by Lizzy Mason
He stepped into the dim light from the side porch. Definitely a “he.” I could see that he was tall and broad-shouldered, but somewhat slim. So it wasn’t Mr. Juarez, who had a belly that hung over his waistband.
My heart squeezed.
I recognized that sharp profile. It belonged to the person I’d spent every day with until I was seven. Before Cassidy, Rafael Juarez was my best friend.
Raf and I hadn’t talked in years. But he didn’t hesitate when our eyes met. He just walked up and sat down next to me on the low wall that surrounded our back garden. I tried to be discreet as I pulled my shorts down to cover more of my thighs and smoothed my humidity-frizzed hair.
“Hey, Harley,” he said. “Long time.”
“Hey,” I answered. “Yeah.”
I put out my cigarette and held the butt in my fingers, resisting the urge to cover my stomach with my arms. My T-shirt was tighter than what I would normally wear in public. It was one of Audrey’s.
“I heard about Audrey,” Raf said, as if I’d spoken out loud. “I’m sorry.”
He and Audrey had also been friends when we were little. Sort of. We always forced Audrey to be the family dog or the baby when we played house. She didn’t seem to mind; she was just happy to be included.
“Thanks,” I managed to say.
I snuck another glance at him as he took a drag of his cigarette, the brief flare of the cherry illuminating his face. I could still see the six-year-old boy I’d pretend-married. His dark hair was longer and fell in soft waves across his forehead. But his face was harder-edged now, his cheekbones more defined, and there was a dark stubble across his sharp jaw. He was bigger, too. He used to be really scrawny as a kid.
“Is she, you know, doing okay?” he asked. “Sorry. I mean, I know she’s not ‘okay,’ but . . .” He cringed. “Never mind.”
I let him stew in silence for a few seconds before letting him off the hook. “Don’t worry about it,” I said.
He tapped me in the ribs lightly with his elbow. “But really. How is she?”
I took a breath. “She’s . . . in a coma.”
It was the first time I’d said those words out loud.
Earlier that day, her doctors had grown concerned about the continued swelling in her brain. After more than twenty-four hours on steroids and diuretics, the decision was made to allow her brain to heal as the swelling went down. Dad said they would keep her in the coma—and it was no different than being under heavy sedation—for a few days. Then, if her EEG and CT scan showed improvement, they would wake her.
“The doctors say the rest of her is healing,” I added. “But it’s so weird, Raf. She’s just . . . not there.”
Raf didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. He knew what I was feeling. He slid his hand over on the rough stone wall until his fingertips were so close to mine that I could almost feel their warmth.
“Thanks for asking,” I said.
He nodded. “Of course,” he said. “With Allie, people were always avoiding it. Like, they wanted to know how she was, how we were, but never wanted to come out and ask. They didn’t want to remind us, but it’s not like we could forget, you know?”
I nodded. I could feel his eyes on me as I stared into the dark.
“So how are you?” he asked.
“I’ve been better. I’m so numb and I just keep thinking, ‘I wasn’t expecting to spend my summer sitting at the hospital all day, hoping my sister wakes up.’ How ridiculous is that?”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “If it helps, I hear the hospital cafeteria food has really improved since the last time I spent my summer there. Mom says there’s even a Subway now. The fact that that’s an improvement is saying something about what it was like before.”
I managed a smile. Of course Raf would remember the hospital food. Such a boy.
“It helps a little,” I said. “But maybe not enough to make up for the fact that my boyfriend, the drunk asshole who almost killed her? He walked away with barely a scratch on him.”
Raf inhaled sharply. I guess that part hadn’t yet hit the neighborhood gossip circuit.
“But he’s still your boyfriend?” he asked.
I shrugged. “Only because I haven’t wanted to talk to him for long enough to break up with him.”
“That sounds about right,” he said. “The Harley I remember would have kicked him to the curb before he even got out of the car.”
I turned and stared at him. Was that really what he thought of me? I found myself wishing that I was the girl he remembered, bossy and demanding of his time. Insisting that we play the games I wanted to play. Making him watch the movies I wanted to watch. He saw more My Little Pony than he’d probably ever admit.
Instead, I grew up to be Mike’s girlfriend. I’d liked having a boyfriend so much that at first I’d pretended to be someone I wasn’t. But when I was finally comfortable enough to stand up for myself, Mike saw it as some kind of betrayal. He’d made me feel guilty about it.
Suddenly I realized I’d been gazing at Raf for too long. It was getting awkward. I said the first thing that came into my head.
“So, speaking of drinking, how was rehab?”
He laughed softly. “You heard about that, huh?”
I found myself smiling, too. “You heard about Audrey, didn’t you? Like, immediately after it happened? You know this neighborhood. I heard all about how your parents caught you with weed. How furious they were.”
Raf’s smile faltered. He took a deep drag from his cigarette and bowed his head, avoiding my eyes. He exhaled heavily. “It was outpatient, more like group therapy with a urine test at the beginning of every session. Sometimes a Breathalyzer, too.”
