by Sarah Lyu
“You wouldn’t understand.” The sudden sadness in her voice startled me.
“Wouldn’t understand what?” Elise never hesitated. She was fearless, especially when she saw an injustice.
“Nothing, never mind,” she said coldly, turning firmly away from me.
“Don’t do this,” I said. “No one else is here. It’s just you and me. You know you can tell me anything. Don’t shut me out.” When she didn’t respond, I pulled out her cigarettes and lit two for us, and she finally turned around to face me when accepting one.
“There’s nothing to tell,” she finally said, but she seemed torn, avoiding eye contact and taking frequent sips from her cigarette.
She was constantly circling something she wouldn’t tell me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. “What did you mean when you said you can’t always do something about every single injustice?” I asked. I couldn’t ask her about it directly, so I just wanted to keep her talking with the hope that she would tell me once and for all.
“Let’s just forget it,” she said. “We don’t have to do the prank.” She sounded pained.
“What?” I was relieved, but more worried than ever. Elise was not one to change her mind, just like that. Elise was not one to back down, ever.
“Let’s just go to my house,” she said. “My dad probably won’t be back until late tomorrow.”
“But it’s your birthday,” I said, saddened by the thought that her father wasn’t home, like he had forgotten.
She glanced at me like she could read my mind. “Trust me, him not being home is the best birthday present he could give me.” Then without another word, she started the car. Elise never wanted to talk about her father, never wanted me to run into him, but I still didn’t know why.
“Is everything okay?” I asked, knowing that it clearly wasn’t.
“Yeah, it’s fine,” she said in a tone that ended the conversation, pointedly looking away.
That night, we went down to the river behind her house. It’d been dry the last few months and the water was low, quiet and soothing. We smoked one cigarette, then two, as the dark sky opened up and revealed a scattering of stars.
“I’m sorry Christian was such an asshole,” I said, breaking the silence.
“It’s not your fault,” she said, sighing. “It’s just bad luck.” At my questioning glance, she shrugged. “Everyone likes to pretend they have control over their lives, but none of us really do. Sometimes shit just happens, sometimes there’s nothing you can do about it.” That didn’t sound like the Elise I knew. The Elise I knew didn’t back down, didn’t throw her hands up in surrender, not ever.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again.
“Nothing,” she said, getting up. “Come on, it’s getting cold.”
I followed her back inside and up to her room, where we climbed into bed, neither of us falling asleep.
“I’m so tired,” Elise said, sitting up. “Not sleepy. Tired.”
I pulled myself up too, propping myself on one arm and tucking my feet beneath me.
“I’m tired of everything.” She was staring straight ahead to the opposite wall, back against the headboard, chin resting on her knees, arms hugging herself.
I didn’t speak, didn’t ask questions. The second I said anything, I risked her shutting down. It’d been like that all day: start-stop conversations, me asking her what was wrong only for her to fall silent.
“How are you not exhausted too?” she asked softly. “How are you not sick of the bullshit? Is life just one long line of wanting something you can never have?” She was talking about Christian again, I thought. “Of being forever trapped?”
The sadness in her voice shocked me. She’d always been so strong and in control, so sure of herself and of her future. I drew confidence from her by just being near her, drew inspiration from her every moment of every day. The night before, with Jack, jumping into the dark water and kissing under the moonlight—I never would’ve done that before I met her.
“Sometimes I don’t know if I’m going to make it,” she said with so much sincerity it scared me.
“What do you mean, if you’re going to make it?” I said. I’d never heard Elise say anything like that before.
“Out of here,” she said. “Out of this town, this state, this life.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved.
“Don’t you ever worry that this is it? That this is the one shitty life you’re going to have and there’s nothing you can do about it?” This didn’t sound like her at all. The Elise I knew was determined to make her mark on the world. She wasn’t worried about having a shitty life.
“Is this because of Christian?” I asked. “Because he’s not worth it. And you don’t have a shitty life.”
“It’s not because of him,” she said. “Well, it’s not just because of him.”
“What happened?” I crossed my legs so I could sit up straight, and she finally met my eyes.
“I know I always act like I know what I’m doing, but—” She took a deep breath. “But I don’t.” She held my gaze, and it was like I could see into her soul. “Don’t tell the others, but most of the time I have no idea what I’m doing. I just think about the person I wish I were and try to act like her. Fake it till you make it, you know?” she finished with a sad laugh.
I didn’t want to believe her. Maybe this was just a bad day, an aberration. All her confidence and swagger—that was the real Elise. But then I thought of the times Elise invoked the Bride. She wanted to be just as badass, just as tough. Just as impossible to defeat. It’s what the Bride would do. When she didn’t know what to do, the Bride was the one she turned to, the source of her courage.
“You know you never have to fake it around me, right?” I said. “You know that I love you, right? You never have to pretend to be anyone but yourself with me. Never.”
“Remy, I—” She burst into tears.
I didn’t know what to say so I scooted closer, put both hands on her shoulders and squeezed.
She pulled away, wincing.
