by Stacie Ramey
When I’m done, I sit and look at what I’ve made, my hands shaking. I pull my phone out. I take close-up pictures of the letters and then back up and show the full view of each painting. I send a copy of each to Dad. And then to John Strickland. Exhausted, I turn out the lights and lock the door. I walk across our yard and back into my house. I open the cabinet and return the pills. That’s when I see Mom’s note on the counter.
Let Sophie out earlier. Just go to sleep when you’re done. Your paintings will be coming home tomorrow. XOXO, Mom.
I pick up Sophie and walk upstairs. When I get to my room, I collapse in bed, fully clothed. I’m about to fall asleep when my phone lights up.
They’re beautiful. Like you! John Strickland’s text reads.
Gnite. Sweet dreams.
I put the phone under my pillow and close my eyes. I’m beat-down tired, and I could use some sweet dreams. When I’m almost all the way out, I see her. Leah. I’m sure she’s just part of my dream. But I don’t care. She’s sitting in the grass, the sun a halo behind her head. She’s clapping her hands for me. The last thing I see before I’m out is an explosion of sweetheart-rose pink.
Chapter 26
I sit in the waiting room, restless, my paintings by my side.
The receptionist opens the door for me. I slide past her and take my place on Dr. Applegate’s couch. She comes in from the other side of the office, closing a door behind her. I wonder what’s behind that door. But Dr. Applegate isn’t required to hand over her secrets. That’s my gig.
“Good morning, Allie,” she says.
“Hi.”
“How are you feeling?” she asks before turning to see that I’ve brought a little show-and-tell.
I shift in my seat. How am I feeling? Pretty freakin’ crappy. And raw. And used up. All in all, I feel pretty much done. “I’m fine,” I say.
“Fine?” she asks, her eyes resting on my display.
“Yes. Fine,” I insist.
“What have you brought me?” she asks.
“Just did them last night.” I hold each one carefully by the edges.
“May I?” she asks.
“Yes.”
She walks over and picks up the camo-rose picture. She holds it up and examines it. Then she walks to the light by the window and turns it so she can see every bit of it. I should be nervous. I usually am. But these paintings are good. I know that. And more than that, they are exactly what I envisioned when I painted them.
“Do you have a name for this one?”
“Downfall.”
She turns to me and flashes a bright smile. “I love this. It’s very complex. These words. I’m assuming they are important.”
I nod.
“Do you want to tell me what they mean?”
“No.”
She extends her hand so we can switch paintings. Her face screws up. Finally she says, “This one feels as if it’s about pain. A driving rain kind of pain. Relentless. Unyielding. I want to look away, but I can’t. Because it draws me in. Is that right?”
My throat closes. I can barely get the word out. “Yes.”
“These are excellent. Do you have a title for the second one?”
“Reign.”
“Like rain from the sky or the other kind?”
“The other kind.”
“They’re very powerful.”
“Thanks.”
“How would you say these compare to the ones you did of Leah?”
“I wouldn’t.”
“Your art has changed. That’s normal, considering.”
I look at my painting. My art has changed, but is it for the better?
“I mean, you could have gone darker with your art. You didn’t. You got more connected to it. You got closer.”
There’s part of me that believes this, that thought this before she even said it, but I’ve always got those doubts about my art. I mean, when you are so close to it, how can you really know? “It’s true. Think about the Leah pictures. Besides the pink one, can you tell me about the others?”
“There was one with her wearing her skinny black jeans and Sean’s jersey.”
“And what perspective was that painted from?”
“From the front.”
“And below or above?”
“She was sitting on the window seat in my room.”
“Where were you?”
“I was on the floor.”
“Why?”
“It’s just how we set it up.”
“We?”
“Leah and me.”
“But I thought you were the artist.”
“I am… I was…” I squirm in my seat. All of a sudden, I’m feeling overwhelmed, remembering how I let her manipulate me. How I always let her decide.
“But this painting, the rose one, who set that one up?”
I look at it. “Nobody did.”
“You had to. You were the artist, right?”
“I didn’t.” I stand and pick up the painting. “It just…came to me.”
“It came to you? Why? When you were painting it, were you worrying what people would think of it?”
“No.”
“Did you worry about what Leah would think when you were done painting her?”
“Yes.”
“All the pictures of her? Did you worry each time what she’d think?”
“Yes.”
“How about other paintings you did? Before Leah’s. Did you worry what people, your art teacher, you parents, the judges at the contest, the other art students would think?”
“Yes.”
“But not these, right?”
“Right.”
“Because your art has changed. It’s matured.”
Guilt invades me. Isn’t it wrong to benefit from this? How can I get better because Leah died? I’m the one who gets to live. I’m the one who gets to paint. Why? I close my eyes.
“Your art is deepening. That’s good. That helps you. But I think it’s important to think about how you view your art and yourself.”
My head starts to pound. My hands go to it. The pain I tapped into when I painted these wants its payment.
