“Right.”
“Right.” I snorted. “Why? Because somebody’s just a few minutes too early, or too late, or because somebody missed a message by leaving at exactly the wrong time?”
“Because they all make choices. They act the way they have to act.”
“But you could have changed it.” I turned toward him. His blue eyes were steady. I could almost see myself reflected in them. “It didn’t have to turn out that way. You could have written a different ending. Let them make the right choices for once.”
“But that wouldn’t be the truth.” Shakespeare’s voice sounded different than usual. Lower. A little softer. A little rougher. “Do you know how hard it is to just sit back and watch, when you already know what’s coming? You created them. You care about them. You know they’ll make mistakes. You know that they’ll get hurt. The world will hurt them, they’ll hurt themselves. There’s nothing you can do. That’s just the way the story goes.”
“I’m going to change it.”
I stood up and strode across the stone floor to the gate. It was locked, its heavy bars bolted in place.
“Romeo!” I called up the steps. “Paris! Stop fighting! She’s not actually dead!”
Shakespeare hadn’t moved. He watched me from the purple couch, his face calm. “They can’t hear you.”
I ignored him. “Hey!” I yelled. “Anybody! I’m down here!”
My voice rang up the staircase. The clanking from above got louder. Now there was another sound beneath it—a deep rumbling, like something huge and heavy beginning to collapse.
“Juliet . . .” Shakespeare said softly. “This is just how the story goes.”
“Stop!” I was screaming now. “Stop! I’m awake!” I wrenched at the bars. “I’m awake!”
Behind me, a massive stone slipped from the ceiling and smashed against the floor. Two more stones fell against one of the pillars, which cracked, tumbling to the floor in an explosion of shards. The ceiling sagged inward. I pressed myself against the gate, shielding my face with both arms. Mortar and black dirt rained down. More stones fell, their crashes echoing. The light flickered out.
And then there was a new light.
Brighter. Paler. Everywhere at once.
A silhouette flickered over me. Behind its spiky head, I could see tubes of white light against a beige ceiling. Rows and rows of perfect square tiles.
I sucked in a breath. My heart still pounded like it had nearly been crushed. My head throbbed.
“All finished,” said the technician. “Are you doing all right?”
I smoothed my face. Vivien Leigh in A Streetcar Named Desire. Katharine Hepburn stepping onto the set at the end of Stage Door. “Yeah,” I said. Don’t let them know what you see. “I’m fine.”
CHAPTER 24
Yellow flowers were in bloom on the riverbank. They opened around me while I slept, and the fairies sang their lullaby in my dreams until all of their voices became just one voice, and I opened my eyes. Mom was sitting beside me.
“Are you warm enough?” she asked, rearranging the old yellow afghan around me.
“Yes. Thanks.”
I blinked at my feet, stretched out to the other end of the living room couch. The air was misty. It was daylight, but Mom was dressed in yoga pants and a zippered sweatshirt, not in her work clothes.
“You don’t need to stay home with me,” I told her. “I’ll be fine.”
“I’m going to do half days for the rest of the week.” Mom looked at me anxiously. “Maybe we should get somebody to come and stay with you.”
“Mom, really.” Two yellow flowers sprouted up from the blanket between my fingers. I blinked and they vanished again. “I’m fine.”
Mom rose to her feet. “Would you like some sparkling water? I was going to get some.”
The rest of the week. More days—how many? Three? Four?—on top of the days I had already missed.
“Mom?” I tried to sound cool, accepting, in case I’d asked this before. “I’m out of the play. Aren’t I?”
Mom stopped, halfway out of the room. “Once you’ve recovered and you’re feeling back to normal, Mr. Hall says there’s no reason you shouldn’t be able to do the next show.”
Don’t crack now. “The next show? In fall?”
“I know it sounds like a long way off. But you’ll be . . .” Mom stopped again. She looked at me for a long moment. “I’m sorry.”
