Give, a novel

by Erica Carpenter Witsell

  She shrugged. “Okay.”

  She didn’t like playing video games, but she liked that Jay had asked her. They had little in common these days—he with his friends and his little league, she with school and track—but whenever they did spend time together, she felt the ease of their old closeness.

  “Any idea what Mom wants?” she asked.

  “Nope.”

  “Think we’re in trouble for something?”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She waited for him to die, and then they raced each other down the stairs and up the hall to the kitchen. She slapped her hand against the doorframe seconds before Jay.

  “I win.”

  Her mother and father were standing side by side in front of the sink. When she saw their faces, her stomach flip flopped inside her.

  “What did we do—” she began, but then she saw Jessie seated in her place at the kitchen table and went quiet. Her sister’s face was red and puffy; she clutched a sodden tissue in one hand. Emma breathed a quick, inaudible sigh of relief. Whatever it was, it wasn’t them— it was Jessie.

  But what had Jessie done? And why, if Jessie was in trouble for something, had she and her brother been invited in to witness her shame? That was not like her parents. “You have your own behavior to think about,” her mother always said when one of them wanted to spy or gloat.

  Emma studied her sister’s face, trying to guess. Then again, maybe it wasn’t what she thought. Maybe some actual tragedy had occurred. Had her sister’s hamster Snowflake died? He had a big lump on one side of his head and one eye was permanently closed. She tried to catch her sister’s eye, to get some hint of what was going on, but Jessie wouldn’t look at her.

  “Emma. Jay. Jessie has something to tell you,” Sarah said quietly.

  Jessie hesitated only a second. “I’m going to live at Baymont.”

  Emma stared at her in disbelief. “With Laurel?”

  “Yes.”

  “For . . . For forever?”

  “Well—”

  “I mean, all the time? For school and everything?”

  “Yes.”

  “But what about us? What about—”

  “I’ll come and visit sometimes.”

  At her side, Jay didn’t move. She glanced at her parents; both their faces were masks of stone. Emma couldn’t speak. She couldn’t ask the one question that was screaming in her head: Why? For how could Jessie answer with their parents looking on like that? Emma knew what drew her sister to Baymont, for those things drew her, too. But beneath all those reasons—the horses, the beauty, the extraordinary fact of actually living in such a place— there was only one possible, unspeakable answer: Jessie liked Laurel more than she liked Mom. But how could she? To Emma, it seemed impossible. Laurel as a mother—that was too high a price to pay.

  As soon as they were dismissed from the kitchen, Emma cornered Jessie in her room.

  “Jessie, why?”

  Immediately, Jessie threw herself face down on her bed and began to cry again.

  Emma did not relent. “But why? Jessie, how can you—?”

  “I just want to, okay?”

  Emma stood on the rug by the door and watched her sister cry. Normally, she would have gone to her in an instant, but now she stood as if rooted to the spot.

  After a moment, Jessie looked up and regarded her with teary eyes. “Don’t you know?”

  Emma shrugged noncommittally and looked away. Did she know? Emma had seen Jessie in Baymont; she had seen her with Laurel. At times, she had even envied her sister for how well she fit there, when Emma herself felt ill at ease and traitorous. Jessie was right: she did know. Emma felt that she understood all of it, all except for that one huge, undeniable piece: Jessie was choosing Laurel to be her mother.

  This she did not, could not understand.

  “But how—?” she began. “Laurel—”

  “Oh, Emma. Don’t you get it? Life here sucks. Every day it’s the same thing, and I’m sick of it.”

  “Those boys still?”

  Jessie met her eye and nodded.

  “So . . . why don’t you tell Mom and Dad? I mean, they could do something—”

  “What? What could they do?”

  “I don’t know. They could talk to the bus driver.”

  Jessie snorted. “Right.”

  “They could drive you home from school.”

  “It’s not just on the bus, Em. It’s everywhere.”

  “Well, they could . . . I don’t know.” She looked at her sister hopelessly. “You could just tell them.”

