by Amy Giles
“You humiliated us!”
He shoves me, hard. I lose my balance and fall to the floor.
“Miles does the disciplining. I can never watch,” my mother once told Mrs. Hawthorne in one of those long, drawn-out PTA huddles outside the school at pickup.
“Discipline? How?” Mrs. Hawthorne asked.
“Oh, you know.” Mom’s lips curled into a coquettish smile. She raised her tiny, manicured hand and made a gentle, sweeping gesture. “Little swats on their behinds. Just to get their attention.”
Mom cowers in the car, because if she doesn’t see it, it doesn’t exist, while I curl up into a ball, biting my lip so I don’t cry out as his foot kicks my hip, my butt, my back.
It’s almost over. I can take it.
But Lila could never take it, and I could never let this happen to her.
Hours later, I wake with a start to my door opening.
“Hadley?” Lila whimpers. She’s standing in my doorway in her nightgown. I wave her over.
“Come on.” I pull back my covers. She crawls next to me.
“I’m s-s-s-sorry,” she stammers through her tears.
“It’s okay.” I pull the blanket up to her neck.
Her face convulses. She’s been crying for a long time. “That wasn’t the act I practiced. I was going to dance to the karaoke song, the one with no words. I gave the new music tonight to Ms. Ellison because I was mad at you. Every time I heard you come home, I turned the music up so you’d hear me. But you never came. Not once. Then when you did . . . it was only to tell me to turn it down.”
“I’m sorry, Lila. I forgot.”
“You never forget,” she says with a hitch in her voice. It breaks my heart.
I curl up on my side that doesn’t hurt so we’re face to face. “I know. Tonight was a big deal for you. I don’t know how it happened. I just . . .” I drift off.
But I do know how it happened. Charlie became my everything, my escape. I let all my responsibilities slip away. Even Lila. Especially Lila.
“Are you grounded?” she asks me. I search her face to see if she knows more.
“What’d you hear?” I ask.
“He was coming up the stairs yelling. Then it got quiet.”
I tuck the blanket under her chin. “Don’t worry about me. Just try and sleep, okay?”
She curls up next to me, and I throw an arm over her, holding on to her until we both fall asleep.
now
“Hadley McCauley,” Dr. Bruce says, looking at a file in front of him. My file. He stands up from his chair. Warm, friendly brown eyes greet me. “May I call you Hadley, or do you prefer something else?”
“Hadley is fine.” I nod.
“I’m Dr. Bruce. It’s nice to meet you.” He reaches over and shakes my hand. He’s the first doctor here to treat me like I came to see him willingly. He gestures to the seat across from him and sits down only after I do.
“How’s your arm? Any pain?” He points with his pen to my left arm.
I shrug. “It’s okay.”
“Hadley . . . I’m going to ask you a lot of questions. Okay?”
I nod again. He’s asking as if I have a choice in the matter.
“Good. How do you feel today?”
I shrug. “Okay.”
He nods. “Do you know why you’re here, Hadley?”
“With you . . . now?” I point to my chair.
He nods.
“I slit my wrists.”
He nods. Good, I’m acing this test.
“Do you know why we’re keeping you here, Hadley?” he asks, his tone gentle.
“To keep me safe,” I murmur obediently, telling him what he wants to hear.
“Right. To keep you safe,” he parrots back. “Are you feeling suicidal?”
“No.”
“Good.” His smile leaches into his voice. “Have you ever attempted suicide before?”
“No.”
“Have you ever thought about attempting suicide before?”
I picture the full bottle of Mom’s sleeping pills in my hand. My knee jiggles. His eyes sweep over my knee and then back up to my face.
“No,” I say. His nod of approval is slower this time.
He bats off more questions about sleeping, eating, hearing voices, or seeing things no one else sees. He asks me if I’ve ever considered self-harm before.
“How do you feel now, Hadley?”
Now I can’t hide my irritation. “Not great.”
