Everything's Fine

by Janci Patterson

  I paused outside the upstairs bathroom. I could just use it like I said I would, and go back downstairs. If Hazel didn't know where the journal was, it might take her a while to find it.

  But she would find it eventually. And I couldn't risk the questions that would follow.

  I pushed open the door to Haylee's room, which was shut but not locked. The room seemed like it was holding its breath, waiting for her to return. Old play programs littered her desk from the shows we'd gone to last summer at the classical Greek theater in Santa Cruz. On top of them lay a clean, printed copy of Haylee's essay on Tess of the D'Urbervilles, the one that was due before Christmas break.

  Her purple bedspread lay smooth across her sheets, tucked in at the edges. That was wrong. I shut the door behind me and tugged on the blanket, wadding it up and stuffing it at the end of the bed, the way Haylee would have left it.

  It smelled of detergent, and that was wrong, too. Hazel had washed the bedding. Everything else in Hazel's house was always newly-laundered, but Haylee made a stand for her room. It should be messy, just like her mind.

  Besides, who washed their dead daughter's bedding days after she died?

  I froze. Was that where her body had been? I stood with both feet planted on the floor, and imagined slipping out of my body and drifting away. What happened to her body, once Haylee was gone? Did it go limp, or stiff? Did her spirit escape, or was she trapped inside as we locked her in cold storage, put her on display, and then dumped her in the ground?

  Mom wouldn't tell me how Haylee did it. I was sure Haylee's death would be in the news, but the only thing I could find online was an obituary. I guess a teen suicide wasn't a big enough deal to be reported. One day Haylee was there, the next she was gone. Not much of a story, really. That meant I knew nothing except what my mother would tell me. And she was too busy reading books about how to help your teen through a death to notice me.

  I didn't know much about killing yourself, but I couldn't imagine it was easy. Maybe if you had a gun, but Haylee's parents weren't gun people. When we were little, her mom wouldn't even let us play with squirt guns, unless they were the useless kind shaped like spitting frogs or dolphins instead of firearms.

  If Haylee died a bloody death in her bed, the bedding wouldn't have washed easily, if at all.

  My stomach turned.

  Don't think. Get the journal.

  I opened the closet. It looked even more a wreck than usual. Hazel must have been in here, looking. Or maybe Haylee had torn it apart in her last minutes, consumed by one of her fits, blind to everything but her pain. Once, years ago, I'd watched her destroy her math textbook, tearing and tearing until no page was left intact.

  "I don't get it," she said. "I just don't get it."

  I should have realized then she wasn't talking about math.

  At the bottom of the closet, sparkles shimmered. I pulled out Haylee's Winter Fling dress, smoothing out the wrinkles in the black fabric. Silver glitter dusted the floor.

  Last time I'd seen Haylee, she'd modeled the dress for me at the store before she bought it. The top fit tight, straps criss-crossing over her shoulder blades. The skirt cascaded over her hips and billowed out, so it swished when she turned, just wide enough to be classy, just tight enough to be sexy. Her hands ran over the skirt like each thread was precious. Haylee had worn that dress to go out with Bradley Johansen. The one, true Bradley Johansen. And then she'd never called me again.

  I'd tried to call him the day I found out about Haylee. I'd called twice more since then, but he hadn't answered. I was sure that I'd see him at school, or at the funeral. But I'd skipped school on Monday, and he'd been out the rest of the week. I hadn't seen him at the service, or the burial, or the reception.

  He should be here—if he liked her enough to take her to the dance, he should care enough to suffer along with the rest of us.

  Focus, I told myself, hanging Haylee's dress over an open dresser drawer. He had to come back to school eventually. For now, I had to deal with the journal.

  I lifted the shoe rack that had been below the dress. Beneath it, the carpet lay loose against the wall. I reached under it; my fingers met paper and I pulled.

  The journal slid free. I held it tight. The front cover had a picture of a willow tree, and a quote from William Shakespeare:

  All the world's a stage,

  And all the men and women merely players:

  They have their exits and their entrances;

  And one man in his time plays many parts,

  His acts being seven ages.

