“Umm, no.”
That was okay. After talking to Molly and seeing what my sister and her friends were capable of, I wasn’t sure Maddy’s normal was what I wanted.
21
I eased open the door to the school’s back staircase. Hardly anybody used it. It was out of the way, the third-floor entrance to it tucked between the art room and the janitor’s closet. Most of the school preferred to use the main stairwell, whose wide steps dumped you within feet of the cafeteria, the front office, or the exit to the student parking lot. This narrow back staircase dumped you nowhere but into the dark corners of each floor.
It was quiet, the echo of my own thoughts keeping me company, and that was what I wanted—an out-of-the-way space to think and regroup.
There was a large window midway up the stairs with a ledge big enough to sit on. There was fifteen minutes left of study hall and walking in this late would draw more attention to myself. Attention I didn’t want or need. Not yet anyway.
I loved it here: the cold cinder blocks at my back, the heat vent below roasting my feet. I spent hours each week in this very spot, with my sketchpad, watching the world outside, trying to replicate in my drawings every movement, every dropped leaf, every parked car.
I reached down and grabbed a notebook out of Maddy’s bag. It was lined, so I flipped to the only blank space I could find—the back cover—and dug around in the bag again until I found a pencil. It was nothing but a standard number 2 pencil, but it would do.
Lost in my drawing, I startled when the bell rang. The few people who used this staircase were making their way through the doors. I ignored them, my focus on the notebook in front of me and the janitor emptying trash into the Dumpster outside. If he would stay still for more than half a second, I’d get his expression down right. But he kept moving, picking up stray bits of paper that had blown free of the container.
The halls went quiet. My next class had started—Physics, I think. It was Basic Physics, not Honors. I could miss two months of that class and still come out with a B. Missing one more day wasn’t gonna kill me. I had lunch, four more classes, two hours of field hockey practice to watch—a sport I didn’t know how to play—and a crapload of homework to make up, and yet I couldn’t get myself to move from that spot.
I tried to hold it together, purposefully thought about random things like the small crack in the windowpane I was leaning against or the faded parking lines in the lot below. It didn’t work; my body still trembled with unspent energy.
I closed my eyes and saw Maddy’s face smiling at me through the darkness. I thought back to the last time I’d seen her happy. It was the morning of the accident. I was talking to myself, muttering about how the admissions board at RISD would have to be out of their minds to accept me. I’d balled up my fifth attempt at the same sketch and tossed it at the door, not even knowing Maddy was standing there, watching me, listening to me. She caught it and opened it, studied the drawing before tucking it into her back pocket.
“Perfection isn’t everything,” she said as she turned and walked away. “I think the flaws are what make it perfect.”
Without opening my eyes, I started drawing her. The deep set of her eyes, the dimple in our left cheeks, that crazy strand of hair she was always fighting into place. Her image flowed through me onto the paper as if drawing her kept me connected to her, bringing a small piece of Maddy back to me.
The doors above me opened and I heard footsteps.
“Hey,” a familiar voice added.
I looked up and saw Josh standing there. He looked confused instead of angry at me. He was a little thinner and paler than usual, but it didn’t matter because just seeing him brought the sense of calm I’d been sitting here struggling to regain.
God, I missed him.
I followed the line of his shoulder down his arm, then to his hand, intertwined with somebody else’s. I didn’t have to look up to know whose it was. Kim’s.
Jealousy, as thick and tainting as bile, rose in me and I winced. I had to swallow it down and remind myself who I really was, how much more I meant to Josh than she did. I’d always liked Josh, figured eventually we’d become more than just friends. But I never had the courage to tell Josh how I really felt, and he never made a move, so I waited, comforted by the fact that even though Josh was technically dating Kim, he spent all of his time with me.
