For This Life Only

by Stacey Kade

  Before I could figure out what to say, Leah turned on her heel, her plaid skirt flaring out behind her, and headed into the living room.

  She sat on the couch. I lowered myself into the armchair across from her, keeping half the room and part of the piano between us.

  The uncomfortable silence continued, and I could hear the low murmurs of my mom and Mr. Hauer talking in the kitchen, most likely about us.

  “What’s up, Leah?” I asked, a little more abruptly than I meant to.

  She flinched and then held her hand up in apology. “I forgot how much you two sound alike.” She took a deep breath. “And I’m trying to get used to the idea that I’ll never hear Eli say my name again.” Her eyes went shiny with tears.

  I clamped my mouth shut. What could I say to that?

  Leah took another breath, then lifted her gaze to meet mine. “I came here because I wanted to say I’m sorry for yesterday.”

  “Yesterday? For what?”

  She sat up straighter, smoothing her hands over her skirt. “That couldn’t have been easy for you, coming back to church for the first time since . . .” Her voice faltered. “I didn’t mean to make it harder. I haven’t been sleeping well.”

  Was she actually apologizing for fainting? Like that was something she could control. “It’s fine. You have nothing to be sorry for,” I said.

  “No, I’m not the only one who lost. I need to remember that.”

  The back of my brain registered the faintly martyred tone in her voice, exactly the kind of thing that made her so irritating, but I was more preoccupied with a larger revelation.

  “You’re not mad at me,” I said, but my surprise made it come out more like a question. After all, maybe she was better at hiding her anger than others.

  She shook her head and stared down at her hands folded neatly in her lap. “Of course not.”

  “Why not?” I blurted. It was an accident, yeah, but the circumstances leading up to it had been put in motion by me.

  “Jesus said to forgive seventy times seven, Jace,” she said with an admonishing look.

  Thanks, Leah, how incredibly helpful. I knew the Bible verse—Matthew something—just as well as she did. Okay, maybe not quite as well. But regardless, what the verse lacked was the how. How do you forgive someone that much? How do you forgive yourself? How do you stop being angry? Where was that quote?

  “Because Jesus told me to” wasn’t a particularly compelling or useful explanation in this situation.

  Her shoulders sagged. “Besides, it’s what Eli would have wanted,” she added softly.

  I cleared my throat. “Thanks.” She was right; Eli probably would have wanted that. But that didn’t mean I deserved her forgiveness. Or his, if he were able to give it.

  “I also wanted to ask a favor,” Leah said. “You knew Eli probably better than anyone besides me.”

  Maybe. Today of all days, I wasn’t so sure about that.

  “Would it be weird if we talked about him sometimes?” Her throat worked. “I loved him, and I miss him.” Tears rolled down her cheeks to her jaw. “And I thought maybe since you did too, we could . . . I don’t know . . .”

  Leah had planned her entire future around my brother. They’d spent days comparing course catalogs and college brochures and being generally annoying downstairs in the rec room, while I was playing Xbox. If anyone could have made a relationship in high school survive all the way through college and beyond, it would have been the two of them.

  But now here she was, half of a whole that no longer existed. Maybe in that, Leah and I finally had something in common.

  “Yeah,” I said, rubbing my palms down the legs of my pants. “Whenever you want.”

  Leah nodded her thanks, wiping under her eyes carefully. After a beat of silence, she started to get up.

  A stupid impulse took hold of me. “Wait. Can I ask you something?”

  She sank back onto the couch.

  I hesitated. The last thing I wanted to do was make her cry more. “Was everything okay with Eli that last night? He, uh, seemed upset about something.”

  She blinked, confused. “No, I don’t . . . I didn’t really talk to him much that day. Did something happen at the party?”

  I stared at her. “What?”

  “It’s just, that was more your scene than his.” She lifted her shoulders in an uncertain shrug. “Maybe someone said something—”

  “At Zach’s party,” I said slowly, trying to fit the pieces together.

