Why I hadn’t thrown myself over the guardrail by that point was a fucking riddle.
“So. Was there really something?” No response. Not even a shrug. “Connor.”
“What? Oh. No, that was bullshit. You looked miserable as hell. Figured I’d give you a hand.” The corner of his mouth lifted, a half-curved commiseration with a wicked, sideways twist. “But while you’re here …”
I leaned toward him, took a long, deep hit off the proffered joint. Escaped into a lungful of smoke. He chuckled at the resulting cough, took another pointless swipe at his hair as I turned away, seeking Grey. Finding him on the cusp of the night, reaching once more for Sadie. Letting his silhouette melt into hers.
They spun together, out of the headlights’ reach, and they were lost to us.
2
THE BATHROOM OF OUR OLD house was entirely white: white tile, white sink, white toilet. White walls and cabinets. Even the fixtures were vintage white porcelain, individual taps labeled HOT and COLD. My mom loved that bathroom. She hung white linens on the bars, and framed black-and-white French postcards on the walls. She kept it spotless and shiny and smelling like tea roses.
I like to think she’d have been furious with herself to see the mess she made.
I’d loved that bathroom too, because she did—afterward, not so much. Dad had all but gone broke moving us out of that house as fast as he could, but life is nothing if not a shitshow of everything you’d rather forget entirely, so it makes sense that I get to see it over and over again, for what appears to be the rest of my natural life.
The dream is always different, in tiny, varied ways—I never know, for instance, which Lane I’ll be. Most nights I’m Present-Day Lane, but sometimes I’m five years old again, closer to the ground, closer to her. My voice is higher, shrill and uncomprehending as I call for her, as I did in life—to my knowledge, the first and last time she failed to answer my cries.
So, yeah. Not much sleep happening on a regular basis in Lane’s world.
Blood itself wasn’t the problem. Cuts, now, those were a different story—the parting of skin beneath steel, blood or no blood, never failed to fuck me up. Blades against skin, even shaving accidents, left me grasping for control, gasping for air. So dinner prep was always fun, but blood on its own wasn’t horrible.
Which was fortunate, since I happened to be cursed with the most agonizing menstrual periods on the face of the earth.
It was almost a parody: cramps that rendered me horizontal for hours at a time. Migraines that knocked me on my ass. Nausea that devolved to vomiting that devolved to me lying on the bathroom floor in tears, begging random entities for relief, stomach yearning for sustenance that only made things worse. Did it suck? Yes. Did it ruin several consecutive days of every month, like clockwork? Absolutely. But I was used to it. It was part of my routine.
So I didn’t even consider the far-reaching implications of a shared bathroom until I was slumped on the floor at six a.m. a mere two weeks into the new living arrangement. Moaning into the bathmat with a bile-sour mouth, as Grey McIntyre’s voice sounded at me from the hallway.
“Elaine? Are you—oh, shit. Mom? MOM??”
His footsteps went pounding all over the house in a frantic search for Skye, and my agonized groan rose to a thin, tiny wail as I realized exactly what was about to transpire.
There was no stopping it. It was already set in motion, and it spooled out just how I knew it would: Skye took one look at me, sent Grey to put the teakettle on to boil, and set to work sponging my wan face with a cold, damp washcloth.
“Are you okay, Elaine? Did you eat the wrong thing?” She lowered her voice, glancing over her shoulder at the door. “Do you think you might be pregnant?”
“God, no,” I croaked, fighting off another wave of nausea. “Just that time of the month. The usual fun and games.”
“Yikes. Have you seen someone for this?”
“Long time ago. It happened to my mother too. Endometriosis. Apparently, though, I’m too young for that, and this is all in my head.”
“That doesn’t sound right at all. Were you diagnosed?”
“Not officially. My doctor says it’s just bad PMS, and we should wait on testing until I’m older. I guess for now I’m supposed to just suck it up and deal.”
“Ugh, you poor thing. Sounds like you’re in the market for a new doctor.”
“Yeah, he’s generally useless. But hey, if this ends up killing me like it did her, maybe that means I won’t actually be dead, right? It’ll all be in my head, and my body can carry on as usual. So that’s an upside.”