I’d watched Kim for the last few months, laughing as she tried to flirt her way into Josh’s life. She had succeeded, or at least had gotten as close to Josh as she could. She came along when we went out for pizza and had been dragged to my house to watch movies or hang out. She even sat through our weekly anime meetings. The only difference I could see between her and me was that she had to share his popcorn and soda at the movies while I always had my own.
But I’d never felt threatened by her before. I’d watched her snuggle into him at the lunch table, thread her fingers through his hair on my couch, and giggle at his obviously lame jokes, and it had never bothered me. Until now. Now, when I had no claim to Josh in any capacity—not as a friend, not as a boyfriend—now I felt threatened.
“Hey,” I said back, my eyes still locked on their hands. Anything more and I was afraid I’d slip, say something or do something to crack the fragile control I was desperately clinging to.
Josh tugged his hand free of Kim’s and dug it into his front pocket, then rocked back on his heels so he was farther away from her. Kim eased herself in to his side and looked up at him, her gaze darting between Josh and me as if trying to figure us out.
“Hi, Maddy.” There was a forced cheerfulness in Kim’s voice. It was the same tone I’d heard her use on Josh when she was flirting, the same shy grin I’d seen her flash when she was trying to convince him to go to the movies alone, just the two of them.
“I’m sorry about your sister,” she said. “I used to hang out with her. She was nice.”
Kim reached her hand out to touch me, some fleeting gesture meant to show her condolences, but I flinched. She hadn’t hung out with me; she hung out with Josh. She didn’t know me, and I doubted she knew Josh. Not like I did anyway. And I sure didn’t want her sympathy. I wanted her gone. Away from him. Away from us.
“You didn’t hang out with Ella. You didn’t know anything about her.”
She paled at my words. “What?”
I shook my head, wondering why I was considering explaining myself. I was Maddy now, and I knew for a fact she didn’t care about Kim or Josh, where they went on their date last Friday, or how far they’d gone last time they made out. To Maddy, they were insignificant people who weren’t worthy of her time.
“You and Josh…” My voice slipped on his name, my own more casual tone seeping in. I slammed my mouth shut, shocked that I’d done it. I’d never let my voice slip when I was playing Maddy. Never. Not when we were kids pretending to be each other for fun, not during the countless times I took her tests, and not once since the accident. Why now, why here when I had so much to lose?
Kim looked at Josh, fluttered her hand between us in a futile attempt to get him to say something, to call me out for being rude to her. He didn’t. He stood there, his fists bunching in his jeans pockets as he watched me, studied me. He’d heard the slip in my voice; I knew he had.
“Kim,” he said, his eyes still totally focused on me, “can you give me and … uh—can you give us a minute alone?”
She hesitated, then opened her mouth to protest. Josh held up his hand, cutting her off. “Please, I’ll meet you in the cafeteria in a few.”
She whispered something into his ear before giving him a kiss. He turned his head, and she caught his cheek. I laughed. I couldn’t help it. For once today it was nice to see somebody else getting the short end of the stick.
Josh gave me that same irritated glare I’d seen a thousand times. One that told me to knock it off. I did, settled into the window seat, and watched as Kim walked away.
22
Josh waited until Kim wa
s gone, then waited a bit longer before he spoke. “You okay?”
“Yeah … sorry about that,” I said, waving in the direction of the door Kim had sulked through. “I shouldn’t have been mean to her. It was wrong.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He took a step closer and repeated his question slowly. “Are. You. Okay?”
“Yes … no … I mean…” I wavered, unsure of how to answer. My shoulder no longer ached, and most of my bruises had faded to a pale yellow. My left wrist was still in a cast, and I had a red line above my right eye where they’d stitched my skin together. But other than that, I was fine.
Physically anyway.
“I’m good.”
Josh nodded but didn’t move, rather, shifted the weight of his backpack to his other shoulder and continued to watch me.
“What do you want?” I asked him.
“Your sister … Ella used to sit here,” he said as he dropped his backpack to the floor and nudged my feet so he could climb up onto the sill next to me. He picked up the notebook I’d been drawing in, instinctively flipping to the back cover as he took in my drawing and compared it to the living, breathing version sitting next to him.