  “Yes, Zach’s party,” she said, giving me a sidelong look. “Eli wanted to spend time with you. What other party was there that night?”

  “I . . . none, I guess,” I managed, my hand clutching tight to the arm of the chair.

  Leah shifted closer to the edge of the cushion, looking at me and my death grip with concern. “Are you okay? Do you need me to get your mom?”

  “No,” I said too quickly. “I just didn’t know that he’d told you that. About wanting to spend time with me, I mean.”

  Her eyes spilled over again, a sad smile pulling at her mouth. “He told me everything.”

  No, no, he didn’t.

  Because Eli sure as hell had not been at Zach’s party.

  He’d told my parents and me that he was with Leah. And he’d told Leah he was with me.

  The realization led to a strange twisting sensation in me, like something long held was breaking loose. Eli had been lying to all of us.

  But why?

  In a flash, I saw again the deep, unmistakable grief on Thera’s face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  * * *

  WHEN I WALKED INTO Pussy PE on Tuesday, Thera was already there, her attention fixed on a thick textbook in front of her and her barely-a-stub pencil scratching across her notebook page. Her dark hair had slid forward over her shoulder, hiding most of her face.

  I paused just over the threshold.

  Was this really such a good idea? So what if she and Eli were a thing—what difference did it make now?

  None.

  Except I needed to know. It was like discovering some secret side to Eli, one that was less than perfect and more like me.

  Thera didn’t look up when I stopped in front of her table, not even when I cleared my throat.

  “Hey,” I said.

  She glanced up, her mouth tightening at the sight of me. “Oh. Hey.”

  “Can I talk to you?” I asked, and everyone else in the room went still, like we were the featured entertainment. Damn it.

  She nodded slowly, running her thumbnail over the metal ridges of the eraser end of her pencil. “Listen, if this is about yesterday, I . . . I’m sorry.” Her words sounded stilted and forced. “That was a shitty thing to say to you and I’m not—”

  “No,” I said. “It’s not about that.” I didn’t want an apology from her. That felt wrong. She was the only one who’d had the guts to call it like she saw it.

  “Then what?” she asked, her expression radiating wariness.

  “My brother,” I said, hitching my backpack higher on my shoulder, the motion awkward with my right hand.

  Thera went still. “Okay,” she said after a moment, pushing away her textbook—physics, I could see now—and putting her pencil down.

  “Did he . . . were you . . .” I struggled to find the right words. “What was he to you?” I asked finally. “I saw you yesterday,” I added before she could say anything. “You thought I was him.”

  Her shoulders stiffened. “You’re twins,” she pointed out, focusing on some undefined spot to my left. “It was a mistake. I forgot for a second. That’s all.” Then she grabbed her pencil and slid her textbook closer, signaling that the conversation was over.

  “I’m just trying to understand,” I said quietly. Him, the situation, life, death, everything. It felt like I needed to start somewhere, and this, at least, I could investigate.

  Thera didn’t respond except to flip a page.

  With a wince, I lowered myself carefull
y to be level with her. “My brother was lying to his girlfriend and everybody else about where he was right before the accident,” I said in a voice barely above a whisper.

  Her gaze shot to me immediately and then away, color rising in her pale face.

  “And you . . . you’re . . .” My words failed me again, and when she looked up at me, I could feel the embarrassed flush in my cheeks.

  “I’m what?” she asked, in a careful, too neutral tone. “I’m . . . me? Is that what you were going to say? I’m the girl you don’t take home to Mom and Dad, just the one you screw in secret and then lie about?”

  Oh, shit. “No, that’s not what I—”

  “You can go now,” Thera said.

  “Wait, no, that’s not it!” I hoisted myself back upright, gritting my teeth against the pull of pain in my leg. “I’m trying to figure out what Eli was doing that night—”

  “And you automatically assume he was sleeping with me?” Thera folded her arms across her chest.

  Someone in the back of the room tittered.

