Wake

by Abria Mattina

  “Sing with me.”

  The side door flies open with such force that it bangs back on its hinges and slams shut. Elise storms in, red-faced and tear-stained. She’s sobbing like Dumbledore died all over again

  “What’s wrong, honey?”

  Elise blows right past Mom to throw her arms around my waist. She clings to me and cries loudly. All attempts to extract information from her are useless; she’s crying too hard to speak clearly. Mom and I share perplexed looks over her head.

  “That boy?” Mom mouths. I shrug. “Did you and Carey have a fight, sweetie?” Mom says. She rubs soothing circles across Elise’s shoulders. Elise just shakes her head no, she didn’t fight with her friend, but that’s all she can communicate.

  “Come on.” I shift her so she’s clinging to me sideways and walk her upstairs with an arm around her shoulders. I take her to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Her tears don’t really stop, but she’s able to catch a breath with her head between her knees and a cool cloth on the back of her neck.

  “What happened?”

  Elise pants a little, trying to find her shaky voice. “I w-went to talk to W-Willa—”

  Oh fucking hell.

  “I thought maybe you guys had a fight, and”—she interrupts herself to wipe her drippy nose— “that you’d make up if you just…I dunno, talked?”

  “Why would you try to interfere?”

  Elise sniffles. “Because the two of you fight over the stupidest stuff.”

  “What did she say?” Wrong question. Elise’s face crumples into a look of anguish and a fresh wave of sobs makes her impossible to understand. Holding her doesn’t seem to help. I keep wiping her cheeks with my thumbs, but it’s like sandbagging in a monsoon.

  “What did she say, Lise?”

  Elise shakes her head. “I’m not gonna repeat it.”

  “That bad?” Elise nods and tucks her head under my chin. “Do you want your toy wand?” Dumb little things like that always make her feel better.

  “Yeah, so I can stab her with it.”

  “What did she say? Tell me.”

  Elise firmly shakes her head. “It was mean. Very mean.”

  I keep trying to badger the story out of her, but she won’t budge. Eventually her tears run out of steam and she starts to collect herself. I give her a minute alone in the bathroom to wash up—and give myself an opportunity to text Willa.

  Was it really necessary to make my sister cry?

  It’s going to take one hell of a reason to keep me from keying her car tomorrow.

  Tell her to keep her nose out of it, then.

  Bitch. She has no right to be mean to Elise; my sister didn’t do anything to her.

  Elise comes out of the bathroom and crawls onto her bed. She sits facing me, crosses her legs, and hugs a pillow to her chest. “What,” she says seriously, “did the two of you do to each other?”

  “Never mind.”

  “I do mind. Nobody says hurtful stuff like that without a good cause. What happened?”

  “Willa’s got…secrets.”

  “We all do. What’s that got to do with you?”

  “She told them to me, that’s what.”

  Elise narrows her eyes at me. “And what did you do?”

  It’s a very long story and not at all easy to tell. Elise interrupts frequently, asking questions and making me repeat myself. She wants to know my exact words, my exact inflection, Willa’s tone of reply and the details of body language, like the conversation was a play and she’s dissecting it in drama class. She starts to cry again at the rough parts, and then practically jumps down my throat when I try to stop telling the story.

  “Tell me the whole thing, Jem,” she says through her teeth.

  “You’ll just get upset.”

  “I’m already upset. Tell me what you said!”

  Elise’s eyes are still red and puffy at the end of the story, but she’s no longer crying. She hugs her pillow tighter against her front, looking off into space with a deeply thoughtful expression.

  “I get it,” she says quietly.

  “I always knew there was something off about her, but I didn’t think she was actually insane.”

  “Not that.” Elise shakes her head. “I mean why she did it. Everything else—the series of bad decisions, I mean—started when her sister died. It’s…it’s the consequences, sort of; not the root of he problem.”

  “When she killed her sister,” I correct her. “The difference is subtle, but meaningful.”

  “No, she helped her sister to die. I understand why,” Elise insists. “If it’s all the same, if her sister was going to die anyway, Willa did it out of love. The sister didn’t have to suffer any more. She could have hung around in pain for weeks.”

  “You’re missing the point. It’s illegal to help someone commit suicide. She had no idea what she was doing—just gave her sister a fistful of pills. You don’t know that it was painless and peaceful.”

  Elise leans over to kiss my shoulder. “I would have done it for you,” she murmurs. “Legal or not.”

  “What?” I push her away so I can read her face. She’s being completely serious.

  “If you were going to die I wouldn’t want you to suffer.” Her lower lip trembles. “If we could say goodbye and I could help it end quickly, well, I think that’s a better way to go than just waiting for the inevitable.” Her voice cracks a little on the end. “It’s not cruelty—that’s love.”

  “If you love someone you don’t make their last moments about fear and let them die alone,” I argue quietly. I can’t believe we’re having this conversation. I’ve gone out of my way for months not to talk to Elise about dying, and here it sounds like she’s thought the whole thing through when I wasn’t looking.

