Even If I Fall

by Abigail Johnson

  It’s such a small question, four little words, Your brother all right? But I don’t miss the way Dad holds his breath waiting for me to answer.

  I nod, and with a breath, so does Dad.

  “Will you tell her? Not now but—”

  “I’ll tell her,” I say, lowering the peas to the counter, but Dad stops me before I can turn toward the stairs with his hand over mine and eyes my cheek. It feels hot, which I know means it’s still red. Mom will be feeling horrible enough without having to see the evidence of her slapping me. I bring the peas back to my cheek. “Tomorrow,” I say. “I’ll tell her tomorrow.”

  He nods, his eyes resting on the frozen peas before smiling. “I remember this.” His smile grows. “Frozen vegetables on your knees or your ankles. You used to go on when you fell skating. Never saw such a little thing cry so much. But you never did want to quit, did you?”

  “No, I never did,” I say, wanting to smile and cry at the memories of me and Dad driving home from practice with ice packs or frozen whatever-was-closest-to-checkout-at-the-first-store-he-spotted-on-the-way-home vegetables. He’d let me cry the whole drive if I wanted to, but he always had me stop before Mom saw me, saying that mommas don’t like seeing their babies cry. It hurts their hearts in a way they can’t ever forget.

  “I miss seeing you skate,” he says when I lower the frozen peas from my face. “Loveliest thing I ever saw was you on that ice.”

  “I still skate,” I say, but it’s not the same and we both know it. My lungs swell and I have to look away because I’m afraid that I’ll see my father cry if I don’t.

  * * *

  I’m in bed but awake much later that night when I hear footsteps outside my door, light and soft, and I know they’re Mom’s. I pull the quilt higher under my chin and wait. There’s no tap on the door, no whispered words. There is just silence, long and aching, from her and me, and then the footsteps retreat.

  CHAPTER 32

  I drive Bertha’s ancient rusted form to the edge of the rink, ready to give the ice its first smoothing pass of the day to remove any moisture and impurities that the low humidity air in the rink would have drawn out overnight. Even though my feet won’t be touching the ice, my heart, so heavy since the events of yesterday and the quiet empty kitchen I left this morning, lifts a little as it always does. Then it lifts even more when I look up and see Maggie coming through the entrance. Shattering my phone the day before had deprived me of my one last lifeline, and I felt like I wouldn’t make it another minute without seeing my friend.

  If Bertha’s top speed were anything above a snail’s pace, I would have skidded with how quickly I stop her. I hop down, waving as I call Maggie’s name, though I know she already saw me. We aren’t officially open yet, so there’s no music pumping through the speakers. If there weren’t already a few people milling about I might have sprinted to her and worried about explaining myself later, but there are, so I walk. I round one end of the rink and expect to see Maggie rounding the other so we can meet halfway like normal, but the long walkway in front of the benches and rows of bleachers is empty before me. Then I see that Jeff has waylaid her and my desire to reach her intensifies, for my good and now hers too. Whatever he said to her must have been brief, because he’s walking away when I finally reach her.

  “I’m so glad you’re here,” I say, closing the last few steps between us and throwing my arms around her. “I had a really bad day yesterday. And a really bad night. And until now a really awful morning.”

  Maggie doesn’t say anything.

  And she doesn’t hug me back.

  I never feel the chill from the ice when I’m at the rink, but I do now. I pull away and look at her. She removes her aviators to reveal eyes that are red and puffy, like she’s been crying all night. And she doesn’t have a stitch of makeup on. Maggie would sooner leave her house without pants than set foot outside without doing her eyebrows, but they’re bare. All of her is. Something is very, very wrong.

  I reach for her hands, concern chasing away—at least for the moment—my own issues. “Maggie, what—”

  “My mom was at Porter’s Grocery store yesterday,” she says, flatly, drawing her hands back before I can grasp them.