“Oh, Elaine.”
“Sorry. That was a bad—” I auto-swallowed a surge of acid, and immediately wished I hadn’t. It burned all the way back down. “It screwed up her fertility, and then with what happened to my brother—I’m sorry. I shouldn’t say these things. Something is very wrong with me. You can go if you want.”
“Honey, stop. I know about her difficulties, and her death. We all process these things differently. If a bit of dark humor does the trick, you shouldn’t hold back. Did he at least give you anything to treat your symptoms?”
“They put me on the Pill. But it only helps sometimes.”
“Well, sometimes is better than not at all. And it’s good to have access to reliable birth control at your age, in any case. Greyson, there you are.”
I squeezed my eyes shut at the sound of his name, gathered the strength to reach over and paw at the toilet handle until it flushed. It was bad enough the whole room stank of my vomit; all I needed now was him standing there staring at it while his mother ruminated on my birth control. Jesus fucking Christ.
“Is she okay? I have some Pepto under the sink, if she needs it.” His voice was small, thick with concern. It pierced my heart, that sweet, protective instinct of his—the reason I’d fallen for him all those years ago. He was still so ready to help, so eager to take care of me and temper my pain. He was still so good.
“She’ll be fine. When the water’s ready, I need you to brew some ginger tea, and add a few drops of my guelder rose extract. Oh, and plug the heating pad in by her bed, would you, honey? Thank you.”
Dead silence. I couldn’t look at him—that my face was already back in the toilet, dry heaving at the water, was a mere technicality. He knew. He’d lived with Skye long enough to know what guelder rose and all that other shit was for. She’d probably sat him down and explained it, nurturing his empathy concerning the biological path into womanhood, or however she’d phrase a horrible thing like that.
Kill. Me.
He was gone by the time I pulled my head out of the bowl, but Skye remained on the floor beside me. She wiped my face again, helped me twist my sweat-damp hair into a braid. Rubbed a hand in small, soothing circles over my back.
“You don’t have to stay,” I told her. “I’m used to dealing with this alone.”
She didn’t speak, just smiled and settled in beside me until Grey crept back like a shamed dog, bearing a steaming mug and refusing to make eye contact. She stayed as he scurried away again, and as I drank the tea and puked it back up, and then she brought me another cup. Once my stomach settled, she helped me into bed and tucked me in with the heating pad.
It wasn’t until I heard her on the phone calling me in sick to school, taking care of even that small detail, that it really sank in: She didn’t have to stay with me. She didn’t have to care. But she did anyway.
It was more than my own mother had done, in the end.
I let myself sink beneath the weight of that thought, let it close over my head like graveyard dirt. Let Skye’s voice carry me softly back to sleep.
3
I PREFERRED LIFE IN SMALL, ordered doses—an unmuddled bento box, with little to no overlap. Less chance that way of one issue bleeding into the rest. Less chance of losing myself in the resulting chaos, or stumbling over a random sharpened edge.
I wasn’t interested in edges. Hadn’t been since I was five yea
rs old and found my mother.
Annie. My mother. Beautiful and gentle, wild-eyed and mad. She’d slipped into nothing on the rhythm of her own heart, chasing my stillborn brother into whatever lay beyond a pulse.
Her face in my mirror. Her chair at the table, nearly thirteen years empty, suddenly occupied by her antithesis.
Skye. She was the brightest version of her name—cheerful and airy and endless, a gathering place for the softest springtime clouds. The new, constant light in my father’s eyes, blending so perfectly into our tiny world—her shawl on the coatrack; her cherry-red rain boots by the door; the sweet sigh of her lilac shampoo—as if a tornado had whirled through and set her gently in her place, scattered her belongings through the rooms, filled every empty corner with her laughter.
Smashed her son down alongside her, staining my world in Grey.
My Greyson. My Greyson who was not mine at all, actually—nothing but a trick I’d played on myself in eighth-grade Advanced Biology class: the smiling nerd deposited at my lab station on dissection day, when our respective partners chose to take the F rather than slice their way to hell through a sedated yet still-living frog. Grey McIntyre, green-eyed and focused, his hands casual on the scalpel where mine shook. Laying open that frog belly with a single, careful swipe, pinning back the skin flaps, making short work of the peritoneum membrane. Brushing a gloved fingertip over the exposed heart. Taking my hand without a word and pressing my finger to the impossibly tiny pulse.