“No.” I swallowed. A screw twisted behind my right eye. “Mom—I’m sorry.”
Mom nodded. “I know you are.” Her voice was papery.
“Not just for this. For everything.” I was at the crest of the hill. Time to plunge down. Fly. Fall. “For being stupid. Not listening. For being bad at skiing. For making you go through this all over again . . . the hospital and the doctors and the tests . . .” Deep breath. “For everything with Dad. How I was. At the end.” I stared at a knot in the blanket. “I know he left us.”
There was a short, awful silence. Mom’s legs moved into my field of vision. She stood beside the couch, looking down at me. “What are you talking about? You think he left?”
“Pierce told me. He said Dad stayed with them for months. Like . . . he’d moved out.” I wormed three fingers through the holes of the afghan. “I remember you two fighting. All the time. Usually after I did something. I’d hear you in your room, with the door shut, trying not to let us notice.”
“Jaye. All couples argue sometimes.”
“I know. I know that. But then he—sort of faded away. He was never home. He stopped speaking to me. He didn’t come to my very last play before—”
“Peter Pan?” Mom interrupted. “The show you auditioned for without even asking permission?”
I groped backward. “I—”
“You knew we’d say no, because it was during the school year, and you’d have to get downtown for rehearsals, and we already had that trip to Colorado planned, remember? And you snuck out and did it anyway.”
“But . . .” My thoughts bumped off of their path. “I guess I didn’t think it would be a big deal.”
“Your dad wanted to make you quit that show. You got so upset when he threatened to call the director and tell him you were out that you started hyperventilating. So I said we should let you choose. Remember? I really thought you’d do the right thing, go to Colorado with your family, make up for lying to us. But you picked the play.” Mom’s voice was gentle. Cool. “That’s why he didn’t come to the show.”
“But . . . No. That wasn’t all.” I looked up into her face now. Her lake-water eyes. “He was gone. He left. I hadn’t even seen him for weeks when . . . when everything happened.”
Now Mom’s tone had a hint of exasperation in it. “Like I told you, he was traveling for work a lot that winter.” She shook her head. “Jaye . . . I know things have been confusing for you lately. I’m not sure what your brain is—”
“No. Please.” I almost put my hands over my ears. “Please don’t tell me I don’t remember.”
Mom let out a long breath. “Okay,” she murmured. “Fine. Think what you want.”
She turned and walked slowly away, into the kitchen.
I slumped back on the couch. My head was pounding. My stomach felt like a wrung towel. I could hear Mom in the kitchen, cabinets opening, cups clinking. After a minute, I swung my legs over the side of the couch and shuffled toward the stairs.
As I climbed, another memory floated to the surface. That winter, two years ago, lying in bed each night with my door open. Listening for the sound of Dad’s car in the driveway, his feet creaking up the staircase. Falling asleep before the sounds came. Every morning, before heading into the bathroom, I’d peek through Mom and Dad’s bedroom door. The bed was always empty by then, the blankets smoothed and pillows rearranged, so it was impossible to tell if only one side had been used
. But I always looked anyway.
I knelt down beside my own bed. At first, when I reached underneath, my fingers found only empty space. My stomach twisted harder. Then I remembered that I’d moved the bundle closer to the side. And there it was: the soft, dusty cotton of Dad’s old T-shirt.
I pulled the bundle out into the daylight.
I unfolded the T-shirt. Dad’s running shoes were still tied with loose bows. I wondered if he had tied them, or if Michelle Caplan had done it, or if it had been Pierce himself, neatening them up before putting them away. Saving them for me. There were little scuffs on the toe of each shoe.
“It wasn’t because of you.”
I turned around.
Mom stood in the doorway. Her eyes moved over Dad’s shirt, the worn running shoes in my lap, almost like she’d expected to see them there. “I need you to know that.”
I held on to one shoe, afraid to move. “It wasn’t?”
