by Stacie Ramey
“Who’s calling?” I laugh, because everything seems so completely hysterical.
Leah laughs with me. “Let me see.” She squints at the phone. “Oh my God. Oh my God. You soooo don’t want to answer this one.”
“It’s not…”
Leah nods. “It is.”
“Max?”
“One and the same.”
I take the phone from her.
“What are you going to do?”
“Hang up,” I say, and I throw my phone against the wall, shattering it.
“Oh my God, Allie. You just killed your phone.”
I giggle hysterically, bending forward, my body folding over completely.
“What’s so funny?” Leah puts her face by mine. “Allie?”
I hold up the baggie that held the light-blue pills, which is now empty. “I think I killed myself too.”
Fits of laughter come out of me and Leah till I can’t tell who is laughing harder. Till I’m not laughing anymore—till I’m crying. Crying for my sister. Crying for myself. Crying because I never wanted to do this, and now I have. The room swims. I put my face on the floor of the studio, letting the cold seep into my skin, cooling my hot cheeks. My eyes close. I think about falling asleep and not coming back. The thought makes me a little bit happy and that makes me wonder when I switched with Leah, switched from the dopey little sister who didn’t quite get it to the general in charge of this death mission.
“Allie?” Leah slaps my face. “Allie?” Her voice changes pitch. It’s not her at all. It’s Mom.
“Oh my God, Allie!” Mom screams. “No!” I hear her dial three numbers.
I pass out.
Chapter 20
The feeling of scratchy sheets under me and tape holding an IV in my arm, the sound of a monitor beeping, tell me all I need to know. I’m still here. I’m okay.
“Allie…” Mom’s voice cuts through the cotton in my ears. “Thank God.”
Guilt washes over me. What have I done? My eyes feel cemented closed. I try to open them, but I can’t.
“Here,” Mom says, patting my forehead with a wet washcloth. The water feels good. My eyes blink open. Her small voice and careful movements make me feel so sorry for her. It must have been awful finding me. Right after Leah. That must have sucked. And suddenly I wish I could take it all back. Tears slip out from under my eyelids.
“Oh, baby…” Mom cries as she wipes my cheeks. “Why?”
“I didn’t mean it… I wasn’t…”
I wish I could make her understand. I wish I could explain everything. But we’re already on two opposing teams. She thinks I tried to kill myself. I didn’t. I just tried to stop the pain. And it almost killed me. I know that sounds like a cop-out. But it’s not. It’s the truth. Straight up.
Dad’s here. I scan my mother for her tells. Her hands are steady, but her lips are droopy. That means she’s taken just enough to deal with the situation but not enough so she can’t drive home. Since Dad doesn’t drive her anymore.
When he nears the bed, I see how much I’ve stripped his colors. He’s white as a ghost and looks as if the air has gone completely out of him. Dad looks smaller. I’ve done that to him. He holds my hand. I fight the urge to pull it away. “Allie,” he says, gruff voiced.
I never meant to hurt them.
“We are just so glad you’re okay,” Mom says.
I just wanted it to stop hurting.
“We just want to know why,” Mom says.
“I didn’t mean to…”
“You didn’t mean to?” Dad repeats, anger creeping into his voice. “They said you had Valium and Xanax and Ritalin and all sorts of other drugs in your system. What were you doing? A science experiment?”
“David, don’t.” Mom puts her hand on his arm.
“Jesus.” He gets up and walks away, parting the blinds and staring out into the parking lot as if he is completely wrapped up with what’s happening out there.
Mom pours a glass of water from the mauve plastic pitcher on the side table. She holds up my head and twists the bendy straw so I can drink.
“It was an accident,” I say.
“You don’t take that much medication by accident,” Dad says from his perch at the window.
This is the dad I know—angry and accusing and judging. Dad thinks he’s so honest and upright. But he’s not. He may be the biggest liar of all. He lied to Mom when he married her. And to us every time he seemed happy to be with us. He lied to Leah after one of her recitals, when he said she had been the best thing he’d ever seen. His new girlfriend is. He always puts her first.
