Every Last Word

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  In the lobby, I press the button for the elevator three times, and when nothing happens, I press it again, three more times. I slam my hand against the door, and the bell dings as the doors slide open. I press 7 three times.

  I burst through the door and Colleen jumps out of her chair. “Sam?”

  “I need to see Sue.” My voice doesn’t even sound like mine, and my legs feel wobbly underneath me. I walk straight for her office and open the door. Colleen is right behind me. “Where is she?” I yell with my fingertips pressed into my temples.

  Colleen grabs my arms, pushes me into the chair, and crouches down in front of me. She’s trying to pull my hands away from my face, but I won’t let her. I’m crying hard and only half listening to what she’s saying, but I hear “hospital” and “won’t be back today” and “call her.” Then “wait” and “water” and “don’t move.”

  When Colleen’s gone, I slide my hands down to my cheeks and look around the room. Two days ago, I sat here and told Sue I was better. I was better. I know I was. But then I remember Alexis’s words, “You’ve changed…and it’s not for the better, sweetie.”

  What’s happening to me?

  I stand up fast and hurry for the door, into the elevator, back into my car. There’s this spot on the top of the hill that looks down on the valley; it’s where everyone goes to park and make out, and at this time of day, it’ll be deserted.

  My hands are tight on the wheel as I wind around the sharp twists and turns, climbing until the road dead-ends. I park next to the big oak tree and cut the engine.

  AJ is wrong; he has to be. Caroline was there, at every reading, during every lunch hour. She sat next to me. She met me in the theater. She read my earliest poems, told me I was good. She taught me how to let go and write what I felt, and gave me words when I couldn’t find them myself. She helped me take the stage. She was one of the—how did I jokingly refer to it the other day—the Poetic Nine?

  Wasn’t she?

  I pull my phone from the cup holder and find the most recent group text, the one AJ sent last night to call the Poet’s Corner meeting. His name is right at the top. Next to it: To Sam and six more…

  I know her number won’t be here, but I tap the word “more” to help me take inventory. Everyone is a jumble of unidentified phone numbers, and I assign each one a name as I count them. AJ. Cameron. Chelsea. Emily. Jessica. Abigail. Sydney.

  Seven total.

  “Technology is a trap,” Caroline had said, and I believed her.

  She never called me. She never texted me. I thought it was odd, but I never questioned it.

  My stomach rolls over, and my fingers are shaking so violently, I’m having a hard time holding the phone in my hands.

  I open the browser and type in “Caroline Madsen 2007” and within seconds, the tiny screen is filled with links that lead to her story. Headline after headline reading, TEEN’S DEATH RULED A SUICIDE; BULLYING TO BLAME FOR LOCAL TEEN’S SUICIDE?; LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL DEVASTATED BY SUICIDE. The last one contains a picture, so I click through to the full story.

  “Oh, my God,” I whisper. I remember reading this article, not last summer, but the summer before.

  Cassidy had just come back from Southern California to spend the break with her dad. He bought a new house, and she was thrilled to finally have her own room when she came to visit. She’d heard a rumor that a girl had killed herself in the house years ago, and she asked me if I’d heard about it. I hadn’t.

  Later that week, I went home with her after swim practice and she gave me a tour. We sat in Cassidy’s new room, did a quick Internet search for local teen suicides, and didn’t find much beyond this one case. We pulled up a bunch of articles, including this one.

  Now, I’m looking at the story again, over a year later, this time on my phone. I scan it quickly for the salient points and latch on to words and phrases like “suicide” and “target of bullying” and “history of depression,” but the tears are welling up in my eyes.

  Her parents were at a Christmas party, only a few houses away. While they were gone, Caroline Madsen threw back a bottle of sleeping pills and never woke up. Her mom and dad didn’t realize what happened until the following morning. By the time I get to the quote from her mom, talking about her daughter’s witty sense of humor and how she loved to write poetry, the words are so blurry, I can’t read any more.

  Scrolling down to the photo, I find a girl who looks exactly like the Caroline I know. Hair slightly disheveled. No makeup. She’s wearing a flannel, unbuttoned, over a T-shirt.