“Not great. Why’s that?” His searching gaze is familiar, like Mr. Murray and his kind eyes. And Coach Kimmel. And Señora Moore. And Dr. Sher. So many sets of kind eyes, and not one of them saw anything.
“Why do you think?” I snap. “I’m here.” He stares back at me as if he’s waiting for me to finish my thought. So I do. “And my mother’s dead!” My voice cracks.
The last time I saw her, she was hanging upside down, her frightened blue eyes staring back at me, as if she were asking me why.
His eyes travel to where my fingers play with the bandage on my right wrist. I tuck my hand under my leg to stop myself. But he sees. He sees everything.
He nods and scribbles. “I know this must be difficult for you, Hadley. I can’t really imagine how you feel, can I?” he asks.
“No.” I shake my head. His words are kind, too kind.
“This must all come as such a shock to you.” I nod. “Do you care to tell me what that’s like?”
Even though I know it’s shrink shtick, my eyes prickle. My leg jiggles until the moment passes. I shake my head, afraid that if I do start talking, I won’t stop.
“Hadley, how are you feeling?”
“You already asked me that.”
He nods but doesn’t say anything. The silence stretches like elastic around the room. His ticking clock counts the seconds.
“Awful,” I say, failing the silence challenge.
“Awful,” he repeats. “Is that the way you feel about your situation or yourself?”
“Both.”
He hums under his breath a murmur of sympathy. “Both,” he repeats. “Can you tell me why?” His voice is a warm blanket. It would be so easy to wrap myself around it and let it comfort me.
The silence is unbearable. Dr. Bruce is baiting me to go on. This time I refuse.
“Hadley.” He breaks the silence. “Did you feel awful before you got on that plane, or after?”
My head snaps up. “What’s that have to do with anything?” Everyone knows why I tried to kill myself. Survivor’s guilt. Didn’t he get the memo or whatever?
“You seem angry. Is it because you’re here? Or because you weren’t successful in your attempt?”
My breath hitches. Which attempt is he talking about?
“What?” I ask, stalling.
“Are you angry because you’re here? Or because you weren’t successful in your suicide attempt?” he clarifies.
He watches my reaction and scribbles, his face still kindly.
“I’m not angry,” I say, though I hear the bite in my voice.
Dr. Bruce nods and smiles. I’m not acing the test after all. The smile is as much a part of his office decor as the books on his shelves and the fern on his window ledge.
“Hadley, could you help me understand why you would want to commit suicide after surviving a plane crash?”
My mouth falls open.
“Are you kidding me?” I ask, feeling my face flush.
My outburst is met with silence and that everlasting benign smile.
“My mother is dead! She was hanging from her seat belt! I couldn’t even get her down!” I yell.
Dr. Bruce doesn’t flinch. His lips tug down sympathetically.
“That must have been terrible.” Balancing his pen between two fingers, he says, “Hadley, I have to ask, though. You’ve mentioned your mother twice now. But I’m curious why you haven’t mentioned your father.”
I have nothing more to say.
then
&nb
sp; “How about this?” I hold up a pair of Aztec graphic leggings with a long shirt.
Lila shakes her head dejectedly and rummages through her dresser drawers. Last night took the sparkle out of my firecracker of a little sister. She’s been withdrawn all morning, her motions limp and halfhearted. I’ve pulled every trick out of my bag to shake her out of her funk.
She grabs a pair of jeans and a navy cable sweater and gets dressed.
“No self-respecting diva would be caught dead in Lands’ End.” I watch in dismay as she puts on the boring outfit. “Lila, that’s not you,” I say, pointing to her outfit, and I think, That’s me.
She pulls her blond hair out of her sweater and throws it over her shoulders. Then she shrugs, her eyes wide and flat.
“Lila.” I take her by the shoulders. “Don’t let him do this to you.”
She looks up at me, and even though she doesn’t say it and maybe doesn’t even think it, I hear the hypocrisy. Why not? I let him do this to me. Lila is the only one of us whose light hasn’t been snuffed out by him.
