How to Save a Life

by Sara Zarr

  “That was astute of Dylan.” Mom has a little trouble getting the word “astute” out, and I know the wine is working. “Even though she’s eighteen… nineteen now… she’s such a child. I’m scared for her to be out in the world on her own.”

  Mom’s eyelids droop. “If I didn’t think it would be too confusing for the baby, and for Mandy, I’d have let her stay with us. She has no idea the lengths I would go to for her. If she did, she wouldn’t run away. I should have done a better job of this. I should have gotten a lawyer. You were right.”

  She goes on like that, repeating herself, repeating me. I top off her wine and put a pillow behind her head as she lies back. “I bet when you wake up, she’ll be right there in her room, like always.”

  “Mmm.”

  Soon she’s out.

  Up in Mandy’s room I check one more time for any clues as to what might be going on. The Bible is gone. Her new clothes are gone, her bag. My straightening iron. I dig through her trash and find an envelope addressed to her and get all excited, thinking there will be answers. But the single sheet of paper inside simply says:

  Please stop writing to me.

  —Alex from the train

  I go back down and sit in Dad’s chair, watching Mom, watching the door. My phone, which I’ve got on vibrate, buzzes with a text and I scramble for it. It’s Ravi.

  Ravi. When we were leaving Casa Bonita, he asked if I wanted him to stay with me, if there was anything he could do, but I sent him home so I could focus on this situation. Now he wants to know if there’s any new information. No, I text back. Thx for checking.

  I go over and over the whole night in my head. Dylan and Mandy being so late, acting so strange. Could something be going on between them? No, that doesn’t make any sense. Mandy is nuts and pregnant, and one thing I’ve never doubted is Dylan’s faithfulness to me, even when I’ve been less than faithful to him.

  My phone buzzes again. This time it’s Dylan.

  He’s outside my house in his car, and can I come out? I bolt for the door, grabbing my keys and my coat. It’s freezing outside; I run out to his idling car and jump into the passenger seat. “Where is she?”

  Dylan looks terrified. “I took her to the train station.”

  I don’t even blink before saying, “Take me. Right now.”

  “Jill… you don’t get it. Imagine if—”

  I hold up my hand, concentrating on containing my fury. There isn’t time to say everything I want to say. “I trusted you. I told my mom if Mandy was with you, we had nothing to worry about.”

  “Imagine you were a guy who got a girl pregnant. Wouldn’t you have the right to know?” He’s impassioned. “Wouldn’t you want to have some say in what happened to your baby?”

  I open the car door. I’m not here to debate parental rights. I just have to get Mandy back so that my mom isn’t shattered all over again. “If you won’t take me, I’ll go myself.”

  “She’s coming back,” he says with less confidence. “She said she would. She—”

  The rest of his words are muffled and then lost as I slam the door and walk to my own car to start scraping ice off the windshield. I hear him get out and follow. “Are you listening to me? No, of course not, because you never listen to anyone.”

  “Why would I listen to bullshit, Dylan?” My fingers sting with the cold.

  “Not everything is bullshit!” He’s loud enough now that if my mom weren’t stone-cold out, I’d worry he’d wake her. I move to the rear windshield, Dylan staying close. In an only slightly quieter voice, he says, “Ever since your dad died, you—”

  “Don’t, Dylan. Don’t ‘ever since your dad died’ me.” The ice scraper falls from my numb hands. I pick it up. “I haven’t changed. I’ve always been this way.”

  “No, you haven’t.”

  “Okay, well, I don’t remember that Jill.” I hold my hands to my face to warm them up, to press back tears. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry. And I can’t be her now, and I’m never going to be her again,” I say, my voice rising. I realize it, finally. This elusive old Jill I’ve been chasing isn’t someone who can be found. Short of my father coming back from the dead, it’s not happening. Which doesn’t mean I can’t change, just that I can’t change back.

