It’s dark. And everything is just as I left it the other day. His headphones. A shirt he threw on his bed the day before he left for Los Angeles.
What I wouldn’t give to trade spots with him right now.
Jasper, he should have taken me, not you. He should have known that you’d have dealt with my death better than I’ve been dealing with yours. That you wouldn’t drink or take pills or tell lies or create a trail of mess in your wake.
I creep into his closet and sit on as many pairs of Vans as I can feel with my hands. And I prefer the darkness, so the tears will vanish, and no one can see them. His closet smells like the woods and soap. His smell.
I rest my head at the back of his closet, and the longing for him builds in my chest.
Tracy tells the story best, but she says, as twins, Jas and I spent the first six months of our lives touching. It seemed, she explained, that every time she turned around, Jasper would have his arm around me or his foot in my face; it didn’t matter. I’d say we spent the better part of our lives together than apart.
On that day, October 1, something was off. I texted Jasper once, then twice, and then three times as unease grew in my stomach. My stomach began to hurt so badly, I threw up. Even though I thought it might be the flu, I couldn’t etch away the terrible feeling I had that something didn’t add up. Something was wrong. And something bad was about to happen.
Then, I received a text from Jasper.
Jasper: Mimi. What? You’re blowing up my phone. U OK?
I remember feeling relief. A huge relief because Jasper was all right. I could breathe again.
But my stomachache didn’t go away. My hands were shaking, and they couldn’t quite type the words out very well.
I texted back.
Me: I lover you.
Me: *Love.
Then, I typed with my newfound relief.
Me: Because lovering your twin would be weird.
But he never responded.
That was when mass hysteria broke out across the country—at 10:48 a.m. on October 1, 2015.
I wish I could have had just one more minute with my brother in the car when I dropped him off at the airport on September 30.
One more foot in my face while trying to explain that athlete’s foot is a real condition, and it can be contagious.
One more snide remark about my yoga pants being a little too tight or my shorts too short.
One last hug.
I hear a creak in the house as my silent tears fall, completely unnoticed until now.
“Mimi?” I hear my dad’s voice.
“In here,” I whisper like the little girl he left behind, very quietly because I’ve lost my way to speak, perhaps hidden behind the sobs, unable to catch my breath. And maybe I don’t want him to hear me, but maybe I do.
My dad opens the closet door and sees me in a puddle at the bottom of Jasper’s closet. He drops his shoulders. He climbs into the closet with me, and I can’t help but think what a mix of emotions Jasper would feel if he could see us right now. Mad because my dad and I are sitting on every pair of Vans he ever owned and sad because our dad has me in his arms while I shake. My dad—my big, strong dad—has his cheek against my hair, and I feel him shake, too, his intermittent breaths telling me the story of his regret, his own loss.
Death is awful.
Death brings about the worst feelings. Ones you’d rather die from than face.
A loneliness that I’ve never known before.
And one I’m not sure I’ll be able to escape.
I wake up, unable to breathe. Sweat is the only remnant of haunted dreams that I can’t remember just yet, my mind too foggy. My eyes swollen from tears, I turn on my bedside lamp, the darkness creeping in on me like sneaker waves.
I breathe. Finally.
How did I get back to my room? And in my bed?
I look down at my pajamas.
I grab my phone and look at the time—12:02 a.m.
I collect my unconscious thoughts, the ones that danced in my mind as I slept. It was Sonja, one of the survivors of October 1. I follow her Facebook page.
In my dream, I relived my version of what had happened on that day. What my unconscious mind threw together while she was center stage, and I grieved.
Envious of her family.
Rage.
Sadness.
She’s still in the hospital. Her communication is limited. She uses a computer, a paper and pen, yet she’s still here. Every time I see her picture come up in my feed, my loss is magnified, and my questions about God and his plan reorganize in my head.
Why didn’t he save them? The victims.
I question how he could have let something this awful happen. How our situation turned out to be horrible and theirs survivable.
I question why all these particular people happened to be at the same place at the same time with so much more to give their lives, so much more to give the world.
What the fuck, God? That’s what I want to say.
WHAT THE FUCK? I scream inside myself.
I rub my eyes and sit up, resting my head higher on the pillow.
Jasper Stone, 17
Bernice Carnes, 18
Jesus Eibel, 18
Xou Hong, 18
Amanda Alcaraz, 19
Treven Anspach, 20
Stephanie Moore, 44
Delma Dietz, 59
Lawrence Levine, 67
These people didn’t survive on October 1, 2015. Why not?
My chest grows tight, the boulder growing by the minute.
I question why the young singer, Christina Grimmie, one of the contestants from The Voice, with so much life ahead of her was shot and killed at close range at a meet and greet after her concert. She was only twenty-two years old.
I question why Jessica Ghawi, who escaped a Toronto mass shooting at a shopping mall, was killed one month later in a mass shooting in Colorado. She was just twenty-four years old.
I question why Steven Stayner was abducted at seven years old, returned at fourteen years old, and died in a motorcycle accident on his way home from work at twenty-four years old.