“Not bad,” he said as he tucked it into his own bag. “The shading is a bit off, but my guess is, you’re out of practice.”
Jerk! The shading was nearly perfect. I went to call him out but stopped myself short and played along. “Yup, about four years. I haven’t picked up a drawing pencil since junior high. That was Ella’s thing, not mine.”
He shook his head as if daring me to continue. “I know. Trust me, I know.”
“You think you know everything about Ella?”
“I know I do. In fact, whenever she was upset about something or was trying to hide, this is where she’d go.”
I cursed silently to myself. I’d known that. That was probably why I was sitting here. It was safe. Familiar.
“So what?” I said, aiming for indifference. “My sister and I had a lot in common. We were twins. Identical twins.”
Josh chuckled at that, the who-are-you-trying-to-kid sound that used to make me smile. Now it irritated the crap out of me. “Not since I’ve known you. Different friends. Different classes. Different everything. Same DNA, I guess, but that’s about it.”
He pulled me away from the wall I was leaning against, his eyes staring at the beige cinder block behind me. I followed his line of sight, knowing what I’d find.
“She drew that, you know,” he said as he inched closer to me to get a better look at the drawing I’d sketched on the wall our freshman year. “The first day I met her, the day you introduced me to her, I found her sitting here drawing on the wall after school. I think she’d been crying, although she insisted she wasn’t. Blamed her red eyes on allergies, I think.”
I heard the humor in his voice as he recalled the excuse I’d fed him. I had been crying. I was hurt and confused and lonely.
“I asked her what was wrong, and she said nothing. Eventually I got her to tell me.”
“What’d she say?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“You. She didn’t understand what she’d done, why you didn’t want to hang out with her anymore,” Josh said.
I shrugged. He was right; back then I didn’t know. Still didn’t, I guess. I simply learned not to care about it so much.
“I told her not to let it bother her, that Alex was exactly the same way, but she never stopped caring about you or worrying what you thought of her. She was always doing things to make your life easier. Even the night of the accident … Ella came for you, dropped everything and came to pick you up when you called.”
“Whatever,” I said, and jumped down off the sill. Sitting here watching him slowly poke at me, unknowingly reminding me of who I was, wasn’t going to help.
I’d made it down a few steps when he stopped me, his hand reaching out for my shoulder. I let it linger there, let myself soak up his familiar warmth before shrugging him off. I could feel myself shaking, the fine tremor of fear working its way through my body. I didn’t turn around to meet his eyes. Not because I was scared or guilty, but because I knew he’d see straight through me.
“I have class.” It took an enormous amount of energy to get those three words out and even then my voice sounded weak … fragile.
“She was my best friend,” he said softly. “I knew her better than she probably knew herself.”
“What are you trying to say?”
He hesitated, and I could hear him sighing, as if he was carefully measuring his words. “Nothing. But if you ever want to talk about her … to remember who she was and what I loved about her, don’t go to Alex. You come find me.”
I’d known it’d be hard—pretending to be someone else. I’d have to keep my guard up, watch what I said and how I dressed, and make sure I answered questions incorrectly so that I could maintain Maddy’s average performance in school. But in the end, or so I’d convinced myself, it’d be worth it. I could spare Mom and Dad, even Alex, from losing Maddy. What I hadn’t figured into the equation was Josh.
I’d known Josh for three years and had spent nearly every spare minute of each day with him. He knew the way I walked, the way my right eye would twitch when I was angry, and he even knew about the string bracelet I refused to take off regardless of how nasty it got.
He reached for my hand, pushed up the sleeve of my shirt, and ran his fingers across my wrist. I let him, stood there silently knowing the proof he was looking for wasn’t there. The ER staff had cut off that ratty old string bracelet along with everything else I was wearing that night.
