by Val Emmich
“Don’t leave. Please.”
He gazes past me at the exit.
“Can you at least look at me?” I say.
He does, but there’s no joy in it.
“This isn’t what I wanted,” I say. “I don’t know how it happened.”
“You had it backwards. You’re the one who’s like everyone else.”
“What? No, you’re misunderstanding.”
“I don’t think I am. Besides, that’s your thing, isn’t it? Poor misunderstood Tegan. Nobody understands.”
It cuts too deep. My fire ignites. “You’re not perfect.”
He sighs, as if he finds me pathetic. “I never said I was.”
“You basically tried to kill your own father. You just left him there and you made me call for help. I can tell everyone what you did. Who you really are.”
His eyes light up, ready to detonate, but he pulls back. “You’re sick.”
He slips around me and walks down the hallway.
I don’t have to turn around to see what happens next. The front door beeps. The cold comes in. He goes out.
I follow him to the door. The storm blasts down as he disappears inside it.
He forgot his coat.
5:13 PM
Iran out of the house, my mom calling after. I was already blocks away before I realized I’d forgotten my jacket. It was cold outside, bitter.
The falling flakes felt like debris from my exploded life. I slowed to a walk. What was the point of running when I had nowhere to go? Alone, cold, aimless—I wanted to scream.
When I spotted the moonlike glow of the soaring Edison tower, I realized I’d been heading here all along, to the museum. My body and heart directed me when my mind was fresh out of ideas. I retrieved the key from the old lockbox that had survived the museum’s renovation. Under the weak porch light, I fumbled with the lock and wiggled open the door.
The Edison bust recognized me and allowed me to pass. I felt safe. I remembered when my dad first brought me here. This is it? I wondered. It’s so small. Now the snugness was like a hug.
Huddled in a ball on the floor, I reached out to him, my dad, the way I’d been doing for years, with an email, but this time I didn’t send it for real, only in my head. The truth—even before tonight, I’d given up emailing him. Not because I’d run out of things to say. He just didn’t know what to say back to me.
I’m not the girl he raised. I don’t know who I am anymore.
Dad,
There’s nothing you can tell me to make me feel better. What can you possibly say? Aren’t you proud of your daughter? You really did create a monster.
Tegan
Dad,
I know you’re never coming back, so I’m going to stop wishing. I just wonder if you’re the lucky one. Getting to leave like you did. I get jealous of that sometimes.
Tegan
Dad,
I won’t bother you anymore. I know you’re ashamed of me. I’m sorry it happened like this. I’m really sorry.
Tegan
3:42 AM
I look down at my naked feet. Snow fills the space between my toes.
I step back inside the museum, where the shift in light causes brief blindness. I make it to the back room. I can smell him here, I swear, and it brings me to my knees. I crawl across the floor, bumping into a hard object: the candle. I shove it away. It topples over and tumbles into something valuable.
I crawl more. I crawl until I’ve reached a dead end. I coil up under the table that Mac once sat on. Where his legs dangled down.
I came to the museum tonight because it was the only place where I could hide. It became a place where I was found.
I shut my eyes and strike the back of my head against the wall. Again, again. A hammer to a nail. Then a sparkle. A swimming, shimmering sparkle. I reach out for it. In my palm, now, a jagged shard of glass. Mac and I missed a piece. I tighten my grip around it and test the sharp edge. It could slice a carrot.
I am sick. I tried to prove the opposite to Mac, that the person behind Nightshade is not a psycho, that there were sane reasons behind the madness, that I’m a well-meaning and caring person. But I lost my head again and showed him how truly sick I am.
I shut my eyes and squeeze my hand into a fist.
A list of imperfect things that still function: book with missing cover, person with one kidney, computer without internet, window with cracks, shoes without laces, girl with misshapen hand.
A list of imperfect things that cannot carry on: phone with no charge, chair with three legs, boat with leak, bird with missing wing, girl with broken heart.
Under the table, you squeeze your fist. You’ll squeeze until there’s nothing left, until it all pours out and fills the cracks in the floor.
You’re a pest. Worse than a fly. Another type: bacteria that no one knows is sharing their air. A sickness. Now you’re under the microscope—your ugliness blown up.
For a moment, though—for one night, you were more. There was a storm and the sky opened and all turned white and beautiful. Even you. You were beautiful. Truly. You felt it. In your skin. In his eyes. Beating from your chest. You felt it. When you spoke with ease. How time stood still. In the waves of a candle. In a kiss. Your beauty was a bolt. It lit up the dark. It was that real. It could brighten up a house. A night sky. It made colors richer. Songs sweeter. It turned fear into courage. It danced and swayed. Oh, what elegance. What grace. Did you see yourself? You were such a thing. At your most beautiful…
But a dream.
He made a promise. You wanted to believe. How weak, how gullible. Just a pest. A sickness. He was right about you. Not easy. Complex, messy. Brutal.
You’re sorry—it changes nothing.
What a beauty, though.
You’re sorry—it changes nothing.
A sound…
A figure appearing…
He looks down at the mess you’ve made.
