I can’t see them. I shake off Ma’s hand and run up Terini’s steps. I open the door and close it behind me.
Lo.
I walk blind to our room.
Lo’s duvet is pushed back where she left it. It was her hands that moved it like that. She was alive, she was here, she was real. She was my sister.
You will always be my sister.
I try not to move her duvet as I curl underneath it. Deep away from the ladder witch who has stolen her. The smell of Lo is around me and I hear her laugh and tell me it’s a lie it’s a lie it’s a lie.
I’m alive, Rita. I’m alive. But where are you?
Can’t you see me?
No.
Then you’re not looking enough.
But I put my hands over my ears as a weight presses so heavy into my chest that I don’t know how to breathe. I don’t know how I’m meant to do anything or be anything ever again.
★ ★ ★
“Rita?” It’s Ash’s voice. I open my eyes.
Lo has gone.
The bedroom door opens, and Ash is here. My Ash. I don’t move, my head on Lo’s pillow, and I look at him. He crumbles into tears and kneels next to her bed and folds his arms around me.
And we hold each other, with Lo so close. There’s nothing but us and this pain. Ash and me. This tiny room in this tiny van washed away from everything and everyone and all that’s left are the black holes in us, filling up with tears.
Chapter Fourteen
Rita
Four Weeks Later
Dean and I leave Lo’s factory behind us, and Ernest drives us and Gramps in silence to the sea. We park near our old site.
“We’ll wait for you in the car,” Gramps says.
Dean and I walk straight through the middle of where our tent and vans had been. There’re no signs of us left, no faded grass to remind anyone we were ever here. There’s nothing to show how Lo danced down the steps and ran hiding into the folds of the ring door curtains.
I stand still where our bedroom must have been, but the pain inside me is too much, and I have to run before the missing her catches me and swallows me whole.
You jumped over this wall, Lo.
I run from her memory, past the ghost of our barrel fire.
I need to keep running until my lungs have no air left and everything will stop.
Lo Lo Lo Lo Lo. Where are you?
I stop and look for her out at sea, wait for her to appear on the waves, but she doesn’t come.
“Lo!” I scream, my head held back. Her name hurts my throat and I want it to. I need something to take me from the pain that’s splitting my heart. “Lo!” But she’s not here, and I smash headlong into a wall of tears that breaks around me, falling brick after brick on top of me, forcing me onto the sand.
Lo.
Dean puts a hand on my arm. We sit and look at the water, at the waves that keep coming and never stop, even though the world has ended.
“How?” I ask him. “How do we carry on?”
“We just do.”
The sea far in the distance holds still, flat like ice. But near to us it becomes something else. I concentrate on the noise of it. Watch each tiny part come in and curl and fall and not even wait before it goes back again.
“What happens with your circus? Without Lo?”
Without Lo.
“They have to do the same set, until we close for the season in a couple of weeks.”
“And then?”
“And then I don’t know.”
I don’t tell him that I can’t perform. That I haven’t even walked into our big top.
“How was she at the end?” Dean asks. I look up at him as I realize what he says, and I wonder what I’ll say.
“She was peaceful,” I reply. He has secrets too. Am I wrong to keep this one?
“Was she in pain?”
“No.” The sea takes my lies and curls them up, dragging them away from me.
Dean looks up at the sky.
“Did she wonder where I was?”
“She thought you came to visit her,” I say quickly. He stares at me, but I hold the truth in my eyes. “She thought you were there.” He presses the palm of his hands across his forehead.
“I never saw her with anyone how she was with you,” I tell him. He doesn’t move. “She changed when she talked about you. She was different.” It’s enough to make him look back at me again.
“I’d never met anyone like her,” he says. I can barely hear him above the water. “She changed me too.”
“Is that a good thing?”
“Yes. She changed the way I look at things. She made me see what’s important.”
“You didn’t know before?”
“I knew some of it. But not all of it. I’m going to change my college course. I’m going to study art.”
I smile at him. “Lo would love that.”
There’s a sound behind us and Gramps appears.
“Is there room for an old man to join you?” he asks. Dean and I move so that he can sit between us, his coat hanging heavy around him as he settles on the sand.
“Dean,” he says, his voice warm, but so sad. “Did you love Lo?”
“Yes,” Dean tells him.
“You chose well,” he says. “And you must never regret that choice. However much it hurts now.”
Pain sits so sharply on Dean’s face. “I won’t,” he says.
He loved you, Lo. He really loved you.
“This is a part of your life, but not all of it,” Gramps says. He looks for a long time at the backs of his hands, at the rivers of tiny bones, before he looks toward Dean again. “Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“I think so,” Dean says. Gramps takes Dean’s hand and puts his other hand on top, as though keeping him safe.
“You have to live twice as hard for her now.” He pauses and I think he’s sifting through his thoughts. “And don’t try to make sense of it, because you won’t. Some things you just have to accept.” Gramps lets go of Dean’s hand and scoops up sand into his palms. It makes his skin look even older, that he’s somehow part of this beach. “The pain half kills you, but in time you gather it and carry on. And you must never wish your life away, however much it hurts.”