  I zoom in so I can read it: IF YOU COULD READ MY MIND, YOU WOULDN’T BE SMILING.

  I run my finger across the screen, laughing at the shirt and fighting back tears at the same time. I remember sitting in Cassidy’s room, looking at this photo, skimming this article. We closed the browser, sad for this girl we never knew, and I don’t remember giving it another thought.

  Now, everything starts to fall into place.

  Caroline and I sat together in the theater one day, me complaining about my friends, her telling me I needed new ones. I confided in her about my OCD and she told me about her struggles with depression.

  But Caroline never read on stage. She came to my house, but she always left before anyone got home. We wrote together in the theater, just the two of us, alone in the dark. She never minded being my secret.

  She never led me to Poet’s Corner.

  “She’s not real.” The words squeak out.

  The tears are falling freely now, and I toss my phone hard on the passenger seat and it bounces onto the floor. I throw open the door, walk to the edge of the cliff, and stand there, looking out over the town. It’s overcast and chilly, but the bite in the early December air feels good in my lungs.

  From up here, I can see my house. AJ’s is on the other side of town and harder to find, but I spot the dense cluster of trees that distinguish his neighborhood. Alexis’s house is on a hill on the opposite side of the canyon, massive and easy to see. The swim club is easy to find too, and from there, I trace the route I’ve driven and walked plenty of times—up the hill, round the hairpin turn, straight to the top, until I see Cassidy’s dad’s house.

  Caroline lived there. She died there.

  “Depression,” she’d told me the first time we sat together in the dark theater. “Sometimes it feels like it’s getting worse, not better.”

  I walk over to the big oak tree and throw up in the dirt. And then I sit on the edge of the cliff, my knees to my chest, digging my nails into the back of my neck and scratching hard. I feel the sting on my skin, but I keep going, not bothering to wipe the tears as they stream down my cheeks, feeling empty and cold, mourning the loss of my best friend like it’s recent and raw, as if she killed herself this afternoon and not eight years ago. I rock back and forth, scratching harder, crying and muttering “Caroline” under my breath, over and over again.

  Like the crazy person I now know I am.

  Once the sun went down, the temperature started dropping fast. I’m not sure how long I’ve been out here, but my chest feels numb, my eyes are puffy, my face is sore, and there’s dirt caked under my fingernails.

  I pull myself up off the ground and collapse in the driver’s seat. The car door has been open for hours, the dome light on the entire time, so I give the ignition a quick turn to be sure I didn’t kill the battery. The engine starts right up. I crank the heat.

  My phone is on the floor next to the console. Texts and missed-call messages fill the screen, and I scroll down, past countless pleas from my mom to call her right away. There are three missed calls from Shrink-Sue, the last one only twenty minutes ago.

  I hit the call-back button and Sue picks up on the first ring. The tears start falling again when I hear her voice, and I squeak out a faint, “It’s me.”

  “Where are you?” she asks, panic in her voice like I’ve never heard. I tell her about the hill and give her the cross streets, and she tells me not to move, that she’s on
her way.

  I hang up the phone and stare at the clock on the dashboard. It’s 7:12.

  Open mic.

  I’m supposed to be on my way to the city right now. I’m supposed to be watching my boyfriend play guitar on a real stage, and Caroline’s supposed to be next to me, cheering him on. Instead, I’m here in the dark, all cried out, waiting to be rescued. I hope AJ won’t tell the Poets; I’ll never be able to face them again.

  I’ll never be able to face him again.

  I picture the look on his face when he told me about Caroline. What a sharp contrast it was from the expression he wore just minutes earlier, as he stood there, admiring that photo of me on the diving block. The me he thought he knew, next to the real me he was forced to see for the first time. Once he saw who I really am, he couldn’t get away fast enough.

  I never wanted him to find out. And now he’s gone.

  Headlights shine into the back window, and minutes later, Shrink-Sue’s guiding me into her shiny black Benz and buckling the seat belt around me. “Your parents are on their way to get your car,” I hear her say.