“Sorry—” I said, worried I’d hurt her somehow.
“Do you ever feel like we’re stuck in the part of a movie where we’re getting beaten and it feels like we’ll never succeed?” she asked. “I mean, I know we’re not in a movie, but you know what I’m talking about, right? The part where the odds feel insurmountable and you’re exhausted and running out of hope and”—she hiccuped—“and somehow you’ve got to go on?”
“I do,” I said, but I didn’t understand what this had to do with Elise.
“If I tell you something will you promise not to tell anyone else?”
I nodded. This was it, I thought. The moment she’d finally, finally tell me the thing she’d been alluding to for months.
“Promise,” she insisted.
“I promise,” I said. She’d been there for me and I didn’t want to let her down.
Elise took a deep breath, like she might lose her nerve. Then she pulled her shirt off and turned on the bedside lamp. Sweeping her long hair aside, she angled herself and shrugged off one of her bra straps so I could see it: a patch of sickly green skin—a healing bruise.
“What happened?” I asked, completely shocked. I didn’t know what she was going to tell me but never in a million years would I have thought that this was it.
She let her hair fall and pulled her strap up before slipping back into her shirt. “What always happens. My father.”
28.
It all came back to me then, what she’d said New Year’s Eve.
Your parents suck. But they’re not that bad.
There are gradations. All they do is argue with each other and throw the word divorce around once in a while.
You’re lucky, in a lot of ways.
All this time, she’d built a wall of silence around her father, a barricade to protect herself, but once she chipped away the smallest opening, it all crumbled, the dam breaking.
“This is nothing,” she said,
slipping back into her shirt. “A few days ago, he shoved me. I lost my balance and caught my shoulder against the corner of one of the kitchen counters.”
“Oh my God.”
She pulled back into herself against the headboard, and staring off at the other wall, she began to name some of the things that her dad had done to her over the years.
“When I was eleven or twelve, he picked me up from a sleepover and slammed my head into the window—twice—for wearing red lipstick. Told me I looked like trash.”
She spoke softly, almost monotonously, like she was listing off items on a menu.
“When I was eight or nine, he shoved me so hard my face slammed into the leg of a chair when I fell. It’s how I got this scar,” she said, touching the scar above her left eye. I’d always wondered about that scar and assumed it was from a childhood accident. And then I thought, with growing horror: Had there been other things I overlooked?
“Whenever he gets angry and can’t reach me right that second, he’ll grab whatever’s nearby. A coffee mug. A frying pan. He once pulled the biggest, thickest hardcover book off our shelves and flung it at me over and over again, then when he got tired, he picked it up and beat the shit out of me with it.”
It was scary, hearing her recount such violence in a muted voice, like she was talking about someone else. Like it was too painful to talk about herself.
“And what’s worse, he always tells me after that it hurts him more than it hurt me, that he only hits me because he loves me.”
Silently, her tears fell one after the other as the sobs wracked her body. I’d never seen her cry like this before and it terrified me, even though I didn’t want to admit it. Elise was the strong one, Elise always knew what to do.
I wasn’t the strong one.
I didn’t know what to do.
“Sprained wrist, dislocated shoulder, more bruises than I can count over the years. One time it got so bad that I went to stay at a friend’s house for a week until he came and literally dragged me out kicking and screaming.” I began to cry and soon I was sobbing too. “He threw me into the car and fought with her parents out on their lawn. They called the cops. And I thought maybe I was saved. But the police came, took one look at me—healthy and unhurt because I got to have a whole week away from him—and let him take me home. Said something about referring the issue to social services. But they didn’t. Because no one ever showed up. And that was when I realized if the cops weren’t going to do anything about it, no one was going to do anything about it,” she said.
“Why didn’t they?” I cried, shocked. They were police officers—they were supposed to do something, protect her.
She tried to wipe her tears away but they kept coming. “The cops believed my dad because of course they did. Who were they going to believe?” she said as more tears fell from her face.
“How could they?” My heart broke for her, for the girl who didn’t get the help she needed.
“TV shows and movies almost always show the police as these heroes, but sometimes they’re not. I’ve read that a lot of cops hit their own partners and children. And they’re the ones who’re supposed to protect people,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve pinned my hopes on being saved by someone else.”
We stayed like that for a while, crying together on her bed. Overwhelmed, I found myself pulling away from Elise, afraid to touch her. It was too much to process, the ground beneath us fracturing. Everything we had before seemed like an illusion now broken by the awful truth.
I felt guilty, angry at myself for all the things I’d said before, things that had seemed harmless at the time but now were insensitive at best. I should’ve been listening when she was talking about how there were gradations of horrible. I should’ve known it’d come from a dark, dark place. My childhood, with all the fighting and neglect, could never compare with what she’d gone through—what she was still going through.