“Then why didn’t Lo know that?” I ask. I’ve got so much anger that I don’t know where it’ll go.
“She did,” Dean says quietly. Sadness holds him tight. “She knew it more than any of us.”
He doesn’t brush his tears away as he looks over the open sea, the giant stretch of it going further than we can imagine. Maybe Lo is there, somewhere. I was looking at the top of the waves, but maybe she’s hidden in them.
Are you, Lo?
I stare at the impossible stretch of it, where it meets the sky. My eyes hurt for searching.
Gramps lets the sand fall from his hand, before he puts one arm over Dean’s shoulder and wraps the other around me.
“You can’t see it now, but you will both be all right. You’ll never stop missing her, but you’ll find your way through.”
“I don’t want to do any of it without Lo,” I say.
“You will,” Gramps says. And we sit together waiting, watching the sea curling its white onto the beach.
Chapter Fifteen
Rita
“Lo wanted me to give you this,” Spider says. We’re sitting with Ash in his room. My place of safety these days.
“What is it?” I look at the envelope in his hand, but I don’t want to touch it.
“I don’t know.” The shock he’s waded through over the last few weeks is beginning to lift, but his eyes are still creased with sadness. “I promised I’d wait a while before I gave it to you.”
He holds out the envelope, and I see that the back of it is stuck down, a wobbly kiss is drawn where the join is.
“Lo did it?”
“Yes.”
I look at the biro cross and then up at Spider. We just stare at each other, trying to work ou
t how it all happened, how it came to this. The missing her is still so big, pushing us back against the walls and squeezing out the air.
Spider passes me the envelope, but it shakes so much in my hands.
“Do you want to be on your own?” Ash asks.
“No. I need you both here,” I say. He puts his hand on my arm and it calms me. I wish Lo could see Ash now. How strong he is. How he stops the earth from cracking in two.
I don’t tear Lo’s kiss in half. Instead I rip a small hole in the corner of the envelope and carefully open the top. I breathe courage deeply into me before I pull out the letter. Little squares of folded paper fall from it. Each has a number written on. I smile, without realizing it.
Spider watches me silently as I open the letter.
“It’s not her handwriting.” I feel cheated.
“She dictated it to the nurse,” he says. “But it’s all her words.” It’s only three sentences.
These are for you. Open one a week. Promise me you’ll do them.
I pass the note to them. I think I’ll see confusion when they’ve read it, but instead Spider smiles.
“That’s our Lo,” he says, his voice so sad that I feel my skin split and his pain sinks into mine. Every cell inside me feels made of jagged stones. I never thought it’d be possible to survive hurt like this.
“Here’s the first one,” Ash says. He passes me a folded piece of paper with “1” written on the front. I look at it floating strange in my palm, but I don’t want to open it. I’m scared to find Lo tucked into the white, but even more frightened that she won’t be there.
“Do you want me to do it?” Ash asks gently and I nod. He takes it from me, and I watch his fingers open it.
“Find me in a river,” he reads. I look at him, waiting to understand the words.
“Well it was never going to be something normal, was it?” Spider shakes his head, smiling again.
“But how will she be in a river?” I ask.
“We’ll just have to find out,” Ash says. He seems so certain, that somehow it makes sense, when nothing else does. “We could go tomorrow. I’ll ask my mom if she can drive us.”
Tomorrow? It seems too far away. Lo took normal time with her and we’re left with days and minutes that stretch endless and aching.
“OK,” I say, though my thoughts are washed through.
Spider carefully picks up Lo’s note and her little squares of paper and tucks them safely into the envelope.
“One a week,” he says. “No cheating.” And he hands me my sister’s words. He cries so quietly and so often these days that I don’t think he even notices as he stands up and turns his back toward us, walks out of the door without Lo by his side.
Ash and I stare into the emptiness. Shapes are here somewhere—the outline of his coat hanging on its hook. The light switch that his mom still cleans for him. His curtain hanging soft against the hard glass.
“They’re all waiting by the barrel fire,” Ash reminds me quietly. He puts his hand in mine, anchoring me so that I don’t float away.
“I’m not ready.”
Ash wipes my tears. “You can do this.”
“I can’t, not without Lo.” The barrel fire will be stripped bare with her not there.
“You can.”
My heart is sewn tight with sadness.
“I want to see her,” I say.
“I know.” He lowers his head.
“I’m so tired, Ash.” Since Lo has gone, I’ve spent my nights curled up on Mada’s sofa, counting the seconds until sleep eventually comes and waking before even the birds.
Ash looks up at me as he gets up. He doesn’t give me a choice as he helps me stand. He leads me to the door, but I hesitate as he opens it. The world beyond it is too big, too empty, and I feel so lost.
“I’m scared,” I say. From here I can see the barrel fire tucked amongst the dark. I know they all sit there, even Lil. Everyone but Ma and Dad who are locked so tight in their grief that they find it hard to even speak.
“I’ll be with you,” Ash says.
I can feel Lo’s words against my palm. These are for you. And I let Ash lead me down the steps.
Everyone stops speaking as we approach. Spider moves up for us, and we sit on the log. Tears are on his cheeks. The grass seems to tilt, but Ash puts his arm around my shoulder to stop me from falling.
