by Dawn Ius
Swipe.
Bridget squeezes my knee. My leg kicks up on reflex and knocks against my suitcase. Her eyes twinkle with mischief. “It’s like you packed for a month.”
I chew on my lip, embarrassed that my indecision is so obvious. This is the farthest from home I’ve ever been—may ever be—and I want everything, every last detail, to be perfect. “Some of us don’t have magical backpacks.”
She shakes her head. “Oh, the Force is strong with this one today, folks.”
Despite my nerves, I laugh. I fold my hands on my lap and continue staring out the window, watching as the familiar scenes of my hometown begin to fade. With each passing blur of a street sign, the knots in my chest begin to unwind.
I steal a glance at Bridget, who looks at me with rosy cheeks and an impish grin.
My face goes hot. “What?”
“You’re adorable,” she says, and leans over to kiss my jaw.
I thread my fingers through hers and slump in my seat, trying to pretend that this indiscretion—this enormous act of rebellion—doesn’t glow from my skin as though I’m draped in neon.
CHAPTER
17
Parallel forests flank either side of the highway, which stretches far into the distance. I focus on staring straight ahead and not looking back. I don’t want to go back, not now, not ever. I think of my suitcase stuffed next to Bridget’s rainbow backpack and wonder how long we can survive with just this. Just us.
As the coach bus turns onto Highway 24, I feel my tension drain like a slow-leaking tire.
Bridget leans in close and whispers, “Holy shit. We’re totally doing this.”
Her breath is hot against my neck, and I’m flushed. The woman in the aisle seat next to us glares at us through her thick-rimmed glasses, curling her lip in disgust. Bridget says I should ignore her—“let them judge”—but my eyes keep flitting back, her disapproval seeping into my rapidly darkening soul.
I inch my fingers closer to Bridget’s. She grabs my hand and smiles. “We’re heading to Boston, can you believe it?”
Emotion swells in my chest. I shake my head, unable to speak. The trees, cars, and road signs all pass in a continuous blur. I shift closer to peer through the window and take off my hat. It doesn’t even matter that my hair’s a mess, that it’s disheveled and imperfect.
This.
This moment is what matters.
A slow smile creeps across my face and I fall back against the seat in a sudden burst of soft giggles. Bridget joins in until we’re laughing out loud. I force myself not to look at the judgmental woman in the seat across from us.
“I wish the scenery was better,” Bridget says, when the laughter finally dies down.
“It’s perfect.”
Bridget scrunches up her nose. “It’s Massachusetts, aka boring as fuck.”
My voice catches. “Why did you come to Fall River, then?” I ask, not for the first time. It’s questions like this she refuses to answer, and I’m afraid she finds me too invasive, too needy. But her phone never rings, there’s never any mail. I understand her parents are traveling, but don’t they even want to know how she is? “I mean, you’ve been to so many amazing places. . . .”
“I needed a change, I guess.” She shrugs like her response makes all kinds of sense, but it doesn’t. Not to me, at least. If I’m ever able to travel, I don’t think I’ll ever come back. “Being on the road all the time can get lonely.”
That’s okay too—I’m used to feeling alone.
Half an hour passes where we say nothing, giving root to my insecurities. I feel the madness, tight like a guitar string, urging me to tell the bus driver that we need to go back. Guilt eats away at me, leaving black streaks of doubt across my heart and my flesh. I’m wound up so tight that when Bridget speaks again, I actually jump.
“Twenty Questions?” she says.
“Yes!” I nearly gasp in relief that things are on their way back to normal. This is our game. “Only if I can go first.”
Bridget nods.
“Most beautiful place you’ve traveled to?”
She groans. “You know the answer. Italy.”
Bridget’s right—that’s always my go-to question, because I know she loves to talk about her adventures. She’s like an artist, painting pictures with her words, bringing to life the sights and sounds, the tastes and smells of places I can only dream of going.
