Wake

by Abria Mattina

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Your tone did.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way.”

  “Then what did you mean?”

  “I was trying to clarify the situation. You said you gave your meds to a junkie.”

  “And that makes me a horrible person.”

  “I didn’t say that!” I don’t really care about the addict. I don’t think it was Willa’s most admirable moment, but it’s small change compared to killing her sister.

  “I gave her my Ambien because she bothered me, alright? People get in your face if they know you have a prescription for something good. Giving her my Ambien got her out of my face, and in return she did stuff for me.”

  “What kind of stuff?”

  “Prison mentality, remember? You have to have a group of people you rely on to keep the cage from overshadowing the wide world beyond. Sometimes she’d give me extra food, or access to a newspaper, or cause a scene so the rest of us could get a few minutes without the orderlies breathing down our necks.”

  “The staff must have known she was stoned.”

  “Of course they did. They just had a hard time tracing her sources. She’d take anything, so they knew by her behavior—calm one day and buzzing the next—that she had a couple people to pump drugs from. Antipsychotics made her into a total nightmare.”

  “You still shouldn’t have given your pills to her.”

  Willa snorts. “It was either that or get in a fight with her. There are no heroes in hell. You just get by as well as you can, and that’s it.”

  “You’re rationalizing.”

  Willa steals a cold carrot out of my bowl. “Alright, smartass. Let’s say I tell you that you shouldn’t have taken all those chemotherapy treatments. Sure, it made you cancer-free, but look at all the shit it cost you along the way. Would you throw your hands up and admit I’m right? Or would you defend your decision to live in pieces instead of die whole? We’re all just getting by with the options available to us. Get off your high horse.”

  “That is complete bullshit,” I tell her. “You made a choice to do what you did. I didn’t just decide one day to have cancer.”

  Willa just shakes her head. “You don’t get it. All the things you loved, the things that cancer cost you—do you think that loss would have been any less significant if it had come from a bad decision instead of random accident? Would it have made you feel empowered to throw it all away on purpose? Or would it haunt you that the responsibility was yours to bear?” She snatches my bowl away and gets up to dump the dregs of soup in the sink.

  “You told me my feelings mattered when I agreed not to cut you out,” she says. “So quit belittling me.”

  I hate it when she’s right. “I’m sorry.” The apology doesn’t do much good. She’s on a roll now.

  “You bitch, piss and moan constantly that you’re so fucking hard-done-by. Imagine how awful you’d feel if you were actually at fault for the bad things that have happened to you.”

  “What do you want me to say? That you’ve got the harder life?” That makes her pause. Willa stands there in the middle of the kitchen with her mouth hanging open. I’ve stunned her speechless.

  “You…are so fucking dense,” she says quietly, like she can’t quite believe it. “This isn’t a contest. I don’t want to one-up you. I want to matter to you.”

  “You think you don’t matter to me?” What planet is she on? I wouldn’t be here if she didn’t matter to me, even against my better judgment. I wouldn’t be driving myself insane trying to come to terms with her messed up past and frustrating personality. I wouldn’t be so thoroughly distracted by her absence from school. I would have walked away from her without a backward glance and been glad to be rid of her—yet here I am.

  “Forget it,” Willa says. She nods to the back door and tells me I can go now. I look at her, standing with her arms folded and the shades drawn over her eyes. She’s cold and closed in, retreating instead of continuing the fight.

  “We’re not done talking.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  “Will you drop the frigid bitch act for a minute? I know you’re human underneath. I am trying to understand the shit-ton of stuff you dumped on me last week, okay? I’m trying—and you haven’t always done that for me, so don’t act like I owe you anything. But I can only muster up so much compassion for—”

  “Shut up,” she interrupts me. “I don’t want your fucking compassion. I trusted you to at least treat me with civility, and you called me a nutcase and said that my pain was insignificant. Now how the fuck does that compare to me refusing to attend the pity party you’ve been throwing yourself for months?”

  She shouts the last part, so the silence that follows is like thick fog. It chokes the room and amplifies the distance between us, even though Willa is only a few feet away from me, fuming by the counter.

  Her anger doesn’t frighten me the way it used to. This is Willa. When things get rough she shuts down and blocks people out. When that fails she gets angry, pushing away instead of merely obstructing. And when that doesn’t work…she cracks.

  “Regardless”—her eyes narrow at me—“we’re still not done talking.”

  *

  Willa’s bedroom is more of a mess than usual. I suppose it’s to be expected. Willa herself is more of a mess than usual. She picks up a CD case off her shelf and hands it to me.

  “No, keep it, really.”

  “This doesn’t mean I forgive you.”

  “Ditto.”

  Willa sits down heavily on the edge of the bed. She’s got an odd sense of peace—or perhaps defeat—about her, and I don’t know how long it will last. She might give anger another try if I give her an excuse.

  “You took the rest of your meds when you got home?” She draws my memory back to Wednesday, to trying to take three pills at once without enough fluid to wash them down. Gag.

  “Yeah.”

  “Were you hurting before you said anything about it?”

  “Just a dull ache,” I tell her quietly.