“Think back to the first Leah painting. The pink one. Can you think of a word that describes Leah in that painting?”
Tears drip down my cheek. “Flawless. Leah was flawless.”
“Flawless. And you?”
“I don’t know…”
“If she were flawless, then that makes you…”
“I don’t know.”
“You do. If Leah was flawless, you were…”
“Not. Okay? You happy? I was not like her.”
“What does that mean?”
“Perfect. I wasn’t perfect. Not like she was.” My face starts to heat. My breathing gets tight. I shift in my seat. I don’t want to talk about Leah like this. Have Dr. Applegate dissect her.
Dr. Applegate softens her voice. “You think Leah was perfect?”
I stay silent. She can’t make me testify against Leah. She can’t.
“Allie, do you think Leah was perfect?”
“No. I guess not, okay?” I push the heel of my palm into my eye. “I mean, perfect people don’t kill themselves, do they?”
“They don’t?”
Leah wasn’t perfect. She wasn’t. But she was the best I had. And way better than I will ever be. Wasn’t she?
“Allie?”
“No, perfect people don’t kill themselves,” I say again.
“No, Allie, they don’t. But to be fair to Leah, nobody’s perfect. Even if that’s how you painted her, she still wasn’t. Do you know why you always compare yourself to her?”
I shake my head.
“I think you see yourself as reflections of each ot
her.”
“I guess.”
“But it doesn’t have to be like that. You both could be powerful. You could both be wrong. She doesn’t have to be the way you painted her. It could be different.”
I sit silent. Is she right? Did I take make myself smaller just so Leah could shine more? Was that because Leah expected it? Or did I just paint myself that way? Isn’t this what sisters did for each other?
“Tell me what you thought of the pact,” Dr. Applegate says. “What it meant to you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on, Allie.”
I grit my teeth against the barrage of questions I know will come now that Dr. Applegate is in her rhythm. But part of me thinks it’s time to do this. Or at least that I’m tired of having to keep it all in. “It was a promise.”
“A promise of what?”
“Like a safety net.”
“If it were a safety net, why don’t you think Leah used it?”
I look out the window. A few leaves on the tree have already started to turn. My stomach twists. Everything changes. Everything. There’s no stopping it.
“Allie, this isn’t a rhetorical question. I need you to answer. Why don’t you think Leah came to you about the pact?”
“Because she didn’t trust me. Because I wasn’t strong enough or good enough or just plain enough.”
Dr. Applegate shakes her head. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it.”
I stay silent. Dr. Applegate can speculate all she likes, but how will I ever know the real answer? No one will. Leah took that secret with her.
“You keep telling me you’re not depressed, and I agree—you’re not. But Leah was. She told Dr. Gates that sometimes it felt like she was drowning, even though she wasn’t in the water.”
I nod. That’s true. I know it is. There were times when Leah would get so dark, no one could reach her. She’d hide away in her room until she was feeling better. I remember sitting, my back against the door, waiting. When I was little, I’d slip notes under for her, but I’d stopped that long before she killed herself because I knew when Leah was like that, you just had to wait it out.
“She said sometimes that the darkness was so heavy, she couldn’t see a way out of it. That’s why I think she did it. For some reason, whatever happened at the end, Leah didn’t see a way for it to get better. She couldn’t find her way out of her darkness, and she didn’t tell you for two reasons.”
I lean forward, my hands on my knees. I know Dr. Applegate is guessing, but maybe she’s on to something. Maybe, just maybe, she can help me with this. “What reasons?” I ask.
“One, she didn’t want you to stop her. Two, she didn’t want you to follow her.”
Her words light a fire inside me. Could she be right? Could it be that simple? I lean my head back and close my eyes. What I wouldn’t give to know the truth.
“Okay, Allie, why don’t you relax?”
I nod, too tired to fight her or her treatments. I let myself go. For once my mind doesn’t seek out the memories. This time I go back to that happy place in my mind I went last time we did this exercise. The ocean. The colors. Cool and clean and beautiful. Me. Alone. Until I’m not. Leah finds me. I don’t look for her, but she finds me anyway. And at first I don’t really want to see her.
She’s walking into the ocean, her hair curled at the ends like the mortician did for her funeral. Like she wore in the production of Beauty and the Beast.
I almost don’t want her to go too deep into the water. I don’t want her curls to be swallowed by the waves, but I don’t say anything. I watch her walk all the way in, the water now almost up to her neck, her hair trailing in the sea. I think she’s going to be mad at me for not bringing her back. I’m sure she’s going to say something mean. I can’t take that right now. If Leah is sharp with me, I’m going to shatter.
Instead, she reaches out for me. She looks soft, like she did in the pictures with John Strickland. “I’m sorry, Allie. For everything.” She starts to cry.
Her nails are perfect, the French manicure Dad sprung for so she would be perfect in her casket. Her silver ring shines on her delicate hand.
I point to it. “John’s?” I ask.
