by Sarah Lyu
“Let me talk to her for you.” Maybe he saw the dread on my face, or maybe I just looked completely exhausted. “You should go home, get some sleep. I’ll tell her myself that I’m not going to the cops. And who knows, maybe it’s better if I talk to her alone.”
I hesitated.
“Go home, Remy. You look like you’re about to keel over.” He pressed a kiss to my forehead for the last time, though I didn’t know it then.
“Okay,” I said, pulling on my shoes. I was exhausted. And maybe if they talked to each other, they’d hash it out.
“Hey,” he said before I left. “It’s going to be okay.”
I nodded and lingered for a moment before finally leaving. I believed him.
Standing at my car, I looked back at the Pink Mansion. Without any lights on, it looked haunted, abandoned. The house had fallen into disrepair in the year Elise and her father had lived there—the hedges untrimmed, the grass patchy and overgrown with weeds, the shutters crooked. A wave of sadness hit me at how time and neglect had turned what was once beautiful into something ugly and heartbreaking.
Getting in, I started the car, foot on the brake, ready to go when I heard it.
Not gunshots, like I later recalled, but the two of them yelling. I ran back, the car door left wide open, my keys forgotten in the ignition.
I hadn’t fallen asleep in my car. I’d never fallen asleep at all.
“How dare you come to my house and tell me what to do,” I heard Elise say as I reached the door, my hand hovering over the handle, frozen by the anger in her voice.
“I’m not telling you what to do. I’m offering you a choice,” Jack said.
Elise scoffed. “It’s not a choice, it’s an ultimatum.” My palm rested against the door, but I stood still, unable to move. It felt like all the times I’d taken shelter in closets, hiding from whatever storm was raging out there.
“It’s what Remy wants,” Jack said simply.
“No, it’s not,” Elise said. “She would never want that. She would never do that to me. You’re lying.” Her voice rose dangerously.
“I’m not.” Jack sounded frustrated. “Look, I don’t care if you believe me or not. Let’s just leave Remy out of it. This is what I’m offering. Leave us alone and I won’t go to the police and tell them you committed arson.”
“I didn’t commit arson!” she screamed. “What is this, some kind of power play?”
He held firm. “No.”
“Don’t lie. You’re enjoying this, having something to lord over me. It has nothing to do with Remy. You don’t care about her.”
“I do care about Remy, and I’m sick of the way you treat her, the way you tell her to jump and she asks how high,” he said. “That’s why I’m doing this. Protecting her from you.” Had Jack planned to confront her all along? After he’d texted me that he was here, he came to the door instead of waiting for me, like he wanted to come inside. And then he insisted I go home, let him talk to Elise.
“This ends now,” Jack said. “Stay away from us. Stay away from Remy.”
“I won’t let you take her from me,” she said, desperation in her voice. “Once I tell her—”
“Go ahead,” Jack said, cutting her off. “Like I said, it’s what she wants.”
I hated the way they were talking about me, like I was some thing to be fought over. I hated the way I’d let them tell me what I wanted and what I didn’t.
“You lie,” Elise said. “You’re just scared what’ll happen when Remy realizes what a loser you are. You’re just a scared little boy making empty threats.”
“Fine, have it your way,” Jack said. “I’ll go to the police station tomorrow, tell them what I know.”
“You won’t take her away from me.” She was gunpowder.
“Look, you can go to jail and lose her or you can leave us alone and not go to jail. Your choice.” He was a lit match.
I touched the handle but remained still, unable to bring myself to confront them. To have to choose between them once and for all.
“You’ll take her from me over my dead body.” Then I heard a click, that distinct sound of a gun cocking.
“No!” I flew inside but it was already too late, the sound of six gunshots piercing the air.
“Remy?” Our eyes met for the briefest moment. What I saw wasn’t anger—it was fear. I saw who she really was, who she’d been the entire time. She wasn’t electric. She was just terrified—a cornered animal.
