Sister Pact

by Stacie Ramey

  “No, of course not. Just you. And only when you want to.” She smooths her black see-through skirt over her black leotard. Just like when she was in my studio. She reaches up to check her bun, but no hair has gone rogue. She looks at me, her eyes warm, brown. I always wished mine were brown too, but I got blue.

  “I’m just worried. Maybe I’ve really lost it.”

  “You know it runs in the family.” She laughs as if that’s funny.

  I start to think that maybe I can keep her like this for a little bit, and the thought makes me so happy, I don’t care if I’m crazy. Because if I have to choose crazy with my sister or sane without her, I’m choosing crazy. Every time.

  Chapter 8

  I walk to lunch, grateful for forty minutes of no expectations. My head is swimmy from the NyQuil–headache-meds cocktail I took yesterday. My stomach is queasy, and there’s a constant buzzing in my ears. The pressure behind my eyes is intense. I don’t know how Mom does this.

  I pass John Strickland, and he makes eye contact. I’ve got no idea why. John’s a major dealer. I’ve never talked with him or had a class with him or even thought about him till now. I’ve heard things—that he got suspended last year for taking a crowbar to some guy’s car and that he once beat up a guy who was making fun of an autistic kid so bad that he ended up in the hospital. John’s like some kind of drug-dealing Batman that most people avoid unless they’re in need of a little weed. I try not to stare as he passes me.

  Emery grabs my arm from behind and twirls me around to face her. “Hey, girl. Guess what!”

  I peel my gaze off of John and glue it to her face instead.

  “What?”

  She pulls me into her so our faces are inches apart, and I can smell the strawberry Layers gum she’s chewing. “The new drama teacher is even cuter than Carbon, and I’m trying out for the lead this year.”

  Emery loads her tray with a tuna sandwich on whole wheat, a Granny Smith apple, and a bag of Nacho Cheese Doritos, which she opens and starts eating as she pushes her tray across the metal counter leading to the cashier. The screeching sound of her tray makes my ears ring. “Aren’t you eating?” she asks.

  I point to my backpack. “Mom packed. Again.”

  “So weird.”

  When we get to our table, I see the rain. The drops collecting on the window remind me of the last time the three of us broke out of the house. Emery was sleeping over. Two weeks before Leah killed herself. It was raining that night too. Drizzling off and on. Leah had just gotten back from a date with Sean.

  “Hey, Emery.” Leah had smiled as she opened my bedroom door. “You got anything?”

  “A little,” Emery said. She always had a little. Said it helped her chill. Acting was tense work apparently. But I hadn’t known Leah was into weed. I looked and saw Leah’s hands shaking. But not like Mom’s. Kind of like they were vibrating. Like she couldn’t make them stop.

  “Bring it?” Leah asked. “I could use a little mellow.”

  “Sure.” Emery grabbed her purse, and I grabbed Sophie.

  I remember feeling kind of annoyed that Leah ignored me for Em and wondering when Leah started smoking weed. I felt left out. Like a tagalong. When we got to the playground, Emery lowered herself onto the merry-go-round. Her long legs trailed on the ground as she started rolling a joint from the bag of weed. Leah sat across from her, their faces close. She lit it like they were sharing a secret.

  “Come on, try it.” Emery turned to me, hand outstretched.

  I held up my hand. “I’m good.” I hated when they pushed me into things.

  “No use.” Leah laughed. “She’s a weed virgin too.”

  Heat spread through me like wildfire. I started to wonder when this became an intervention.

  “Come on, Allie, you know we love you,” Em said.

  “We are the only ones who do.” Leah leaned into Em. “Obviously.”

  Emery covered her mouth but couldn’t hold in her giggles. Eventually she gave in, and the two of them bent over. I couldn’t take it, the two of them hanging all over each other, laughing at me.

  “You’re messed up,” I said, getting off the swing. I started to walk home, but Leah blocked my way.

  “It’s just sex, Allie. What the hell are you waiting for?” Leah was clearly mad at somebody, and I was the closest target. Not good. Like Dad, Leah was about war games. Like Mom, my role was to cower. “Why are you making it this big deal?”