He comes back to stand next to my bed, somewhere between deflated and demanding. And I’m not sure which side of him to trust.
“Thank God you’re okay,” he starts. Lie. “I love you so much.” Lie. “I just wish I knew why you did this. With everything I’ve given you, a talented girl like you…” Finally how he really feels. I’m trapped. I can’t breathe. I reach for Leah. Memories flood me. I see her as I painted her, the way she came to me. I can’t believe she wasn’t real.
“…don’t know what I’ve done wrong. Your mother and I…”
The pain hits me full-on. Leah is gone. Really gone.
“Stop. She’s had enough,” Mom says.
“I was just…” Dad’s voice breaks. Lie.
I try not to listen to them. Try not to let them pull me under. I wish for the millionth time that Leah were here with me, deflecting her fair share. Sisters do that for each other. Until one of them bails.
“You’re always just…” Mom says. Dad gets silent.
Images of the day invade in my thoughts, even though I don’t want them. John Strickland. Max and Emery. Nick. Leah. My insanity. Everything explodes like the chaos of colors that Mr. Kispert said was my best work.
I close my eyes. Leah. She left more than a hole in my heart; she left one in my head too. She lived inside of me, and now that she’s gone, what will fill in the missing parts?
Mom starts crying again.
“Karen, please.” Dad’s voice cracks.
“It was like finding her again.” Mom sobs. “Sophie was barking at the back door. I followed her to the studio.”
“Thank God you did, Karen, but you have to stop thinking about it, obsessing. It won’t help.” Dad says.
I remember finding Leah the morning after the party. She was mad at me. I had checked out, but I wanted to make up. Leah always had music playing or the TV blaring or was on the phone with Brittney. You could usually hear Leah from a mile away. That’s how much life she gave off. But it was dead quiet that morning. I remember thinking she must have really been upset.
I walked in her room and saw her lying there, like she fell and couldn’t get up. I could tell something was wrong. Pills, robin’s-egg blue, formed a splatter pattern next to the bottle of wine she’d drunk from. Part of her lips were burgundy red—underneath the vomit that spilled from her. Some people might miss the burgundy. But I didn’t. It’s the color that stood out the most to me.
I knelt down next to her and saw she wasn’t breathing. Her body was cold. So cold. My hands shook. She couldn’t be dead. She couldn’t. She promised she wouldn’t leave me. Nothing made sense, except she was so cold. I went to get the cover off her bed. I thought maybe if I could warm her up, it’d be okay, she’d be okay. “Please, please, please.” I was screaming. “Leah, you have to get up. You have to!”
She didn’t move. The air around me pressed on me, and I felt like I’d fallen down a hole. Leah killed herself. Leah killed herself. Oh my God, she killed herself. The words became real in my mind. Leah killed herself. She really killed herself. Then I remembered my training and thought, I have to kill myself too. I grabbed for the pills. They tasted like puke and death. I didn’t care.
Mom rushed in. She put her hand
over her mouth. Then she grabbed my arms and started shaking me.
“Oh my God!” Mom had screamed. “Oh my God!”
“No!” I shrieked. “She’s okay. She’s going to be okay.” I don’t remember scooping up the pills. They said I did, but I don’t remember. “I was supposed to go with her. She promised me. She promised.”
My mind had buried this memory deep so I wouldn’t have to remember how much it hurt to find her. To know she was gone. Except I remember now. Fresh pain assaults me.
“Allie…” Mom sits next to me on the bed.
I lay my head on her shoulder and cry. The sobs feel good, like they’re wringing the bad out of me. As if that’s possible. After all that’s happened. With Leah gone and me alone. With the betrayals and the lies. And the drugs. I cry till I feel cleaner. I know there are still some drugs left in me. For now I feel better. A little.
“It’s okay, honey,” Mom says. Lie.