I collapsed by Jack’s side. “No, no, no,” I cried as I looked into his eyes for the last time. “Stay with me, stay with me.” I cradled his head ever so gently as he gasped for breath. “No, no, please,” I begged, holding him close as if I could keep him there if I held on tight enough.
Everything fell away. I became unmoored—from time, from reality. Everything fell away and it was just him and me.
And then it was just me.
“No, no, no,” I cried as his blood soaked the shirt he’d given me the first night we met. I sobbed so hard I couldn’t breathe. My world was spinning out of control, untethered, lost.
“Remy?” Elise’s voice sounded muffled, like I was underwater, drowning.
“Listen to me, Remy, listen. You weren’t here,” she said. “You weren’t here, okay? You were in your car. Jack came in, and I thought he was an intruder. It was an accident.”
Jack’s eyes were glassy and lifeless. “No!” I screamed and screamed, lay my head on his shoulder. “Please, please.”
“Remy, did you hear me?” she asked. “You weren’t here. You didn’t see anything, hear anything. You were in your car. Then you heard the gunshots and ran in. It was dark. I thought Jack was an intruder. It was all an accident.” She placed a hand on me, shook me violently, but I barely felt it. “Everything’s going to be okay, Remy. Everything’s going to be okay now.”
“No, please,” I said as I cried over Jack’s body. “Come back, come back to me.”
“You and me, we’re family,” she continued as if none of this was happening, as if she hadn’t just murdered the boy I loved. “It’s just the two of us now. It’ll always be just the two of us.” She’d said it a million times.
Those words, once a source of comfort, now sounded like a threat.
THURSDAY // AUGUST 31 // DAY 356
64.
Home was a person and for me, that person was Elise. Only now home has become a prison, and that prison is Elise.
“You killed him.” I feel faint, my collapse complete. “You murdered him.” As soon as I say it, I know it’s true. Maybe I’ve known all along and locked it away deep within me because I couldn’t face what she’d done.
“That’s not true,” she says, shaking her head firmly. “I don’t know how much you overheard, but he was threatening me. You weren’t there at the beginning. You didn’t hear the way he spoke.” Her voice begins to tremble. “I hadn’t done anything wrong. Chattanooga was an accident. But he was going to tell the police it was arson. He was going to tell the police I went there with the intention of killing my father. He was threatening me with decades in prison, Remy.”
The wind whipped around us faster, the Pink Caddy speeding up.
“My dad brutally beats me and he’s out of jail in less than a day, free to go until a hearing where he’ll get off with a slap on the wrist, and I have an accident playing an innocent prank and I’m the one who’s going to lose everything? It was all a ploy, Rem. Don’t you see that? He wanted to take you away from me. That’s what it was about. That’s what it’s always been about. You’re the only thing I have in the whole world and he was going to take you from me!”
“I’m not a—a thing. No one can take me, not him, not even you,” I blurt out. I have a choice to make now, not between Elise or Jack but between Elise and me. Between letting her take over my life or letting her go.
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“That’s exactly what you’re saying. You’re acting like Jack was stealing me away
from you, like I’m some kind of possession.” I feel trapped in the car with no way to escape.
“No, I was protecting us, protecting you.”
“No.” I shake my head roughly. “You weren’t.” I’m overwhelmed with anger—and regret. My stomach twists at the thought of everything I’d done in the name of protecting us, protecting her.
“He was making these decisions without you, like some kind of sick puppet master. He was obsessed with you, he wanted to control you. I know you can’t see that right now, but it’s the truth. And I was the only one who could save you.”
“No. Stop it.” I want it all to end. The lies, the half-truths, the manipulation.
“You have to trust me, Rem,” Elise says. “He was a monster.”
“Not everyone is a monster,” I say. “Not everyone is—” I don’t need to finish for her to know who I’m talking about. Your dad.