We all just stare into the flames.
“I miss her,” Sarah says. She’s tucked safe into her dad, Baby Stan sleeping in Carla’s arms.
“I do too,” I tell her.
Gramps is never normally by the barrel fire, but tonight he sits close to Tricks, his eyes unmoving from the dark sky above us. And Rob is here, but I feel nothing when I look at him. No love, no hate. There’s no space for anything in me apart from Lo.
“How’s your mom?” Helen asks. She’s huddled close to Ernest, their hands locked together.
“She’s not good,” I say. And they’re all silent again. Because what do you say when we’re all here, but Lo has gone?
Spider picks up a stone and throws it into the fire. It knocks the flame crooked, before hitting inside the edge of the barrel. And the fire rearranges and carries on, the stone hidden out of sight.
I feel the familiar sharp pain of tears in my throat, but I squeeze Ash’s hand to stop them.
Tricks coughs slightly.
“We were discussing the performance,” he says. “About how we carry on next season without Lo.”
“I don’t want to,” Sarah says, cutting his words short. Stan just hugs her closer.
How will I put on my circus skin when I’m still too scared to touch it?
“It would feel wrong,” Spider says quietly. He doesn’t sound like himself any more. The spark in his voice has gone.
“Rob?” Tricks asks. But Rob just looks up at him as though he can no longer see.
“I don’t know how we can,” Helen says.
The circle of the barrel fire breathes in all the words, takes the lifeblood of our circus and burns it to dust.
“Maybe.” It’s Gramps’s voice that flickers in the darkness.
“Maybe we have a duty to carry on.” I look at him and see only the empty space where Lo should be. “Because we are the ones who are still here.”
He stops talking, the tears reaching from him, ready to meet my own.
“I think we do,” Tricks says, his voice wavering.
There’s a silence and I wonder if they realize they’re all watching me. All except Gramps, who now looks for Lo in the stars above.
“Yes,” I say, feeling Ash’s hand tight in mine. “Yes,” I answer for all of them. “It’s what Lo would want.”
And I know it is. Because through it all, she had our circus woven into her soul.
“We should do a performance with Lo at the center of us all,” Carla says.
I see people nodding, the mumbling of agreement.
“We’ll have to fill it with laughter then,” Stan says. “And mischief.”
“And storms,” Carla says. She watched Lo grow from a baby. Saw her bathe in puddles and catch raindrops on her fingers.
“You could never drag her in from the lightning.”
“And stars,” Tricks says. “Remember when she filled the ring with cut-out stars, so she could see what it was like to walk in the sky.”
“Mist. And feathers. And boys,” Lil says. Her skirt sits huddled around her, growing up from the ground. She hasn’t looked at her cards since Lo has gone.
“Truth and honesty,” Spider says suddenly, strong in the fire-breathed air. “Lo told me to trust people. And to be brave.” His mom looks at him and nods slowly.
There’s a silence, and I know they wait for me.
I stare into the barrel at the center of us all, watching the flames spike and dance. Everyone still looks at me, waiting for me to tell them about my sister. But how do you share the sun and the waves and the horizon?
“She was our Lo,” is w
hat I say. But it’s not enough. I curl my fingers tight around her letter in my hand. Open one a week. Promise me. “We’ll carry on living, for her.”
★ ★ ★
Lo would have loved this day. The bright shine in the air, the damp cold caught on the wind. I watch it all, as Carla drives us to the river.
“There.” Spider points to where a thin wall of water slides down to disappear below.
“I’ll find somewhere to park,” Carla says. I don’t take my eyes from the waterfall, turning in my seat as it vanishes behind the trees.
Carla moves the car half onto a bank and turns off the engine. Spider, Ash, and I get out onto the soft, mossy ground, the sound of leaves touching the air.
“What if she’s not here?” I ask.
“She will be,” Ash says, and he holds my hand safe in his. “We won’t be long,” he tells his mom and she nods but won’t look at us, and I know she’s trying to stop her tears.
The trees are thick with shadows as we push through them. It’s another world in here, the smell of damp earth, the colors darkened. I touch every tree I pass, needing to feel the rough bark on my skin. I want to walk slowly, quietly, so we won’t miss Lo if she appears.
The burst of light is instant the other side. And there’s the river waiting for us, catching a small waterfall. We stand and watch it, Ash, Spider, and I, how it stops when it reaches a rock, but then finds a way around and swims on quickly.
“Can I drink it?” I ask. The water looks so clear, with stones patient at the bottom.
“I don’t see why not,” Spider says.
I let go of Ash’s hand and kneel down close to it. It moves past my fingers, dampening them with cold. I make a cup from my hands and catch some of it. I had expected it to taste clean, but it’s metallic and rusty in my mouth.
“It’s disgusting,” I say. It’s the first time I’ve heard Spider laugh since Lo left us.
“I wonder what Lo sprinkled in it,” he says. And it’s there, the reason why we came.
“She’s not here,” I say.
“She is,” Spider insists. “We’re just not looking properly.” He takes off his shoes and steps from the bank into the stream, the water soaking through his jeans. “I’m going to the waterfall.”
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