Mom leaned lightly against the doorframe. Her eyes lingered on the print on the T-shirt. COACH. “Things had been getting rough for a while. Your dad was on edge all the time. Work problems, the track team’s performance, family stuff . . . He’d blow up about every little thing.” Mom chafed her hands together. “But the big issue was the business expansion. Such a huge investment, all at once . . . I didn’t think we should take the risk. He thought we should. For once, I put my foot down.” She gave a little shrug. A tiny smile. “And it turned out that I was wrong. The new locations were a huge success, and it paid off for the Caplans in a way that it didn’t for us, which made your dad crazy. And then I found out that he’d actually invested more than we’d agreed to, just not as much as he originally wanted, which he saw as a compromise, and I saw as a lie.” She rubbed her hands again. Chapped knuckles. Ragged fingernails. “We just needed a little time apart. But he didn’t leave us. That’s not what it was.”
“Were you going to . . .”
“It was temporary,” Mom said, when I couldn’t finish. “It was supposed to be temporary.”
I ran my fingers over the shoelaces. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
“We promised each other that we’d protect you and Sadie from all of it. We didn’t want you worrying about something that was really between the two of us. Something that we thought would pass.” She paused. “It feels kind of like I’m breaking that promise to tell you even now. But I suppose that’s better than letting you think it was because of you.”
I twisted the shoelace around my finger. Tight. Tighter.
Dad’s angry voice on the other side of the closed door. Dad driving me home from another meeting with the counselor, his hands rigid on the wheel. Dad racing away up our dark street, disappearing through the circles of lamplight.
“I know it was partly me,” I said. The ache in my head was a constant, screaming pitch. “I know I made things worse.”
“Jaye . . .”
“You even said ‘family stuff.’ I know that’s code for me.”
Mom stepped into the room. She sat down on the edge of my bed, facing me, so that my eyes were on a level with her knees. The chapped hands folded in her lap.
“He was worried about you,” she said. “That’s all. You know how many times we got called by your school office during that last year?” She reached out and swept a strand of hair out of my eyes. “He just wanted you to do better.”
There was too much inside of me. The swollen ache in my head, the lump in my throat. It forced the tears out of my eyes. I looked down, tilting my face so Mom couldn’t see.
“I wish . . .” I began. “God. I don’t know. I wish I had made him proud.”
I heard Mom take a yoga breath. In and out, very slow. “You still can.”
We sat together for a while. Cold wind blew outside the house. Mom tucked the afghan tighter around me.
The yellow flowers bobbed and nodded.
I blinked. I was back on the living room couch, with Mom sitting beside me, rubbing my feet through the blankets.
I glanced toward the stairs. Were Dad’s running shoes and worn T-shirt still lying on the floor beside my bed? Had one of us—or both of us—gently rewrapped them and tucked them away again?
Had I pulled them out at all?
I looked back at Mom. A few strands of soft brown hair were slipping out of her ponytail. A cup of tea steamed on the table behind her. She caught me watching her and gave me a little smile, her hands still rubbing, the look in her eyes soft and fragile, like something that’s just started to thaw.
I wasn’t going to ask.
The memory was good enough.
• • •
I woke up shivering.
The air was gray. Crushed red roses stuck to my skin. When I moved, I felt snow crumble around me.
I looked around. I was still on the living room couch. There were my own black drawstring pants, stretching away into the distance; my Arsenic and Old Lace T-shirt. The blanket was gone. The yellow flowers. Was that why I was so cold?
I rolled onto my side. A vase of red roses stood on the coffee table. My phone sat beside it, within easy reach. Under the phone was a note from Mom.
Call if you need ANYTHING. Then her work number, even though she knew I already had it, and the number of the nurses’ station at the hospital. Remember, the phone is for emergencies only. Get some rest. Take care of yourself. XOXO.
I picked up the phone and flicked it on.
A text from Pierce was waiting.