  I backed up. “I’m not. It just hasn’t happened.”

  “Good. Because open your eyes, Allie. You want a shot at Max, you gotta grow up. He’s not exactly dating the pure and innocent girls,” Leah said. “He’s a guy; he wants a little fun.”

  I aimed my stare at Emery. “You told her?”

  Emery’s mouth opened a little. “Ruh roh.”

  “It’s not funny,” I said.

  “Nobody’s laughing.” Leah stood in front of me. “You’ve wanted Max forever. If not him, who?”

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t make the words come out. Angry tears streamed down my face.

  Leah wiped them off. I tried to pull away, but she grabbed my arms. “You have to grow up. If you can’t with Max, then pick someone else. Someone you don’t care about. Then go back to him. Show him you can play with the big boys.”

  I wanted to smack her. Shouldn’t Max care enough to wait for me? The day after our failed hookup, he was with Randi Flanders, so question answered. Max wasn’t going to wait for anyone. Not even me. Especially not me.

  “He’s a guy,” Leah explained as if I didn’t know that. “He is just a guy. Not a god. Not a love. Just a guy.”

  I pushed past them and walked home by myself. Emery came in about a half an hour later. I didn’t know if she came with Leah. And I didn’t care.

  “I’m sorry, Allie,” Emery had whispered.

  I pretended to be asleep.

  “I think it’s cool that you want it to be special. It’s just not. Not the way you think.”

  I had wondered what she meant by that. But I hadn’t asked.

  I look at Emery now, talking with Violet Cunningham and Lindsey Clark, who put their trays down noisily in front of me. They are talking so fast that all I see is the flash, flash, flash of their super-white teeth, and all I hear is the dizzying loudness of their laughing. Lindsey crunches a chip. Emery crunches her apple. I start to sweat. Head to toe, I feel sick.

  Emery leans into me. “You okay?”

  “Fine.”

  It’s difficult to hear what they’re saying. Everything sounds fuzzy. Everything feels fuzzy. Everything is overwhelming. Including the smell of the food everyone’s eating—Dorito smell, burrito smell, salad dressing, ketchup, fries. Gagging me. Making me feel like I want to die.

  “Bathroom,” I mumble. I go to get up. The room spins. I brace myself on the table.

  “Allie?” Nick’s voice comes from behind me. “You okay?”

  “Nurse.”

  His arm goes around me, and he supports me as he walks me to the clinic.

  Nurse Debbie comes out to greet me. “Oh, Allie, a headache?”

  I groan.

  “Let’s just have you lie down for a little. I’ll get you some ice. Bring her here.”

  Nick guides me to the cot and helps me lie down. I hear Nurse Debbie closing the blinds, which sounds like whips being cracked. Nick puts an ice pack on my forehead.

  “You’re scaring me, Allie,” he whispers. “You look bad. Really bad.”

  And just like that, the guilt rushes in. God, I suck. I start to cry. Small tears. Because I don’t deserve the big therapeutic kind. I did this. To myself. I need to stop.

  “You better get back to class. Allie needs quiet.”

  He reaches down and kisses the top of my head. “Text me later. Okay?”

  I nod. The
n close I my eyes and think about the choices I’m making. Am I being smart? I fall asleep, Leah’s voice washing over me like a wave on the beach.

  “Just keep moving,” she says. “Watch your checkerboard. Don’t get jumped.”

  • • •

  Mom is waiting in the front office to sign me out of school. We walk to the car in silence, thankfully. I close my eyes.

  “Are you okay?” Mom asks. “I mean, is it because it’s too hard? Are we pushing you too much?”

  “It’s all hard, Mom,” I say.

  “I know.”

  What I wouldn’t give to go back in time, never make the pact. Or tell someone about it. What I wouldn’t give to argue with Leah and say it was stupid.

  Mom’s car stops, jolting me conscious. We’re parked in front of a CVS.

  “Why are we stopping?”

  “Just have to pick up your script; you’re almost out. You wait here.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll go. I’m faster.”