I swallowed. That sounded awful. Humiliating. “Did it work?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said with a sigh. “I guess so. I mean, I’m sober. I just don’t want to keep being a disappointment to my parents, you know? Being a burnout. But I don’t know if I’m actually an addict.”
“How do you figure that out?”
He laughed again, softly. “I don’t know that either. My therapist thinks I still need to ‘come to terms with it.’ But I think I’m just bored. Tired. Depressed. This city, this neighborhood, this house . . . it’s stifling.”
“But you’re graduating, right? I can’t wait to graduate, go to college, and get far away from here.”
Raf was quiet for a moment. He eyed the glowing embers of the end of his cigarette.
“Yeah, I’m graduating, but barely,” he said. Then softer, “And I didn’t get into any of the colleges I applied to.”
I blinked. “Oh,” I said, fighting to hide my surprise. The Raf I knew—or had known—was brilliant. In middle school, my mom told me that he had taken the SATs as part of some gifted program and he had done better than some of the juniors. He could have skipped a grade if his parents had been willing to let him. But he’d just been through a pretty big trauma. His parents figured that he needed his friends around, so he stayed with his class.
“Did you apply to art schools?” I asked.
He took a last drag and then stubbed out his cigarette in the dirt between us. “No, my parents aren’t exactly feeling my creativity lately.”
“Why’s that?”
“I’ve kind of gotten into street art. Like, graffiti-inspired?” he said with a crooked half-smile.
I barked a loud “Ha!” and then looked around guiltily, as though someone might accuse me of not being sad enough. But Raf’s eyes glinted with amusement.
“So your bedroom walls are destroyed?” I asked.
“That depends on your definition of ‘destroyed.’” He grinned, and I had a sudden memory of him telling me about how he had cut all the hair off his sister’s Barbie doll. He’d thought Barbie looked great. His sister, Allie, had not agreed.
“Do you want to see it?” he asked, standing.
“Your bedroom?” I said. I couldn’t be sure if that was weird. It wasn’t weird when we were seven. But in that moment, I knew how lost I was. I’d convinced myself that I was comfortable around boys, but then I’d interact with one and realize my expertise was really just with the one boy. I was awkward as hell around the rest of them.
Raf put his hands up like a criminal who’d just walked into a police department in surrender. But he was still smiling.
“Not like that,” he said. He started toward his house. “Maybe another time. See you later.”
A little stab of disappointment took me by surprise. I opened my mouth to respond, but Raf had already faded into the dark.
Instead of going to bed, I went to Audrey’s room. Her door was closed, as it nearly always was. Some of the stickers she’d slapped haphazardly all over it had started to peel. I tried to smooth their rebellious edges, but once a sticker has lost its stick, there’s no going back.
The hinges squealed as I opened it. I froze, wincing. My door did the same thing, and I’d always wondered if it was some Parenting Teenage Girls trick that my parents had adopted. Was there some substance—the opposite of grease—that added squeakiness to hinges? I made a mental note to pick up some WD-40 the next day. If I was going to keep sneaking out for cigarettes, I would need it.
Audrey’s room looked exactly as it always had: chaos. Clothes littered the floor like fallen leaves. Her textbooks were stacked haphazardly on her desk, one open next to a notebook like she’d just stepped away to go to the bathroom or get a snack. Jewelry and makeup snaked and spilled out of their respective containers, as if attempting escape.
Her bed wasn’t made, but the duvet was pulled up, at least.
I crawled on top of it and laid my head on the pillow next to hers—she would only sleep on the right side. The impression of her sleeping head was still visible. During the day, she barely stopped moving, but when she slept, she was like a mummy: hands at her sides, unmoving, blankets tucked neatly under her chin.
I leaned closer to her side of the bed and found myself caught off guard by the scent of her. It was hard to describe, but Audrey had this smell when she woke up in the morning that was a little bit sweet, a little bit like sweat, and somehow just . . . Audrey. Her sleep smell.
My throat burned as I curled my fingers back from her side, careful not to disturb what could be the last impression my baby sister would ever leave. I stood and fumbled my way through the clothes on the floor, my vision blurry.
If I was going to cry, I preferred to do that in my own bedroom.
Eleven Years Ago
I was six and Raf was seven when his sister dared us to kiss. We’d just left a birthday party for another kid in the neighborhood and, because Allie was with us, our moms let us walk home together after the party instead of coming to pick us up. Allie was two years older than Raf and she seemed so mature. She was tall and thin, with the longest, thickest black hair I’d ever seen. It nearly hit the top of her butt when she wore it down, but usually it was in a long braid that swung back and forth when she walked.
She stopped me at the corner and whispered in my ear, “Raf wants to kiss you. I dare you to do it.”
I was torn. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to kiss Raf. I was pretty sure I didn’t want to kiss anyone. We played house and pretended we were married and sometimes we even fake-kissed, with our hands over our mouths, because we saw our parents kiss and thought that was just what you did when you got home from work. But real kissing was still gross then.
But I didn’t want to disappoint Allie. She was older, and cooler, than me. I just wanted her to like me.
So I nodded and she skipped off to catch up with Raf, who was holding Audrey’s hand as they walked up ahead. Allie walked backward in front of Raf and Audrey, waving me over. I walked up to them slowly.