Her eyes dart away. “I’m sorry I got you in trouble,” she mumbles.
“I’m always in trouble.” I smile for her. “Some people are impossible to please.”
She glances down at her feet, weighing her next words, lifting one shoulder with her heavy admission.
“I’m scared. When you go away . . .”
I squeeze her arms. “I’m working on that.” She shoots me a skeptical look. “I applied to some local schools. I’m kind of hoping Cornell turns me down.” I laugh to take that worried look off her.
Her mouth purses in an O. A flicker of light returns in her eyes.
“Is Charlie going to stay home too?” she whispers.
Every ounce of air siphons out of the room.
I bend down so I’m nose to nose with her. “Lila, what do you know?”
“I’m sorry.” She bites her lip. “I heard you on the phone.”
I gasp a weak, panicked breath. If it was that easy for Lila . . .
“No one else knows, I swear!”
My legs shake. “Lila, you can’t tell anyone, okay?”
She sneers. “Duh!” Lila’s back.
I had no idea anyone could hear my conversations with Charlie outside my bedroom. And the things we talk about . . . the blush creeps up my neck at the thought. I cover my face with my hands.
“Jee-zus, Lila! What did you hear?”
She walks to her bed where I’ve put the leggings and shirt. Inspecting them, she quietly changes out of her Lands’ End clothes and slips into an outfit much more suitable for her larger-than-life personality.
“Nothing to get your panties in a wad about.”
I snort and choke. “You’re ten going on thirty, you know that?”
She tries, and fails, not to smile. “I’m actually glad someone likes you. I was starting to think something was wrong with you.”
“And why’s that?” I ask, swallowing a laugh.
“God, Hadley,” she huffs, pulling her leggings up with a hop. “I’ve already had two boyfriends.” She holds two fingers up to emphasize her point. As she stands there jutting out her hip, trying to look older than her ten years, I have a flash of her in her yellow Gymboree dress holding three fingers up—from her pinky to her middle finger—telling the produce clerk at the supermarket how old she was.
“WHAT?” I gasp.
She shrugs with diva perfection, completely indifferent to my shock. I ease back onto her bed, careful of the new bruises. “Even my little sister is running laps around me.”
After she changes her shirt, she crawls onto the bed.
“Is he cute?” She plops down beside me so we’re both lying back facing her ceiling, the one with the commissioned Peter Pan–in-flight ceiling mural. Pretty, but so not Lila.
“Very,” I say.
“Rocking body?”
“Lila!”
She giggles.
“Well?”
“Yes,” I concede.
“Is he nice?”
“The nicest.”
“Good.”
“I’m so glad I have your approval.”
Lila sighs heavily. “I think I have to break up with Colin. He’s getting too clingy.”
“Really?” I ask. “How?”
She stares at her stubby fingernails, painted a glossy sea glass. “Like during recess, he wants me to play fort on the monkey bars with him all the time, but I want to hang out with my friends on the swings.”
I nod. “Yeah. Don’t let him come between you and your friends. That’s always a big mistake. Meaghan got mad at me about that.”
She takes a deep breath and exhales, flapping her lips.
“How do you get to see him?”
“It’s been hard,” I admit, then I have an idea. “Lila, can I ask you a favor?”
“Sure,” she says.
“Mom and Dad are going to the city tomorrow for that gala,” I say. “Would you want to have a sleepover at a friend’s house?”
She stares at me, confused, but then it dawns on her. Hopefully not completely. I hope her precocious brain isn’t that fully developed yet.
“Casey asks me all the time to go to her house for a sleepover. I’ll ask her today, but I’m pretty sure she’ll say yes.”
“It has to be your idea when you ask Mom, though, okay?”
“I’m not stupid, Hadley!”
I shove her again and again until she rolls across her bed in a fit of giggles.
“Okay. I have to go to school now. Go have breakfast. The beast has left the building.”
I kiss her on the forehead and rush out of the house to pick up Charlie.