“Venice, if you want me to be more specific,” she says, echoing Father Buck’s sentiments. I’ve heard many stories about Italy, but the water traffic in Venice is by far what he talks about the most. “The architecture in Rome is stunning, but the river canal that winds through Venice is . . .” Her voice trails off and she sighs. “Breathtaking.”
“Is it true that you have to get around by boat?”
Her eyebrow rises above the top of her sunglasses. “Is that an official question?” She laughs before I can respond. “Gondolas, actually. The water system in Venice is quite intricate. Like a liquid maze.” Her fingers flex, release, and tighten on my knee. “My turn.”
I wring my hands together on my lap.
“Most trouble you’ve ever gotten into with your sister?”
My heartbeat stutters. I chew on the inside of my cheek, stalling on my response. “I never got into trouble with Emma.”
After Mom died, Emma’s role changed. She stopped treating me like her baby sister, started nurturing me as if I was her own child. I used to be the good girl. Obedient. A prodigal daughter, our parents said. But then the trifecta of trauma blew through my life—my irregular menstrual cycles, Mom’s cancer, Abigail’s grand entrance into our lives—and something inside of me just . . . snapped. Emma got the brunt of that.
Dr. Driscoll says I’m still grieving, that I’m simply depressed. Even if that were true, it’s not as “simple” as he makes it seem.
I haven’t said it aloud, not even to Bridget, but I know there’s something else wrong, because even when I was taking the full dosage, the medications haven’t been working the way they should. There’s a darkness that lives deep in my heart. Some people can find the silver lining in a storm cloud. Not me. When I black out, I can’t see, can’t hear, can’t find anything but madness.
Except when I’m with Bridget. That’s when everything seems clear.
And maybe, if I take this trip without an episode, without medications, I can use it as evidence to convince my father I’m not crazy. That I can make it on my own.
The bus shifts down a gear as we pull up behind a slow-moving tractor. “I didn’t get in trouble with my siblings either,” Bridget says, her lip curling into a mischievous smirk.
“Because you don’t have any,” I say, smiling. I learned that the last time we played Twenty Questions. The bus moves around the tractor and we pick up speed. “Maybe you don’t have to act out because your parents aren’t strict.”
Bridget rolls her eyes. “Mom has rules, trust me. Like, no boys in the house. I got around that, though.” She winks. “I invited my girlfriends over instead.”
My cheeks go pink. “Did she ever figure it out?”
Bridget shrugs. “I guess so, but my parents never made a big deal out of it.” She rubs her thumb against the top of my hand. “Like I always say, you love who you love.”
She makes it seem so easy, but I know it’s not.
Fresh guilt washes over me. Father Buck’s voice rings in my eardrums, unspooling each lie until it thickens into a web. I am a fly trapped in its deceit.
Bridget twists in her seat so she’s facing me, her expression solemn.
“What is it?”
She caresses the edge of my hand. “We don’t have to go back.”
“Of course we do. Where would we go? What would we do?” The questions pop out of my mouth like firecrackers, my tone turning incredulous. I breathe in and out. It’s like I’m drinking my father’s Kool-Aid, starting to believe that I really couldn’t make it without them. “We have to go back.”
Bridget nods. “Maybe this time, but you’re going to get into that school, Lizzie, and when you do, you can give Fall River the big old middle finger.” She demonstrates to prove her point, and the woman across from us scowls. “It’s going to happen for you, Lizzie. You believe that, right?”
I glance away to mask the tears gathering in my eyes. In the distance, the sun hangs high over endless fields of grass. The beauty of it sucker punches me in the solar plexus, and I realize with sadness that I’ve never truly seen the beauty that surrounds me.
Could Bridget be my silver lining in the storm that is my life?
My voice softens. “I’m not sure about anything, really.” I tuck a strand of Bridget’s hair behind her ear and swallow. “But for the first time in my life, I can see more than Fall River on the horizon.”