  “I’m not . . . I didn’t . . . ,” I protested. How did this spin so out of control, and so quickly? My argument was crumbling fast around me. “You were really upset yesterday. And I just . . . why else would he lie?”

  Her expression darkened. “Of course. Because I’m Thera Catoulus and I’ll fuck anything that moves, right? Whether they have girlfriends or not. Whether I want to or not.” Her voice wavered a little on that last part.

  I opened my mouth and shut it, not knowing what to say. A yawning chasm was opening up in what I’d thought was solid ground.

  She leaned forward, her dark eyes bright with tears and anger. “Why can’t you leave me alone?”

  “That’s not—”

  “Is it because you think I’m poor and desperate, so I’ll let you?” she asked. “Or maybe it’s because my mom tells fortunes, and lies about talking to dead people, so guys like you can say whatever you want about me and no one will stop you.”

  Lies about talking to dead people. Her words bounced around in my head, echoing, so it took me a second to process the rest of what she’d said.

  “I’m not trying to say anything about you at all,” I said, frustrated. “I’m just asking a question.” And she was literally the only person in the world who could answer it.

  Thera shoved her chair back to stand. “No, you’re not!” she shouted.

  “Hey, hey! What’s going on here?” Mr. Sloane asked as he walked into the room.

  “Nothing,” Thera said, dropping back into her chair.

  “A misunderstanding,” I said.

  Mr. Sloane sighed. “Thera, go to the office, please.”

  “What? I didn’t do anything. Ask anyone.”

  A deafening silence followed. No one was going to back her up.

  Her shoulders slumped. “Forget it,” she muttered, gathering up her belongings.

  But her hands were shaking as she shuffled her books and that pathetic excuse for a pencil into her worn bag, and something like guilt moved in me.

  “She’s right. I started it,” I said before I could think better of it.

  Thera’s fingers slipped off the zipper of her bag as she glared at me.

  Mr. Sloane threw his hand up in exasperation. “Fine, both of you go.” He frowned at us. “I’ll call to make sure you get there. You have three minutes.”

  Thera stood, swung her bag over her shoulder without comment, and then hauled ass out the door.

  • • •

  In the hall ahead of me, Thera was a distant figure in all black, her hood up and her head down.

  I followed her path to the office, but I couldn’t keep up. And I had a feeling that asking her to wait wouldn’t get me very far. I wasn’t completely sure why I’d said anything. Getting sent to the principal’s office automatically meant a call home, and right now, that couldn’t be good for me. Either they’d be pissed, which would be bad, or, worse, they’d say nothing at all.

  I concentrated on moving one foot in front of the other, trying to move faster.

  At the sound of laughter, I looked up.

  Caleb had come from somewhere, one of the classrooms probably, and was now walking backward alongside Thera, a bright green hall pass between his fingers.

  As I watched, he laughed again and reached out to tug her hood back, touching her hair.

  Twisting away from him, she slapped his hand down with a loud smack and walked faster. I couldn’t see her face, but she seemed smaller, shrunken somehow. The whole scenario screamed WRONG. It made my insides feel squeezed by an invisible fist.

  “Hey, Caleb,” I called.

  He caught sight of me, whispered something to Thera that made her flinch, and then loped toward me.

  “Palmer! What’s up, man?” Caleb asked with a grin. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Office. What are you doing?”

  “Library.” He flicked the pass and grinned. “Gotta do ‘research’ on some Shakespeare thing.” He squinted at me. “You get in trouble? With her?” He jerked his head in the direction Thera had taken.

  I shrugged, uncomfortable. “Something like that.”

  “Nice.” He held his fist out.

  “I better go, before Drizen comes looking for me.” I moved past him.

  “You don’t have to chase that hard after her, Palmer,” Caleb called after me. “She wants you to catch her.”

  “Shut up,” I mumbled, and he laughed.

  When I finally made it to the office and pulled open the door, I was sweaty and exhausted.

  “No, he’s here now,” Mrs. Clark, one of the secretaries, said into the phone as I collapsed in the chair next to Thera’s, trying to catch my breath and ignore the fresh throbbing in my leg.