I felt it all the way up my arm: a frantic staccato, so rapid it was almost a shudder. My throat seized; I jerked away, stumbling over his foot. He regained his balance on the stool, caught me against his chest, his own strong heartbeat thumping against my back—once, twice—before he righted us both, and it may as well have been me pinned open on that tray, paralyzed by a blur of scalpels-turned-knives and splattered bathroom tiles. Choked by the stench of bleach and blood.
“Steady,” he’d whispered, guiding me to my stool and turning back to the frog. He’d handed that thing in forty minutes later, perfectly dismantled and bearing both our names. His parting smile was shy and shiny with braces as he waved goodbye, fading into the stream of our classmates. I followed at a careful distance, losing myself instantly and completely in a way I’d never known I could.
I’d seen him everywhere after that—four years of Grey’s voice weaving its way into my ears over the general hallway clamor. Four years of watching his hair grow into a cinnamon mop, sideburns filling in around his sharpening cheekbones and jaw. Watching his arms slide around interchangeable girls, his hands moving over interchangeable waists and hips until they’d landed on Sadie. Nearly four years, and not another word between us, which was fine by me—he was safer as an idea, untouchable and perfect. Perfectly satisfactory, in a way even he couldn’t ruin.
Until the night Dad took me to a rare dinner out to meet his Skye, his unexpected second shot at life. Took me to dinner to meet her son, who blinked at me over our automatic handshake.
“Skye, this is my daughter, Elaine.” Poor Dad. So shy and nervous. So happy. Skye’s infectious smile shone bright; her hands reached for mine, without hesitation.
“Oh, Elaine. Oh, I’m so, so thrilled to finally meet you. This is my son, Greyson.”
“Grey,” he said, at the same time I said “Lane.” And everyone laughed, and we four began our transition into one before I’d realized what was happening—what had already happened. An engagement, to be exact, admittedly sudden after only a month, but met with genuine, if somewhat shocked, enthusiasm. Enthusiasm that, on my part, gave way to dawning realization, then panic and horror and denial.
That dinner, oh my God. The longest meal of my life, filled with Skye’s laughter, and Dad’s moony grin, and Grey’s every last little thing. Grey McIntyre: longtime occupant of my heart’s most vulnerable nook, hopeful and buoyed in the chair next to mine. The only boy I’d ever loved.
My future brother.
Kill me. Seriously.
“It just never connected,” he’d said. “Mom has been all ‘Rob Jamison’ this, and ‘Rob’s daughter, Elaine’ that for weeks, but my brain never linked him to you. You prefer Lane, right? That’s what you’re called?”
“By everyone except Dad.” My laugh was cheerful, my voice a bright, teasing lie, and holy shit, did I deserve an award statue. He hadn’t even known my real name. “He’s talked about Skye as well, but obviously I never connected Miller to McIntyre.”
“Yeah, she kept her name when she married my dad—which made it easy, since she didn’t have to bother changing it back.” He studied me, biting into his own grin. The braces were long gone, the smile a sideways, dimpled thing. “Would it be okay if I call you Elaine? I think it suits you.”
“Only if I get to call you Greyson.”
“Whatever you want—apparently, we’ll be family, soon enough.” His smile stretched even farther. “Crazy, isn’t it? I’ve always wanted a sister.”
I’d clamped down on my agony and smiled through that thought, and through the goddamn endless dinner, and the domino fall of everything that followed. I smiled at the handfasting ceremony a mere week later, just the four of us and an ordained friend of Skye’s, on the last day of summer vacation. I smiled as Grey recited his own blessing over our parents’ joined hands, though I was the odd one out—the lone agnostic, hovering at the edge of their pagan rituals—and as they moved into my house that same afternoon, as I helped him carry his things from his cramped apartment to the bedroom next to mine. My smile stayed on through another eternal dinner out, through the car ride back home, only faltering as we stepped into our shared living room.