  My insides start to freeze. Frost seems to lick its way up my legs and arms, converging in my chest and finally encasing my heart in a solid block of ice. All those eyes, all those whispers. I don’t know what Maggie’s mom heard, but an internet search would have filled in anything she missed. All the gory, seedy details splashed in vivid color on her screen.

  I can barely meet Maggie’s gaze, and when I do I want to look away. It’s more than the fact that she’s not wearing makeup; Maggie doesn’t look like herself when she’s not smiling. I feel the first crack splinter through my frozen heart when her lip trembles.

  “All this time you lied to me. Why, Brooke?”

  “I couldn’t lose you.”

  “Your brother killed someone.”

  I start to shake my head, a reflex not a denial, but Maggie makes a choked sound.

  “Don’t lie to me anymore.” Her breath comes in small, sucking sounds, like she’s trying not to cry. Or not to start crying again. “You told me he was messed up with drugs.” Her voice grows quieter. “All the people in town, Jeff, Elena and everyone here—that’s why you don’t want me talking to any of them. Not because they’re all horrible people who took the wrong side in a breakup, but because your brother killed someone.”

  I wince, her words ripping into my heart.

  “I thought you were helping me, protecting me in real life like you do with commenters on my videos, but you weren’t. I didn’t know anyone when I met you, and I thought I was lucky to have found the one good person in this town to be my friend.”

  “I am your frie—”

  The reproach in her tear-filled eyes stops my mouth. “You were my best friend, and you’ve lied to me over and over again since the day I met you.”

  “How could I tell you the truth? How?”

  She shakes her head at me. “You just do.”

  “I’m sorry.” But those are only words, and they mean less than nothing compared to all the lies.

  “Would you ever have told me the truth?”

  She can see the answer in my face; I don’t try to hide it. “I couldn’t stand to have you look at me the way everyone else does.”

  “You didn’t give me a choice. Instead you told me who to stay away from and when to keep my mouth shut. You always had reasons too. So-and-so hates me because...or what’s-his-face is a jerk because... Maybe it wasn’t all lies, but all of them? Every single one? I believed you and because of you, I’ve treated everyone here like scum.” She straightens her shoulders even as her eyes fill with more tears. “There are people here that I’ve literally turned my back on when they tried to introduce themselves. I thought I was being loyal to you. I even felt good about it, but the reality is you made me act like a complete jerk to people who didn’t deserve it.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry you got caught. You just admitted you weren’t ever going to tell me the truth, which means that list of people I was expected to write off on your say-so was just going to get longer. Do you get that? You say I was your only friend, but you made sure that I didn’t have anyone else either.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, again and again as she goes on. I can’t defend myself, because she’s right. I paint everyone in this town with the same brush. A lot of them have earned my low opinion, but not all, and none of them have earned Maggie’s. I didn’t set out to isolate her the way I isolated myself, but hearing her spell it all out like this...that’s exactly what I’ve done. I don’t know which is worse—all the lies, or all the manipulation.

  “Stop saying you’re sorry.” She brushes first one cheek dry and then the other. “I don’t want to hear that you’re sorry.”


  But I am, and I don’t know how else to tell her. “When I met you I had never been lower in my life. I had no friends, no future, and no hope for ever seeing my family happy again. Everyone in this town knows me by name if not by sight, but you didn’t. I got to be who I used to be with you, before everyone knew me as the sister of a murderer. I should have told you then, but every time I tried, I couldn’t get the words out. It was so nice to be able to spend time with someone who didn’t treat me like Jeff, or Mark, or my old friends, but someone who just treated me like me. I got so scared that someone would say something to you that I did warn you off people. I didn’t lie about anyone though. I did have a bad breakup with my ex-boyfriend after he sold pictures from my diary to a news outlet. And I don’t talk to Elena because she set me up to be ambushed by reporters the day Jason pleaded guilty. The people I used to trust and care about...so many of them turned on me that I didn’t give the rest a chance to do the same.”

