first?” Coach asked.
I eyed Dillard suspiciously, curious if there was anything he could say that wouldn’t make him look like the ass that he was.
We both stayed silent.
Coach looked back and forth between us. “I’d prefer not to write you both up. I still need one of you to play short. So what do you boys think I should do? Anyone want to give me a reason not to file a report on this?”
I ground my teeth waiting for Dillard to say something stupid, but he just sat there rubbing his jaw, which was starting to swell.
“Sorry, Coach. It won’t happen again.” I hoped that the fact that I’d never been caught fighting in school before would save me.
Dillard grumbled “sorry” under his breath. What he was sorry for was being caught, not mouthing off to me.
Coach stared at us and sighed. “Get out of my face before I decide to replace both of you. And Dillard, go see the nurse before your face swells up even more. You already look like a chipmunk.”
His expression as he walked out meant that he knew I’d won this round.
As I started to leave Coach’s office, I heard, “Nice punch, Ryan. I heard what he said. He had it coming. But next time take it outside. Don’t you dare do that in my line of sight again, got it?”
Coach kept his head buried in some paperwork, not even looking up.
“Yes sir,” I said.
“And Ryan? If there is a next time, make sure it’s in the off season. I don’t want you busting your hand.”
“Yes sir.” I hid my smile as I walked out to my next class.
When I ran into Lizzie and Spencer later that day, they’d already heard about the fight. Lizzie called me “slugger” like she was proud of me. Spencer nodded at me once I told him I was okay. But I never told him what had happened to make me deck Dillard.
What I did tell Spencer, and what I remember now and pretty much every time I think of throwing that punch, is this: “It felt really, really good.”
I take a super-hot shower and my meds, but still must look tired because my mom gives me one of her looks as I get ready to leave. She goes so far as to put the back of her hand on my forehead, checking to see if I have a fever and I have to push her off.
The only good thing about the morning is that when Spencer picks me up, it’s with a large cup of decaf coffee. It may not be “real” coffee, but at least I can pretend that I’m drinking something that will wake me up.
Of course he also greets me with, “Man, you look like crap.”
“You always know what to say to make me feel good, Yeats,” I joke as I slide into Sweeney and gulp down the coffee.
“No, seriously, you’re okay, right?” he asks, and honestly, even though he means well, I’m so sick of that question I could scream.
“Let’s make a deal. You won’t ask that again and I promise that you’ll be the first person I tell if I’m not.”
Spencer smiles apologetically. “Sorry. It’s a deal.”
There’s a silence in the car that’s waiting to be broken, a heavy cloud above me that’s made it impossible to have a normal conversation about anything. Even more, there are ghosts of conversations that hang between me and Spencer. It’s still eating at me that he and Lizzie slept together. It isn’t jealousy; it’s some odd twisted anger I don’t understand. And our conversation yesterday about my having Lizzie’s heart feels like it’s demanding to be discussed. But I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to talk about hearts. I don’t want to even think about how much I hate myself for what I did to Lizzie, and I certainly don’t want to talk about how Lizzie’s dreams of him are still invading my nights. So when I break the silence it’s t
o ask about Spencer’s kinda-sorta-boyfriend in Seattle. “So what’s up with Rob?”
“What’s up with Ally?” he lobs back.
“Come on, that isn’t fair. You guys are at least actually friends. I mean, you email him and everything.” And what I mean by that is that he doesn’t turn into a total idiot every time he even thinks of talking to Rob, like I do with Ally.
“It isn’t that hard. All you need to do is say hello to her,” Spencer says in that way he has of boiling things down and making them sound easier than they are.
“I’ve said hello,” I say, fiddling with the strap of my backpack.
Spencer rolls his eyes at me and smiles, but like all of his smiles lately it’s forced and almost empty. “Yeah, and then you need to say something else.”
I flip the buckle of the seat belt open and closed, open and closed. If someone hits the car now there would be a fifty percent chance of my being protected by the belt depending on the timing. “That’s where I get stuck.”
“You should have let Lizzie talk to Ally for you when she wanted to.”
I have no idea whether he’s kidding or not. My breath catches a little bit anyhow. The idea of Lizzie being the one to approach Ally on my behalf was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever heard. It took weeks of begging and pleading on my part to get her to promise that she wouldn’t say anything to Ally. Even then I was looking over my shoulder all the time because Lizzie wouldn’t have been subtle, and she wouldn’t have been vague, and I would have been mortified.
But now, if she were here, I’d almost let her. It would almost be worth whatever embarrassment came from it to have her here screwing with my life again.
“It wouldn’t have ended well,” I say.
Spencer laughs a little. “Oh absolutely not. But it would have started a conversation and you need to talk to her. To Ally.”
My talking to Ally was a pipe dream before the accident. On one hand, I probably have nothing left to lose and should go for broke. On the other, it might make more sense for me to concentrate on keeping my grades together and figuring out what the hell kind of a future I have now that I can’t play ball.
I don’t know how to explain to Spencer, confident Spencer, who can say anything to anyone and make it sound interesting and convincing, that any chance I ever had with Ally is probably gone. I can’t tell him how not being able to play baseball makes me feel like I don’t even know who I am anymore. Lizzie’s dreams aren’t making that easier either. How much can I lose before I lose myself? Or who I thought I was?
There’s no way I can throw that question at Spencer without him thinking that I’m nuts, so I make some noncommittal noise that he realizes is a noncommittal noise. Once again, he’s managed to resist talking about Rob and I’ve managed to resist talking about Ally and we’ve both managed to avoid talking about Lizzie. We both know that all those conversations might be tabled, but none of them are really over.
Twelve
After a couple of days of school, I get back into the rhythm of things. Government follows English follows Chem. My brain falls back into these patterns the same way I used to be able to step up to the plate on the first day of spring training and fall into my swing from muscle memory.
