by Wylie, Sarah
Jena knows, too. She touches her finger to it, tries to catch it, but her hands are only so big and it just keeps coming and coming and then it crosses her lips and trickles down her chin and it’s on the top of her coat and I can’t move.
“Oh, God,” she says. “Do you have Kleenex or something?”
Nothing.
We don’t need Kleenex. A little square piece of tissue will not clean up the fountain gushing out of her nose, spilling out onto the beautiful white carpet and slipping under the new snow and into the cracks in the old snow.
My fingers tremble and my brain can’t think and I need to do something.
Jena has her head tipped back.
Do I move her or keep her here, where the cold will seep into her clothes and make her bleed all out? What did Mom say? What does Mom do?
“Dani, you have to run home and get my medicine. The one in the kitchen, by the spoons.”
My head is shaking, whipping from left to right, but I’m up, hovering over her. “I won’t go without you.”
“I’ll be fine,” she says. “I promise. This has happened before. Just hurry, okay?”
I won’t go without you. And I say it again and again and again in my head, even as I turn around and leave her kneeling with her head tipped up and her hands cupping her nose, looking up to heaven and appealing to God, just like my parents are tonight. We didn’t think we’d have to join them.
Please please please please please. I sputter prayers without beginnings and words with no meaning as I sprint toward home. Heart pumping against chest, lungs expanding, expanding, expanding. Tonight I am an athlete. Me and my running shins. When I get home, I find the pills where Jena said they’d be.
Then I pick up the phone and dial 911.
I hurry back, praying I’m not too late.
Nobody bleeds like that, and it’s not normal and it’s happened before but not like that and why did I let her come out tonight? Why why why?
I find her huddled in the snow, her chin up to her knees, her eyes weak, tired. She’s not dead, she tells me with a laugh. She just got cold.
I’m trying to give her the medicine when we hear the sirens heading this way.
“You called the paramedics?”
My hands are still shaking as I kneel next to her, begging them to hurry. “Hey, don’t cry,” my sister says. “I’m okay. I promise. I’m just tired.”
My brain bleeds out onto the white carpet, too, leaving more red on our patch of crimson. Why did I go home? I should have gone to someone’s house and called for help. They would be here by now.
Her eyelids look heavy.
Oh God, oh God, oh God.
The sirens are here. The man is sweeping her up in one fluid movement. Jena Baby almost fits in the crook of his arm. She was not too big for the kid playground, for the wet, icy swing and the weak metal frame. I was.
As they hurry her into the ambulance, I skirt behind. I want to throw myself into a pile of snow, stuff it into my ear holes and my nostrils and swallow mouthfuls of it so I choke. I want to fill my eyes with it, tuck it in behind my eyeballs, the corners of my eyelids.
I shouldn’t have brought her here.
I don’t want to watch this.
I don’t want to see this part and know that I did it.
I don’t want to live if she doesn’t.
Something is wrong and the man carrying her is stopping, turning around. “Where’s her sister?”
I don’t answer, but they pull me forward to Jena. I am the girl who’s covered in blood, who’s drowning in her tears and choking on her words.
Suddenly, I’m in the ambulance with her, while they try to keep her eyes from closing.
“Dani,” she says too loud. “Dani?”
“She’s right here,” somebody says for me. They give me a push forward.
“You’re here. Good.” She grabs one of my fingers, the only one I dared to hold near the stretcher they’ve placed her on. “It’s not your fault. Don’t think that. And if you do something stupid, I’m going to be so pissed at you.”
What stupid thing would I do?
What thing stupider (than this)?
Does she mean I should stop thinking about bursting open the doors in this cramped ambulance and throwing myself out? Does she mean not going back home, lying in the bottom of the pool and this time leaving the cover on so nobody finds me until it’s too late?
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. Those are the only words I can cough up, and they are not enough.
“Don’t be. Stop it,” she says. “Just stay with me, okay? Don’t do anything stupid.”
I don’t want to stay with you.
I want to hide under the tires of this ambulance and let them peel me off the road.
“Okay,” I mumble. And she smiles.
I give her more of my hand, three more bloodstained fingers.
Somebody says something to me about staying strong and contacting our parents. We pull up at the hospital.
Then they’re wheeling Jena somewhere and I’m running alongside, no idea where we’re going, but here, because I made her a promise.
And all I can think about is snow angels and the little craters we made for them to land in when they come to Earth. Hers is covered in red now: colored, warm bits of snow that will stain the angels that sleep in them.
Maybe the ones we made tonight were different. Maybe angels don’t sleep in them after all.
Shallow graves for dead angels.
31
This night secretly weaves in hours and hours from other days, until it feels much longer than just one.
Even though I can’t hold Jena’s hand all night, I stay in the waiting room with Dad, while Mom does.
She still has her Bible from Bible study and she reads it beside my sister’s bed, her lips moving occasionally, pleading, praying.