  Jessie sighed. “It’s not just the bullying, Em. You know what it’s like at Baymont. It’s . . . It’s just different, isn’t it? I mean, can you imagine actually living there? I want to go.”

  “But what about Laurel?” At last she had said it.

  Jessie looked hard at her. “What about her? She’s our mom, Emma. It’s not so crazy that I want to go and live with her.”

  Emma shook her head. “No, she’s not. She’s not my mom, at least.”

  Jessie sighed, exasperated. “Well, technically, she is. But whatever.”

  Emma studied her sister, who had propped herself up on her elbows on the bed and was wiping at her cheeks with the backs of both hands. Suddenly Emma felt how far Jessie was from her. They had always been so close, and yet here was this colossal piece of her sister’s heart that she did not know and failed to understand. Already she looked different to her: the sister who would be a different kind of sister now. An absent sister, a partial sister, a sister who could choose to leave.

  Emma did not cry or beg her sister to change her mind. She could feel a new distance opening up between them. She did not contemplate, then, what Jessie’s absence would mean: this bedroom empty of her sister and all her things, the way her own life would shift and shrink without her sister in it. Her sister was a part of her, her love for her so deep that she hardly needed to call it love. And yet even then, on the precipice of losing her, Emma did not think to tell Jessie that she loved her, or plead with her not to go. Instead, an awful greed loomed up in her. When Jessie left, she and her brother would be alone. They would be the faithful ones. They would be loved best.

  Does every child feel this horrid thing? This secret, sucking need to be loved more? Emma loved her sister—she knew she loved her sister—and yet, during those long moments in Jessie’s room, she felt that love trumped in her. There it was, undeniable but awful. Horrid, yes, but thrilling: Jessie would leave, and Emma would be loved more.

  CHAPTER 26

  Jessie

  One afternoon a few months later, Jessie burst through the back door into the kitchen, her backpack halfway off her shoulders already. She unzipped it and plunged her hand inside, pulling out a slightly crumpled piece of paper. She held it out to Sarah, who stood at the counter, unloading the dishwasher.

  “I need you to sign this form,” Jessie said.

  Sarah looked up.

  “What’s that?”

  “I want to run cross country next year. They made an announcement today at school—there’s a meeting next week. All I need is to get a physical and for a parent to sign this form.”

  “Could you close the door please, Jessie? The air-conditioning’s on.”

  “Would you sign it?” Jessie said, holding the paper out to Sarah with one hand and pulling the door closed behind her. “So I can run cross country in the fall?”

  But Sarah didn’t reach out for the paper. She simply turned, a coffee mug in each hand, and looked at Jessie sternly, her eyebrows arched and forehead wrinkled.

  “Mom, I said is it okay if I run cross country next year?”

  Sarah stared at her, silent.

  “Mom, I—”

  “Next year?”

  “Yeah, it’s a fall sport. It’ll start next—”

  Jessie stopped. Suddenly, she understood the odd expression on Sarah’s face. All at once, she remembered—she wouldn’t b
e here next year. She wouldn’t run cross country for Spelman High School next fall. She wouldn’t even go to that school anymore. And she wouldn’t, she realized, need her mom and dad’s permission for anything. Her breath caught in her throat.

  “Oh,” she mumbled. She felt too ashamed to add, “I forgot.” The blood rushed to her face and she scuttled to her room, throwing herself onto the bed.

  “I just forgot, okay?” she muttered into her pillow. “I just forgot.” She pushed the heels of her hands into both eyes, hard, and clenched her teeth. She was so tired of crying, and what was the point, anyway? Nobody here even cared.

  That Friday evening at Leah’s house, Jessie reported to her best friend what had happened. They were lying side by side on their backs on the shaggy rug in Leah’s room, staring at the ceiling.

  “I just forgot that I was going to leave, you know? But I felt so stupid. Asking Mom if I could run cross country when I won’t even be here.” Jessie was dry-eyed now, nonchalant, but the urge to cry was still lodged in the bottom of her throat, even now, two days later. Oh, she just couldn’t wait for it all to be over. But everything seemed to be moving so slowly. The court date had not been set; weeks passed with no word from the attorney. When Jessie had first told Laurel she wanted to live with her, Laurel had called her every few days for two weeks, full of questions and plans and gratitude. But now weeks might pass with no phone call from Laurel—as if nothing had happened at all, Jessie thought. As if her whole world was not about to change.