  I wanted to take a permanent marker over the third line, especially that word: exit.

  Stairs creaked at the end of the hallway. Footsteps drew closer. I stepped behind the closet door, holding absolutely still, squeezing shut the pages of the journal in my hand. If Hazel came in now, where would I stash the journal? I wouldn't be able to jam it back beneath the carpet in time, and I hadn't brought a purse.

  The feet paused outside Haylee's door. My heart pounded as the seconds ticked by. Had my breathing always been this noisy? I tried to take shallower breaths, but my lungs began to ache, demanding more air.

  Then the door to the bathroom clicked closed, and I heard the sound of the toilet cover being lifted. From the volume of the sound of urine hitting the toilet, the person had to be standing up.

  I couldn't move, for fear it was someone else inclined to investigate, but at least if it was a man, it wasn't Hazel.

  I let out a long breath and took another one in, trying to calm my heart. My fingers twitched over a bent corner of a journal page. Mom said there'd been no suicide note, but certainly this is where it would be—Haylee's last words, where only I could find them.

  I flipped the book open, sifting quietly through the blank pages at the back.

  The toilet flushed across the hall, and I heard the bathroom door open again just as I came to the last written page. There was no date, only a single sentence: The stairs creak in the night, and interrupt my dreams.

  What kind of a note was that? That could have been written anytime—even before the dance.

  The footsteps came back into the hall, and I waited, holding my breath, for them to walk back down the stairs. But they paused outside Haylee's door again. Waiting.

  In all likelihood, listening.

  There was no more time for reading now. I couldn't get caught with the journal in my hands—not when I'd just lied about it. Shoving it under the carpet would take too long, and make too much noise. I leaned toward the window. Could I drop it out into the bushes below?

  But the blinds behind the curtains would clank, and the sound of the window dragging open would be unmistakable. Plus, the house was crawling with people, new guests arriving all the time. Someone would see.

  The hallway was silent. Had whoever it was wandered away? I moved slowly to Haylee's door, easing each footfall onto the carpet. I turned the lock on Haylee's door, slowly, quietly.

  I still couldn't read the journal here. If someone found the door locked, they might knock. I couldn't exactly cower in here. Hazel would know instantly what I'd been doing. What I needed was a place to hide the journal—somewhere Hazel wouldn't immediately look.

  My eyes settled on the crawlspace—a hatch in the closet ceiling that led to a space under the roof, filled with insulation.

  Another floorboard creaked in the hall, and I made a split-second decision. I grabbed Haylee's chair from her desk, lifting it as quietly as I could and setting the legs down on the clothes in the bottom of the closet. I stepped up onto the chair and reached for the crawlspace, pushing the hatch door up a few inches and shoving the journal underneath the layers of insulation.

  Dust drifted down into my eyes, and I fought the urge to sneeze. I took an involuntary sharp breath, and dropped both my hands to plug my nose and cover my mouth.

  The hatch banged back into place.

  I cringed, and my whole body hunched. If someone was in the hall, they'd definitely he
ard.

  A heartbeat later, Haylee's doorknob rattled.

  Seventeen Months Before

  Haylee's family had a party every year on the fourth of July. Hazel invited all the neighbors, all Aaron's friends from work, and Haylee's entire extended family.

  During the party, Haylee's backyard fizzed with soda, streamers, and sparklers. Hazel covered the roof in blankets so people could climb up and watch when the fireworks started. She cleaned the house, groomed the yard, and spread out so much food there wasn't room for it on the ten-foot table.

  This year, Aaron tried to draft me into a night game of touch football with the neighborhood boys. They played with a glowing Nerf ball and hung glowstick bracelets from every ankle and wrist—from a distance, the game looked like a battle between awkward, oversized fireflies.

  Playing football with boys in the dark sounded like a good way to get groped by twelve year olds. "I'm not really a football person," I told Aaron.

  "Eh," he said. "You're in better shape than any of them. Faster, too."

  I hesitated. "Is Nick playing?"

  Aaron shrugged. "I tried to convince him, but he said the same thing you did."

  I smiled. Nick wasn't one to play any sport, but I could still be happy we had this in common.