  When Mrs. Clark hung up the phone and returned to her computer, Thera skated a glance in my direction, hugging her bag tighter to her body. “I don’t need your help,” she whispered.

  “I never said you did.” Though after what I’d seen in the hallway, I wasn’t so sure about that. “I just want answers.”

  “I don’t have any answers,” she hissed, shifting away from me in her chair. “I told you.”

  We sat in silence for a few long moments while I tried to figure out how to ask what I needed to know. I had no idea what I could say that wouldn’t make things worse.

  He was worth ten of you. That’s what Thera had said yesterday. And she was right, no matter what reason she had for feeling that way. On that, at least, we were in agreement.

  “If you’re angry at me for getting Eli killed, you should be,” I said finally. “He’s the one who should be here, not me.”

  She stiffened and then looked over at me, her eyebrows raised in surprise.

  I shifted my plastic-booted foot on the worn gray carpeting, stretching my leg out and rubbing the muscles around my knee, trying for some relief.

  Thera watched my movements, her expression impassive. But she didn’t turn away again.

  “I fucked up,” I said softly. “Made a mess of everything. Eli died because of me, and I don’t know how to deal with it. I don’t know how to live with it.” I gave a halfhearted shrug. “Most days, I don’t want to.”

  My words sounded bleak and tasted like crumbling ashes on my tongue, and yet it was a relief to confess even that much.

  Thera turned a microfraction closer and I braced myself, ready for the stream of platitudes about better places and forgiving myself, or a torrent of cutting accusations of recklessness.

  Instead she regarded me silently. “I’m not sure anyone knows how to live with something like that,” she said after a moment. “You’re just here, and that has to be enough for now.”

  “Because everything happens for a reason?” I asked. “Do you believe that?” The desperation in my voice made me cringe.

  Her gaze skittered from mine. “I . . .”

  “Never mind,” I said. “That was dumb, forget it.”

  Thera sighed, slumpin
g in her chair. “You want to know what Eli was doing?” she asked.

  I looked up, hopeful.

  “He was tutoring me,” she said. “Because of my . . . other obligations, he had to come to my house. He thought your parents would probably not be too happy about that, so he—”

  “He lied.” That made infinitely more sense than any other scenario I’d come up with.

  I leaned back and bumped my head against the cinderblock wall a couple of times. I was so stupid.

  “He was my friend,” Thera added.

  “I’m sorry. For what I said. For this.” I tipped my head toward Drizen’s inner office. “I guess . . . I wanted there to be more. I wanted there to be some big secret. Something new to learn about him.” I stared down at my left arm, trying to flex my fingers. “Because then it would be like he wasn’t really gone, not yet.”

  “I think that’s understandable,” she said. “Kind of,” she added with a hint of her original sharpness.

  I felt the faint curve of a smile pulling at my mouth. She wasn’t quite ready to let me off the hook. And that was fine; I deserved to be there.

  Mrs. Clark rose from her desk and went to knock on Principal Drizen’s door. He answered and she stuck her head in to speak with him, her hand gesturing toward Thera and me.

  Time was almost up.

  “Did you really mean what you said?” I asked Thera. “About your mom lying about what she does?”

  Her mouth fell open slightly. “I don’t . . .” She frowned. “Why?”

  “I want to know if he’s okay,” I said, my voice gravelly and thick.

  Understanding dawned, and her expression softened. “I don’t know. I mean, there’s something. She knows things she shouldn’t. But if you’re asking for proof, I can’t help you there. I’m sorry.”

  The honesty hurt, but in some ways that was better than yet another attempt at comfort.

  I nodded. “Thanks.”

  “Jacob?” Principal Drizen asked from his doorway, but his attention was focused on Thera. He shook his head at her with a sigh.

  I stood up. “You going to be all right?” I asked her under my breath, as Drizen moved back to make room for me.

  “Sure,” she said. “Haven’t you heard? This place is like my second home.”