They didn’t cast stones at me or curse the day I was born. They only hugged me and let me cry into their shoulders and told me it wasn’t my fault.
“I’m going to get some coffee. Want anything?” asks Dad.
“No, thanks.”
“Sure?” Dad asks. “Well, we should be heading home in a bit anyway.”
“I told Jena I’d stay here.”
His eyebrow rises. “Dani, you need to get some rest. We can stop by first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Okay?” Dad asks, when I don’t say anything.
“Okay.”
After he gets coffee and goes in to see Mom again, Dad comes out and tells me it’s time to go. Jena is “just resting” right now, so there’s no reason why I can’t come by and see her tomorrow. It’s all settled.
I don’t sleep at all. It keeps replaying in my mind over and over again. The bad parts, mostly. The part where the blood fills up her hand and starts to drip between her fingers. The part where I come back and she’s so small I can hardly make her out in the shadows. The part where she closes her eyes and sleeps, while doctors schedule more tests and wonder aloud whether this is it, whether the countdown begins now.
And if it is, did I say enough? Why don’t I ever say or do enough?
I feel like unzipping my skin and crawling out of it, tearing off the bits that stick and burning them.
I have four lives. Why did I wait for this?
How did I let this happen?
I picture her in the park again, in the hospital, dying.
I let her.
I let her.
I let her.
* * *
We wake up late and Dad offers to call the school and tell them I’ll be absent, so we can go and see Jena. He just got off the phone with Mom, who says she is awake and better.
I tell him thanks, but no thanks, big day today, don’t want to miss any more (I’ve already missed math), can I see her after school?
He’s a little surprised but agrees. While Dad drives, he says, “I really hope you’re not still beating yourself up over last night. That could have happened anywhere. It wou
ld have happened anywhere.”
“I shouldn’t have taken her out, though.”
“Why not?” Dad cuts off the engine in front of my school. “Because she’s sick, she shouldn’t get to hang out with her sister, eat too much sugar, and laugh? She shouldn’t get to go outside and play, remember why she likes living and why she needs to keep fighting?”
His voice is impassioned and as I look at him, expressionless, he catches himself and sighs. “I guess I’ve been wanting to say that for a while. I hate that things are this way, Dani. But you know what? We still have each other. We’re all still here. It’s not over yet.”
I move to open my door.
“It’s not,” Dad says again.
“Will you be out here at three?”
“Three-oh-five,” he says. “Isn’t that the official end?”
Dad is finally catching on, but we’re all too worn out to care. “Yeah. Bye.”
He waits till I’m inside to drive off. I wait till he’s driven off to come back out.
How did I let this happen?
I walk to the bus stop a couple of blocks from the school.
The bus is taking forever to come and, when I grow tired of waiting, I just start walking. There’s a trail through Haneson Park that leads up the mountain. The higher up you go, the more you can see of the town below and everything looks like a toy model. You can’t tell houses from churches from schools.
Two middle-aged women power walk past, and the jogger behind me is gaining on me. I pause for a moment and then start to go in the opposite direction, climbing downhill. It isn’t nearly as high or as steep here, but at least there are fewer people.
Tears blur my vision when I finally stop, when I approach the ledge.
As I stand there, I whisper a prayer. Or maybe it’s more of an order. I say, “Jena needs this one more than I do.”
This one.
Please, please give it to her.
And then I stumble forward and let myself fall. Faster, faster, faster.
I know I promised her I wouldn’t do this. But I’m not strong enough to watch her die. I’ll do it nine times before I let her do it once.
It’s the only thing I can think of to do.
I hear a shout, a stranger’s voice above me.
My last thought as I plummet to my death is this:
Six down, three to go.
three
32
When you die, does your life flash before your eyes?
Does it happen so fast that you can’t pick out one memory from the other, or do the moments stick out, good, bad, beautiful, ugly, before, after?
If you don’t like what you see, can you ask for a refund?
Do you know you’re dying?
Is there opportunity for regrets or do you have to suck up the fact that This Is Your Life?
Is there somebody waiting to receive you on the other end?
If you change your mind, is there a Panic button you can press?
Do you taste your favorite foods, smell your favorite smells, hear your favorite sounds, one last time?
Does everything you’ve ever wondered just suddenly start to make sense?
Can you convey telepathic messages to the person you want to find you?
Do you get to tick Ghost or Away From Here, Please?
Are you detached from your body, watching people react, and getting to bring bad luck on the people who aren’t devastated by your death?
Does it hurt to die?
Do you get to meet the angels that slept in your angel-craters?
Do you get to meet God?
Is He happy to see you, or disappointed?
Can you send help to the people you’ve left behind?
What if they really, really need it?
Can you watch them while they’re sleeping, far enough away that it’s not creepy, but close enough that they feel you and don’t feel so alone?
Isn’t there a way you can make them understand, help them forgive you?
The answer to all these things is no. But you have to die to know that. Really die. And then, you don’t come back.