“You have to do it,” Allie was saying. “Kiss her.”
Raf looked at me uncertainly. I nodded. He glanced at Allie’s taunting face and then stepped toward me. And I just planted my lips on his. It only lasted a second, but I still remember the feeling of his lips on mine, pursed and wet. I didn’t get the appeal.
Allie let out a whoop when his lips met mine, and she applauded as we blushed. We didn’t really talk afterward; he just took Audrey’s hand again and walked the last block home. We had planned to hang out after the party, but he didn’t really look at me. And then he just let go of Audrey’s hand and followed Allie into his house. She looked at me over her shoulder before she went inside, but I couldn’t tell if she was happy that she’d embarrassed us or mad that we had actually done it.
But I knew that I didn’t like the way I felt. I didn’t like that I’d kissed my friend and that he didn’t want to hang out with me because of it. Years later, though, I would tell people Rafael Juarez was my first kiss and that we were early make-out adopters. By the time we started freshman year, by the time my friends were making out with boys while I watched movies at home with Audrey, I was desperate for a second kiss.
I met Mike later that fall and I soon lost count of the number of kisses I’d had.
But I never forgot the first one.
Chapter Four
I awoke on Monday morning with a heavy feeling of dread, the certainty that I had to go to school. Then a rare spark of joy hit me. School was over! Cassidy’s party was the last one of our junior year; it was supposed to be a celebration . . . and as fast as the memory cascaded back, the spark fizzled.
I pulled the covers over my head and curled up with Floyd. He’d taken over half of my bed in the night. Somehow he always knew when I needed dog cuddles. But I couldn’t go back to sleep. Not when Audrey’s swollen face was the only image I could see when I closed my eyes.
I dragged myself out of bed and went to the one place that was as miserable as I felt: the hospital.
We’d been pretty quiet in the room, for the most part. I’d read every comic I could carry, plus most of the digital collection on my iPad. Mom had finished a ridiculous number of crossword puzzles. She also continued to read aloud bits of reassuring articles she’d found about head trauma recovery—for me, or for her, maybe for us both. She repeated them when Dad was able to stop by on a break. That was our new routine. But for the most part, we were letting Audrey rest in silence.
We were also getting to know the nurses. My favorite was the night nurse, Keisha, because she talked to Audrey instead of forcing small talk on me. She spoke as if she was sure Audrey could hear her and just wasn’t ready to respond.
I spent most of that day and the next at the hospital by Audrey’s side and tried Keisha’s method. It helped. Talking to my sister kept me from constantly staring at her EEG monitor.
But I didn’t know what to say. I’d told Audrey I wouldn’t talk about Mike with her, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it. So instead, I bought every gossip magazine the gift shop had and read them aloud to her.
“Oh, look, Audy,” I said. “Drew Barrymore is walking her dog! She’s picking up dog poop, just like us!”
That would have made her laugh if she was awake. Audrey loved Drew Barrymore—and every single movie she’d ever been in—but she also found it hilarious that gossip magazines had whole photo spreads of celebrities doing things like picking up their dry cleaning.
Soon, though, I’d run through all the magazines and began reading her friends’ social media updates aloud. They’d been posting messages to her nonstop. The barrage of notifications finally prompted Mom to turn Audrey’s phone off. I read those to her, too. They were all basically the same. Her friends gushed about how wonderful Audrey was, how bubbly and kind and friendly, how she was the last person who deserved this. The notable exception was Neema, who hadn’t posted anything. Odd. But to be fair, I didn’t want to post anything, either. Audrey’s friends knew her as someone who would g
o out of her way to help them, who would never hurt them. I wouldn’t shatter their illusion, but I knew better now.
I would have read aloud one of the books I’d brought, but Audrey hated comics. And reading. Dad had never been able to convert Audrey the way he had converted me. Maybe because she wasn’t named after a comic book character. (How he ever talked Mom into naming me Harley is a mystery, but I imagine it involved heavy drugs, a flood of postpartum hormones, and some kind of deal with the Devil. Or the Joker.)
Besides, Audrey had always been a romantic. She pretty much exclusively watched romantic comedies—and she would watch them over and over again, even the worst, most predictable ones. All she’d ever wanted was to find her Prince Charming. The One. True Love. Instead, I’d led her to Mike and he had almost killed her.
Later that afternoon, I decided to put on The Princess Bride, one of the few movies that Audrey and I had always been able to agree on. She liked the romance, I liked the action, and we both liked the comedy. It was a rare and perfect fit.
Taking a cue from Keisha, I even tilted my laptop toward Audrey. If she awoke, I wanted the first thing she saw to be something she would remember and love. But the movie ended without so much as a flicker of her eyelids.
Mom returned that evening to find me staring out the window at the parking lot. I could see my sun-faded forest-green Honda out there baking in the heat. I’d been dreading sharing it with Audrey. She would be getting her license in a few months. Or she should be.
“Harley, you’ve been sitting in here for days,” Mom said. She surveyed my cutoffs, Wonder Woman T-shirt, and flip-flops. “And I’ve seen you in that outfit three times.”