  Mom hesitates, then opens her purse and grabs her wallet. She takes out her debit card and hands it to me. “Get yourself something if you like,” she says.

  I walk into the store and head toward the prescription counter, passing the makeup, then the nail polish, then the hair products. I walk past the rows of cold medicines. Small red pills. Bright-pink Benadryls. Yellow Coricidins. Followed by bottles of cough syrups. Syrups—as if you’d put it on pancakes or waffles. Words are important. They mean things. When the drug companies called cough medicine “syrup,” they opened up a possibility that their product would sweeten something bitter. Like my life.

  I run my fingers over the bottles like when Leah and I used to go for mani-pedis and I couldn’t decide which color to pick. Only now there’s no Leah.

  Mom’s words “Get yourself something” run through my head. I am out of Robitussin. It claims multisymptom, nighttime formula relief. These products are all offering them. Shouldn’t I accept a little Help? When it’s right here in front of me?

  “Come on, Allie, we don’t have all day. Pick one. Any one. Just pick,” Leah’s voice is sweet but slightly annoyed. The day of the party. She took me to get our nails done. Because I had agreed. It was time I grew up. And Leah was going to help me with that. I remember she was so good to me that day. And that felt so great. More intoxicating than Robitussin. More fun than gin shots chased with Gatorade. Leah choosing me was a drug. My favorite high.

  I held up a red bottle of polish. “I’m Not Really a Waitress?”

  She shook her head. “Too bad they don’t have one called I’m Not Really a Virgin.” She laughed so hard that she started to choke. I went along with the joke. She was helping me out after all, wasn’t she?

  Standing in the drugstore now, I do exactly what I did that day at the nail salon—and that night at the party. I close my eyes, reach out, and pick. My hand closes around the Delsym. I feel good about that choice because orange is one of my favorite colors. Orange is Max. And pumpkins. And Creamsicles. Orange is the color of warm. Orange will coat you and protect you and keep you safe. Like a life jacket, orange will lift you up.

  I take it to the back of the store and put it on the counter.

  “Hi, Allie,” Mrs. Simpson, the cashier, says to me. Her hair is carrot and wheat and gold, and she has freckles on her face. She looks like a sunset. She reaches behind her, then places three prescription bags on the counter. Three. Mine plus two others.

  She points to the cough medicine. “That also?”

  “Yes. Oh and these…” I throw a pack of gum on the counter and turn around to pull a vitaminwater out of the cooler.

  “You have a cough?” She inspects the bottle.

  “Just at night.”

  “A little honey will take care of that too, you know.”

  I look at her and wonder if she knows about me. I mean, obviously she does. I wonder if she’s going to refuse to ring me up. Tell me to put the Delsym back. Part of me hopes she will. But she rings it all up and points to the place to swipe the debit card. I type in the code. Transaction complete, she puts everything in a bag and hands it to me.

  “Oh, sweetie?” she calls as I walk away.

  I turn.

  “Feel better.”

  “Thanks.” And once again, I feel like a fake.

  On my way out the door, I take the cough medicine out of the bag and transfer it into my backpack before I get to the car. I leave Mom’s two prescriptions in the bag but crumple the receipt and shove it in my pocket. Mom’s two scripts are the real reason she wanted to go in and pick these up. She didn’t want me to know. As if I didn’t.

  Leah always said Mom had the best pharmacy on the block. It’s where she “shopped” to get through a test or a breakup. It never bothered me back then if Leah sampled a little. It’s not like she was hooked like Mom was, and why suffer when you could take a little Happy and move on? But maybe that wasn’t the best plan. I mean, obviously, considering Leah’s overdose and all.

  • • •

  The receptionist tells me I can go back before I even sit down. That means no trip to the bathroom for me. No battle armor. I take my place on the burgundy love seat, even though it’s hard to feel safe when I’m sitting on a big sea the color of death.

  Dr. Applegate comes into the room. She’s wearing dark-blue pinstriped pants and another crisp white shirt. “How are you today, Allie?” Dr. Applegate asks as she settles into her chair.