  “I don’t think it matters,” she says. “Once you’re dead, you don’t much care about any of that. And the people who keep on living get to do it with the knowledge that they did what they could.” She sniffs back snot. “There’s nothing graceful about dying, anyway.” Willa said that once. “We prolong lives so much longer than we should in hospitals.”

  I can’t believe I’m hearing this shit. I get off her bed and head for the door.

  “Thank God you’re not my next-of-kin.”

  The slam of the door behind me doesn’t do enough to distance me from that conversation. She would have accelerated my demise, if it had been up to her. And all I thought about for her was a quick and natural death.

  Mom hears my loud exit from Elise’s bedroom and comes to the upper hall to investigate.

  “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fucked.” I slam my bedroom door behind me and lock it.

  I take a shower to calm my nerves, but it doesn’t help. When I get out I find a note from Elise slipped under my door: I’m sorry.

  I can’t deal with this shit right now.

  I need to talk to someone who gets it, which immediately rules out all of my Ottawa friends. I thought Elise would understand my position, having gone through my illness alongside me, but that turned out to be a fucking catastrophe. The only person who can stand to talk to me about the fucked up shit in my life is…Willa.

  As I hang my bathrobe back in the closet—the guy in the mirror looks hideous and pinched—I consider all the awkward ways that telling Elise is going to come back to bite me in the ass. I shouldn’t have said anything. I should have brushed her off, like she did when I asked her what Willa said.

  If Willa hadn’t made her cry none of this would have happened.

  I grab my phone off the dresser and send a short text: I told her about you. Before I can tell the rest of the story—that Elise actually agrees with her messed up, borderline homicidal method—Willa replies with: You don’t deserve friends.

  So that’s what she thinks of me, is it? I may be standoffish and grouchy, but I’m not inherently a bad person. I don’t deliberately harm the people I love.

  I can’t believe I ever liked you.

/>   It’s not necessary to tell me what a monster I am.

  I don’t think I could. There’s no word for what I think of her.

  Ask Hudson to assign you a new lab partner tomorrow, she texts. Don’t put yourself through the trouble of having to acknowledge me.

  For once, I’m glad she’s shutting down and pushing me away. It spares me the trouble of having to make peace with her.

  I’ll do that.

  I toss my phone aside and flop back on my bed with an angry sigh. It’s not cold in here, but the air pricks at my bare skin. I should stop wallowing, get up and put clothes on. But I don’t. I lie there and stew in anger.

  I only relent and sit up when my teeth begin to chatter. I’ve still got the waterproof patch on my central line. I peel it off and toss it at the wastebasket. I miss.

  The guy in the closet mirror is watching me again, studying me where I sit on the corner of the bed. Jesus, he’s gross. I want to tell him to fucking eat something and hasn’t he ever heard of a tan? He’s like an androgynous alien, boney and hairless with a machine sprouting out of his chest.

  I shut the closet door on him. But then I’m left alone with myself, cold and naked.

  As I put on clothes, systematically covering up the disgustingly pale flesh and jutting bones, I find some relief in Willa’s confession. Now that we’re no longer involved, my inadequacy doesn’t matter.

  If only I could get her out of my fucking head.

  Friday

  Elise doesn’t say anything to me over breakfast. Or in the car. Or when I sit down with her clique at lunch. I chance a look over at Willa’s usual table, but she isn’t there. Weird. As I cross the parking lot to get to the portables I notice that her rusty Toyota isn’t here, either. She’s absent. Willa is never absent.

  Maybe she’s sick.

  She was fine yesterday.

  Maybe she transferred out.

  That bothers me far more than it should.

  I didn’t get to say goodbye.

  Are you sure you want to?

  I want some closure, at least. I want her to apologize to Elise. I want to part ways with the knowledge that she’s going to a place that will be able to deal with her problems.

  Willa’s absence distracts the hell out of me all through Social Studies. Maybe I could talk to Paige Holbrook or Hannah Trilby—Willa might have mentioned to her other friends if she was planning to leave school.

  Her other friends?

  Slip of the tongue.

  I take stock of the parking lot once more as I head to English for my last class of the day. Her car still isn’t here. It’s stupid, but I head for the nurse’s office instead of my English class. It’s weird. I’ve never come here as a visitor. The nurse looks up at me from her desk and asks if I’m not feeling well.

  “No, I’m fine. Has Willa Kirk been in here today?”

  The nurse finds my question surprising. “No, she hasn’t.”

  “Great.”

  I leave the main office to…stand in the parking lot. Where was I going?

  My phone is in my hand and I’m dialing her home number. Hopefully she’s just sick and stayed home to rest.

  Hopefully? What do you care?

  Frank answers the phone with a gruff ‘hello.’ I ask if Willa is available to come to the phone and he asks to know who is calling.

  “It’s Jem Harper.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “Yes, sir, I am.”

  “Well then would you like to explain why you’re obviously not in class, calling my sister in the middle of the afternoon?”

  “I...uh, I noticed Willa was absent from our Soc class. I wanted to know if she needed me to bring anything she might need. Homework, things in her locker…”

  “Get to class,” he says. “And leave Willa alone, while you’re at it. She’s had enough trouble.” He hangs up on me. I have this rotten feeling of dread in my gut. She’s had enough trouble. Maybe her brother or parents pulled her out of school without warning her—a reform school might be in the cards after all.