  I recognize hysteria coming when I see it; I can’t afford it right now. My hands drop, and I take deep breaths of the lung-burning air. “If I could, I would… and I wish… I’m sorry.”

  Dylan is miserable, staring at the ground. “This sucks.”

  I open the driver’s-side door, throw the scraper into the car. “Was she trying to sell a watch?” I ask.

  He pulls his head back, a little surprised. “Yeah.”

  “Did she?”

  “No. I… I chickened out. I thought we were going to get stabbed outside a pawnshop or something. I gave her some of my own money instead.”

  At least there’s that. “Go home,” I say. “Your parents are having a shit fit.”

  Mandy’s sitting on one of the high-backed wooden benches, looking ten times as lost and helpless as she did the day she got here, even though her clothes are better now, and at least this time she’s got on a decently warm coat. At the sight of her, tears spring to my eyes. Tears of relief, I guess. Such incredible relief. Also, I feel something for her. Something like pity but more like affection, more like compassion. Because imagine. Having a mother like that, being pregnant, having the balls to leave home and go through with it all. And I wonder where she’s planning to go now, trying for another fresh start. As mad as I am at how close she’s come to getting away, there’s something admirable about how she can take care of herself, be this strong.

  I sort of want to let her go. I still think my mom is bonkers for wanting to take on a baby at this point in life. And if the baby has half Mandy’s kooky genes, it’s going to be interesting. I also know my mom would give that baby a great life and love her even when she’s an ungrateful, bitchy teenager like me, love her more than she deserves. Not that Mandy couldn’t love her, too, and I’m not saying money necessarily makes a life better, but they had a deal. Does it matter that it might not hold up in a court of law?

  “Mandy,” I call, breathless, from where I am, maybe ten feet away.

  She turns her head and stands up. “Hi, Jill.” And she waves, as if we’re just running into each other at school or something. I’ll never get this girl.

  I take a few steps toward her. “Where are you going?”

  “I was just deciding.”

  Someone at the ticket counter shouts into the station that it’s closing in five minutes.

  “Did you miss the train?”

  “One of them.”

  My breathing slows.

  Her bags are at her feet. She’s got something in her fist. “Is that the watch?” I ask, coming closer.

  Mandy lifts her hand, opens it. “Dylan was going to help me pawn it.”

  “He’s not that tough. He won’t even go into a 7-Eleven if there’s a homeless person out front.”

  I get close enough to touch the watch in her open hand. “We’re mailing this back to your mom.”

  “No,” she says with more emotion than I’ve ever heard her use about anything. She closes her fist back around the watch, puts it in her pocket.

  “Mandy, I don’t know what kind of crazy family you come from, but after five seconds of listening to your mom, I know it’s scary, and I know why you wanted to get away. The last thing we want is this dude Kent coming around here causing all kinds of trouble.” At “Kent” she flinches. “We send the watch back, and it’s over. And then whatever you decide, at least you decide it with a clean slate.”

  “He owes it to me.”

  I don’t know what to say to that, what it means, exactly.

  “It’s all I have.” There are tears in her eyes, and fear.

  God. I can’t imagine feeling that way. That all I have in life is a stupid object belonging to some guy who is obviously someone to be ter
rified of. And I think about all I have, and all I’ve rejected. The support, the friendship, the comfort that I’ve refused from people who actually love me.

  “That’s not true,” I say.

  She stares, expecting more.

  “I know how I was to you when you first came here,” I continue. “I was in a bad place. I wasn’t on board with this whole thing, I admit it. I thought it was a terrible idea; I wanted to protect my mom. But I sort of get it now.”

  “You do?” She smiles a little bit, her eerie eyes boring into mine. “Because I don’t. I don’t know what I’m doing.”

  I swallow. “Well, I don’t know what you’re doing. Or what I’m doing. But I think I know what we want.”

  The station agent comes over to us. “Ladies, we’re closing up. If you need information about a shelter…”

  “We’re fine. Thanks.” I pick up Mandy’s big bag.

