In the kitchen, just as Rosemary had said, was a large black burn mark where Fred had supposedly burst into flames and become a spark. Esther was skeptical that a) this had occurred at all, and b) if Fred was indeed a goblin, that he’d supposedly given his life to save Eugene’s. Maybe one of the rabbits had simply scared him to death and he’d spontaneously combusted in a fit of wild rooster rage. Still, she knelt at the scorched wood, which kind of did look rooster-shaped if she squinted, and gave thanks to the creature that her mother was convinced had kept them afloat for the past six years.
Esther went to her room and sat on her bed and contemplated what it meant that the curse wasn’t real. That it wasn’t a spell that made Eugene so sad, just depression. It wasn’t magic that bound her father to the basement, just anxiety. It wasn’t a jinx that drove her mother to the slots, just an obsession. For the first time, all the broken bits of her family and herself seemed fixable; curses couldn’t be broken, but mental illnesses could be treated.
Esther stood and looked around her room, at the costumes Jonah said she used to hide from being seen. Is that what they were for? All these years she’d told herself she wore the costumes to hide from people, and from Death. Had she really been using them to hide from herself?
Tears of frustration and betrayal and pain burning in her eyes, she started to tear down the cage of fear she’d built for herself, ripping apart strips of silk and shredding half-drawn patterns, until all she could do was collapse on the rug-strewn ground in a heap of color and fabric. There, sobbing on the floor, she noticed that the wood beneath the layers of paper and fabric was blue, which she was almost certain it hadn’t been before she’d covered it with several Persian carpets years ago. Esther cleared away some of the mess she’d made; more and more blue appeared on the floor, some of it light, some of it dark, some almost white, some almost black, all in a circular pattern she recognized well because she saw hundreds of them every day.
Esther peeled back a carpet and pushed her bed to the side of the room. On the floor, right where her bed had stood moments ago, someone had painted a huge nazar, the blue, white, and black paint faded and peeling now. Scattered over the charm to ward off the evil eye were dozens of sage leaves; some fresh, some brittle, some almost dust now, each with a different wish on them, all written in her mother’s handwriting.
Keep her safe.
Give her courage.
Let her escape this town.
Don’t let her become like me.
Make her see how much I love her.
Make her see how much I love her.
Make her see how much I love her.
Esther picked up a handful of them and held them to her chest before a sound from the hall made her breath catch. Her heart kicked up its tempo and her brain whispered run, run, run from the fear, but she didn’t. Let the monsters come, she thought, her mother’s wishes grasped tightly in her palm. Let them try and take me now.
She stepped out into the hall and noticed something she hadn’t seen when she came in. Outside the bathroom door, Rosemary had laid out her jewelry in a long line on the wood: her tiger’s-eye, her sapphires, her amber rings, the nazars that wrapped around her ankles. Her clothing—stitched with coins and stuffed with herbs for luck and prosperity—had been neatly folded and placed next to the trinkets. Another sound came from the bathroom. Sloshing water.
Esther pushed the door open. Rosemary was on all fours dressed only in her underwear, her knees and the soles of her feet stained red with blood. Her ribs were visible through her thin skin. A web of blue veins. The frightening mountain range of her spine. Wedged between her knees was a bucket of soapy water. The tiles were slick with bleach and blood and detergent. Esther always thought if you cut your wrists, your life just kind of leaked out of you quietly, poetically, pooling in delicate puddles at your sides. That was not the case. Though the skin might be broken, the heart still roared with life, pumping away at four miles per hour. There were arcs of blood on the walls. Spatters on the ceiling. Eugene had tried very hard to die in this small room, and his heart had tried very hard to keep him alive.
Esther exhaled at the horror of it and Rosemary noticed for the first time that she was there.
“Oh, no, Esther,” she said, her thin body springing up. Blood on her hands, blood on her knees, the blood of the son she almost lost. Jesus. The poor woman. “I can do this,” she said as she tried to push her daughter from the room. “You don’t have to see this. I don’t want you to see this.”
Esther put her hand to her cheek. Wiped away a speck of red. “Pop’s gone.”
“Oh, honey.” Rosemary tried to hug her with her elbows, careful to keep her bloody hands away from her clothes. “Oh, honey, I’m so sorry.”
Esther put her head on her mother’s shoulder and held her around her thin waist, hoping she could feel what she no longer had the words to express: I love you, I love you, I love you.
Was it so bad to hold onto something that was broken? All those years she’d judged Rosemary for staying with her father when she could’ve cut and run, but could she blame her? Rosemary left her first husband because he was a monster, but Peter was still good and kind and gentle, and perhaps that was worth staying for, even if the person was ruined.
As she watched her mother kneel again to wipe up her son’s blood, Esther thought she finally understood the woman who’d raised her. Jonah had once told her that one day, everybody would realize that their parents were human beings, and that sometimes they were good people and sometimes they were not. What he failed to mention—what she was only coming to appreciate at that exact moment—was that most of the time people were neither good nor bad, not righteous or evil, they were just people.
And sometimes love, even if it was all they had to offer, was enough.
It had to be.