  Willa nods sadly. When she speaks her voice is soft and mournful. “I shouldn’t have made you hike like that. I should have waited to take you there.”

  I can’t help but find that amusing. “Kirk, it would have hurt with or without the hike. I’ve got joint pain from—” I hesitate. I’m in the habit of avoiding this subject; I don’t know how to talk about it. So I leave the sentence hanging and shrug. “You probably already Googled it.”

  “I didn’t.” Well now I feel like a jerk for researching her medications.

  “Really?”

  “I told you, I care far less about your cancer than you think I do.” Willa sighs like she’s exhausted. I take a seat next to her on the edge of the bed and she doesn’t stop me.

  My phone vibrates again. The buzzing sounds louder than it actually is in the silence of Willa’s bedroom.

  “Excuse me.”

  I check my phone, expecting another angry text from Ava, but it’s a message from Elise: I put your backpack on the back seat. My mind immediately goes to medication. Is there something I forgot to take today? Something I didn’t bring with me that Elise thought I would be gone long enough to need?

  “Uh…give me a minute.”

  Willa doesn’t say anything. She just stares straight ahead with that dead look in her eye and gives no indication that she heard me. I leave her like that and go out to the car to retrieve my backpack.

  The backpack is empty of school stuff, but there is a book. I recognize the black cover without having to open it. It’s the photo album that usually sits on my third shelf. What the hell is it doing here?

  Elise’s loopy handwriting is on a sticky note on the cover: Please don’t screw this up.

  I call Elise from the driveway. She skips the hello and asks if Willa and I have made up yet.

  “Why the hell did you put this in my bag?”

  “I thought you might need it.”

  “Why?”r />
  “I thought she’d be…curious. You said you asked her questions, but she didn’t ask you any. Willa must wonder. And didn’t she show you her pictures?”

  “This isn’t a tit-for-tat situation.”

  “She’s your friend.”

  “Lise, I’m not sure what you were expecting, but I’m not here to make up with her. I’m here to get a clean break.”

  I move the phone away from my ear to spare myself from her squawk of indignation. “But it’s Willa.”

  “This doesn’t concern you.”

  “You’re not going to get a clean break,” she says moodily. That little snot.

  “Goodbye, Elise.” I hang up on her and silence the ringer so she can’t bother me by repeatedly trying to call back.

  Shit.

  I lock the car without putting the album back. Should I show it to Willa? Do I owe her an explanation when I plan to cut ties? Is it fair to share all this stuff and then never speak again?

  I turn the album over and find another of Elise’s cheeky little surprises: she taped a recent Polaroid of me to the back cover. It’s the snapshot she took after I came in from kissing Willa on the porch, right before Elise ratted me out to Mom.

  That’s the smile Ava was talking about.

  I look stupidly happy in the photo. It’s an image of a simpler time, before Willa’s baggage parked itself between us, revealing her to be something much more sinister than just an angry teenage girl.

  She can deal with your baggage.

  My baggage doesn’t include killing someone.

  Compared to her you look normal.

  All the more reason to end it.

  But what are you without her?

  I look back to the Kirk house. I could just get in the car and drive away right now. Willa probably wouldn’t miss me. She’s just as upset with me as I am with her, and she’s practically in a walking coma—I bet she hasn’t even realized I’ve left the room yet.

  A week ago that would have worried you.

  I don’t care anymore.

  Sure.

  I don’t.

  So drive away.

  We’re not done talking yet.

  You just can’t stand to leave.

  *

  Willa has moved all of two feet in the ten minutes I was away. She lies on her bed with her pillow resting squarely over her face. Blocking out the world, or a half-baked attempt to suffocate herself?

  I lift the pillow off her face and Willa lazily opens her eyes. “I thought you left.”

  “I just went down to the car.”

  Willa sits up like the movement is a great challenge and swings her legs out of bed. “Don’t let me keep you if you have some place to be,” she says.

  “I don’t,” I assure her. “We’re not done yet.” I sit next to her on the bed. “We still have to go to school and have class together. It’ll be awkward and unproductive unless we, uh…reach an understanding.”

  Willa sighs and nods. “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me.”

  “That’s not what I meant.” I shouldn’t speak so impulsively. As soon as the words are out, I wish I could take them back.

  So what did you mean, smartass?

  Willa asks the same question in fewer words.

  “Um…I don’t think we should totally ignore each other.”

  Willa looks over at me with dead eyes and a smirk. “Right. I forgot the part where you continue to use me until you can make other friends.”

  “No, it’s not like that.”

  “Don’t tell me you still want to be friends?”

  “No, I don’t.” I’m too disappointed in her to manage that. “But…I’m not ready to just cut you out completely.”

  “What if I’m ready to cut you out?” She’s giving me that sideways look that could mean anything, and it’s difficult not to show the effect her question has on me. She’s good at cutting people out cold turkey; it sucked last time she did it to me. I shouldn’t care about that anymore, but I do, and the wound is fresher than I’d care to admit.

  “Are you?”

  “No.” She shakes her head. “I still think well of you, for the most part. You’re the one who thinks I’m a monster.”