I’d spent hours those first few days at home trying to re-create it. But no matter how many times I tried, I couldn’t get the colors to match up the way I wanted, the way I remembered. Even using brand-new thread the colors seemed duller, less vibrant. I kept the poor replica anyway. It was tucked in the back pocket of my jeans, a small reminder of what I was purposefully giving up.
His hand clenched around my wrist, my fingers going cold beneath his grip. He could stare at the spot for hours, could will that tiny bit of evidence into place, but it was never going to happen. I was Maddy Lawton now. The popular, cherished, and adored Maddy Lawton.
I’d never lied to Josh, never had a reason to. And I wasn’t planning on starting today. “I know everything I need to know about Ella,” I said as I yanked my wrist free and walked away. “Everything.”
23
The tight rein I had on my emotions fell away the instant the door closed behind me. I could feel myself trembling, and I was torn between wanting to scream with rage and cry with hopelessness. I didn’t know what to do, who I was, or where I was going, and I had to figure it out in front of a school full of gossiping peers.
“Maddy?” Her name fluttered across my mind, the familiarity of it crushingly present and distant at the same time.
“Maddy?” Mom said again. Her hand grazed my chin as she lifted my face to look at her. I felt the sting of tears threatening to break free. I wanted nothing more than to run and hide. “What’s wrong? Why are you home from school?”
What I came out with was a lie. “I got a headache and felt sick to my stomach.”
I don’t know whether it was relief or fear I saw in my mother’s eyes, but she kicked into action, cleared the table of the hospital bills she was studying, and motioned for me to sit down.
“Take one of these,” she said as she shook a pain pill out of the bottle and into my hand. “I’m going to fix you something to eat.”
I wasn’t hungry, and no amount of painkillers was going to still the chaos that cluttered my mind. What I wanted was answers—clues—a road map for how to navigate my sister’s life.
“I’m going to lie down,” I said, heading for the stairs.
“After you eat,” Mom insisted. She waved me back in and opened a can of soup. “Did you drive home? Does the school know you left early? Does Alex know you left early?”
I said yes
, hoping my answer to the first question would carry over to the other two. I hadn’t told anybody I was leaving. I climbed down off that windowsill and kept going until I found myself behind the wheel of my sister’s new car, driving the same roads I had that night, my mind lost in an abyss of unanswered questions, until I found myself here, still pretending, but now at home.
Instinctively, I pulled out the chair I always used and sat down. If Mom noticed, she didn’t say anything, but Bailey did. He came up to me and laid his head down on my lap, his tail wagging. He let out a low whine and started nosing my hand, practically climbing into my lap when I petted his head. I pushed him down, but he kept coming back, refusing to leave me alone.
Mom dumped the soup into a bowl, not bothering to measure the amount of water before she poured it in and placed the soup in the microwave. I counted the seconds, then heard her open and close the microwave door before she dropped an ice cube in and placed the bowl in front of me.
That was what I needed to do. In order to survive, I needed to focus on the ordinary stuff in Maddy’s life. The color of her nail polish. The placement of pictures on her mirror. The way her shoes always matched her belt. If I concentrated on the little stuff, the pretty stuff, eventually things would get better, being Maddy would become easier.
I took two spoonfuls and then, ignoring my mother’s pleas that I eat more, stood up and headed for the stairs. The headache I had lied about was quickly appearing, burrowing its way into my head, taking with it any sense of control I had left. I grabbed the tiny white pill Mom had given me and let it dissolve in my mouth, the bitter taste a stinging distraction before I swallowed. I’d give it ten minutes to work, then I’d add some NyQuil and sleep my way through this living nightmare.
The door to my room was open, the light on my nightstand casting an odd glow across the floor. My iPod was in the player, the random mix of songs each carrying with it a memory long buried. I pushed the door wider and walked in. I hadn’t been in my old room this morning, yet my iPod … Ella’s iPod was playing music.
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