Falling into Place

by Zhang,Amy

  I wobbled.

  She screamed.

  Liz’s father spun around too quickly, and lost his balance.

  And Liz screamed some more.

  A neighbor came to investigate. She called the police and got Liz off the roof. Later there was a funeral and a fatherless family, and Liz had to be pried off the coffin, finger by finger.

  She never stopped blaming herself.

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  CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT

  Hickeys and Black Eyes

  Jake Derrick finally arrives in the waiting room.

  He walks over to where Kennie and Julia sit and says, “Hey.”

  Kennie ignores him entirely.

  Julia looks up. She gets slowly to her feet and says, “Jake.”

  “How is she?” he asks.

  Julia examines the hickey on his neck. “Where have you been?”

  He runs a hand through his hair. It’s so overly gelled that the crinkle fills the room—the junior class has paused its card games to listen. “I didn’t hear about it until an hour ago,” he pleads.

  “You were in school today,” Julia says flatly. “It was all over Facebook last night. You couldn’t have not known.”

  “Oh, come on,” he says, growing defensive and consequently unpleasant. “You know I was at basketball practice last night. And I don’t check my wall every five minutes, like some people.”

  Julia’s eyes narrow. For a moment, her expression is so uncannily similar to the one Liz often wears that Jake is unnerved. “Nice hickey,” says Julia. “Who was it?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Your girlfriend,” Julia says, “is fucking dying.”

  That shuts him up, because Julia never swears.

  Jake collapses into a chair and rubs his face. He looks tired, afraid, and I know that he cares. But like Julia, like Kennie, I hate him because he has never, ever cared enough.

  “I didn’t know what to do,” he says in a hollow voice. “I heard that she was in the hospital, and—god, Julia. We had a fight on Sunday, okay? I tried to apologize and she told me to go away. Do you know how guilty I’ve been feeling? God, don’t you think I regret all the things I said to her?”

  Julia stares at him for a moment. Then, without warning, she punches him in the face so hard that his chair falls backward.

  And with Jake curled on the floor, shocked and wincing, his hands cupped over his eye, Julia says in a hard voice, “This is not about you.”

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  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  The Second Visitor

  In the commotion, no one notices that Liam gets up, shoves his hands in his pockets, and walks after Monica.

  He arrives just as she is leaving Liz’s room.

  “Oh,” she says, hastily wiping at her eyes. “Hello. You . . . are you . . .”

  “May I see her?” he asks quietly.

  She hesitates, considers him as she has never considered any of Liz’s boyfriends, and gives a small nod.

  Liam has to close his eyes for a moment, because she looks so, so much like Liz.

  Then he reaches for the door, his fingers curling around the cold handle, takes a breath, and goes in.

  He leaves the door open and feels Monica standing just beyond view, giving him a privacy that he is grateful for beyond words. He doesn’t want to be quite alone with Liz Emerson, but he wants to see her. He wants to see her.

  He sits in the chair and looks at her. Carefully. He follows the tubes running up her nose and taped to the insides of her wrists. He observes the infinitesimal rise and fall of her chest. He can see the faint blue of her veins beneath her gray skin.

  He says one word.

  “Why?”

  It’s something that he has wanted to ask her for so long that hearing it aloud is strangely surreal. He wanted to ask her at the end of fifth grade. Why haven’t you noticed me? He wanted to ask her during freshman year. Why did you do it? He wanted to ask her when he watched her staring at the sky. Why are you afraid of being yourself? He wanted to ask her that day in the gym lobby. Why do you want to be unbreakable? He wanted to ask her after the party. Why don’t you remember?

  He never asked before because he didn’t think she would answer.

  She doesn’t.

  “Liz,” he says, and that’s another thing that he’s always wanted to say, her name. Just her name. “Liz, I never thought you’d be the first one to quit.”

  He grips the metal bars on the side of the hospital bed until his fingers are nearly as white as her face. “Liz,” he says. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the bars.

  “Please,” he whispers. “Remember the sky.”

  She doesn’t respond, and after another minute, he leaves.

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  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Two Days Before Liz Emerson Crashed Her Car

  “Ms. Emerson,” Ms. Greenberg said severely. “Why aren’t you working?”

  “Forgot my calculator,” said Liz.

  It was a combination of her careless tone and her incomplete homework and the fact that she had forgotten her calculator every day for the past week that led to Ms. Greenberg’s ten-minute lecture on the irresponsibility of today’s youth, and at its conclusion, Liz was sent to her locker to retrieve her calculator.

  Liz’s locker, however, was on the second floor and on the opposite side of the school, and she was too lazy to walk that far. Since Julia’s locker was conveniently located down the hall, Liz decided to borrow her calculator instead.

  When she spun the lock and opened it, however, it was not the calculator that caught her eye.

  There was a ziplock bag sticking out of Julia’s backpack.

  Liz swore and grabbed it, looking around to make sure she was alone. She shoved it deep in her purse, slammed Julia’s locker shut, and walked back to class.