CHAPTER
18
Bridget flicks on the overhead light, and I pull the thin duvet up over my eyes to dial down the brightness in the hotel room. She yanks the blanket off, crouches so that her face is inches from mine, and tilts her head. “Wake up, sunshine.”
Sunshine.
A distant memory snakes through my groggy haze. My mother hovers over me, smile welcoming, the promise of adventure twinkling in her eyes. “Rise and shine, sunshine,” she said, her melodic singsong twisting under my skin. “There is a whole world waiting for us out there.”
Looking back, I must have known something was off. Ice cream for breakfast, skipping school for a hike through the reservoir, s’mores for lunch and waffles for dinner. I should have felt something when she took my hand and led me through the forest, should have realized we were chain links of desperation, attached to each other, trying to hold on to something that by the next week would abruptly end.
Mom hid her cancer from me, from Emma, from Father, too.
None of us knew until the tumor had leaked into her blood and burrowed its way to her bones. Sometimes when I squeeze my eyes shut at night, I search for her face, for the sunshine in her heart. But all I’ve ever found is darkness.
I blink. See Bridget. And remember that with her in my life, some of that pitch-black has begun fading to gray.
“What time is it?”
Bridget flops down on the bed next to me, and the mattress sinks, making me roll into her. “Early.”
I perch on my elbows and yawn. “Is there coffee?”
Bridget shakes her head, fanning me with the scent of strawberry shampoo. Her eyelashes are long and thick, lips freshly glossed, hair pulled back into twin braids that fall in parallel lines down her chest.
My fingers tangle in the knots of my bedhead hair. “What is this fresh hell?” I sit upright, conscious of how I must look, and rub the sleep from my eyes. “Got anything else to offer in exchange?”
Bridget makes a face. “Nothing that can replace caffeine. But I do have . . .” She hands over a slip of paper with a theatrical flourish. “This.”
This is the bus route from our hotel to Le Cordon Bleu, along with a list of Boston tourist attractions ranging from the Museum of Fine Arts to a pond apparently named for its abundance of frogs. Bridget has numbered each item in order of preference, ranking the Boston Symphony Orchestra at the bottom of the list, while the Boston Public Garden is circled in red, starred, and numbered with an oversize 2.
“They have swans,” she says, when I trace my finger over the blue lettering. Bridget’s penmanship is atrocious, an odd mix of cursive and printed letters similar to my own. “Like, giant ones that you can actually ride in.”
“I can see why it ranks so high,” I say, eyebrow raised. “But you’re missing a number.”
Bridget leans in. “Nope.”
I count off the items on the list—nine—and then follow the random pattern of numbers. “You’ve clearly forgotten one.”
“Turn it over,” she says with a wink.
I do, and my pulse quickens. In bold ink, framed with hearts and stars, Bridget has written EMERSON COLLEGE. Tears burn my eyes. I don’t look up, afraid she’ll ask me what’s wrong and I’ll snap.
“We could meet your sister for lunch,” she says, oblivious. “Before your interview. I know it’s short notice, but I’m sure she’d skip class. Don’t you think?”
“I don’t know if she would,” I whisper. Or if I even want her to.
Because the truth is, we’ve barely spoken since Emma’s last visit. And for the first time in our relationship, I’m the one coveting secrets and breaking rules. It’s me who’s clammed up, shut her out. I keep pretending it’s because of Jesse, but deep down I know that’s not the issue.
Bridget is.
I’ve never been able to lie to Emma. She can decipher every facial expression, knows every beat of my heart. Two seconds in a room with me and Bridget, and Emma would know. She’d know how Father hasn’t stopped hurting me, how I’m mad at her for getting engaged to Jesse and abandoning me, how I feel about Bridget. She’d know—
Everything.
No, I cannot go for lunch with her and Bridget. I’m not ready.
“I thought maybe you’d want to see her,” Bridget says. “She’ll be excited for you.”
“Can I think about it?” I say, an attempt to explain why I can’t—won’t—see my sister.
“Absolutely.” She spreads the list flat on the bed. “Anything else here of interest?”