You’re sorry.
His face, kind, relieved, that of a father’s.
You’re sorry.
His big hands take hold. He drapes you over his shoulder. He takes you away from here.
8:23 AM
My eyes open on a different Saturday to a white ceiling. It’s a blank screen onto which anything can be projected. I raise my hand and form a shape. With plenty of morning light coming into my bedroom through slanted shades, the conditions aren’t right to produce a shadow. I squint my eyes to create a fuzziness around my fingers. Still, the snail doesn’t come to life.
I lower my left hand and focus on the right one. Across the palm is a fading red line where the glass dug in. It doesn’t hurt anymore. Only to look at.
My phone waits nearby. It urges me to check it and I do. The lock screen is clear of messages. Disappointment, relief. I leave the phone locked.
I throw the covers aside and slide my feet into slippers. I lift the shades to let more light in. The snow is all but gone. A few blackened piles have turned to stone and might never thaw out. What starts out pristine gets made a mess of.
I turn away from the window. The interior view is stained in its own way. This bedroom of mine is too familiar. So much time spent here. The mini disco ball with the forever-tangled chain hanging from the closet doorknob. The leaning tower of books, higher each year, with every lower layer revealing past lives. Wedged inside an empty seltzer bottle—a stress ball looking very stressed. I’ve stared at these objects for hours on end. When something about the room suddenly changes, it awakens me.
Right now, there’s one object that shouldn’t be here. It rests flat on my dresser. I walk over and look down. I stare at it, long and hard, feeling wide awake.
The day after the night that changes everything is a Sunday. You waste it entirely in bed. Even if Mom allowed you to leave the house, you wouldn’t dare.
The aftermath is worse than the storm itself. Even with doubled-up clothing and covered in blankets, you feel naked. There’s only the barest you remaining. Stripp
ed away are the many layers of deceit. Debunked are the various myths you’ve perpetuated. Fallen is the wall of denial you couldn’t see past. There are no more lies worth telling. Nowhere left to hide.
But still you try.
Monday, thankfully, is no school. You would have found a way to stay home even if it weren’t a snow day. Normal life, regrettably, resumes on Tuesday. What is normal? Is it chewing handfuls of Charlie’s antacids to settle your stomach? Is it lashing out at Neel when he’s done nothing to deserve it? Is it arriving late to every class because you’d rather wait for the halls to clear out before showing your face? Has Mac told anyone your secret? How will the masses exact their revenge?
This is what consumes you. But the outcome hardly matters. You’re already dead inside. That’s what it feels like. Let it be done already. Let the truth be revealed. Let them all hate you the same way he does.
You told him the truth because you thought you could. He made you a promise. You try to hate him the way he hates you. You really put some effort into it. You summon your deepest reserves of venom and you poison his memory with it. This works okay, especially at night, but always when you wake, your thoughts of him are vivid and unharmed, and each one reveals a stunning moment of light and awe.
So there’s that.
Obviously, he must be avoided at all costs. You learn his schedule and hallway routes to ensure that the two of you are never in the same place at the same time. Neel serves as additional lookout, texting you Mac’s whereabouts while growing increasingly alarmed about this new obsession of yours. You manage to elude Mac for the most part. On Friday, there’s a close call. He walks out of the main office as you’re passing. He doesn’t see you, but his sudden appearance causes a minor panic attack. You wonder why he had to go to the office. Was he called there? Or did he go on his own? As he walks away, his hands dangle at his sides. He doesn’t wear a bandage, just a small Band-Aid.
It’s not easy, this eternal evasion. Just more pretending, really. The following week, you spot him talking to a group of people. He’s all smiles and laughs. It hurts to watch. Is this the real him or a performance? You want him to turn to you and wink, to send you a sign that your time in the museum wasn’t a dream. But you realize that no one in real life winks. That night it seemed as if an improbable thing like a wink could really happen. Every tilt of the head and graze of the knee and gleam in the eye seemed equivalent to a wink. The night plays over and over in your head. Every teasing detail. The unharmed memories torture your mind and wring your insides. This life is a kind of death: when the one person you’re forbidden to see is the one person who truly sees you.
8:52 AM
I enter the kitchen and find the refrigerator pulled out from the wall. Mom stands before it, arms crossed. Breezy instrumental music bleeds from the house phone lying faceup on the counter.
“What’s going on?” I say.
“It just stopped working,” Mom says.
Charlie pops his head out from behind the fridge. “Did you break it?”
“No,” I answer earnestly, before realizing he’s only kidding.
“I’ve been on hold forever,” Mom says, and lowers the volume of the phone. “It’s practically brand new, this thing.”
“It’s almost ten years old,” I say, doing some quick math. Three years since Dad died plus at least five more. I was probably around eight when I threw away that hand art my parents had saved.
“Has it been that long?” Mom says, already tired of the subject. “I was just about to wake you up.”
“Well. I’m up.”
She seems proud that her sixteen-year-old daughter woke herself up for work, and I try not to show that I’m also sort of proud of this small accomplishment.
I open the fridge and peer into the darkness.