  Maggie looks sick, and I don’t know if she’s listening to me anymore as she hugs her arms around herself.

  “But you’re right, it wasn’t everyone.” Most days it had just felt like everyone. “And even if it was, I had no right to try to tell you who you could be friends with, indirectly or not.” I lift a shoulder. “The truth is I barely know who would give me a smile if I gave them a chance. It’s so easy to read hostility in someone’s expression when you’re looking for it.”

  Maggie stands there when I finish. She looks ready to cry again. Like I hurt her irrevocably. She takes one shaky breath.

  “You really hurt me.”

  “I know.”

  She shakes her head. “I don’t think you do.” Then she turns and walks away. It’s only when I finish my shift and get ready to leave myself that Jeff tells me Maggie put in her two weeks.

  CHAPTER 33

  My family members are scattered when I get home from work, Dad in the basement, Laura in her room. I don’t know where Mom is, and I don’t feel ready to look for her just yet to give her the blow-by-blow from my visit with Jason.

  I trudge up the stairs. Laura’s door is shut and so is mine, but farther down the hall, Jason’s is cracked just a sliver. It looks like someone meant to shut it and didn’t make sure the latch caught before walking away.

  Mom is the only one I know who goes in there, and it’s not like her to leave the door open even a little. My brows draw together as I head to the room.

  For me, Jason’s room has never been the shrine it is to Mom, the closed door to be ignored to Dad, or the land mine to be avoided at all costs by Laura. It’s my brother’s room. I haven’t tried to avoid it or seek it out, to keep it from being a space that lets me deny reality or succumb to it.

  But it’s been a long time since I’ve gone inside, months, and as I reach for the knob my hesitating hand says I’m not as unaffected by it as I thought.

  I push open the door. It doesn’t creak—not that I would have expected Mom to let it—and the room is just as it’s always been, though neater and better-smelling than when Jason lived there. It’s also empty. I wasn’t expecting Dad or Laura to be sitting on the bed in the throes of an unguarded emotional breakdown, but disappointment slows my steps as I enter the room. Navy bedspread, white walls, the desk and headboard Dad made. Mom had hung a couple pictures of sailboats on the walls, more to keep with the color scheme than any nautical obsession on Jason’s part. He never complained. The only real time he spent in this room was when he was sleeping. Jason was always the type who struggled to sit still. He was always moving, surging from one activity to the next, unable to stay in the same place for too long. I push that thought from my mind knowing that’s exactly what he’s being forced to do right now.

  I trail my fingers over the silky smooth surface of the desk. I can feel the hours upon hours Dad spent planing and sanding the rough wood, the days of layering coats of wax onto the walnut until it gleamed. It looks as pristine as the day Dad finished it, because the only thing Jason ever used it for was holding his book bag. He and Laura were alike in that they preferred to do homework outside on the porch when they could.

  Unlike my siblings, I need the quiet, distraction-free solitude of four walls to focus. From my window, I used to watch the two of them rocking on the porch swing—Jason’s long legs propped against the porch railing and Laura’s folded underneath her, their matching honey-brown heads bent over books or laptops. They wouldn’t talk, just enjoy the quiet company until Jason would slam his book shut and silently declare he was done with a grin. He was always the smartest of us and could breeze through assignments that I later learned took me sometimes twice as long. Laura struggled more, but Jason, when he finished with his homework would, without fail, move down the porch swing and slide whatever papers she was hunched over halfway onto his lap so they could finish hers together. After so many years of him figuring out ways to help her learn, she’s better now with schoolwork, but when she does struggle, watching her makes me miss Jason so much I can’t breathe.

  The bedsprings squeak ever so slightly when I sit. I suck in the stale air, trying not to miss Jason, trying not to feel that sharp pain in my chest, the one that throbs endlessly like nothing will ever be good so long as he’s gone. A year ago, I thought I’d lost everything, but in the span of two days I’ve lost Heath and Maggie too—the one person who had started to give me hope for the now, and the other who had relentlessly given me hope for the future since the day I met her.

