Damage Done

by Amanda Panitch

  “I have to,” he said. “For you. For us.”

  He always got me. I bowed my head. I didn’t want to see it happen, but I couldn’t avoid the sounds: the quick intake of breath—the last one—before pulling the trigger, the single, sharp gunshot, the nanosecond of silence that hung in the air before the thud of his lifeless body hitting the ground.

  Or the thud of him hitting the ground. Not his body, because he didn’t die. I hadn’t checked; I hadn’t thought it necessary, and I couldn’t bear it. I’d simply squared my shoulders, taken several deep, shuddering breaths, and strode out the band room door into the waiting arms of the police. Everybody who knew about my brother and me was dead. I would be okay. I would start over.

  And I was okay until I saw Spence lurking, telling me with his mere presence that things had changed. But now my brother is dead for good, and our secret is safe, and I’ll never have to worry again.

  I was very studiously not looking at Michael as I finished my story, though I really should have been. I was pointing a gun at him, after all. What if he dove at me, or screamed and tried to run?

  He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t. Was that love? Knowing what someone would or wouldn’t do before they did it?

  “Did you ever care about me?” Michael said flatly. “Or were you just using me to get to him?”

  “You don’t understand,” I said. “He wanted to tell.” I remembered meeting my brother in the backyard the night Alane had slept over at my house to keep me safe. I’d wrapped my robe around myself, trying to shield my body from the chill of the night, but it didn’t work.

  “I can’t do it anymore, Julia.” I could hardly believe the changes the past year had wrought in him: the stiff left side, the stumbling speech. “I can’t keep pretending. I won’t do it without you. Tell the truth with me.”

  My breath caught in my throat. Tell the truth? I’d go to prison and be scorned and mocked as the incestuous twin. I’d be reviled by the entire country. My parents. Alane. Michael.

  “I can’t,” I said. “Remember? We decided you would take the blame.”

  “You decided I would take the blame.” He crossed his arms. “We didn’t decide I would keep taking the blame. You made it look like I killed Dr. Spence. I liked Dr. Spence.” A muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t want to tell them without your blessing, but I will. I’ll give you some time to think about it. I want us to do it together because we’ve done everything together, but I’ll do it myself if I have to.”

  “No.” The word came out reflexively.

  “Of course not,” he said. “Why would you sacrifice your new life and your precious new boyfriend?”

  He knew about Michael. “Why should both of us go away when—”

  “I’ve spent the last year in solitary, Julia, relearning how to talk and eat with a spoon and wipe my own ass.” A fine spray of spit settled over my face, and I flinched. “All alone. By myself. Not answering any of their questions. Protecting you. And you’ve spent the last year gallivanting around with your new friends and hooking up with some new boy. I don’t think that’s fair. I mean it, Julia. I’ll tell.” He stepped back, melting into the darkness. “I’ll give you some time to come around. I know you will. I have faith in you.”

  He shouldn’t have. My voice shook as I spoke next. “Yes, you were very helpful. But I swear, I wasn’t using you.”

  “But you want to keep this a secret. And you’ve told me.”

  He’d picked up on it. My hand was shaking now, too, not just my voice. Because I’d killed so many people to protect my secrets. Evan. Liv. Eddie Meyer. Elisabeth Wood. Irene Papadakis. Nina Smith. Danny Steinberg. Erick Thorson. Mr. Walrus. Sophie Grant. Penelope Wong.

  Dr. Spence.

  Miranda.

  My brother.

  There was real fear in Michael’s eyes because he knew exactly what I was thinking. If I didn’t want everything getting out, he had to die.

  “I could make it look like a battle,” I said, my voice deceptively calm. The way I framed Dr. Spence’s death as my brother’s doing. The way I’d crushed my mom’s pills into Miranda’s hot chocolate and left her there in the back of the parking lot—she wouldn’t be waking up anytime soon. “You snuck in for some thrills, to talk to the killer with me. Ryan got free, grabbed your gun, shot you. I wrestled the gun away and shot him. I’m traumatized, yet again. Nobody could prove otherwise.” I was very, very good at this.

  “Julia,” Michael said. “Please.”

  I looked at the gun. I looked at him. I looked back at the gun. I didn’t hear anyone coming; the room must indeed have been soundproofed. But eventually someone would come down to check in. I couldn’t stand here forever and keep us suspended in this nebulous state between action and inaction, no matter how much I wanted to.

  I had to kill him. If I didn’t kill him, what was the point of everything I’d done so far? Why were the eleven dead? Why had I staged those deaths? And why, why, why had I killed my brother, my only? If I didn’t kill Michael, they would all have died in vain. All my secrets would get out. I would be hated. Hunted. Even if I made it away, started over as someone new, I would forever be looking over my shoulder.

  And yet…and yet.

  There was the determined set of his jaw when he told me he’d go with me to Elkton. There was the glow on his face when he stirred the sauce for his lasagna and poured me a cup of hot chocolate straight from his heart. There was the graze of stubble as he kissed me, and the catch in his voice when he told me he loved me, and the way my mom described the glow on my face when I realized I had his love held tight in my fist.

  The epiphany struck me like a firework. This was love. Love was not shooting somebody even though you really should. Love was leaving someone free to destroy your life and stomp on the ruins because you couldn’t bear the thought of ending theirs. Love was putting somebody else’s needs over your own. I couldn’t shoot him, because I loved him.

  I tucked the gun into my waistband. “Give me an hour to get away,” I said. “That’s all I ask.”

  He said nothing. I avoided his eyes as I turned my back, exposing myself to him, and walked toward the door. I almost hoped he would stop me, but he didn’t. I couldn’t look at him. I didn’t want the last expression I’d see on him to be one of horror and loathing.