“Don’t let the cold air out,” Mom says. “We still might be able to salvage some of that food.”
I shut the door and survey the kitchen. A tray of fresh corn muffins waits on the counter. Charlie says his muffins are organic, but if he’s claiming they’re healthy, he’s delusional. I’m convinced a stick of butter goes into each muffin. They’re delicious.
I jiggle a muffin out of its nest and carry it over to the table.
“Do we have any wrapping paper?” I say, crumbs falling from my open mouth.
“For a birthday?” Mom says.
“No. Just something generic.”
Charlie pokes his head up, intrigued.
“You need it now?” Mom says.
“Kind of.”
She wants to know more, and after all I’ve put her through she has a right to be curious. I disappeared in the middle of a major storm, and when I finally returned near daybreak, I was covered in blood. That’ll unnerve the best of them. But to her credit, Mom resists the urge to pry, perhaps because I’ve started the day off so responsibly.
“Let me check.” Before she leaves, she points to the noisy phone. “If someone picks up, please talk to them.”
I hope it doesn’t come to that, but if it does, I can manage it. I’ve spoken under more pressure than this.
I watch Charlie, down on his knees, feeling under the fridge. “Do you know what you’re doing back there?”
“No idea,” Charlie admits.
“Have you tried unplugging it and plugging it in again?”
“Course I tried that.”
Hard to tell whether he’s bluffing. I give him the benefit of the doubt.
“Makes no sense,” Charlie says. “It was working perfectly last night.”
Electricity is like that. It’s one of those things we believe in without fully understanding how it works.
“Can I help?” I say.
Charlie hoists his big body up to a standing position. “To hell with it.”
He rests in a chair across from me. His forehead glistens with sweat. Hold music loops endlessly from the phone.
I didn’t even know how I truly felt about Charlie until that night. Hiding under the table in the museum, letting the glass tear up my hand, I just didn’t want to fight anymore.
He arrived like an angel. He carried me to his warm car and drove me home. Not a word between us.
In the driveway, I couldn’t get up from the passenger seat, so he lifted me again, this time out of frustration, the compassionate kind, and he delivered me safely to Mom. We embraced and I gazed over her shoulder at Charlie. He watched me like a knight guarding a princess. What he meant to me and what I meant to him—I felt it then.
I feel it now as he wipes his wet brow. I laugh when he pretends to be mean. I adore his lazy spelling in texts. I love that he carries around his MUSICIAN FOR HIRE business cards wherever he goes. I’m disappointed when he forgets to say good night. I miss him when he’s gone.
He’s even given me my own theme song. I finally asked him what tune he’s always whistling outside my door. He told me it’s “Girl on Fire” by Alicia Keys.
“Today’s the day, huh?” Charlie says, trying not to appear too excited.
“The day for what?” says Mom, returning with her arms full.
I shake my head at Charlie. Mom sees it.
“Excuse me,” she says. “No secrets, please.”
Charlie wants no part of it. “I’m going to wash up,” he says, leaving the table.
Mom watches his awkward exit and turns back to me. Charlie and I took a long drive the other day, and he knows a few things that she doesn’t.
“I’ll tell you tonight,” I say.
Her nerves can’t take it. “Tell me now.”
“Tonight,” I insist, letting her see into my eyes.
She breathes deeply and lets it go. She’ll just beat the information out of Charlie if I don’t keep my word. But it won’t come to that. I’ll tell her anything she wants to know, but only after I follow through with my plan.
“I don’t have any plain wrapping paper,” Mom says, sorting through the items she’s dumped on the table. “But I do have these gift
bags. Would one of these work?”
On the night of the storm, I warned Mac that he better start appreciating his dad because he could be gone at any moment. I’ve realized in the time since that I haven’t taken my own advice when it comes to my mom. Mac was right: She is tough. She smiles when she wants to cry. She gets out of bed when she needs more sleep. She opens her heart again after it’s been torn to pieces. I want some of what she has.
I find a bag that’s big enough. “This should be good.”
“You’re getting crumbs everywhere.”
“Sorry,” I say, shoving the final bite of muffin into my mouth.
The hold music stops and a woman’s voice calls out, “Hello, this is Meredith speaking.”
Mom leaps up from her chair and dives for the phone. “I’m here!” she shouts as she fumbles with the receiver.
She takes the phone off speaker. Here’s hoping Meredith can save the day.
Mac was right about something else: Mom had known about the emails I was writing Dad for a while. It wasn’t her discovery that I was writing them that made her want to talk to me that night; it was learning that I wanted to stop writing them.
She had plenty of questions about what she found in those emails. I told her as much as I could. There are still secrets I keep—one very shameful one named after a toxic plant. I don’t know whether I’ll ever be able to reveal to her how truly low I got. For now, I’m just trying to communicate the best I can.
I take the gift bag and mouth “thanks” to her.
She mouths back, “Text me.”
We’ve been texting each other more than ever. Most of the time it’s about nothing—what time I’ll be home or where she hid the nail polish remover. But sometimes it’s not nothing. Sometimes it’s kind of everything.