  One of the hall monitors sees me standing in the middle of the parking lot. He comes out of the building and calls out to me, “Do you have a pass?”

  She’s gone and you’re never going to see her again.

  I turn and vomit between the cars. My head is spinning. The only thing that keeps me upright is the hand I have braced on the trunk of the nearest car.

  “Hey!” The hall monitor approaches me and lays a tentative hand on my back. It’s such a light touch, like he’s afraid I’ll break. Willa never once touched me like that.

  “You all right?” Before I can answer he announces that he’s going to walk me to the nurse’s office. Stupid overeager freshman.

  Then I realize the tire I threw up on belongs to Chris Elwood’s car, and I feel a little bit better.

  Saturday

  The sun is high in the east by the time I roll out of bed and walk, still more asleep than awake, to the bathroom to take a shower. I strip with my brain on autopilot and cover my central line just as steam begins to rise from behind the curtain.

  As I doze under the warm spray coherent thoughts begin to circulate. They’re timid and fragmented at first: I’m hungry. The chord progression needs work. Where’d I put my iPod? It’s Saturday—what time is it? Late enough to go over to—

  That’s a sobering thought. No more Saturdays at the Kirk house. Not that I want to go over there, but…what the hell will I do with my time?

  Having no friends turns out to be really good for the homework situation. I bet that’s why dorks are all so studious; not by choice, but by virtue of boredom. I knock out all my assignments by noon and have nothing left to do. There’s nothing on TV. It’s too rainy to go for a walk. There’s nothing to do in Smiths Falls. Mom and Dad are out of the house, shopping for shrubs to plant by the porch. Elise won’t talk to me and Eric is at work. And I can’t stop thinking about Willa. Every hour it gets harder to resist the urge to call her. For all I know she could already be on a campus where students wear wristband tracking devices and lockdown is the norm.

  I don’t really care about her. I just want to know what’s going on with her.

  Riiiight.

  Shut up.

  I call Ava. I need a dose of her twisted reality to take the edge off mine.

  “What do you want, bitch?” Ava’s familiarly crass greeting makes me feel a little bit better. I ask her if she’s busy and she says she’s setting up for a band practice.

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Boredom.” It’s a synonym for loneliness in my case. Ava sees right through me and asks if I’ve got nothing better to do.

  “Pretty much.”

  “How’s that girl you’ve been chasing?”

  “Uh, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “What, is she dating some shaved gorilla now? Doesn’t know what she’s missing out on with you?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  “What’s it like?”

  “Never mind.”

  “You sound sexually frustrated. Your voice goes up an octave like that when you’re horny.” She laughs at me. “Is your girl a tease?”

  “No.” Maybe. Or maybe I just have an overactive imagination. But it’s hard to picture her in a nice way now. All that comes to mind are fistfuls of pills and the ragged scar on her hand.

  Ava can tell I’m not being truthful. “Rub one out. Ease the tension.”

  “Ava.”

  “Oh, right.” Her tone dips from lighthearted to flat and sarcastic. “Is that what happened? Did you get her into bed and then disappoint her?” Damn it. I thought it had been long enough—Ava’s attention span is a short one—and that she wouldn’t be sore about our abortive screw anymore. I guess not.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “No, really, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. I knew, you didn’t.”

  “Why
did you do it?” she says shrewdly.

  “Why did you?”

  I’m used to that trick causing the end of a conversation, the way it does with Willa. Just ask her something she doesn’t want to tell, and the whole discussion shuts down. I’m so used to it that I’m caught off guard when Ava actually answers the question.

  “I felt bad for you.” I don’t need to hear that. “Your turn.”

  I swallow, considering how I can lie plausibly about this. I can’t.

  “I…sort of, um…I liked the feeling of being wanted.”

  “Was the, uh, problem really because of the cancer?” Ava asks. I can’t help but smile. She’s not trying to give me a hard time; it’s just that her pride is wounded. I know a thing or two about that, but she doesn’t deserve to second-guess herself.

  “Ava, we both know you’re the sexiest chick to ever attach an amp to a violin.”

  “Flatterer.”

  “Fine, whatever, but it ups my street cred to say I banged you, so don’t go telling people otherwise.” That makes her laugh and she calls me a lying cocksucker. I’m officially forgiven. I let the tension out of my shoulders and crawl onto the bed, relaxing against the pillows for a comfortable and hopefully time-consuming conversation with my foul-mouthed friend.

  “Come on now, how’s your girl?” she asks. She had to bring that up, didn’t she?

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” And Willa certainly isn’t mine in any sense of the term.

  “Did you give up on her already?”

  “It’s not like that.”

  Ava scoffs. “You want to explain it in a way that doesn’t make you look like a gaping vagina? Because you were already behaving like a pussy about her before, and this sounds worse.”

  “I was not.”

  “Yes, you were. Massive vag. And not even the good kind with a wax job and a hood piercing—I mean a had-six-kids bat cave kind of vagina.”