  I try to smother the sob that slips through my lips, but it reaches my ears anyway, and a second later, footsteps in the hall precede Laura’s appearance in Jason’s doorway. My sob cuts off before it can take hold of me the way it’s promising to. If I’ve learned anything about my sister since Jason went away, it’s not to cry in front of her. She breaks down completely, worse even than Mom.

  Laura clutches at one side of the doorframe; the toes of her bare feet almost curl back from the threshold so that not even the tiniest part of her enters Jason’s room. I wonder not for the first time how she can dismiss him so easily, decide that a lifetime of love means nothing. I know it hurts that Jason is gone, that we’re all of us suffering because of what he did, but we still have a brother. We’re still a family who should love each other, strengthen each other, not forsake each other even when everything else is telling us to.

  “Why don’t you ever come visit him?” I ask her, traces of the sob staining my voice. “He misses you. So much,” I say. “You have to miss him too, Laur, I know you do.”

  She doesn’t say anything, but her eyes blink faster.

  “He knows what he did was unforgivable, that’s why we have to forgive him. He’s not—he’s not doing great.”

  Laura’s blinking stops and I can see that her eyes are glossy wet. Barely more audible than a whisper, she says, “Mom said...”

  I don’t have to tell her that Mom sees what she wants to see.

  It’s a huge ask, wanting Laura to visit Jason, but maybe just coming into his room? That can’t be too much, it can’t.

  I reach a hand toward her. “Sit with me?”

  Laura’s eyes, which had softened, go wide and frightened now; her fingers dig into the doorframe.

  The ache in my chest sharpens. “Please?”

  But she won’t. He loved her—loves her—so much, and she won’t set foot in his bedroom.

  “He’d come for you, you know he would. It wouldn’t matter what you did. He’d camp outside your cell if they let him, find a way to get himself thrown inside if he could, just so you wouldn’t be alone. Remember when he got you Ducky? He worked for Mr. Zellner at the pet shop cleaning cages for weeks, getting up at four every morning before school after we had to give the kitten back because you were allergic. Or what about that outer space diorama in third grade that you dropped and broke the night before it was due? He stayed up all night redoing it with you. He gave you his shirt when y
ou fell and split your pants on the church hiking trip. Do you even remember how sunburned he got? He couldn’t go to school for a few days afterward.”

  My heart is breaking saying these words, every one of them true. They should be breaking hers too, but they aren’t. She doesn’t let go of the doorframe, and her toes don’t slide even an inch forward. “How can you turn your back on him like this?” My head swings down and away, unable to watch her deny him even so small a thing when he would gladly give his life for her, or me, or anyone he loved. And he loved so much.

  My gaze catches on the collage of photos tacked above Jason’s desk, his one nod to decorating. There are a lot of him with his friends, one of him and Dad fishing, one of him and Laura on the porch swing that Mom took unawares. He’s smiling down at her, and you can tell from the lift in her shoulders that she’s smiling too. I’m on my feet then, moving to pull it free to show it to her, but when I get closer, my eyes drift to another photo, one that had been blocked by a lamp from my angle on the bed.

  I’ve seen it countless times. Before his arrest it was his profile picture on all his social media accounts and the wallpaper on his phone. It’s of him and his then-girlfriend, Allison. She’s on his back in the photo, laughing with her arms loosely wrapped around his bare shoulders, and they are both dripping wet from swimming. Jason’s face is in profile as he looks back at her, smiling. Seeing that photo the first time, I believed my brother when he said he’d marry that girl. I used to believe Allison felt the same way, and not just about Jason, about all of us.

  My hands go to the edge of Jason’s desk, supporting my weight that suddenly feels like too much for my legs. Jason said she wasn’t in town that night, but would he have told us if she were? Or would he have lied to protect her from the accusations and implications that would have assaulted her if anyone thought she was a witness?

  “Brooke?”