  “Okay, I guess.”

  “You look tired.”

  How bad must I look for her to say that? I think about making up an excuse, but I don’t. Instead I slump lower in the chair and say, simply, “I am.”

  “I want to talk about something important, something we’ve avoided talking about for a long time now.”

  I close my eyes.

  “Leah and you had a plan. You made a plan together.”

  I draw my knees up to my chin. I shake my head.

  “You said you had one.”

  At least this time she doesn’t flip through the pages. At least this time she doesn’t pretend she’s trying to remember. “You had a battle plan. You told the police that. You tried to take the pills she’d thrown up. You said you were supposed to go with her.”

  I lay my cheek in my hand. “No.” I shake my head. “That’s not true.”

  “Which part isn’t true?”

  I sniff, wipe my nose with a tissue. “I didn’t want to go with her.”

  Dr. Applegate smiles at me. It’s a small one but genuine. “I believe that, Allie.”

  We sit in silence for three and a half minutes. Then Dr. Applegate gives in. She can’t stand silence; she thinks it’s the enemy, so she slaughters it with this whisper. “We need to talk about the first time you discussed the pact.”

  I shake my head.

  “I know this is hard, so don’t answer me. Just think. Try to remember.”

  I don’t have to think. I know. We were at the Cape. We’d gone up with Dad early. Two hours in the car with Dad in the best mood I’d seen him in forever. Leah sat up front, of course. She was wearing the new gold bracelet Dad had given her for being the youngest Robert Frost High School dance captain. It was this really heavy hearts/kissing hearts thing, and I knew it cost a fortune. I stretched out in back, headphones in, watching a movie on my tablet. I was thirteen. Leah was fifteen. Just turned.

  We got to the house, and I let all the air in my lungs go out, just to make room for more Cape air. The breeze blew and the trees rustled. “Race ya.” Leah bolted out of the car.

  “Put the food away before you head to the beach,” Dad called from his bedroom, where he’d wheeled his suitcase.

  “What’s got him so happy?” I asked Leah.

  “Who cares? Just roll with it.”

  It was early in the season. The weekend before Memori
al Day. The kids on the beach were wearing sweatshirts, but Leah stripped to her bathing suit.

  “You’re not serious. It’s gotta be freezing.”

  “So what? It only hurts for a minute.” She pointed to the water. “Besides, it’s easier when you do it with someone.”

  Dr. Applegate’s voice cuts through the mist. “Look around you. What colors do you see? Try to remember it all.”

  We were standing on the beach. The rocks were gray and blue—shimmery water, inky black in parts, and navy in others. Sea foam and sand and the sun overhead. Leah stood at the edge of the water. It slapped against her legs, and she held her hand out. Leah was a dancer. Her body was used to pain. The icy water would feel like knives to me, but to her, it was relief.

  “Come on, I’ll give you the blue dress. The one you like.”

  I stayed still in the sun on the sand. I let it bake on me and make me feel warm and loved. “You were going to give me that one anyway.”

  “Okay, then I’ll give you the Kate Spade purse with all the colors to go with it.”

  I took my sweatshirt off. “How bad is it?”

  “Not bad at all.”

  “Liar.” I inched closer. Just the spray on my feet was too much. I shrieked and ran away.

  She laughed so hard. I remember thinking she had the best laugh. She wrapped her arms around me and started dragging me to the water. “A deal’s a deal.” I shrieked the whole way in, screaming with each spanking of the waves against my skin.

  “Don’t you love it now?” she lowered herself so that the water was up her neck.

  “Now that my body is numb, yeah.”

  “Numb is way better than feeling most times anyway.”

  The water splashed against us, and we bobbed up and down with the waves. Then we rode some in toward the shore, like Dad had taught us when we were little. Finally, we straggled onto the beach, exhausted and freezing. I wrapped up in my towel, and she put her arm around me. “You wanna know a secret?” she asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “I think I’m in love.”

  “Who this week?”

  “No. Seriously.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s a secret, but it’s real. Not like those stupid throwaway guys, you know?”