  No one at home seemed to understand Jessie’s impatience for the suit be resolved. After all, she had made her decision, and her father had said he would not cross her. Next summer Jessie would go to Baymont for good. But what would the judge say about Emma? The question hung over all of them. Jessie had, more than once, overheard her father and Sarah speaking to each other in tense voices, but to Jessie and Emma they said almost nothing.

  “I mean,” Jessie said to Leah now, “everything just feels pretty much the same as it always has. Except Mom and Dad . . . I don’t know, they seem different somehow. But they never talk about the court case. I don’t even know what’s happening.”

  “I still can’t believe you forgot,” Leah said beside her. “That’s so weird.”

  “Yeah,” Jessie agreed. “But how can they blame me? I felt stupid and everything, but I don’t know. Everything just feels so normal that I forgot for a second.”

  “Well, technically a lot longer than a second, if you asked your mom to—”

  “Come on, Leah. You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  Leah had been Jessie’s best friend since they were both five years old, when Jessie had started kindergarten in Bakersfield. They had been together through all six years of elementary school; it was only in retrospect that Jessie understood what a difference that had made. Jessie had never been easy with her peers, but with Leah there—fearless, gregarious, likeable Leah—the other kids had hardly seemed to notice Jessie. Back then, it had only been Leah who had teased her, calling her “Brainy Smurf” good-naturedly whenever the teachers praised her.

  “Okay, Smurfette,” Jessie had retaliated. With her perfect blonde hair and her ballet lessons, Leah had always been the kind of girl that Jessie had no wish to emulate, no matter how many times her friend talked her into painting her toenails or curling her hair.

  Everything had changed after fifth grade, when Leah’s parents decided to send their only daughter to private school. Leah and Jessie had managed to stay friends, but it was different now. Jessie had often wondered how her life might have been if she and Leah had gone to the same school. Would Leah’s friendship have been enough to keep the other kids at bay? Or would Leah—so popular now, so cool—have understood immediately what a social liability her best friend was and kept her distance? Jessie wouldn’t have blamed her, if she had. Who’d want to be best friends with Crow Magnum, after all?

  Jessie rolled onto her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows. She looked around at the familiar room. There, on Leah’s bookshelves, were all the romance novels that Leah loved but that she disdained, although she had borrowed and read most of them. There, on the dresser, was the shoebox where Leah saved every wrapper from every piece of gum she had ever eaten, all the shiny, silver pieces of paper neatly folded and stowed away. On the walls hung half a dozen pairs of old ballet slippers and pointe shoes.

  Jessie gestured to them now. “If you can’t wear them anymore, why don’t you just throw them away?”

  Leah shrugged. “I like how they look.”

  Jessie lowered her head to the rug and closed her eyes. When she left, would Leah just ask one of her friends from school to sleep over on Friday nights? Would it all go on exactly the same—the Domino’s pizza Leah’s parents always ordered for dinner, the voices on Dallas filtering in from the den, the trundle bed pulled out for some other girl who might actually like the pink comforter that Jessie hated? Would it all go on just the same, but without her? She felt her presence like a ghost in the room, already fading.

  When she opened her eyes, she saw that Leah had turned onto her side and was looking at her seriously.

  “What?” Jessie said.

  “You don’t have to go, you know.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t have to go to Mendocino. You don’t have to go live there. Stay here. Run cross country.”

  Jessie laughed nervously. “But I already decided.”

  “So change your mind. It’s your life. You can just . . . stay. Plus, if you run cross country, you won’t have to ride the bus, right? Somebody’s gonna have to pick you up.”

  “But I’ve already said—”

  “So say you’ve changed your mind.”

  “But—”

  “Oh, come on, Jessie. Do you really want to go and live up there? How can you want to live there?”

  “You don’t understand. It’s different there.”