  "See if you can convince him," Aaron said. "Bring Haylee, if you can find her."

  I couldn't. She'd disappeared to refill the chip bowl, and never returned. Haylee was nowhere—not in the yard, not in the house, not even in her room, where Nick's younger sister and her friends had gathered to watch a movie on someone's laptop.

  I returned to the yard and found Nick sitting on a lounge chair in one corner, watching as his brothers chased each other in circles, sparklers in hand. The football game might be a good excuse to touch him, but what I really wanted was to sit by him and talk. I wasn't brave enough to plop down next to him. Instead, I casually walked by four different times, waiting for Nick to invite me to sit.

  He smiled at me twice, and my skin tingled. But each time he turned back to his brothers.

  Four times was already bordering on stalking; five would be ludicrous. And if I sat down next to him now, it would be obvious I'd been pacing back and forth, trying to work up the nerve. So I went back to searching for Haylee.

  I don't know what set her off. It might have been the sparklers. They're illegal in our county. No one was going to call the cops—one of the neighbors was a police officer, and he had one in his own hand. But I finally found her shut in the pantry, chewing on a fruit roll-up. She fidgeted against the shelves, like a cornered mouse.

  "Can we get out of here?" she asked.

  "Your dad wants us to play football," I said.

  Haylee gave me a dark look. The football game was a trifecta of things Haylee avoided—sports, crowds, and her father. "Can't we just go for a walk?" she asked.

  The sky had already settled into true darkness, so Hazel wouldn't appreciate that, and neither of us were old enough to drive. Nick had just gotten his learner's permit a few months ago, so he wasn't supposed to drive without a licensed adult.

  But I remembered the cop with the sparkler. This was a night for breaking rules.

  "Hang on," I said, and I shut Haylee back in the pantry.

  Nick was still sitting alone on his chair. He wasn't much for parties either, but instead of hiding away like Haylee, he sat on the sidelines and watched.

  Now that I had a real reason to talk to him, I marched right up and tugged on his sleeve. "Haylee needs to get out of here," I said. "Can we go for a ride?"

  Nick shook his head. "Her mom would be ticked."

  That was true. Nick's mom and Hazel were sisters, but Nick's mom was pretty relaxed, while Hazel was totally anal. "But she really needs this. Just for half an hour. Maybe Hazel won't notice."

  Nick chewed his lip for a moment. "I'll think of an excuse," he said.

  I grinned. "We'll meet you at your car."

  Haylee and I slunk through the house, taking the side door through the garage and out to the street. One of the families down the road was setting off rockets in the street, but Nick had left his car unlocked, so I ushered Haylee inside and rolled up his windows. She curled up on the back seat, her forehead pressed to her knees.

  Nick opened the driver's side door a few minutes later. He winked at me. "I can't believe Aunt Hazel ran out of paper plates," he said. "Guess we'll have to go get some more."

  I'd seen the mountain of paper goods Hazel bought for the party. "Where'd you hide them?" I asked.

  "In the trunk of her car."

  I laughed. She'd find them later, and blame her scattered brain. I sat in the passenger seat as Nick drove to the convenience store down the street. Every patch of grass along the side of the road was papered with blankets and bodies, everyone lounging and waiting for the fireworks.

  By the time we pulled into the parking lot of the store, Haylee was emerging, crawling out of her funk like a moth from a cocoon. We padded through the store in our flip flops, and Nick paid for a package of blue plastic plates with a twenty from his wallet.

  Haylee hugged her arms around herself, but she followed as Nick led us back to the car.

  We were three blocks from the party when she pointed out the window at the first fireworks blossoming against the sky. "Stop the car!" she said.

  Nick pulled over, and she scrambled out of the car and up the trunk of a palm tree to get a better look.

  Nick and I stood at the base of the tree. Nick watched the fireworks sparkling above. Haylee's knees hugged the tree above us as she stretched to get closer to the explosions.

  Nick stood so close to me that our arms bumped. I looked down at our hands, hanging next to each other. My fingers stretched awkwardly—how did I hold them normally? Close together? Far apart? Did I look like I wanted him to hold my hand? Did I look like I didn't? The line between available and desperate slipped through my grasp.