I smiled until it hurt too much to do anything else. And Grey and me, who’d spent years as nothing more than hallway nods and a single moment shared over a dying amphibian—we were thrown together all at once, bound in the weirdest version of forever.
It all happened so fast.
The first day of our senior year, watching him eat a bowl of homemade granola with chia seeds at my kitchen table.
The ride to school, punctuated by the first of many detours to feed his Starbucks vice.
The parking and walking into school together.
The official introduction to Sadie and her sweet-scented hugs, her sincerity and enthusiasm and endless, overbearing kindness.
His new role in the family business, redesigning our website and working alongside me at the farmers’ market, selling Dad’s organic soaps and lotions, my hand-knit items and crocheted jewelry and lace—effectively rendering my weekend booth shifts a little less lonely and a lot more secretly anticipated. Schedules were readjusted; nerves slightly unwound. Life was a new, vibrant thing, louder and sweeter and richer in all ways, even as it tore me up from the inside out.
And so we began.
4
DAD SMIRKED ACROSS THE TABLE at the sour pinch of my mouth. This batch of kombucha had turned out better than his last one, but that bar wasn’t exactly the highest.
“Drink up, Elaine. It’s good for your—”
“—digestion. I know. It’s still disgusting.”
“You’ll live.” His chuckle rolled out ahead of yet another thunderclap.
Rain slashed at the windows and splashed along the gutters, but the basement was warm and dry, pungent with incense, lined with shelf after shelf of supplies—jars of dried herbs, flower petals, and essential oils; containers of lye; vats of coconut oil and olive oil, shea butter and beeswax; bin after bin of yarn and notions; stacks of packaging and shipping supplies. The “business” side of our business, awaiting us in neatly ordered rows. It was rote work, and time-consuming, and it wasn’t ever going to make us rich. But it made us happy. After so much misery, that was more than enough.
It used to be a regular thing, working together. I’d sit across from him and knit while he made supply lists, filled custom orders, balanced the bank account. We’d package product over cups of tea and rare batches of homemade oatmeal cookies. S
ometimes we’d chat, or watch a movie on his laptop. Sometimes he’d put on a playlist of cheesy pop songs, and we’d sing along until we were laughing too hard to breathe. I’d gotten older, though; gotten busier with school and boys. Gotten old enough for my own shifts at the market, leaving him to handle the back-end tasks. The shift in routine wasn’t personal—it just was.
But today I’d run out of yarn mid-project, gone rummaging through my fiber stash, found him hauling one of several bins of product down from the kitchen; we’d settled at the table without a word, and gotten to work. Grey was out with Sadie, and Skye had picked up an extra shift at her job, so there we were: me, Dad, and a shit-ton of freshly cured soap.
It was soothing and repetitive, our routine: I wrapped the bars in waxy paper, sealed them with our label, and passed the finished product to Dad, who wound decorative twine in bright loops around their middles—red for peppermint, purple for lavender, green for tea tree, pink for rose. The colors trailed from his fingertips, wrapped like vines around the slender phalanges, lay in bright hanks alongside the graceful ridges of his knuckles. Those hands, larger, paler versions of mine, that never failed to pry beauty from the scraps of his world.
“We haven’t talked in a while,” he began, eyes on the table, fingers suddenly fidgety with the twine. “Keeping busy?”
“Yeah, you know. Lots going on.”
“Seeing anyone special? Boyfriend material?”
“What? Oh. Um, no. Like I said, I’ve been busy.” It was a weird question, a step outside our usual conversational stratosphere. Like I was going to bring a hookup home to meet my dad.
“Oh, sure, sure. No doubt. School’s okay, then?”
“Sure,” I hedged. “Dad, are you okay? You’re being—”
“Weird. I know. I just need to make sure you’re fine. With this.”
The words burst out of him all at once. I eyed him over the jumble of our work space, waiting for something other than ellipses. Took in the tension in his arms, the squint of his hazel eyes; his pale lashes and strawberry-blond hair, the same chin-length Cobain cut he’d worn since the early nineties, now slashed with gray. The curl of twine, pulled tight around his purpling fingertip.
Together We Caught Fire Page 2