  “Fine. I don’t understand. I’ll never understand.” She paused for a minute, and when she spoke again her voice was different, less petulant but sadder somehow.

  “You’re right, Jessie. I don’t understand. I don’t understand how you can just decide to leave everything. Everything! Emma, Jay, your mom, your dad. Snowflake. Me.”

  “What?”

  “Geez, Jessie. I mean, come on. How can you just decide to leave your best friend like it’s nothing?”

  “It’s not that it’s nothing. It’s just—”

  “It’s just what? It’s just that Baymont is so different, blah, blah, blah. There you can blah, blah, blah. Laurel lets you blah, blah, blah. Well, what about us? Don’t you care about us? How can you just leave everyone like that?”

  Leah got up suddenly. She tore a Kleenex from the box on her bedside table and wiped her nose. She stared at the ballet shoes hanging from the wall. When she spoke again her voice had softened.

  “Look, I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes for a moment and sighed deeply. “I’m just really going to . . . I’m just going to miss you.”

  Jessie couldn’t speak. The room was quiet except for the muffled voice of JR coming through the walls and the hum of the air-conditioning unit just outside Leah’s window. Jessie looked at Leah and then buried her face in her arms. Her friend knelt beside her on the floor and put a tentative hand on her back.

  “Jess, I didn’t mean to make you cry. I’ll just miss you is all. But you can visit, I guess, right? Jessie? What’s wrong?”

  Jessie was sobbing hard now, her face hidden in her arms.

  “Jessie?”

  “I don’t think I want to go,” she mumbled through her sobs.

  “What?”

  “I don’t want to go.” Jessie looked up finally, her eyes puffy and nose running. Leah offered her the Kleenex she still had balled up in her hand, and Jessie took it and wiped her own nose fiercely. When she spoke again, her voice was calmer.

  “I don’t want to go and live in Baymont. I want to stay her
e.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Really?”

  Jessie nodded.

  “Why? I mean, what changed your mind? I thought—”

  “You did.”

  “Jessie, I didn’t mean . . . I was just talking, you know? I didn’t mean to make you—”

  “It’s not that. It’s not what you said about how I didn’t have to go and everything. It’s just—”

  Jessie hesitated, not wanting to repeat it. It felt too precious to repeat; she didn’t want to spoil it.

  “Then what?”

  “What you said about . . . about missing me. You’re the only one who’s said that.”

  “Oh.” Leah plopped down on the bed. “That can’t be true. Everyone is going to miss you.”

  Already Jessie could feel her friend backing away. Leah was not one to gush. Instinctively, Jessie backed off, too. Leah had said it; that was enough.

  “I mean, I can imagine myself being there,” she said. “Mostly. I just never imagined myself not being here. You know?”

  “Yeah, I guess.”

  “And I honestly never thought about how anybody might miss me.”

  “Honestly, Jessie, that’s just stupid.”

  Jessie smiled through her tears; this was more familiar ground. She gave a little shrug. “Maybe.”

  “Of course everybody’s gonna miss you. What did you think?”

  Jessie shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then she shrugged again. “Maybe you’re right. I guess probably Emma will, anyway.” But inwardly she was thinking, But you’re the only one who said it. And suddenly the realization that until now not one person in her family had said that they would miss her seemed monstrously sad. Jessie began to cry again, covering her face in her hands. “I’m sorry.”

  “Oh, Jessie. Please stop. Here.” Leah got the Kleenex box from beside her bed and shoved it at her friend. “You’ve got to stop. My mom’s going to come in here soon to tell us to go to bed, and if she sees you crying she’ll be worried and call your parents and . . . Are you really not going to go, do you think?”

  Jessie looked up. Leah looked uncharacteristically serious.

  Jessie nodded. “I really don’t think I want to anymore.” Suddenly the prospect of going to live in Baymont with Laurel seemed ludicrously far-fetched. How had she missed that, before? She’d been so caught up in the fantasy of it. She would go to Baymont, escape her tormentors, gallop through the hills with the wind in her hair . . . She let out a little burst of laughter.