Or Jessica de Lima Rohl, twenty-one, who organized an event for university students at the Kiss nightclub. Her boyfriend begged her not to go, so she didn’t. Two hundred thirty-eight people were killed that night in a fire at KISS. She and her boyfriend died one week later in a head-on collision.
How about Hilda Yolanda Mayol, twenty-six? She was on the ground floor when the Twin Towers were hit on 9/11. She escaped. Only to die two months later in a plane crash on her way to the Dominican Republic. Flight 587 crashed into a New York Borough of Queens.
And how about David Furr? Due to an injury, he was the only member of the University of Evansville men’s basketball team who wasn’t on the Douglas C-53 chartered plane where all the players were killed. He and his sixteen-year-old brother were killed two weeks later by a drunk driver.
DJ Lawson was a nineteen-year-old Humboldt State University sophomore who moved up from Los Angeles, where he was raised, to go to college in a small town where it was safer, only to be stabbed to death at a party in the same small town. His murder still remains unsolved.
Or the five-year-old boy—his name was never released—who survived a massive tornado in Oklahoma, only to be killed by a bullmastiff dog days later.
Or Nicky Hayden, Formula 1 motorcycle racer, who died while riding a bicycle in Italy.
And let’s not ever forget about Sandy Hook. Ever.
I question all of it.
The rock in my chest grows and pushes in ways my body doesn’t allow. It hurts, and I’m not sure if it’s the sadness or the anger.
Fate.
Destiny.
Devine will.
Providence.
Karma.
Kismet.
Maybe we don’t remember, but maybe God gave us a number of days, and maybe he gave us a choice of how we’d vacate this world and move on to the next. Surely, if we
knew the how and when of it, we wouldn’t survive the wait. Instead, we’d fear the days until our days on Earth were up. If we knew our departure date, maybe we wouldn’t enjoy the pure moments of joy that life provided. Maybe our souls have their own journey, and our bodies are just a costume we wear while our time is spent on Earth.
But this still doesn’t explain Sandy Hook. I don’t think any of us can explain that, and this is where I always end up: God, if you exist, Sandy Hook never would have happened.
I allow the awfulness of the world—the wrongdoings and the decisions people make, the unspeakable ones—to roll off my back and splatter onto the floor. But there they sit, waiting for me to collect them.
I can’t cry, so I close my eyes and let the unjust world fall around me.
My phone vibrates, and it’s an email.
TO: [email protected]
FROM: Sonja Peet
SUBJECT: Jasper
Hi Livia,
I got your email from the FBI. I hope it’s all right that I’m emailing you.
Anyhow, I know you’re having a hard time right now. And I’m unsure of how to approach this, but I have, um, Jasper’s last words if you want them.
I guess, if I were in your place, I’d want to know. I knew him for only an hour total, but he talked a lot about you. I’m emailing you against my parents’ wishes. I just think it’s the right thing to do.
Some people might think I’m crazy with PTSD right now. That I might not be well. That I shouldn’t be approached. The truth is, I don’t know what I am.
Your brother was special, Livia. In the sixty minutes I got to know him, he was special.
He did what I couldn’t do.
He did what 99% of the world’s population would not do.
He stood in his own truth.
Stood up for what he believed in.
I’m not sure how to close this email, so I’ll stop here. Let me know if you want to…well, you know, know.
—Sonja
Immediately, I get out of bed and creep into the backyard and to the shed. I dig in the crate full of nails and find my relief—an airplane bottle of vodka. This will do.
I take it back to my bedroom.
I take enough to let my mind grow fuzzy.
I close my eyes and let the relief from hurt disappear into the night.
My head aches, and it can’t be from the booze. It’s got to be from the crying, the emotional hangover.
I’d rather stay home from school today, but Cao’s counting on a ride.
I heave myself into the shower.
I wash.
Rinse.
Brush.
Apply.
And put a cold washcloth on my burning eyes for five minutes.
I leave.
And I try not to let Sonja’s offer enter my head because the only thing the offer fills me with is awfulness. Jagged, rugged rocks stick into my heart, my spleen, gouging them from the inside first. My heart contorts and moves, stretches. My head is full of scenarios that play like early morning infomercials, I can’t stop it, and I know what will stop it. Give me the ease I need.
But I have to go to school. I sweep my thoughts, my feelings, under the rug, so no one can see them.
I’m half-tempted to delete the email. But something tells me not to.
Driving to Cao’s, I look for Daniel. There’s a need I can’t explain deep down, a need that can only be met by him. Feel his leg pushing against mine with urgency. Maybe his wordless communication urging me to keep talking. His scent, the one that lulls me to say things and do things and think things I shouldn’t.
Maybe I’ll tell him about the email…or my thoughts on fucking fate or all the bad in the world. The conclusion I drew last night: Maybe there isn’t a God.
Pulling up to Cao’s, I see Beth following Cao out of the gate. Cao has some sort of odd figurine in her hand, and she’s clearly annoyed.
She pulls open the car door, and she says, “Drive. Just drive, Liv,” before she’s seated in the car.
“That’s all I need—attempted murder charges on me, Cao. With this pill thing at school, I’m sure the DA would have a heyday with that.” The old Liv.