  As Sue winds her way down the hill, I stare out the window, wondering where we’re going and deciding I don’t care. I feel heat on my face. My butt is getting hot from the seat warmer. I rest my forehead against the glass, close my eyes, and don’t open them again until we’re stopped in a driveway, waiting for a garage door to open.

  Sue pulls in and cuts the engine. She comes around to my side of the car and unbuckles the belt, helping me out as if I’m elderly and infirm, and leads me inside the same way.

  We arrive in a kitchen, and two girls stop what they’re doing. They’re a few years younger than me and a lot smaller; like Sue, tiny in every way. Same straight hair. Same delicate features. They’ve grown up since they took those photographs that sit on Sue’s desk, but I recognize them immediately.

  “Sam,” she says gently, “these are my daughters, Beth and Julia.”

  Their expressions are full of concern, but I guess I shouldn’t expect anything else; I’ve been crying in the dirt for the last five hours. And they’re just staring, like they aren’t sure what to make of me, but that doesn’t surprise me either. Knowing Sue and her commitment to “professional distance,” I’m pretty sure she’s never brought a patient into her house.

  “Julia, would you get us some tea, please?”

  Sue leads me out of the kitchen, past the living room, and through a set of double doors. This must be Sue’s home office. It overlooks a perfectly manicured garden, set in a circle with a fountain at the center. It’s softly lit. Peaceful. I walk to the glass door. “This sure beats the view of the parking lot.”

  “It’s my favorite place.” She’s standing right behind me. “I sit right there,” she says, pointing over my shoulder to an oversize metal chair with deep cushions and lots of throw pillows. “That’s where I think, or meditate, or work on patient files. Unless it’s raining, that’s where you’ll find me.”

  We’re both quiet for a long time. I can hear the sound of the fountain through the glass. It’s soothing.

  “Are you still cold?” she asks.

  I shake my head.

  “Do you want to sit outside?” she asks.

  I nod.

  “Good.” She steps forward and twists the lever on the French door, and it swings open. “Let’s talk out there until we can’t take it.” She grabs two blankets from a basket on the floor and wraps one around my shoulders. She tells me to sit in her favorite chair.

  Julia arrives holding a cast-iron teapot and two mugs. Sue thanks her and arranges everything on the table in front of us, pouring out a mug of steaming tea and handing it to me. Sue settles into a spot on the couch, and Julia leaves, closing the double doors behind her.

  “You can talk whenever you’re ready, Sam.”

  I pull my knees to my chest and hold my mug in both hands, staring down into it, breathing in steam and inhaling the scents of flowers and citrus, thinking about everything that’s happened since I sat in Sue’s office two days ago. The P.M. Poet’s Corner meeting. AJ and me alone downstairs. Telling the Crazy Eights about him. Caroline saying good-bye to me in her own way.

  Caroline.

  I’m surprised I have any tears left, but sure enough, they start falling again. A tissue appears in front of me, as if by magic, and I dab my eyes and blow my nose.

  Shrinks and their tissues.

  “What do you already know?” I ask.

  “That doesn’t matter. I don’t know anything unless I hear it from you.”

  I understand her code. That means she’s spoken with Colleen. I think about the urgent calls and texts from my mom, and wonder if she called AJ looking for me. If she talked to him and he told her what happened today, Sue must have a pretty clear picture.

  “You asked me to make one new friend,” I say, staring into my mug. “And I did. And I liked her. A lot. But as it turns out, she’s been dead for eight years, which, as you might expect, can really hinder a friendship.” I thought sarcasm would make me feel better, but it doesn’t. I start crying even harder.

  Sue takes my cup out of my hands so I can pull myself together. I wipe my eyes and blow my nose while Sue tops off my mug. She trades my hot tea for a pile of snotty tissues and doesn’t seem to care.

  Once I start talking, I can’t stop. I’ve sworn to keep Poet’s Corner a secret, but I can’t keep it from Sue anymore. I describe that first day I ran into Caroline in the theater, how she settled in next to me, made me laugh, told me that she wanted to show me something that would change my whole life.