The familiarity of taking the same classes and sitting in the same seats day after day after day actually helps more than I could have guessed. And now that everyone has pretty much stopped pointing and staring at me, I can zone out and lose myself in things I don’t care about, like Wuthering Heights, and things I do care about, like how thunderstorms develop into tornados.
Aside from the fact that I really need to start focusing on my grades to get me through to college, classes take my mind off Lizzie, and my guilt, and the gray cloud of sadness that follows me around more often than not. Lizzie pretty much hated school. She’s tuned out during the day so my head is totally mine.
“Dude. Really?” Ben leans over my arm while we’re waiting for class to start. At first I have no idea what he’s talking about, but then I follow his eyes down to my notebook. I slam it shut as fast as I can on what would have been a nude drawing of Spencer Yeats.
“Prank,” I say although I know he’s not going to believe me. Today it’s Spencer, yesterday it was a mound of skulls. Flowers were growing out of the eyes of one. Snakes slithered through another. One looked suspiciously like Assistant Principal Stiller.
I’ve never been able to draw. I almost flunked my distributional art class. But apparently I’ve gotten over it.
“Damn it, Lizzie. Stop,” I mutter under my breath. Thankfully, we have a sub today. Everyone is having their own conversations, so no one except Ben is looking at the crazy boy talking to himself in the corner and even he’s moved his chair noticeably farther away from me.
I sit with my hands linked together for the rest of the day, only picking up a pen when I need to take some notes and hoping that Ben will forget what he thought he saw or at least that he stays quiet about it.
As usual, though, things get worse when class is over. In the time that used to be filled with baseball and with Lizzie—the whole Lizzie, not just her voice—I’m lost. Somehow, I have too much time on my hands and not enough. I’m lonely, but at the same time I feel like I can’t get a minute alone.
With nothing else to occupy my thoughts, Lizzie is everywhere. She’s in my head. Coursing through my veins. She takes over to the point that there are evenings when I wonder if any of the things I’m thinking are really mine.
I’m using my study hall hours to work out in the gym like Dr. Collins suggested. The school has been great about allowing it. But come four o’clock on days when Spencer is in rehearsal and Lizzie is just a voice inside my head, the thought of going home and being alone makes my skin crawl.
So I’ve developed this kind of route that takes me around the school. I hang out in the library talking to Mrs. Finn, the librarian, about new books that have come in that I’ll probably never read. I hover in the music rooms to listen to the choir practice and watch the marching band go through its drills. Today, I head to the auditorium to sit in on part of Spencer’s rehearsal.
I’m almost to the door when I see her. Ally. Leaning against the wall, dressed in white for the show, and holding a sword. She looks like some fierce angel and I don’t really realize it until I see her, but I’ve been avoiding her since I came back to school.
I imagine walking up to her, asking her to dance with me in the halls or run outside to play in the rain. For one minute it doesn’t matter that I have this scar and these medications like some old man. For a minute I’m going to take charge.
Just do it already.
“God, Lizzie … ” The words escape my mouth before I can stop them and my stomach clenches with worry. Hearing her voice is one thing. Talking back to it in front of other people is another kind of crazy and it’s starting to become a bad habit.
When I look back at Ally, she catches my eye. It makes me so flustered that I walk right by her. Spencer would kill me if he knew I’d chickened out. Lizzie would have been giving me a crazy hard time as well. I will the voice in my head to stay quiet just this once.
But then I stop again. For a minute I picture myself turning around and going back. Talking to her. Just saying something. Anything to break this stupid stalemate.
Then, as I’m about to turn, I hear a voice behind me. “Hey, sweet cheeks.” It’s Justin Dillard, and I know he isn’t talking to me.
I’m halfway inside the door. In front of me, ribbons of fabric unfurl from the top of the stage. I turn my head and crane my neck back to see Ally offer Dillard a tired smile.
“Hey, Justin.” Just hearing her say his name makes me want to hit something.
I wonder if they’re dating, wonder if the entire world has gone crazy while I’ve been gone.
In the space of time it takes him to answer, I ride a roll
er-coaster ride of emotions: anger at him for being such a jerk, disgust at myself for even thinking I’d have a chance with her, fury at the universe for not letting me catch a break, and a sadness so deep and acidic that it feels like I’m burning up from the inside.
His response, “I want to talk about prom,” propels me away from them and down the stairs.
I’m gasping for air, feel like I’m going to throw up.
Before I know it, I’m in The Cave. It’s the first time I’ve been here since the night of Lizzie’s birthday and it feels like our laughter from that night is trapped in the black of the walls, mocking me. I can hear our voices in my mind. Not like the ones that sound like Lizzie is whispering straight into my ear. These are more like an old scratchy record that’s stuck in a groove on repeat.
It’s freezing and dark. Spencer isn’t here so there are no candles lit and I feel more alone than I ever have. Even with Lizzie inside me.
Then I remember the ghost.
“Alice, are you here?” I ask the air. It’s stupid, but if I can feel Lizzie inside me shouldn’t I be able to contact this poor girl whose spirit is supposed to be here somewhere?
I don’t know what I’m expecting. Like maybe all of a sudden I’m some ghost whisperer? I keep calling her name louder and louder, but there’s no answer. Even the damned ghost doesn’t want anything to do with me. Even she knows who I am: someone who kills their friends. Someone who has nothing left.
I don’t notice the door opening and the recessed lighting coming on until suddenly, it’s light and Spencer is there with his arm around me.
“It’s okay. It’s all going to be okay,” he murmurs.
For the first time, Spencer’s reassurances sound false. Maybe he actually believes that things are going to be fine because for Spencer they always are. But I’m starting to think he needs to understand that the rest of the world isn’t so lucky.
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