Mom lies to keep us moving. She is fine: lie. Dad still loves us: lie. I am good enough: lie. Each move is carefully negotiated. Each lie is designed. She plays an excellent game. I should be impressed. I’m not. I don’t want to live like this anymore.
“Dad?” I ask even though I know he’s gone.
“He can’t deal. It’s not okay, but he can’t,” Mom says. Truth. Finally.
Dad walked out. He can’t stand weakness. It’s worse than trying to kill yourself. He’d take tragic over lame any day. God, I hate him. Lie. My head hurts bad. I push my hands against my temples.
“Headache?” Mom asks.
“Yeah.”
“I’m not sure you can take anything right now.”
She means now that I’m a suicide attempt instead of just an addict. Labels mean something. Despite what it looks like, that label is a big fat lie. Despite the picture I painted for them, I did not want to kill myself. I’m completely sure of that. Mostly.
“My phone?”
“Honey, you smashed it.” I can tell she wants to give me what I want. Like when I was four and screaming for her to buy me something I didn’t really need. I can tell she wants to feel useful. “But I can get you another one. No problem.”
My phone. Gone. It’s stupid to be upset about it, but another tie to Leah is gone. We had the same phones. Dad gave them to us. Together.
“Allie?”
“I’m so tired. Going to go to sleep for a while.” Lie. I turn over.
“Okay.” She kisses my cheek. I wish she wouldn’t. Because I don’t deserve it. She doesn’t know about me. She doesn’t know I heard Leah up and moving around that night. That I didn’t think… She doesn’t know I could have stopped her. If I’d just gotten up and gone to her. If Mom knew, she’d hate me. Like Dad does.
“I’ll ask the nurse about something for your head,” she says as she leaves.
“Uh-huh,” I mumble and pretend to be asleep. Just one more lie piled on the heap.
“Oh, Allie? A psychiatrist is going to come in and see you. Dr. Ziggler, I think.” Sneaky-Mom timing.
Chapter 21
I hear the door open. A light switches on. A man walks over to my bed wearing green scrubs that make him look like a doctor. He is. Just not the kind who needs to wear scrubs. As one liar to another, I am offended by his weak attempt to make me believe he’s more powerful than he is.
“Hi, Allie.” He flips the page. Is he checking to see if he has my name right? How many suicide attempts could he have to deal with in one day? “I’m Dr. Ziggler.”
I take in his colors. Gray hair. Blue eyes. Platinum wedding band.
He pulls up a chair. The noise of the legs being dragged against the tile floor makes me wince.
“Headache?” he asks.
I put my hand to my head, a movement so practiced I don’t even have to try to fake it, and that’s a relief. “Yeah,” I manage.
“Hmmmm. You get those a lot?”
I wonder what this could possibly have to do with taking a bunch of pills. One doesn’t lead to the other. Necessarily. I stay silent.
He clears his throat. “You get a lot of headaches, Allie?”
“Yes.”
“And you take…” The rustling pages are like helicopter blades cutting into me. “Relpax, Topomax, Phenergan, Frova…”
“Not all at once.” It’s supposed to be a joke. I hope he laughs. He does, a little.
“Your tox screen from your stomach showed different sedatives and stimulants. That’s just what you took yesterday.” He flips another paper in my chart. “The blood tox screen, the other stuff you’ve taken within the last couple of months, showed additional recreational drugs, cough and cold medicines. So I guess I’ve got to ask, your headache meds not working?”
I stare at the wall.
“You want to tell me about it?” He lowers my chart and looks at me, like he’s got all the time in the world. Like it doesn’t matter that it’s dark outside and he probably has a family to get home to or that he’s ignoring the phone vibrating like mad in his pocket. He focuses on me. That almost makes it worse.
“I don’t know what to say.”
“I’m worried about you, Allie,” Dr. Ziggler says, making me wish I were worthy of his concern. Because he’s a good guy. I can tell. Even if he lied to me with the scrubs, he had his reasons.
“I’m good,” I say.
He laughs.
“Considering, I mean.”