  She didn’t even realize that she had forgotten the calculator until Ms. Greenberg demanded where it was.

  “I couldn’t find it,” Liz snapped, and Ms. Greenberg gave her a detention for Friday afternoon for “blatant disregard for the tools of mathematics.”

  Liz threw the detention slip away as soon as she left pre-calc, because she didn’t intend to be alive on Friday afternoon.

  She headed straight back to Julia’s locker. As she walked closer, she could see Julia rummaging around frantically, searching.

  “Hey,” said Liz. “Here.”

  Julia snatched the bag, her gaze flashing around to make sure that their exchange had gone unnoticed. “Why did you—”

  “I came to borrow your calculator,” Liz said, “and found that. Are you stupid? God. The drug dogs could have come today. Any fucking teacher could have opened your locker and found it—”

  “Seeing as my locker was locked,” Julia said, “I don’t think that would have been a problem. Give me my calculator back.”

  “I didn’t take it,” Liz snapped. “Damn it, Julia. Why do you even have it here? You know that you can’t just—”

  “I ran out, okay?” Julia said quietly. “I talked to Joshua Willis and he got me some. It isn’t a big deal.”

  “It isn’t—the fuck it isn’t a big deal. You told Joshua Wills? Joshua Willis knows?”

  “I told him I was getting it for a friend, okay? Chill. He’d never think it was for me.”

  But the words shook as they fell; Julia’s entire body shook, and though she looked on the brink of tears, her voice was angry.

  “I have to go to class,” Julia said when Liz was speechless.

  Liz watched her walk away, her heart po
unding. God, if Julia were caught. She didn’t know what Julia would do. She didn’t know what she would do.

  She went to chemistry, but she couldn’t focus on the notes. The teacher lectured on stoichiometry, and at the end of the hour, Liz still didn’t know what the hell stoichiometry was. She hurried down to Julia’s locker and caught Julia just as she was leaving, and when Liz called her name, Julia stiffened.

  “We’re going to be late,” Julia said.

  “Julia,” Liz pleaded, “please tell me you gave it back to Joshua.”

  Julia said nothing.

  “Give it back to him,” Liz said.

  “Don’t tell me what to do.”

  “Please,” Liz said. “Please, Julia.”

  “Liz,” Julia said, and her voice cracked. “I can’t.”

  “Jules,” she said, but Julia had already disappeared into the swarming crowd of students. Liz leaned against the lockers and was suddenly frightened, because she was losing Julia. And despite the fact that in two days she would lose everyone, she wanted Julia to be okay. Julia was cracking, and Liz just wanted to keep her from falling apart, because in her heart, Liz Emerson knew that she was the one who had put the cracks there in the first place.

  Liz attempted to talk to Julia after government, searched for her in the halls when that failed, but Julia avoided her deftly. Because they were not in the same lunch, Liz tried to forget it and listen to Kennie chatter, but everything around her was fog and white noise.

  Finally the last bell rang, and Liz caught Julia on her way out of the building. For a few seconds, they walked in silence; then Julia pushed the doors open and a blast of frigid air hit Liz in the face and slapped the words from her mouth, words she’d held back since the first moment she had realized that Julia was addicted.

  “Julia,” said Liz. “You need to get help.”

  Julia spun around. “Shut up,” she said, and walked away.

  Liz kept pace with her, her teeth carving into her bottom lip as she tried to find the right thing to say. “Julia, please,” she said. “Go see a doctor or something. We can keep rehab a secret. Please. God, Jules, you’re going to ruin your life if this goes on—”

  “Me?” Julia’s voice was so hard that it stopped Liz in her tracks. “I didn’t ruin my life, Liz. You did.”

  Liz stood there for a long time, trapped between those little words and the truth of them.

  I’m sorry.

  Those were the right words. She just hadn’t been able to get them out.

  Liz stumbled back against the side of the school and leaned her forehead against the cold brick. The rough surface stuck to her skin, and when she closed her eyes, the tears froze on her eyelashes.

  Julia was right.

  It wasn’t just people Liz disliked that she destroyed. It wasn’t just nerds, or gays, or sluts, or band geeks, or the members of the crappy cheerleading team, or the chess team members, or the Buddhist Club members, or the quiet ones, or the annoyingly loud ones that Liz destroyed. She destroyed everyone. Even the people closest to her. Especially the people closest to her.

  And even when Julia texted her that night to apologize, saying that she didn’t mean it, that she was just PMSing, even when Julia made it clear that she was willing to forget, there was no going back.

  Some people died because the world did not deserve them.

  Liz Emerson, on the other hand, did not deserve the world.

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  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  World of Idiots

  “Oh my god,” Kennie says in a teary, wavering voice. “You hit him.”

  Julia says, “I think I should have aimed lower.”

  Kennie sniffles. “I wanted to hit him too,” she says, and begins crying again.

  Julia sighs and puts her arms around her. “What now?”