  “Tell me exactly what happened,” Sue says. “Start at the beginning.”

  “Caroline told me to meet her on the stage, next to the piano.” I close my eyes and see the scene a bit differently, like I’m watching it from a bird’s-eye view. “I waited for her, hiding on the other side of the curtain until I heard the group pass by.”

  “And then Caroline met you.”

  “She told me to follow her, and I did. We went down this narrow staircase, and through the gray-painted halls. She told me where to turn, which doors to open.”

  I picture the two of us rounding that final corner, just in time to see the door at the far end swinging shut.

  “What is this place?” I’d asked her when we were standing in front of it. She ignored my question and pointed to the doorknob.

  “I’m going to be by your side the entire time, but this is all up to you from here. You have to do all the talking.”

  My eyes spring open.

  It was me all along. I saw the doors in front of me closing. That’s how I knew where to go. I turned the knobs—she never did. I saw the mop heads on the wall, swaying as if they’d just been moved. I found the hidden seam, the dead bolt.

  I followed them.

  “Caroline didn’t bring me downstairs.” I can barely get the words out.

  Caroline didn’t stand to the side and tell me to knock. I did that on my own. I heard her say it was up to me from that point on, but that wasn’t exactly true. It was always up to me.

  “I saw them walk across the stage that first day.”

  “See you Thursday,” someone had said.

  “I came back when I knew they’d be there again. I waited behind the curtain, by the piano, and then I followed them. Oh, my God, Sue. I followed them down there.”

  I tell her about the first time I visited the room in the basement. “AJ was really cold to me,” I say, picturing the way he stared me down until Caroline grabbed my arm in solidarity. Only she didn’t.

  I set my mug on the table and wrap the blanket around me tighter. Sue asks me what happened next, and I tell her about the time Caroline came to my house and we hung out in my room together. She told me AJ didn’t hate me, but I’d hurt him and he didn’t know how to handle that. I suck in a breath, realizing that conversation never actually happened either. I knew what Kaitlyn and I had done. I didn’t remember it consciously, but I knew a
ll along. I think about the poem Caroline helped me write, and how I used her words to ask him to forgive me. And he did. He let me stay. They all let me stay.

  I tell Sue about every interaction I had with Caroline and the rest of the Poets, and how that room in the basement calmed my mind. There, I learned how to write and let go and speak up. I became one of them.

  Now I’m crying hard again, because despite all the incredible things that have happened over the last few months, I can’t stop thinking about the one thing that’s wrong with this whole picture.

  “I made up a whole fucking person, Sue!” I yell through tears. “What kind of twisted mind makes up a whole person?”

  “You didn’t just make up a person, Sam. You made up a unique and wonderful person who was all the things you needed her to be. Funny and smart and kind—”

  “And again, Sue. Not. Fucking. Real.”

  “She was real to you.”

  Was. Of all those words, that’s the one that stings the most. I miss her. Real or imaginary, I don’t want her to be gone.

  “What’s happening to me?” I ask. Sue scoots to the edge of the couch and sets her tea on the table.

  “This isn’t what you want to hear, Sam, but the truth is, I don’t know. It might have to do with your medications, or chemical changes taking place in your brain, or a combination of the two. It could have nothing to do with any of those things.” She’s trying to keep her voice calm and level, but I can tell she’s concerned. A lot more concerned than I want her to be. “What’s happening to you isn’t consistent with OCD. Something else is going on, and I’m not sure what it is yet, but we’re going to figure it out together, just like we always do.”

  I pull the blanket over my head. I can’t look at her. I don’t want to listen to her either, but I need the information she’s sharing in a way I can’t ignore.

  “Based on what you’ve told me tonight, I think Caroline becomes real to you in moments of extreme anxiety.” The sound of her voice is soothing me, and I feel a deep sense of relief when she starts talking again. “You met her on the first day of school. You were already highly anxious, but you became even more troubled about something Alexis said, and that might have sent your mind looking for…a new way to cope.”