37
O BROTHER
HEPHZIBAH WAS at her house when Esther got home from Reg’s funeral several days later, sprawled across her bed with Fleayoncé on her back and a laptop open in front of her. Familiar figures danced across the screen, chased by a horde of homicidal geese. Hephzibah giggled.
“What are you doing?” Esther whispered.
Heph turned and raised her eyebrows. “Watching you be a hilarious badass,” she signed with a grin.
Esther slammed the laptop shut. “Don’t ever watch them again. Jonah put them on the internet even when I specifically asked him not to. Do you know how messed up that is?”
“The videos are beautiful.”
“That doesn’t make it okay.”
“I get that but . . . it’s not like he was trying to hurt you. He was trying to help you. I think you should give him a chance to apologize. To explain himself,” signed Heph. “It would be the bravest thing to do.”
“What do you know about bravery?” Esther snapped. “You don’t even have the guts to talk to your best friend. How do you think it makes me feel when you speak to almost everyone except me?”
Hephzibah stood slowly, her jaw set, and walked out of the room without another word. “Yeah, go,” Esther said as she went.
Eugene appeared in the doorway less than a minute later. “What did you say to her?” he demanded.
“Something that I knew would hurt her.” Eugene pursed his lips, flared his nostrils slightly. Causing Hephzibah pain was off-limits to everyone, even Esther. She changed the subject. “How are you feeling?”
“Like I’m super sick of telling everyone how I’m feeling.”
“Sorry.” Eugene sat down on the end of her bed, his head in his hands. Esther patted him on the back. “How weird was it seeing Dad outside today, right?” Despite the doctor’s protests, Peter had insisted on attending his father’s funeral. He’d worn Reginald’s red knit cap and reading glasses, and Esther and Rosemary had taken turns pushing his wheelchair.
“It was nice,” Eugene said. �
��I know I was supposed to be super sad all day because Pop’s dead, but the whole thing just made me feel kind of . . . normal. For the first time in a long time.”
“On that note, I think it’d be a good idea to try therapy again, but really try it this time, don’t just go in there with the intention of scaring the shit out of people. It’s like a broken bone, you know? You can’t keep walking on it and expect it to heal.”
“Is this the superstitious Esther Solar acknowledging the existence of mental illness and not just behaving like I’m cursed?”
“Shut up.”
Eugene ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t really want to talk to anyone.”
“I don’t really care. If you broke your leg and didn’t want to go to the hospital, I’d take you anyway.”
“I don’t want people to know I’m crazy, you know?”
“Oh, honey. You slit your wrists with a veterinary scalpel. I think it might be a little late for that.”
Eugene laughed. “No way. I can totally get away with the tortured artist thing. I only did it for my craft.”
“Oh great, this only adds to your mysterious legend. The boy witch, in so much pain he couldn’t face another day. The girls at school are going to fall for you at an unprecedented rate.”
“Ugh. Just what I need. Adventures of the Boy Witch, Episode One, in which our hero survives a brutal attack by his own mind.”
“You know what? I think it’s actually a really good idea. You could write a web comic about a depressed superhero. I mean, who saves the superheroes when they’re mentally ill?”
“That’s . . . not a terrible idea.”
“Well, I mean, I am practically famous on the internet, right? I could plug you on my channel.”
“Wait, you’re gonna keep going?”
“It was a joke.”
“You know, if I were to write a web comic, a certain charming young artist would be a handy mentor for me to have around.”
“You can be friends with him. But he betrayed me when he promised he wouldn’t, and I can’t forgive him.”
“Esther.”
“What?”
“I mean . . . it’s not like he cheated on you, or killed your cat, or hit you, or had six kidnapped girls locked up in his basement.”
“Well I haven’t verified the last one.”
“You didn’t check for basement girls? Damn, you’re gonna get a rude awakening one day. Always check the basement.”
“Betrayal is betrayal, Eugene.”
“Is it though? Remember when we were like seven, and we were at Pop and Gran’s house, and Gran found that expensive plate she loved broken and hidden under the bed in the guest room?”
“Yeah, they blamed me for some reason, even though I had no idea how it got broken.”
“I broke it. I ratted you out. I said I saw you do it.”
“You little shit. I didn’t get to go swimming that afternoon because of that.”
“So there you go,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Jonah and I have both committed a heinous betrayal against you.”
“You’re my brother. It’s different.”
“Why?”
“Because I love you.”
“You love him, too.”
“I want to talk about you, not him.”
“You do though, don’t you? You love him.”
“Eugene.”
“Okay, okay. Maybe not as much emotional development as I thought.” Eugene stood, but before he left, he leaned down and kissed her forehead. “If I can work up the courage to walk in to a therapist and say—” He exhaled loudly, shook his head. “Shit this is hard. If I can say to a therapist, ‘Hi, I’m Eugene and I need a cast for my very fractured mind because I frequently have suicidal thoughts,’ then you can be brave enough to forgive him. Deal?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Everyone we let into our lives has the power to hurt us. Sometimes they will and sometimes they won’t, but that’s not a reflection of us, or our strength. Loving someone who hurts you doesn’t make you weak.”