  She stares and stares. Waiting. “What do we want?”

  What do we want?

  “Something different from what we have now.” I want what I felt when Ravi kissed me, not because of the romance of it but because of how I feel about me when I’m with him. I get a feeling of possibility and, more than that, a glimpse of myself as someone who would be open to possibility.

  I want to start again. Not necessarily in a relationship but for myself. I want to start again with me, as the me I’ve become without Dad here. Good and bad and all of it.

  Mandy picks up her other bag. “I don’t know what to do.”

  “There’s this coffee shop. Mom and I went there the morning we came to pick you up. We could—”

  Before I even finish talking, she says, “Okay.”

  Mandy

  I wake up surrounded by the hopeful orange walls. Despite wanting to believe this is real, again I think it could be the last time, because I still haven’t faced Robin and she could hate me now. I could be repacking everything within a few hours.

  When Jill and I got back home last night, Robin was asleep on the sofa, and Jill put her finger on her lips and we crept up the stairs. Jill helped me unpack. We put the new maternity clothes back in the drawers, put my Bible back on the nightstand. I gave Jill the watch because I didn’t trust myself not to get scared again, and I also gave her the address for where to send it.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said.

  We were too tired to talk for very long at the coffee shop. Instead of discussing what to do with my future, Jill talked about the past. She told me how it was the morning I arrived. How she’d fought with Robin about me. How she was mad about Pancake Universe. How she was sure I was only here for money or something. It made me feel bad at first, but then I could see that her point was she’d changed her mind.

  “I get why you ran,” she said.

  She thinks she gets it. She doesn’t know all the reasons.

  “But I’m still mad at Dylan,” she added. “I can’t believe he gave you money. I can’t believe he didn’t bring you right home.”

  I admit I didn’t listen to or remember every single thing she said about it. I was tired. What I remember is that I asked, “Can I still be friends with him?”

  She didn’t expect me to ask that, I could tell. First she said, “But you’re not really friends….” Then she stopped. Then she started again. “I mean, you’ve only really talked to him once or twice.”

  I stared at her.

  “And it’s not like…” Then she looked at me, and down at her tea, and back up at me. “Yeah,” she said. “You can. Not that you need my permission.” She nodded, her eyes on the café wall behind me. “He’s a good friend to have.”

  She said she was sorry she wouldn’t be here this morning to help me talk to Robin but that she couldn’t miss school again, and that I should let Robin lead the conversation because maybe she had enough wine that she wouldn’t remember I was missing for a few hours. I told Jill that I’d had lots of experience with people drinking too much and that you’d be surprised what they remember.

  Jill comes into my bedroom now, all dressed for school in her usual dark, drab colors and too much eyeliner. “Hey,” she says, sitting on the bed. “Mom is still on the sofa. When she gets up, remind her to drink lots of water and eat a good breakfast.”

  “Tomato juice with hot sauce.”

  She smiles. “Right. You know about these things, I forgot.”

  “Not because of me,” I tell her. “I’ve never even tasted alcohol. But I know from my mom and Kent.”

  “If you have any other secret cures, let her know. She’s going to be feeling profoundly shitty. She hardly ever drinks.” Jill shifts her backpack to her other shoulder. “Well, good luck today.”

  “Wait…” I wiggle and scoot across the bed so I can reach the nightstand. I take a folded-up piece of paper out of my Bible. “Put this in with the watch. Don’t read it.”

  She comes closer, takes it. “I won’t.”

  Of course, Robin remembers everything. A little bit too much wine isn’t the same as a bottle of whiskey.

  “We’re going to have a long talk,” she calls to me in a croaky voice from the couch when she hears me in the kitchen. “As soon as I can think.”

  Jill was right about one thing: Robin is very sick. She throws up three times in the first couple of hours after waking up. I offer her all different things to eat, but everything in the house is so healthy. “What you need is a doughnut,” I tell her, standing in the downstairs bathroom doorway. She’s on her knees in front of the toilet, elbows on the seat, resting her head in her hands as it hangs over the bowl. “Alcohol makes your blood sugar go low, and you need to get it back up.”