“Maybe I could go for giant swans?”
“Excellent choice.” She stands and smooths her hands over her hips. “How about I scare up some java while you get ready?”
“I can get behind that plan.”
The words come easy, but the second Bridget steps out of the room, I’m struck by a wave of panic. It hits me like a tidal wave, pummeling my chest with doubt. Who do I think I am, pretending I have a chance of being accepted to culinary school, thinking I’ll ever be able to leave Fall River, my father, that house stuffed full of darkness? I yank open the blinds and allow the sun to stream into the room. My breathing steadies.
For a brief second, I wish for my medications, and then remember that they don’t calm me. I have to learn to do that on my own if I’m to ever truly be free. You’ve got this.
Yes, I’ve got this.
I change into a knee-length pair of shorts and a fitted T-shirt with black lace on the collar and sleeves. Apply a thin layer of mascara and a clear sheen of gloss that makes my lips feel like they’re covered in snot. I smile, and the girl in the mirror smiles back. I lift my chin, and she does too.
Bridget knocks on the bathroom door. I ease it open and she shoves a Starbucks cup through the opening. DRIZZIE is scrawled across the side in black Sharpie. I tilt my head in confusion.
She shrugs. “I think coming up with alternate names is like a game for baristas. Don’t worry, I’m ‘Legit.’ Which”—she scrunches up her nose—“I suppose could be a compliment based on how hard the ginger was hitting on me.”
I swallow the bitter taste of jealousy in my mouth and take a sip. “The coffee’s good at least.”
“Substandard,” Bridget says.
“Next to Italian espresso, I’m sure.”
Bridget grabs my hand and tugs me out of the bathroom. “I looked up the Boston Public Garden while I was waiting for our coffees, and if we want to hitch a ride on a giant swan, we should hit the road. We can grab breakfast on the way, maybe do a picnic lunch before your interview if you don’t want to see your sister?”
My stomach makes a loud gurgling sound and I cover it with my hand.
Bridget drops her gaze. “Seth?” She crouches so her face is eye level with my stomach. “I thought we told you to stay home.”
“Clever guard dog,” I say, grinning.
Bridget slings her backpack over her shoulder. “And ferocious. I guess we should feed him, since he’s already made himself a third wheel.”
I shrug into my sweater and stuff my wallet into my back pocket. A gift bag on the bed catches my attention, pink tissue paper poking out of the top. Bridget sees me st
aring and nudges my shoulder.
“Oh yeah, I almost forgot, that’s for you,” she says.
I point at my chest questioningly.
“No, the other you,” she says with a slight eye roll. She grabs the polka-dotted gift bag and holds it out to me. A small card dangles from the side, where’s she’s written Happy Day of Birth, Lizzie. I Love You. Every I is dotted with an imperfect heart, two hastily drawn arcs that join to form the perfect symbolism for how I feel.
“How did you know it was my birthday?”
“July nineteenth,” she says, rocking back on her feet. “Remember when I asked you? Back when we were fishing?” She taps her skull. “I’ve got a memory like an elephant.”
I lick my lips. “You shouldn’t have . . .”
“Of course I should have.” She leans in and lightly kisses my lips. My face tingles as every cell in my body ignites.
“Open the present,” she whispers, her breath warm against my mouth.
My heart feels like it will beat straight through my rib cage. With trembling fingers, I untie the bow and peer into the bag. I reach in and withdraw a hot-pink citrus peeler.
“It’s for your kitchen,” she says, blushing. “I mean, when you get your own place. You always say you want one.” She lifts my hand to her lips and kisses the inside of my palm. “You’re always cutting yourself.”
A teardrop trickles down my cheek. “This is the most thoughtful gift anyone has ever given me.”
She smiles softly. “I don’t like it when you’re in pain, Lizzie.”
The words seem light, but I know they’re just skimming the surface of feelings that run far deeper than the superficial cuts by my kitchen knife.
CHAPTER
19