  A particularly loud rocket burst above our heads, and I looked up to see golden streaks soaring through the air, then fading to plumes of gray smoke, leaving a ghostly relief against the dark sky.

  "I don't think we're ever going to get her out of this tree," Nick said. Lights blossomed in the sky above us, and I felt the reverberation in my chest, sounding in tandem with the beating of my heart.

  Nick's sleeve brushed my arm twice more before the fireworks ended, but he never took my hand.

  Chapter Two

  The doorknob rattled again. I stepped down off Haylee's chair and put it back at her desk before moving to the door. What was my excuse for locking it? Because I wanted to be alone?

  In a dead girl's room? Kira, thy name is Morbid.

  I unlocked the door and pulled it open a few inches, peeking out. Nick knelt in the hall, still wearing his collared shirt and sedate maroon tie from the burial, though it hung unevenly around his neck like he'd been tugging at it. He looked up at me, his eyes wide with surprise.

  "What are you doing?" I asked. "Peeking through the keyhole?"

  Nick looked at the doorknob. The lock wasn't old enough. He couldn't have peered through it if he wanted to. "Um," he said. "I'm pretty sure I was listening for a ghost."

  I raised my eyebrows. "A ghost?" I asked.

  Nick rubbed his forehead in embarrassment. "Yeah," he said. "That's stupid, right? I was using the bathroom and I heard a noise . . . . But I guess a person makes a lot more sense."

  Was it his urine I'd been listening to? My cheeks burned. Why did I think of that?

  "You believe in that stuff?" I asked. "Ghosts, I mean?"

  Nick climbed to his feet. "No," he said. "Yes. I don't know." He gave me half a smile, digging a dimple into his left cheek. I felt my mouth turn up in mirror to his, the way people do when they're paying way too close attention.

  I sucked my lips in, hoping he didn't notice. "Well, it's just me," I said. "Sorry to disappoint."

  Nick looked surprised. "Oh," he said. "No. You don't."

  I took
a step back. I didn't what? Disappoint? "Well, I was just . . . I mean, I was—"

  And at the same time Nick said, "I just meant—"

  And then we both stood there. We'd hung out a thousand times, but always with Haylee, and apparently we'd buried our ability to interact like normal people along with her.

  "Can I come in?" Nick asked finally. He looked over my shoulder, into Haylee's bedroom.

  My heart double-thudded. Last night I'd picked up one of my mom's books—some pop-psychology thing on how to help your teenager through a loss. The chapter she'd earmarked was about risk-taking behaviors. It said grief loosened inhibitions, and made me more likely to take drugs, or engage in promiscuous behavior.

  I wasn't exactly buying joints under the bleachers, but my heart just kept pounding, so hard I could feel it in my ears. Here we were. Nick and me. Near a bedroom. Alone. Lost friend; loose tie.

  Nick cleared his throat. "Oh," he said. "I guess you probably wanted to be alone."

  "No," I said. "I mean, yeah, I did. But I can be alone with you."

  For the love. Why did I say that?

  Nick's eyes widened. And for a second I thought he might flee down the stairs, running away from the crazy girl propositioning him in the bedroom full of ghosts.

  He recovered quickly. "Okay," he said.

  And then there was an awkward pause again, because I was standing in the door silently, blocking his way like a freak. So I did what I should have done at the beginning of the conversation. I stepped aside and let him in. He followed, and closed the door behind him.

  There wasn't a lot of room right inside Haylee's door. We both stood in the three square feet of space between her bed and her dresser. Haylee used to pull the drawers open when she didn't want her mother bursting in on her, which drove Hazel nuts. For Haylee, the annoyance was part of the charm.

  Nick ran a hand through his hair, brushing it out of his eyes. Other guys smelled like hair product or body odor or—worst of all—over-done cologne, but Nick just smelled clean, with a hint of soap. I wanted to touch him, to bury my face in his chest and breathe him in. And if I hadn't been acting like such a spaz since I opened the door, I probably could have done it. Everyone else in the house seemed to be hugging.