“Staying with someone who hurts you does, though.”
“Jesus. Try telling that to a victim of domestic abuse. Try telling them that they’re pussies for not running.”
“This is different and you know it.”
“I get it. You think Mom’s weak, because she stayed all these years.”
“Yes.”
“You think she should’ve left Dad, like she left her first husband.”
“Yes.”
“Sometimes you’re brave if you run. Sometimes you’re brave if you stay. It’s important to know the difference. Important for both of us, probably.”
Esther had never thought of it like that before. “So you’ll talk to someone?” she asked.
“On one condition.”
“I can’t let him back into my life. Not yet. I’m not ready.”
“I’m not going to force you to make up with some dude if you don’t want to. That’d be pretty shitty brotherly love. You’re first, always.”
“Then what’s the condition?”
“You have to come with me.”
“To therapy? Eugene, I’m totally—”
“Fine? Sane? Stable? Happy?” Eugene shook his head. “I know working your way through the list is helping you, and I think you’re brave as hell for facing some of your fears. But I don’t think your makeshift self-help is enough. If I need more, then you need more. Come with me.”
Suddenly she got why Eugene didn’t want to go to a therapist, even though she could see clearly from the outside that it would help him, that it was the best thing. The thought of sitting down in front of a total stranger and spilling her guts out on the table for a therapist to sift through like a medium scrying animal entrails for a message . . . made her skin crawl. She liked to keep all of her emotions locked inside where she could see them and catalogue them and control them and make sure they didn’t spill out.
But she said okay because she wanted him to go. She needed him to go. Her life depended on his continued existence.
“I know you think love is dangerous. But I look at you and me, and I don’t see that.”
“Really? Because you have more power to destroy me than anyone else. I gave you that control by loving you and you went and tried to kill yourself. Why would I want to give anyone else the power to hurt me like that?”
“That’s just the thing. It had nothing to do with you. So maybe love isn’t the poison you think it is. Maybe people just make mistakes. Maybe they’re even worthy of our forgiveness if they hurt us.”
“Ugh. Sink the scalpel a little deeper next time, oh wise and annoying one.”
“You can’t say that to me, I’m emotionally fragile.” Eugene grinned. “I’m gonna go find the cheapest therapist in town and hook us up with an appointment.” He opened his laptop and sat it on the floor in front of her. It was open to the Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares YouTube channel. “Now, time for you to do something you’re actually afraid of.”
38
THE GHOSTS OF ESTHER’S PAST
THE DAY after Reginald’s funeral and subsequent ash scattering, Little Creek inexplicably began to dry up. Within a week all the water had sunk into underground reservoirs and the riverbed was as bone dry as it had always been before the murder of the Bowen sisters. The remains of the girls were located two weeks to the day after Reginald’s death, not far from where he first found them, each with wild orchids bursting from their rib cages.
Esther felt strange living in a world in which Reginald Solar no longer existed. Death made perfect sense in the scientific (the redistribution of atoms, etc.) and philosophical sense (anything that lived forever would have no value, like the Reaper’s most hated jellyfish), and Esther understood that it was n
atural and necessary, but trying to wrap her head around the undeniable fact that her grandfather no longer had a body, that the electrical signals that had sparked through his brain making him him no longer sparked . . . it made no sense. She was a smart and (mostly) rational human being, and still she couldn’t make herself understand how it was possible that he was just . . . gone.
And then the thought that she herself would die . . . Well, that was another panic attack entirely.
So Esther started going to therapy with Eugene, as she said she would. They shared one-hour sessions, to save money; fifty minutes for him, because he needed it the most, and ten minutes for her at the end. The therapist, Dr. Claire Butcher, was nothing like what Esther had expected. For one thing, she didn’t seem like a psychotic ax murderer, as her name might suggest. For another, Esther assumed it would only take one session with Eugene before she’d diagnose him as schizophrenic or chronically depressed and try and pump him full of tranquilizers and have him institutionalized. Instead, she mostly listened. Sometimes she gave Eugene coping strategies—breathing exercises, podcasts to listen to as it was getting dark, links to videos on meditation, the option of trying prescriptions if these approaches failed—but she was never forceful, or frustrated, or condescending. Together they came up with plans to wean him off light and—shockingly—Eugene had begun to try them. Each night, he peeled a strip of electrical tape off one switch. Each night, he lit one less candle than the night before. It might take years, but he was breaking through his own protective dam against fear, and he wasn’t drowning. He was teaching himself to swim.
Esther told Dr. Butcher nothing of importance. “I’m just here because of Eugene,” she said the first week, but Eugene wasn’t going to let that slide. He told her everything Esther refused to: about the curse, about Death, about Jonah, about the list, about their grandfather, even about how she compartmentalized her life into lists sometimes. It took him two weeks (well, technically only twenty minutes) to cover everything, and once he had, Dr. Butcher started working on tactics with Esther too, coaching her through her anxiety and grief and utter mortification that there was footage of her on the internet.
A Semi-Definitive List of Worst Nightmares Page 24