Elise wiped away her tears with the back of her wrist and sniffed. “For the longest time I thought it was my fault. He told me it was my fault, every time. I was useless, I didn’t appreciate how hard he worked to feed me, how my mom had left him with this—this burden. He said I was stupid and would never amount to anything, just like her. She came from this fancy family, she’d been a fucking debutante, he said. Never worked a day in her life. He told me I had to toughen up if I wanted to survive. That he was trying to make sure I didn’t end up useless like her.” She began to sob then, covering her face with both hands.
“But the thing is,” she continued, breath hitching, “it had nothing to do with me. It never did. It didn’t matter if I was the perfect daughter or not, because nothing was ever going to be enough for him.”
“Oh God, Elise,” I whispered, the panic rising, threatening to pull me under. The room felt too small all of a sudden. I wanted to get out. I just wanted to escape this entire conversation. I didn’t know how to comfort her. I didn’t know what to do.
“When I got older, I saw the pattern,” she said. “If he was having a bad day, he’d make sure I’d have one too.”
Elise needed me. I had to snap out of it, be strong like she was, do what she would’ve done for me. Instead I was paralyzed.
She cried harder. “Sometimes I think he’s right.”
That jolted me out of it. “What? No!”
“You know how in movies you just know things will be okay? That the good guy will win the day, that the setbacks, as awful and insurmountable as they seem, are just that: setbacks.”
She looked at me expectantly and I nodded slowly.
“I wish I had that certainty,” she said, turning away from me, shoulders shaking. “I wish I knew I was going to be okay.” She looked up at me like I had the answer to her question, like I could tell her definitively that she was going to be all right, that she’d triumph over any and all obstacles, that she was unstoppable. No one had ever looked at me like that before. Had ever needed me like that.
She trusted me, I realized, and I wanted to be worthy of it.
“I think you do know,” I said quietly.
“I do?”
“Yeah,” I said with more confidence than I felt. Fake it till you make it, that was what Elise had said. “And maybe we know that the hero will win the day, but they don’t. You don’t know how things will turn out now, but I do.” I scooted closer and laid a gentle hand on hers. “I’m watching the movie of your life right now and I’m telling you that these are just setbacks. I know nothing can stand in your way.” It’s what she would’ve told me, but more than that, it’s what she needed to hear.
She stared at me for a moment before nodding slightly. “You’re right. We’re the heroes in this story, born of tragic circumstances, yes, but also strong enough to overcome them. We’ll win the day,” she said, like ultimate triumph was in the stars for us. She dried her eyes and managed a watery smile, laughing a little at herself.
“Feel better?” I asked, taking both of her hands in mine and giving them a small squeeze.
She nodded. “They’ll be shouting our names one day,” she promised, like we’d be conquerors marching through the streets. “You and me.”
I laughed too, relieved she seemed to be feeling better. “Okay.”
“It’ll always be you and me,” she said, and I nodded.
We believed our wounds made us special. We believed what didn’t kill us made us stronger. We believed our tragedies were romantic.
At least that was what we told ourselves. But that night, it was beginning to sound less like an inspirational motto to live by and more like something we had to tell ourselves to survive.
I told Elise I knew how things would turn out, that I knew she’d triumph, but the truth was that I had no idea. It’d shaken me to the core, hearing her talk about her father. I had wanted so desperately to know what was going on with her, but now that I did, I only felt more helpless. I wanted to be strong enough for both of us, but I didn’t know if I coul
d.
29.
“He hasn’t always been awful,” Elise told me later that same night. I was lying next to her in bed, halfway asleep.
“Hmm?” I said, my eyes still closed.
“I’ve always wanted a dog but my dad’s allergic,” she continued, voice barely above a whisper. “For my birthday one year, he took me to an animal shelter and spent the day with me playing with the dogs there. He was so puffy and red when we left.” I could hear a smile in her voice.
“We were never allowed to have a pet,” I said. “Too messy, too much work.”
“It’s the first thing I’m going to do when I turn eighteen,” she said. “I’m heading to the nearest shelter for a dog.”
“That sounds awesome.”
“It can be ours,” she said, shifting toward me.
“Yeah?” I said, blinking sleepily in the dark.
“Yeah,” she promised, and I fell asleep dreaming of the life we could have one day.
• • •
In the middle of the night, I woke from the cold, turning to find Elise missing. Wrapping the blanket around me, I slipped out of bed to look for her.
“Elise?” I called out in a whisper that seemed to echo through that big house. In the dark, everything looked haunted as I wandered the hall. She was in the master bedroom, both doors to the smaller balcony wide open. “What are you doing out here?”
She turned around, cigarette in hand, hair fluttering in the wind.
“I left something out earlier,” she said. “About my dad.”
“What?” I asked, confused.
“My dad.” She took a big breath before continuing. “He always says he’s sorry, every time. And the weird thing is most of the time, I believe him.”
“You do?” I joined her, leaning over the ledge on my elbows.
“He cries and begs for forgiveness. It’s hard to explain. He promises me he’ll never do it again, and even though he’s broken it a million times, I still believe him when he swears it’ll be different. Is that fucked up?”
I lit a cigarette and released a stream of smoke, trying to clear my mind.