“You’re unbelievable, you know that? You’re acting like it happened to you,” she says, cutting me off. “But it didn’t. It happened to me. And you act like you’re this old soul, this broken spirit, this victim, but you’re not! You don’t have wounds, you’ve never bled. I’m the one who’s bled. Not metaphorically. Literally. And you think, what with your shitty parents and their fighting and how mean they are to you, you think that’s the same?” She laughs, jarring and bitter. “It’s not. Only one of us here has been truly damaged, and guess what, it’s not you.” She’s yelling now.
“So what, you decided you’d be the one to fix it? Kill Jack, make sure I was just as damaged as you?”
“You think I wouldn’t trade places with you in a heartbeat? Wake the fuck up, Remy.”
Jack asked me when I was going to wake up Sunday morning, on the day he died. Have I been asleep this whole time?
“Only one of us has been truly traumatized. And in the last few months, I’ve been blaming myself. I lie awake at night and replay every punch, every kick, every word, every agonizing second. I lie there and think, why wasn’t I smarter, why wasn’t I faster, why didn’t I report it?” she says, sobbing.
“Elise—pull over.”
She ignores me, driving through her tears. “But it wasn’t my fault! It happened because you weren’t there. Because I called you and you knew—you knew—I needed you and you just fucking ignored me. And for what? Some guy you’d met a few months ago? Well, Remy, was it worth it?” Elise says, leaving both of us in a stunned silence.
“What do you want me to say?” I finally ask, but I’m furious. She knows I was wracked with guilt for not answering her calls that night. She knows and now she isn’t even pretending it wasn’t my fault—she takes the knife I’d sharpened for her and buries it in me with a twist. “You want everything to be just you and me, forever and ever. You say things like love is need and tell me that we need each other, but what you really mean is you don’t want me to need anyone else. What you really mean is you don’t want me to love anyone else but you.”
“That’s not true!” she says as the sky opens up and warm rain begins to fall, soaking us and the car instantly. “Fuck.”
“Pull over!” I yell, but she ignores me, lets the rain pound on us, drench the convertible. “I’m allowed to want other things, other people. I’m allowed to need more.”
The words I hold back hang between us: You can’t be my whole world.
Then I shake my head. “None of this changes what you did. You—you killed him. You murdered Jack.”
“It was self-defense!”
“No,” I say. “It wasn’t.” The rain crashes down on me in waves, running down my face, but I’m no longer crying. I scream at the sky in rage.
“It was,” Elise insists, her voice wild, like she’s losing control. “It was self-defense.”
“Oh my God,” I say, squeezing myself against the door trying to get as far away from her as possible. “You don’t even feel bad. You don’t even care that you murdered him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says. “Look, I know you liked Jack but—”
“Liked Jack?” I say. “Liked Jack?”
“Oh, please,” she says. “Don’t tell me you were in love. Don’t tell me you wanted to be with him forever.” Her voice mocks me and my hands clench, knuckles white. I look at her and I can’t find the Elise that I knew, the one I loved. All I see now is a stranger, an echo of someone I once knew. “You and I are forever. You and I are soulmates.”
“No. We’re not.”
She glances at me. “Other people come and go, but I’ll always love you.” Love is to need and be needed.
“You don’t love me,” I say in the quietest voice.
“I’m the only one who loves you,” she says. “The only one.”
“That’s not true. Jack loved me,” I say, the tears falling hard and fast just as the rain lets up, slowing to a lazy drizzle. “And I loved him. I don’t want to do this anymore. Just take me home.”
“No.”
“No?” I say, staring at her in shock. Then I look all around me, confused. “Where are we going?” I thought we were driving around in circles, but I hadn’t been paying attention until now. We’re about to get on the highway, heading south.
“No,” she repeats. Her voice is firm.
“You’re refusing to drive me home? Are you kidding me?” I start to feel panicked, try to force air into my lungs.
“You don’t want to leave me,” she says. “You need me.”
“I don’t!”
“You do. You need me because there is no heroine without a villain, and you so enjoy playing the part of the heroine. Poor, poor Remy. Nothing’s her fault. Bad things just happen to her. Bad people made her do it.”
Her words are jarringly familiar. She sounds just like my mother.