  “I can do that with fruit,” she mumbles.

  “It’s not the same.”

  She spools a few squares of toilet paper onto her hand and wipes her eyes and mouth. “Mandy, I’m sorry, but I don’t feel like taking nutritional advice from you right now.”

  “Okay.” I sit on the padded top of the clothes hamper. “I have a glass of water here if you need it.”

  “I’d really rather you leave me alone completely until I’m done throwing up and have had a shower and coffee.” She retches again; nothing comes up. She moans a little and then crawls to the tub, sitting on the floor with her back against it. When she sees that I’m not going anywhere, she asks me, “Were you very sick during your first trimester?”

  “Not really.” I felt good. I acted normal. My mother had no idea. The only reason she knew is because I told her.

  “When you got here that day on the train, I felt bad that I’d already missed so much of your pregnancy. I wish I could have been there for every moment, to support you and help you through it. I felt like a mother would feel with a pregnant daughter. I felt connected to you. I always have. It’s—” She stops herself and stares at me the way a person does after just realizing something important. Maybe it’s striking her that she does hate me now, how deeply I betrayed her, that she only wants me to leave. Her fingers go to that spot on her face she always touches when she’s thinking.

  “Here.” I hold out the water. She takes it. “Small sips at first,” I remind her. “How did your council meeting go last night?”

  “The council meeting?” She laughs and leans her head against the shower door. “Fine. Brilliant. Everything went great until I got home and found out you’d run away.”

  I know I should say that I’m sorry. My hand automatically goes to my belly and starts circling. “I didn’t run away. I’m here.”

  “What if Jill hadn’t gone after you?”

  What if questions are always hard for me to answer.

  “Mandy?” Robin’s voice is shaky now. “Were you really going to leave?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Robin closes her eyes and starts out soft, asking “Why?” and gets louder, “Why? Why?” until on the last “Why?” she sets the water glass down too hard, and it breaks against the tile. Her hands curl into fists and pound against her thighs. Her
eyes are still closed. “Why?” I don’t know whether she’s even asking about me anymore.

  I get onto the floor, which isn’t easy, and crawl over to pick up the glass before she accidentally cuts herself.

  “I’ve done everything your way, even though I clearly know better than you do.” Her voice seems extra loud here in the bathroom. She opens her eyes. “I’ve ignored—leave it, Mandy!—I’ve ignored everyone who has been telling me to be careful, to not trust you. Especially Jill, who warned me and warned me.” The big pieces of broken glass are in my hands; I was already mostly done cleaning up when she said to stop. I shuffle on my knees to the trash can and let them fall in with a clink. Still on my knees, I reach to take a hand towel off the rack, reach again to dampen it in the sink, then shuffle back to wipe up any small pieces of glass that might be there. We’re next to each other now, and I lean my back on the tub, too.

  “All of our e-mails, Mandy, everything we talked about… I thought we’d developed trust. A relationship. What could I have done differently to keep you from running?”

  It was at the doctor’s office, I want to say, when you were talking about not letting me hold the baby. But I don’t want to blame her right now, and maybe that’s an excuse, and really it was only Dr. Yee saying those things. “Nothing.”

  She exhales a sigh. Her breath is sour; I turn my head away a little, but not so much she’d notice and feel bad. “The father,” she says, “if that’s what this is about—we’ll find him. I’ll do everything in my power. We’ll hire someone if it helps, only promise we’ll talk about it, do it together.”

  The father.

  “Mandy? If we find him and get his explicit consent, would that make you feel better? I’m trying here,” she pleads. “I’m racking my brain, I—”

  “I don’t know who the father is.”

  I said it. It’s out.

  Robin pauses. And then, “I’m confused. I thought you said there was only one person it could be?”

  “There are two people it could be.”