“I’m not sure I believe that.” He puts his left foot on his right knee and lets it bounce a little.
I stare, because even though it’s a little gesture, it says he’s confident and nice. If he played baseball, he’d be a second baseman, I’m guessing.
“Allie…” Dr. Ziggler tries to get me back on subject.
“I didn’t mean it. I didn’t think… I wasn’t trying…” I stare at the wall again, the tears wrenching themselves out of me, even though I try to keep them in. “Nobody believes me. But I really didn’t.”
“You seemed like you did.” His voice is calm. “That was a lot of medicine to take if you didn’t.”
“I guess I did at the time. But I don’t anymore,” I offer. True.
“Can you tell me why?” he asks.
I shake my head.
“Do you know?” He persists.
“No.” Lie.
“You want me to let you in on a little secret?” He leans forward.
“Okay,” I say.
“I believe you.”
He shouldn’t. I’m lying. I know exactly why I did it. Every reason is lined up in my head like crayons in a box.
“Most people don’t know why,” he continues. “Even when the reasons seemed so clear at the time.”
Maybe. When I was taking the pills, I didn’t think about it. I just did it. But I had to know on some level, didn’t I?
“The most important thing is to be honest. It’s the only way to get better. Whatever is hurting you, we have to get it out of you. That’s the only way to get better.”
Maybe.
“So, will you try to let me help you. Will you do that?”
“Yes.” Lie.
“Good. Because I want you to get better. There’s no secret that’s worth this.” He holds up his hands to indicate my current address.
I stay silent.
“You’re seeing Dr. Applegate, right?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like you to stay here for a little while. Till you feel strong.”
I wipe the tears from my face.
“Sometimes having someone you love die makes you feel so sad, you don’t want to live anymore. It’s understandable. I’d like to put you on something to make you feel better. Exchange all those other pills for just one. Will you let me do that?”
He makes this sound so personal. He’s worried about me. Would I l
et him help me? I’m so beat-down tired that I almost believe him. Almost. Then I remember. He’s lying too. He showed me the moment he walked in wearing scrubs, as if he were the kind of doctor who operates instead of just messes with your mind and hands out pills.
I think about Leah throwing away her pills because they made her fat. The same pills that made me feel drugged and tired and totally disconnected. Those are the pills he thinks will fix me. “I’ll try,” I lie.
The door opens. Mom slides in. Dr. Ziggler unfolds his leg and pushes himself out of the chair, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Ziggler.”
“Karen Blackmore,” Mom replies.
“Allie and I were just talking about a few things.”
Mom looks at me. Then back at him.
“I’d like to put Allie on an antidepressant.”
Mom nods.
The door opens again. Dad’s entrance is stronger than Mom’s but quieter than his earlier one. Contrite Dad is on the scene now. He makes my stomach crawl, but he’s not dangerous. Not like angry Dad.
Dr. Ziggler extends his hand again. “Mr. Blackmore?”
Dad nods.
“I’m Dr. Ziggler. I was just telling your wife…”
“Ex-wife,” Mom chimes in. I want to crawl under the covers. Dad gives Dr. Ziggler an aggravated smile. Lie. They’re still married. For now.
“I was just telling Karen that we’d like to put Allie on an antidepressant for starters. Time in our inpatient facility will allow me to monitor her to make certain she reaches therapeutic levels.”
“No.”
“No to the medicine or no to the inpatient stay?” Mom demands.
“No to the stay.”
“Mr. Blackmore, I think you’re making a mistake,” Dr. Ziggler says.
Dad flashes his aggravated smile again. “Thank you for your help, but we can give Allie everything she needs at home.”
“She needs a neutral place to heal,” Dr. Ziggler insists. “She needs a break from whatever it is that made her feel compelled to take those pills.”
“Don’t worry, Doctor. We’ve already made some changes.”
My stomach turns. I wonder what he means by that. With Dad it could be anything. He knows how to hurt you in the name of loving you. Just ask Mom.