  I expected at any second to feel someone’s hand clamp around my shoulder and tell me I was under arrest. I had my gun just in case—I’d sooner shoot myself than fall victim to the same system that had held my brother. But nobody did. Nothing happened. I nodded goodbye to the cops in the office, still working through their mounds of paper, climbed into my mom’s car, and drove off into the figurative sunset.

  Once upon a time my name was Julia Vann. Then, for another, wonderful time, it was Lucy Black. For a brief flash I was Julia Vann again, but that burned out faster than a sparkler on the Fourth of July.

  Now my name is Ariella Brown. I wanted to name myself after Alane, or after one of Michael’s sisters, but I’m not stupid. I won’t do anything that could possibly help them find me. The A is enough of a tribute.

  Ariella Brown lives in New York City. The city is a big place, and it’s easy for someone to disappear.

  Especially when no one is looking for her.

  I’ve Googled Julia Vann so many times I’m starting to worry the police will track me down through it, even though I’m filching off a neighbor’s Wi-Fi. The eleven-year-old cancer victim Julia Vann is still dead, and the volleyball-playing Julia Vann ended up deciding on UCLA and the scholarship (and seems happy there, even with a recent shoulder strain), but nothing new turns up about me. I’m assuming the cops want to keep everything that happened, motives and all, a secret. No one wants to admit they were outsmarted by a stupid teenager.

  I was surprised by one thing I found, however. I’d Googled everyone associated with the case, from Spence to Joseph Goodman, and that included Miranda. I’d expected to find her obituary, maybe a tribute featuring stunn
ed relatives and friends with no idea why she’d descended into drugs. But I’d apparently misjudged, hadn’t given her enough of my mother’s pills. I found a snippet on a state college website a few months ago talking about their incoming candidates for a master’s degree in social work, and Miranda was among them. I’m not unhappy she survived. I wish her well.

  I didn’t Google my parents. Ariella Brown doesn’t have parents. I can only assume that Mr. and Mrs. Black are happier not being parents anymore.

  Miranda apparently didn’t talk, and Michael didn’t, either, at least not that Google can tell me. I wonder, sometimes, if the love Michael once felt for me was enough for him to keep my secrets. If he, too, claimed amnesia. If he let some big, fat crocodile tears slide down his cheeks and then moved back into his life, like I’d never been there at all.

  Google tells me he’s done quite well for himself in this last year. He made it to states in the butterfly, finished fourth, and will be coming out to NYU in the fall to study history and swim. His oldest sister, the one he thought of as more of a distant aunt, lives out here—I’ve walked past her building once or twice, maybe even seen her, though I don’t remember her face that well. Sometimes I wonder if he’s coming out here to become closer with his sister, to see what he’s missed out on.

  Or maybe it’s because of Alane, who will be attending Columbia. After I vanished, Alane threw herself into her studies and graduated as valedictorian and captain of the show choir, which she led to a fine showing at regionals. I watched their video online; her voice was richer and fuller than I’d ever heard it before, with a thread of melancholy in it that brought tears to the judges’ eyes. Sometimes I fancy I’m the reason for that, too.

  They’re together now. Alane and Michael. One of Alane’s comments online celebrating their one-year anniversary tells me that they leaned heavily on each other after I left, which soon progressed into something more than friendship. I love them both. I hope they love each other.

  I like to think that they’re being pulled to New York because of me, because they’re in my orbit, that I’m Saturn and they’re my rings.

  I know that’s ridiculous. The city is a big place.

  I’ll probably never see them again.

  It’s impossible to thank everybody who influenced this book or my writing in a few pages, so before I start in on the specifics: thank you, all of you, who have championed my book on Twitter or talked over a plot point with me or helped me somehow with this whole book thing.

  Merrilee Heifetz, you are wise and wonderful and the best agent anyone could ever ask for. Sarah Nagel, you found me and let me cry on you and are just generally amazing, really. Michael Mejias, I don’t know where I would be today without you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you to everybody else at Writers House, too, and to Kassie Evashevski and the rest of United Talent for handling the film side.

  Chelsea Eberly, thank you for being the best editor I could possibly have ended up with—the way you “get” my writing and my book never ceases to amaze me. Michelle Nagler, thank you for acquiring me and championing me through every step of the process. And thank you to editorial assistant extraordinaire Jenna Lettice, as well as to Aisha Cloud, Jocelyn Lange, Nicole de las Heras, and Christine Ma.

  Thank you to the friends who supported me throughout this whole process, especially those who let me steal parts of their lives or our friendships in my writing: Christienne Damatac, Shimmy Edwards, Eleni Axiomakaros, and Kim Holmes. My colleagues at Lippincott Massie McQuilkin have been incredibly supportive of me and my writing, especially Kent D. Wolf; I couldn’t ask for a better workplace.

  Thank you to the critique partners and beta readers who helped make this book and my writing better: Annette Dodd, Brenda McKenna, Lucas Hargis, and Dahlia Adler. Fearless Fifteeners, I’m thrilled to be on this ride with all of you and glad to have you on my side. And thank you to all the teachers and librarians throughout the years who helped this dream come true, especially Emily Franklin, Mary-Sherman Willis, and Naomi Fletcher.

  Finally, I don’t want to imagine life without my weird and wonderful extended family—grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins—and my siblings, Rebecca, Adam, Noah, and Sam. I love you all, and I’m so glad our relationships are nothing like the ones in this book.

  AMANDA PANITCH grew up next to an amusement park in New Jersey and went to college next to the White House in Washington, DC. Amanda now resides in New York City, where she works in book publishing by day, writes by night, and lives under constant threat of being crushed beneath giant stacks of books. Visit her online at amandapanitch.com and follow her on Twitter at @AmandaPanitch.