Thinking about you, it said. See you soon.
Another shiver raced over my skin.
Pierce saved you, I reminded myself.
Rob wasn’t even there.
He wasn’t there.
I stared straight at the phone for a while, like that could make another message appear.
Maybe I should send one instead.
Tom, could you find out . . . Find out what? How?
Nikki, would you ask Rob to . . .
No. No, you idiot. You’re going to choose right for once.
Thinking about you.
What should I write back?
Hamlet sat on the corner of the coffee table, leaning his head on one hand, watching me. He sighed. “Words, words, words . . .”
I typed Thinking about you too. Then I turned the phone off.
The couch creaked as I rocked to my feet. The room was empty. Hamlet had vanished again. The sounds of the furnace and the refrigerator rumbled in the background. I was alone.
I started up the staircase.
“My Oberon! What visions have I seen!” My voice rang through the empty house. No one there to hear me playing Titania. No one would ever hear me. “Methought I was enamored of an ass. How came these things to pass?”
I sounded strong. Clear. Queenly. Not crazy.
“Silence awhile,” murmured Oberon’s voice beside me. He stood halfway up the steps, fireflies dancing around his long, pale face. “Titania, music call, and strike more dead than common sleep of all these five the sense.”
I climbed past him. “Music! Music such as charmeth sleep!”
Below me, fairies twirled through the living room, singing their lullaby.
I threw myself down on my bed. I felt freezing and feverish at the same time. Heat swelled inside my skull and cold climbed up from my fingers and toes, the two fronts clashing until my whole body shook.
I wrapped myself in the rumpled purple quilt. Something crinkled under my head, and I reached up, fumbling for it.
It was a folded square of notebook paper. That’s right—the notes from Nikki and Tom that Pierce had brought to the hospital. I’d forgotten all about them. Mom or Sadie must have put them on my pillow.
The notebook paper had been tucked into a tight little packet. As I unfolded the flaps, a second, smaller square tumbled out. I looked at the outer page first.
At the top, in Nikki’s blocky handwriting, it read THE STATE OF THINGS IN THE FAIRY COURT. Below that was a mean but pretty accurate caricature of Michaela Dorfmann, complete with snooty nose and heavy makeup, being stabbed by a swarm of fairies with pitchforks. Under the drawing were the words: When you get better, I’ll kill you.
I smiled.
I picked up the note from Tom.
Instead, what I unfolded was a letter. A long letter. In handwriting I didn’t recognize.
Jaye—
The EMTs wouldn’t let me ride with you to the hospital. At least they told me which one they were taking you to. I ran home for my car and drove there, but the staff told me I couldn’t see you because I wasn’t family. And they wouldn’t tell me how you were, or if you were going to be okay, and that’s been making me crazy ever since.
I called your house over and over, and I left a lot of idiotic messages on the machine, and finally your sister picked up and told me never to call again.
So now I’m writing you a note. Nikki agreed to help me get it to you, and if you’re reading this right now, then she figured out a way to do it. I hope you are.
This isn’t just an apology, although I need you to know how sorry I am. I’m sorry that you were hurt, and I’m sorry that I was part of it, and I’m sorry if I’ve made things worse for you in any way, and I’m sorry that I can’t tell you all of this in person. Although maybe you want to never see me again. I would understand. Even though I’d be sorry about that too.
I’ve been losing my mind since Monday afternoon. Not knowing if you’re all right. Thinking about how you looked, lying there on the sidewalk, because I was too late to catch you. Putting this on paper helps a little bit. But it’s not the same as getting to talk to you. Getting to sit across a coffee shop table from you. Getting to walk down the street beside you.
Last week, I didn’t even know you. Now not knowing you or seeing you or thinking about you feels totally impossible. Sorry if that’s weird.
There. That’s my last apology.
If you don’t want to answer, that’s all right. I get it. I’ll stay out of your way.
Dreamers Often Lie Page 23