“Like you didn’t want all of it,” she continues. “Like you didn’t just love watching the two of us fight over you. I know you. I know what’s in your heart. I know exactly who you are and I still love you. No one will love you like I do. Don’t throw away what we have to punish me. It’s you and me, Remy. We’re family.” And there it is again, those awful words like a chain around my neck, choking all the air out of me.
“Where are we going? Where are you taking me?” I’m so scared, so angry that I want to scream. I’m trapped, no way to reach anyone, least of all Elise. She’s completely gone.
“We can go anywhere you want,” she says. “Maybe LA or San Francisco, or maybe Portland. We could drive around the whole country, go to the Grand Canyon, see everything, do anything.”
Her smile is so wide, her eyes are so bright, that hint of dangerous electricity underneath. We turn off 141 onto 285 West as I watch helplessly. It’s late with few cars around. The rain makes it worse.
“Like I said, we can sell off my grandmother’s things for now and when I turn eighteen, I’ll have more than enough money for the both of us. I’ll buy you whatever you want. You’ll be free of your parents, truly free of them. We’ll travel the world, go to Paris. Or Tokyo! I’ve always wanted to see Japan. Where do you want to go? We can take turns picking.”
She wants me to be free of my parents so I’ll never be free of her. She wants me to depend on her, to need her. She doesn’t want anyone else to have any control over me—not even myself—because she wants to be the only one who does. Life with her would be an ever-shrinking prison. Inescapable.
A new wave of rain comes down hard again, and Elise slows the car. My fingers stretch toward the door handle. Our speed is slow enough now that I could maybe roll out, but then what? We’re still on the highway, and I’m without a phone. I can’t think straight.
“What’s wrong?” she asks. “I thought you’d be happy!”
“Why would you think that?” I’m shouting now and I don’t even care. I’m done silencing myself to protect her feelings. “What part of I want to go home said I wanted to run away with you?”
Her expression darkens. “You can act like you don’t need me, but I know the truth. I kno
w you. You want to pretend you’re tough but you’re not. You don’t know how lucky you are, Remy,” she says, shaking her head, her voice dismissive. “You have everything. But I’ve had to fight for everything, claw my way out with my bare hands, and it’s made me strong. It’s made me a survivor.” She sounds deluded, clinging onto the story she wants to believe about herself. The story that turns everything tragic in her life into something that gives her power.
“I don’t want to do this anymore.”
“Do what?”
“Play this game. You win, okay? You clearly had it worse. You’re right. Now what?”
She looks surprised. I’ve taken away one of her weapons. It was a mistake, letting her wounds define mine. Even now, I feel guilty for being “lucky,” but I know I was never lucky. Life isn’t a race to the bottom—having it worse doesn’t win her some kind of prize. Her pain doesn’t diminish my pain. It’s a false dichotomy.
Elise is so proud of her suffering. I used to believe her when she said our battle scars made us strong because all I ever felt was weak. But that was before Jack died in my arms, before I knew what real loss was. What it meant to be truly powerless.
We found it romantic, being the tragic heroines of our own stories. But the cost to being a tragic hero was always going to be the ending. Romeo and Juliet with their poison and knife, Gatsby by his pool, Bonnie and Clyde in a shoot-out.
The ride is always grand—the rush at the beginning, the ever-mounting obstacles, and finally, the fait accompli, the heartbreaking conclusion.
We are careening toward it now and maybe it’s too late already, but I want out—out of the car, out of this story.
“Look, I know I fucked up, okay?” she says. “I know that. But I’m different now. I’m better, I’ll be better.”
“Are you even listening to me?” I say.
“Yes! Are you listening to me?” she asks, and I shake my head.
“You’re fucking unbelievable, you know that?” I say. “You’re such a liar. You say we’re just going for a drive and then you kidnap me. You never had any intention of taking me home, did you? You say you love me but you’re so afraid of losing me that you murdered Jack. This is so fucked up. Can’t you see how terrible we are for each other? We’re not good for each other, can’t you see that?”