Fallen: Angels in the Dark

by Kate, Lauren

  They told her about the rogue wave that rose like a myth out of the ocean and swept her mother’s Chrysler from the bridge. They told her about scientists searching the water for a meteor that might have caused the wave. They told her about the construction workers, asked whether Eureka knew how or why their car was the only one allowed to cross the bridge. Rhoda mentioned suing the county, but Dad had motioned Let it go. They asked Eureka about her miraculous survival. They waited for her to fill in the blanks about how she’d ended up on the shore alone.

  When she couldn’t, they told her about her mother.

  She didn’t listen, didn’t really hear any of it. She was grateful that the tinnitus in her ear drowned out most sounds. Sometimes she still liked that the accident had left her half-deaf. She’d stared at William’s soft face, then at Claire’s, thinking it would help. But they looked afraid of her, and that hurt more than her broken bones. So she stared past them all, relaxed her gaze on the off-white wall, and left it there for the next nine days. She always told the nurses that her pain level was seven out of ten on their chart, ensuring she’d get more morphine.

  “You might be feeling like the world is a very unfair place,” Landry tried.

  Was Eureka still in this room with this patronizing woman paid to misunderstand her? That was unfair. She pictured Landry’s broken-in taupe shoes rising magically from the carpet, hovering in the air and spinning like minute and hour hands on a clock until time was up and Eureka could speed back to her meet.

  “Cries for help like yours often result from feeling misunderstood.”

  “Cry for help” was shrink-speak for “suicide attempt.” It wasn’t a cry for help. Before Diana died, Eureka thought the world was an incredibly exciting place. Her mother was an adventure. She noticed things on an average walk most people would pass by a thousand times. She laughed louder and more often than anyone Eureka ever knew—and there were times that had embarrassed Eureka, but these days she found she missed her mother’s laughter above everything else.

  Together they had been to Egypt, Turkey, and India, on a boat tour through the Galápagos Islands, all as part of Diana’s archaeological work. Once, when Eureka went to visit her mother on a dig in northern Greece, they missed the last bus out of Trikala and thought they were stuck for the night—until fourteen-year-old Eureka hailed an olive oil truck and they hitchhiked back to Athens. She remembered her mother’s arm around her as they sat in the back of the truck among the pungent, leaky vats of olive oil, her low voice murmuring: “You could find your way out of a foxhole in Siberia, girl. You’re one hell of a traveling companion.” It was Eureka’s favorite compliment. She thought of it often when she was in a situation she needed to get out of.

  “I’m trying to connect with you, Eureka,” Dr. Landry said. “People closest to you are trying to connect with you. I asked your stepmother and your father to jot down some words to describe the change in you.” She reached for a marbled notebook on the end table next to her chair. “Would you like to hear them?”

  “Sure.” Eureka shrugged. “Pin the tail on the donkey.”

  “Your stepmother—”

  “Rhoda.”

  “Rhoda called you ‘chilly.’ She said the rest of the family engages in ‘eggshell walking’ around you, that you’re ‘reclusive and impatient’ with your half siblings.”

  Eureka flinched. “I am not …” Reclusive—who cared? But impatient with the twins? Was that true? Or was it another one of Rhoda’s tricks?

  “What about Dad? Let me guess—‘distant,’ ‘morose’?”

  Landry turned a notebook page. “Your father describes you as, yes, ‘distant,’ ‘stoic,’ ‘a tough nut to crack.’ ”

  “Being stoic isn’t a bad thing.” Since she’d learned about Greek Stoicism, Eureka had aspired to keep her emotions in check. She liked the idea of freedom gained through taking control of her feelings, holding them so that only she could see them, like a hand of cards. In a universe without Rhodas and Dr. Landrys, Dad’s calling her “stoic” might have been a compliment. He was stoic, too.

  But that tough-nut phrase bothered her. “What kind of suicidal nut wants to be cracked?” she muttered.

  Landry lowered the book. “Are you having further thoughts of suicide?”

  “I was referring to the nuts,” Eureka said, exasperated. “I was putting myself in opposition to a nut who … Never mind.” But it was too late. She’d let the s-word slip, which was like saying “bomb” on a plane. Warning lights would be flashing inside Landry.

  Of course Eureka still thought about suicide. And yeah, she’d pondered other methods, knowing mostly that she couldn’t try drowning—not after Diana. She’d once seen a show about how the lungs fill with blood before drowning victims die. Sometimes she talked about suicide with her friend Brooks, who was the only person she could trust not to judge her, not to report back to Dad or worse. He’d sat on muted conference call when she’d called this hotline a few times. He made her promise she would talk to him whenever she thought about it, so they talked a lot.

  But she was still here, wasn’t she? The urge to leave this world wasn’t as crippling as it had been when Eureka swallowed those pills. Lethargy and apathy had replaced her drive to die.

  “Did Dad happen to mention I’ve always been that way?” she asked.

  Landry set her notebook on the table. “Always?”

  Now Eureka looked away. Maybe not always. Of course not always. Things had been sunny for a while. But when she was ten, her parents split up. You didn’t just find the sun after that.

  “Any chance you could dash out a Xanax prescription?” Eureka’s left eardrum was ringing again. “Otherwise this seems to be a waste of time.”

  “You don’t need drugs. You need to open up, not bury this tragedy. Your stepmother says you won’t talk to her or your father. You’ve shown no interest in conversing with me. What about your friends at school?”

  “Cat,” Eureka said automatically. “And Brooks.” She talked to them. If either of them had been sitting in Landry’s seat, Eureka might even have been laughing right now.

  “Good.” Dr. Landry meant: Finally. “How would they describe you since the accident?”

  “Cat’s captain of the cross-country team,” Eureka said, thinking of the wildly mixed emotions on her friend’s face when Eureka said she was quitting, leaving the captain position open. “She’d say I’ve gotten slow.”

  Cat would be on the field with the team right now. She was great at running them through their drills, but she wasn’t brilliant at pep talks—and the team needed pep to face Manor. Eureka glanced at her watch. If she dashed back as soon as this was over, she might make it to school in time. That was what she wanted, right?

  When she looked up, Landry’s brow was furrowed. “That would be a pretty harsh thing to say to a girl who’s grieving the loss of a mother, don’t you think?”

  Eureka shrugged. If Landry had a sense of humor, if she knew Cat, she would get it. Her friend was joking, most of the time. It was fine. They’d known each other forever.

  “What about … Brooke?”

  “Brooks,” Eureka said. She’d known him forever, too. He was a better listener than any of the shrinks Rhoda and Dad wasted their money on.

  “Is Brooks a he?” The notebook returned and Landry scribbled something. “Are the two of you just friends?”

  “Why does that matter?” Eureka snapped. Once upon an accident she and Brooks had dated—fifth grade. But they were kids. And she was a wreck about her parents splitting up and—

  “Divorce often provokes behavior in children that makes it difficult for them to pursue their own romantic relationships.”

  “We were ten. It didn’t work out because I wanted to go swimming when he wanted to ride bikes. How did we even start talking about this?”

  “You tell me. Perhaps you can talk to Brooks about your loss. He seems to be someone you could care deeply about, if you would give yourself permission
to feel.”

  Eureka rolled her eyes. “Put your shoes back on, Doc.” She grabbed her bag and rose from the couch. “I’ve gotta run.”

  Run from this session. Run back to school. Run through the woods until she was so tired she didn’t ache. Maybe even run back to the team she used to love. Coach had been right about one thing: when Eureka was low, running helped.

  “I’ll see you next Tuesday?” Landry called. But by then the therapist was talking to a closing door.