  Do I think that?

  “You think I’m a self-pitying fathead.”

  “Only sometimes. Most of the time you’re pretty cool. You’ve grown on me.” Willa offers up a weak smile. It’s sad to watch her meager attempt to seem happy. She knows it’s not working, so she relaxes her mouth back into an apathetic frown and clears her throat.

  “Did you forget your meds?” She points to the backpack near my foot.

  “No. Um…” I open the bag take out a black photo album. It’s… a peace offering? A way of settling a debt?

  “I still owe you, for showing me yours…” Willa stares at the book and makes no move to take it from me.

  “Show me.”

  “Uh…” I was sort of banking on her looking through it herself. I don’t want to have to discuss it. If she asked questions I would answer them, but I don’t want to do show-and-tell. I can’t.

  “Are you just doing this because I showed you mine?”

  “Yeah, speaking of, did you have braces? Because your teeth were really messed up as a kid.”

  Willa gives me a dry look. “Don’t try to change the subject.”

  “Fine, I owe you. Here.” I try to hand her the book.

  “You don’t owe me your history, and I don’t want it if that’s the only reason you’re offering.”

  “Will you just take the book?” I extend the album to her again.

  “No.”

  “Why can’t you just cooperate?”

  “Because you obviously want me to.” She smirks without humor. “You think showing me this stuff will really make you feel better about the situation?”

  “Maybe?” It’s one less loose end if we even the score. We’ll fully know each other’s pasts, insofar as we can, and the decision to cut ties will be informed and equitable.

  “Show me, Jem.”

  I don’t have the guts to show her. If she left it up to me, I would never open the cover. I need her to take it and turn the pages and really look and see, the way she made me see Thomasina.

  Maybe if I talk long enough, explaining the album without really showing her, she’ll get impatient and take it from me.

  “You already know I had a transplant. Elise was the donor. She and I are a match, but Eric and I aren’t, and he felt sort of…left out. He, um…well, he had a harder time with me being sick than Elise did. But he had this idea—he took pictures. I hated him for it at the time, but he said that at some point down the road I was going to have a rough day and I could look at these pictures to put a real bad day in perspective.”

  I hand her the album. She doesn’t take it.

  “If you don’t trust me enough to show me you shouldn’t have brought it here.”

  I hate it when she’s right.

  Bite the bullet.

  I balance the book on its spine and let it fall open. We’re starting from the middle of the book, then, at the shots Eric took around Christmastime. The shots on this particular page are of Elise and I. We’re lying side by side in the same hospital bed, even though that’s against the rules. We’re both wearing red and green toques and Elise has a surgical mask over her nose and mouth. Eric drew a smile on her mask for the photo and put an ornament on my IV pole.

  “That was a week or so after they let me out of isolation, from the transplant.”

  “It looks like Elise bounced back pretty well.”

  I swallow and refrain from answering. Just a few weeks before that photo was taken, Elise suffered life-threatening complications. My baby sister almost died trying to save me. I couldn’t even visit her; my immune system was too diminished. I relied on Polaroids from Eric as proof that she was still alive and on the mend. Maybe ‘relied’ isn’t the right word—I practically demanded photo updates several times a day. I had to
burn those pictures, afterwards. I couldn’t stand to look at them.

  Willa flips back to the beginning of the book and new set of photos. I still had hair when Eric began taking pictures. In these I’m curled up in the fetal position, green in the face and sweating from the pain. Mom is holding a cold cloth against my neck. I remember that photo. I puked all over myself just a few minutes after it was taken.

  Willa flips the page, to the pictures of Elise and I after she knit me that first hat. I look morose underneath my affected smile as she perches with her chin on my shoulder, next to her new creation. The next photos are of my second round of chemo, where I had to have injections put directly into my spine. Willa pauses on those for a long time.

  “It didn’t hurt,” I say. “They numbed me. I just had a bit of a headache after.”

  She touches my dad’s image in the photo. He was with me for that treatment. While I was curled up for a jab in the spine he sat facing me and we talked about music. I remember asking him if he’d ever done an injection like that on a patient. He said he had, and he looked so uncomfortable that I quickly changed the subject.

  “Were they drawing fluid or injecting you?”

  “Injecting.”

  “And Elise gave you marrow? Or was it something to do with your kidneys?”

  “Marrow.” I snort at the memory. “You want to know something? We had the transplant scheduled for early October. I had chemo and full-body radiation to prepare for it; ended up feeling like shit. And then she got an ear infection. We had to put off the transplant until she was well again. I went through hell for a procedure that got delayed.”

  Willa chuckles with dark amusement. “Is that irony? Or just bad luck?”

  “Bad luck, but it could have been worse. My good luck was that she was a match and willing to donate.”

  Willa flips a few more pages. She remarks that Eric isn’t in any of these photos.

  “He was behind the camera.” I skim ahead a few pages to the solitary photo of Eric in the whole album. It was taken by accident, and his face is only visible in the corner of the frame because the lens was pointing toward a mirror. Eric had a rare serious expression on at the time.