  “She’s going to kill me,” Kennie says with a muffled wail.

  “Why?” Julia asks. Because honestly, there could be a number of reasons. All the crying, for example. Liz hates crying.

  “Because,” Kennie sobs, “I didn’t get it on video.”

  Julia stares at her.

  Suddenly they’re both laughing, and it’s a relief. They’re laughing as hard as they were crying, and everyone is staring, and for once, neither of them cares. And there are so many things to laugh about—they’ve done so many stupid things. They are a group of idiots in a world of idiots, and Liz was the most idiotic of them all.

  Finally, when they calm down and wipe away the laughing tears as well as the sad ones, Kennie stands up, wobbly.

  “Where are you going?” asks Julia.

  “To get a picture.”

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  CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO

  The Third Visitor

  Julia gets up too. Monica is standing guard by the door to Liz’s room, but she gives Julia a hug and a shaky smile, and walks away. Julia goes in. There’s a nurse wearing scrubs with pink dinosaurs, adjusting one of Liz’s tubes.

  “How is she?” Julia asks.

  The nurse turns and smiles at her, and Julia can see in her eyes that she’s considering a lie. But in the end, the nurse says, “Honey, she is an absolute mess. But she’s holding on.”

  Julia can’t help it. She begins to cry. She rubs her eyes furiously because everyone is crying, and honestly, she’s sick of it. She sees why Liz hates it so much.

  But she can’t stop.

  The nurse gives her a sad smile and leaves, and Julia sits down in the chair that Liam vacated moments before. She touches one of Liz’s hands, and it’s so cold that a tremor runs through Julia. Liz always had cold hands. Bad circulation. Julia takes Liz’s fingers in hers, careful to avoid the needles and tubes, and tries to rub some warmth into them.

  But Julia’s hands are cold too, as she stares at Liz’s quiet face. There were many days when Liz was strangely, inexplicably quiet, but not like this. There were many parties at which she had found Liz crying, but they had never really talked about why. Behind all of her wildness and anger and insanity, Liz was a girl of silence, and Julia always let her keep her secrets.

  Now Julia wonders exactly how many secrets Liz had.

  Julia didn’t drink at that first party.

  She didn’t like the smell of beer, and she was already drunk on the fact that they were there at all. Kennie was curious, but not, at that point, enough to try it.

  Liz, on the other hand, celebrated by forgetting everything she had ever learned in health class. She had three Solo cups of beer and was completely wasted.

  Near one in the morning, when Kennie’s brother arrived to pick them up—having been paid fifty bucks to keep all of their parents ignorant of their whereabouts—Julia realized Liz was missing.

  She found her upstairs, in bed with Zack Hayes, and he was trying to get Liz’s shirt off.

  Liz was trying to say no, but she was too drunk to get the word out.

  Zack leaped off the bed when Julia entered, and Julia, after getting over her initial shock, decided that the best thing to do was to get Liz out of there. She dragged Liz down the stairs to find Kennie pushed against the wall, wrapped around some senior whose hands were already at her shirt buttons. Julia grabbed her too, and she pulled them out into the night.

  Something changed that night. Liz was different after that.

  That night, Liz’s self-respect began to chip away, and then she had let it fall, piece by piece.

  I think Julia is beginning to realize this. She remembers what the doctor told Monica yesterday, what Monica told her, what she told Kennie, and what Kennie told everyone else: that Liz will only pull through this if she’s determined to.

  The nurse escorts her back to the waiting room. She had run into
Liz’s room after hearing a crash, and she found Julia beside an overturned chair, shaking.

  Julia doesn’t struggle. She’s held silent by the overwhelming fear that Liz Emerson, her best friend and the most obstinate person she knows, no longer wants to fight.

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  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  The Maternity Ward

  Kennie wanders around the hospital until she finds Jake seeking comfort with a young, pretty, overly sympathetic nurse. She hears a bit of what he’s saying as she walks closer, “something real” and “in love” and “lost without her.” She thinks about hitting him again, or maybe kicking him this time, but in the end, she doesn’t. She takes a picture of his brilliantly purpling eye, flips him off, and starts back to the waiting room.

  Unfortunately, Kennie’s sense of direction is virtually nonexistent, and within a minute, she is hopelessly lost.

  She sees an elevator and heads for it. She begins hitting buttons, figuring one of them will take her back to the emergency room. None of them do. She passes the pediatric ward, the cancer ward.

  And then she finds herself at the maternity ward.

  She steps out of the elevator. She hears the faint, thin wails of babies, and her hands go automatically to her stomach. The flatness makes her throat close, and all she wants is to sit and curl around herself, around the baby who is no longer inside her.

  On the day of their junior homecoming, the humidity was at 100 percent.

  Liz didn’t bother trying to curl her hair. Julia helped her stack it all atop her head while Kennie struggled with the iron and the hair spray, and when they were finally dressed and ready, they went to the beach to take pictures.