33
Voices swarm around me, but everything is black. Any minute now, I’ll wake up and have to explain.
I think I’m in a hospital. I can hear people shouting orders, bustling around me, but I don’t feel anything.
It seems like I died bad this time. This is the first time my fingers don’t tingle and my throat doesn’t burn and my skin doesn’t itch. My body feels detached from itself, frozen.
I can’t move.
I start counting Mississippis.
Fifteen Mississippis.
One hundred Mississippis. Two hundred Mississippis.
I try to force my eyelids apart, but everything remains black.
I can’t wake up.
Suddenly, I start to panic. This is not what it feels like to die; I don’t remember it like this. Usually, it is one moment of pitch black before the light bursts through, whether I want it to or not.
Now there is only black.
“I told you not to do anything stupid, you stupid cow.” Jena. She’s close to me; I can feel it. But I can’t feel myself.
Jena! I try to form the word, but I can’t. The silence is hollow and empty, and it ricochets off the voices of people without faces around me.
One of those voices is my mother’s. She is not calling me a stupid cow, although I suspect she might want to. It’s hard to understand what she’s saying at first, but then I realize she’s praying. For me.
I’m confused, but mostly angry, because these prayers belong to Jena. These prayers for life and healing are not, and should not be, for me. My sister needs them more than I do.
I try to inhale, and I finally, finally, feel something. A sharp stab of pain pounds down on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
As my mother continues to spew prayers, ones that surprise me with their depth, that sound like she really believes them as she prays, I start yelling, screaming at her to stop.
To make it stop, make it stop, make it stop.
If she is keeping score, and I think she is, then she has to know that I don’t need her prayers. I am, I will be, fine. I’m only on my seventh life.
What if we were wrong?
I start counting.
One—the car accident.
Two—the chest infection.
Three—that time I drowned.
Four—that time with the motorcycle.
Five—that time with the pills.
Six—that time I jumped.
That’s six. Six.
What if we were wrong?
I try again to speak, to scream, to move.
Nothing.
I, the girl with nine seven lives, am dead. Jena, the girl with one, is not.
* * *
This is what I wanted.
Isn’t it?
For Jena to live at any cost.
If I die, if I die for real, will she be well? Not better, but well. What if this is what she has needed all along? One cat’s life for the other; my life for hers?
All her words start coming back. Not my mother’s; Jena’s. About being each other’s backups. Jena hasn’t given up. She is fighting.
The blackness isn’t going away.
I suck in a breath—a thin, short breath—and fire erupts in my chest. It hurts to breathe and I want to sleep and I want Jena to be well.
But what if I was wrong? What if I have only one life and this is it?
I suck in another breath and it stings, but it fills my body. It reminds me of a time when breathing wasn’t traitorous or unfair or labored; it was just breathing. It was just what we did. It reminds me of Once Upon a Times that had endings we chose for them—happy or violent or funny or sad—or the ones that kept on going because we never could decide.
If I die now, she might have to live without me. Alone with Mom and Dad, awkward dinners with the empty fourth chair, hurting, angry, wishing she c
ould have done more, thinking I did this because of her. She would never forgive herself. Would she ever forgive me?
If I die now, here is a period. Round, black, final. My heart stops and my lungs fail and my brain finally, finally gets to sleep.
If I die now, she might not fight. And there’s no guarantee we’ll go to the same place.
I breathe in, hold it longer this time, even as my chest throbs from the pain.
I want to scream and cry and yell that it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair it’s not fair.
It is not fair that my sister got sick and I didn’t. It’s not fair that I couldn’t—can’t—help her.
It’s not fair that people get answers from God. They get healed, they get miracles and wonders that they might not need as much as I need this, as much as Jena needs this.
It’s not fair that either choice I make could be wrong and I have no guarantees or lifelines.
It’s not fair that what eats away at me, the ghosts I see in broad daylight, are weaker and smaller than me, and if I choose to fight them, I might win.
I breathe, breathe in, keep breathing. Everything hurts.
I picture waking up when she’s not across the hall, not in her soccer uniform, not anywhere anyone can see her.
The throbbing gets worse, but I inhale and don’t let it out.
I would do anything for Jena.
Most people think the biggest sacrifice, the greatest act of love you can give is to die for someone. And probably it is.
But sometimes it is the opposite.
The biggest thing you can do for someone is to live.
* * *
Once upon a time, I thought too long about the taste of marshmallows in hot, hot chocolate, the way moist sand feels between your toes, the way the sun beats down against the nape of your neck, making you wish you could unzip your skin and hide it from the sun. Summer.
I thought about waking up and wanting to, about making snow angels with sisters and whispering secrets; about mothers who embarrassed you by singing opera in the car and dads who tried a little too hard to be cool.
I thought about the lightness in your chest while you were laughing, the way your ears rang from loud music, the smell of fried food and the taste of s’mores. Bones that don’t crack, but hold up by themselves. Hair that doesn’t shed. Scars that heal and bruises that disappear.