She nods.
Leah bobs in the water in time to the slowly churning waves. I bob too. It’s what you do when you’re this far out. “I know you’re mad, but I didn’t want you to know how sick I was.”
“I wouldn’t have cared.”
“But I would’ve. I was your big sister. I wanted you to think I was perfect.”
My mouth goes dry. “You said it wasn’t Dad, but it was.”
“It wasn’t only him. He was one of the reasons. He was going to be my way out. If I could live with him, I could go to Southside. The dance coach there, Colleen Dimarco, loved me. It would all be fine. I felt better than I had in days. The pressure lifted. You know?”
I nod.
“And I got all excited. You were going to the party with me. I wanted to make that night special for you. My baby sister was growing up. I thought you wanted that.”
“I did.” Lie.
“And we had a good day together, didn’t we? We had fun. A great last day.”
“We got ready together,” I say.
“You wanted to go to the party that night,” Leah adds. “Because Max was out with someone. You didn’t know who, but he was going on a date. Remember? And you had decided you were ready to do it, to show him you were ready, that you could be fun too.”
I’m dizzy. My ears are ringing. She’s right. He came over just before I left, smelling like my favorite body spray: menthol and something spicy. I loved that smell. It made me want to press my body against his. That body spray made me want to act on feelings I always pretended weren’t there. My face burns. He had put the cologne on for Emery.
Leah looked in the mirror, holding a blue minidress to her body. “Hey, what do you think about this one? You can wear the red one; it makes you look eighteen at least.”
I had taken the dress from her hands, mine shaking. Leah was trusting me with her clothes and her friends. She walked to her desk and opened the top drawer. She pulled out a crumpled- up napkin. She opened it. Inside were two little blue pills. She held them up.
“You might need a little help loosening up tonight. Take one now and then one right before, you know.” Leah smirked. “If you need.”
A lump forms in the back of my throat, the same size and shape as the pill I took from her. I needed some power. Max had taken all I had, and I couldn’t embarrass Leah. She said the pills made her more fun. I figured if she could do it, I could. I remember. I wanted to be fun. Like Leah and Emery. Like the girls Max liked.
“Not bad,” she called as she held up her phone and took a picture. “You look sophisticated.”
I remember being so happy. Leah thought I looked good. Not baby-sister good. Sophisticated good.
“We got to the party, and right away you started drinking.” She continues, “I thought it was cool. That you’d be okay. You chose Jason, and he was all in. I told you to take it easy. I went to find Sean.”
I see it happen in my mind, like I’m there again. Jason flirting with me, handing me that frozen drink. I started to believe it was going to be okay. My mind got all loose. Jason leaned into me, his eyes focused just on me. On me. His hand played with the top of my dress.
“You’re so pretty, Allie.”
I smiled and leaned in to kiss him. And it felt good. I remember I wanted to. Mostly. But I was scared too. So I drank some more. Sophisticated, fun girls don’t chicken out. I had to do this.
“You want to go somewhere more private?” he asked.
“Okay.”
He led me to one of the back bedrooms. I remember his friends whistling a little as we passed by. He turned off the light, leaving just the glow from th
e fish tank to illuminate our way to the bed. He started kissing me.
“Shouldn’t we lock the door?” I asked.
“Oh, okay. Be right back.” He got up, and I took the other pill out of my purse and bit it in half. I swallowed the pill with a big drink. “No luck. No lock. It’s fine. Nobody’s going to disturb us.”
Only he was wrong. After we were done, the door flew open. The lights went on. I heard laughter. A bunch of football players and Vanessa stood there. My face was hot. They came forward and tried to bump fists with Jason, who was trying his best to shield me. Instead, they slapped each other’s hands. The sounds echoed in my head.
Jason looked at me like he wasn’t sure what to do. I tried to cover up, but my body wasn’t working right. It felt wet between my legs. I looked down. There was a little circle of blood. Blush pink. I was surprised how pink it was. I reached for my clothes.
“Cherry popped,” someone laughed.
I wanted to puke. I was a joke. A party foul.
“Get out of here!” Jason yelled.
“Relax,” a voice said. One I recognized. Vanessa. She snapped a picture on her cell.
When I was dressed, I went to find Leah. I just wanted to go home. But when I got out to the party, I couldn’t find her.
Where are u? I texted Leah.
I pushed past people, not even paying attention to who they were. My legs were rubbery. The sounds of the party were ridiculously loud in my head, making me feel like I was being bombarded. Vanessa approached me. I tried to move past her.
“Two Blackmore girls crash in one night. Does it get any better than this?” She smiled sharply. Sharklike. Then she said, “Ask Leah why she’s not on the team anymore. Ask her.”
Hands came up behind me. Jason. “You okay?”
I twirled around. “I need to find Leah.”
“I’ll help.” My mind shifts back to here and now. With Leah.
“Leah, where were you? I was looking all over for you. After Jason. After… I wanted to…”