He stands on the street corner outside Sal’s. When he sees me, his smile brightens the darkened road brighter than a street lamp. In a flash, he’s in the car, in my arms.
I pull away from our kiss. “You didn’t have to wait out in the cold.” Once again he’s wearing only his hoodie while I’m wearing mittens, a scarf, and my winter peacoat. My car even had a thin crust of ice on the windshield this morning.
“I don’t get cold,” he says as if it’s not the gazillionth time he’s told me.
I pull away from the curb, driving toward school, the music on low in the background.
At the red light, he grins at me. “So, how are we not talking about last night yet?”
The blush creeps up my neck, and I bite my lip.
“I haven’t been able to think about anything else.” He reaches over and twirls a lock of my hair around his finger.
“Me too.” It’s not a total lie. Had the talent show never happened, it would have been the only thing on my mind all night.
Turning left when I get the green arrow, I say, “I have some potentially good news. Tomorrow night looks like it’s back on.”
“Really?” He glances over at me. “How’d you manage that?”
“Turns out my little sister is playing the role of cupid for us.” I laugh. “She’s going to ask to sleep over at a friend’s house.”
“What time are your parents leaving?”
I work out the amount of time it will take them to drive into the city. “Probably around six.”
He nods. “I’ll be there at six-oh-two.”
“You can’t come to the front door, though,” I tell him. “Security cameras.” I wince, hearing how entitled that sounds. “I’ll text you when they leave, and you can come around the back.”
Charlie has some kind of magic power that erases all the ugliness in my life. I can almost forget my father’s flat, lifeless eyes last night right before he shoved me. The painful run with him this morning. I even forget about the game tomorrow until Olivia mentions it to me in the hallway.
“Are you driving or taking the bus?”
“Huh?” I stare blankly at her.
“To the game tomorrow,” she says excitedly. Tomorrow is the last tournament of the season. We’re playing in New Jersey. My father never misses the l
ast game. That means I’ll be stuck in the car with him for two hours there and two hours home.
And suddenly even Charlie and his magic powers can’t erase my dread. If only I could fast-forward past the game. I just have to make it till six o’clock tomorrow.
Meaghan and Noah have already claimed our lunch table. As I join them, Noah deals from his shuffled deck.
“So, how was Little Miss Sunshine’s performance last night?” Noah smirks.
I sigh. “You heard.”
Meaghan cackles so loud, tables of people turn to stare. “Holy crap, Hadley! The whole school district heard!”
“The reviews are in,” Noah says with his hands in the air. “Lila is a sensation!”
Meaghan plays along. “Lila’s performance is salacious . . . raw . . .”
“Transcendent!” Noah adds.
“The best thing to happen to primary school since Taco Tuesdays!” Meaghan dissolves into a fit of silly giggles over that.
I groan, organizing my cards in my hand. If they only knew, they wouldn’t be laughing.
Pretending to be looking at his cards, Noah tilts his head sideways, but I can feel his eyes on me. “My mom was there. She said your dad left in a huff.”
I nod. “That he did.”
He glances at me. “Everything okay at the homestead?”
I pause for a second. It’s one of the few times Noah has let on that maybe he has an idea of what happens at my house.
Since he dealt to me first, I pick up a card. I shrug, expertly dodging the question with just enough truth to make the lie believable. “He’s pissed at me.”
“Shocking,” Noah mutters, his eyes shifting to Meaghan, then me.
“It was my fault,” I admit, focusing on my cards. “I went from trying to talk her out of the song to completely forgetting all about the talent show.”
“But . . . what happened? When you got home?” Noah asks carefully.
I shuffle my cards around. “The usual. He yelled, then grounded me. Same shit, different day.”
Meaghan and Noah look at each other. I pretend not to notice.
“In other news,” I steer them away from the topic, “I am no longer the only virgin at this table.”
I discard my queen and enjoy their stunned moment of silence. Then they both gasp.
Noah puts his cards facedown on the table and applauds slowly. “Well played.”