Sonja’s email enters my head again.
I push it out.
Is she trying to ruin my life?
“What’s that smell?” Cao asks. “It smells like mouthwash.” Cao makes a disgusted face.
Panic.
“I used mouthwash this morning.” I smirk like she’s crazy. I think I need to tell Cao I can’t take her to school anymore but decide to back-burner the conversation because Beth is approaching the car.
“Hey, Liv,” she says as she leans in my car window. “What’s that smell?”
I sit up straighter in my seat and pull my hair to one side, trying to mask the smell. “What smell?”
Beth takes a big whiff inside my car.
Cao shakes her head, and I look down to see some sort of monkey/cat-looking figurine in her hand.
“Would you just stop? Livia doesn’t smoke cigarettes, Mom. Please. Just stop,” she sighs. “Liv, can you just drive?”
Your mom is hanging out of my car window, I want to say. And, again, I want to mention attempted murder charges, but I think it’s a moot point by now.
“Mom. Would you just stop? Please. Just go away.” Cao’s exhausted.
Beth pulls back from my window and nods, still looking at her daughter in the front seat. Slowly and rather uncomfortably, I roll up my window and pull away from their gate.
I don’t dare breathe a word until we start down the Gulch. But she’s still holding the monkey/cat thing in her hands.
“What’s that?”
Cao is staring out the window. “It’s another one of my mom’s attempts at convincing me that I’m Chinese.”
I think for a moment. “I’d say it’s the offspring of a cat and a monkey if they were smashed together. It’s a mon-cat.”
Cao grins, still staring out the window. “It’s feng shui supposedly. A Chinese thing. But the good-luck cat is a Japanese thing.” She rolls her eyes.
“She’s trying at least, Cao.”
Her eyes make their way to my face. “I could say the same for your dad.”
I frown. “Big difference, Cao. Your mom didn’t leave you,” I whisper through my thoughts. “I just think you put a lot of time and effort into hating what she does to make you feel accepted.”
In a knee-jerk reaction, I turn down Daniel’s road because my want to see him has now become a need.
“Where are you going?”
“To pick up Daniel,” I say, as if it’s been the plan since I left the house this morning.
“How’d it go with your dad last night anyway?” Cao gradually comes back into herself. The new Cao jumped out of the moving vehicle somewhere along Rockwell Lane. Thank God.
“This…this is…his house?” Cao leans forward to get a closer view.
On the outside, things are so well put together. A groundskeeper most likely keeps the estate. A housekeeper, or seven, keep the house. A cook, I assume. What this picturesque setting doesn’t show is an absent father and a dying mother—two quintessential parts to making a family whole.
And maybe that’s what Daniel meant by, “It’s just a house, Livia.”
“Do you think Daniel knows Ed Sheeran?” She’s still staring at the grounds, the house.
“Why? Because they’re both British? Doubt it.”
I text him and tell him I decided to pick him up for school this morning. And then I go on to explain that it wasn’t really planned and that it was an afterthought because I don’t want him to think he’s at the center of my universe. Right? No boy wants to think that because then it’s like game over. I wait for his response, and as the seconds tick by, I rethink the whole text, wondering why I’m such an idiot.
I could have just simply said, Hey, thought we’d pick you up on the way to school.
I check the time—8:17
a.m.
8:18 a.m.
8:19 a.m.
8:20 a.m.
No response still.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Cao. But, before I can get out of my seat, my phone chimes.
“Hey, would it be rude if I took a picture of his house?” Cao asks, preparing for a shot of the house with her phone.
“Yes!” I hiss as I open the text.
Daniel: Hey. Sorry, not going to make it to school this morning. Mum is in the hospital.
Me: Daniel, I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do?
Daniel: Nope. Thx. I’ll give you a ring later.
I want to text him back. But I shouldn’t. Don’t look too desperate.
When do we overcome caring about what others think about us in order to do the right thing? The one that’s uncomfortable, that makes us vulnerable. Somehow, we allow it to get lost somewhere in the chaos.
Maybe, sometimes, we weigh opinions too much on what’s acceptable, not what’s right.
I put my phone down, and we make our way to school.
The funny looks, the smirks, but nobody says anything.
I know what they’re thinking though:
Drug busts.
Drug cartel.
Prison time.
Suspension.
Expulsion.
I think about Sonja’s email again. Great. Now, every time I check my email, I’ll see it and start the whole heart-shake-stomach-drop despair process again. And this thought alone makes me feel as though I’m alone, surrounded by hundreds of students. I’ll delete her email when I can.
And I know the only reason my peers don’t say anything, not even Miranda, is because my brother just died. They’d be on me like heathens if he hadn’t. Just like when Paul Pearce got arrested on campus for money laundering. Kids were relentless. He was a senior when Jasper and I were freshmen. Now, I hear he’s in the construction business in southern Humboldt, probably working for Miranda’s dad.
And, in the thought process of Paul, I find my mind wanting just a sip of booze and looking forward to my next drink so that it will take the edge off.
I just want a glow, I think to myself, for my mind to take a break, a mini vacation, and for the worry, the grief, to fade.
Standing Sideways Page 17