The Love That Split the World

by Emily Henry

  I try to focus on anything other than the pain in my chest and the multicolored dots popping across my vision: The nights Megan and I spent watching thunderstorms from the garage, searching the sky for shooting stars from the roof of the porch. The hours I slept in Beau’s arms on the floor in the closet. The stories Grandmother told from the rocking chair. The bus stop where I waited in the dark, in the sweltering heat and burning cold on school mornings.

  Still can’t breathe, can’t calm down.

  The sledding hill in the backyard, and the creek at the bottom that nearly gave me frostbite. The sprinklers we ran through in summertime. Sneaking downstairs with the twins on Christmas Eve to see whether Mom and Dad had put our presents out yet. The series of clues Mom spread throughout the house that led me to the garage, where my birthday present, a Saint Bernard puppy in a blue bow, waited for me.

  And the night I climbed through the window and looked back to find that Beau had vanished. The slow passage of minutes ever since then that I’ve spent waiting.

  I’m in a house full of ghosts. I can’t take the thought of adding another. I bring my hand to touch the wall. “Grandmother,” I whisper into the emptiness. “If you can hear me, find me.”

  Megan’s mom is an anesthesiologist, and her dad’s an architect who loves hunting, so their house is not only enormous but remote, hidden down a long gravel road and a beautiful perimeter of forest. As a kid, its spaciousness and its white columns reminded me of the White House, but the floor plan is surprisingly open and modern.

  Mr. and Mrs. Phillips escort us all down to Megan’s room, which takes up the majority of the basement, its sliding back doors stepping onto a big patio that overlooks a manmade fishing lake. The room has a distinct princessy feel that Megan neither had anything to do with nor ever worked to change or keep up. The floor, usually covered in clothes and paper and books, is now spotless, and I feel a twinge of sadness.

  “Can’t believe we agreed to let you skip out on us,” Dad says from behind me.

  “You guys thought it was a good idea,” I remind him. “Independence and mental health and all that.”

  “No, your mom thought that,” he says. “She’s the fun, laid-back one. I’m the disciplinarian.”

  I snort. “Yeah, that sounds like you. You should consider changing the title on your business cards from Horse Whisperer to Horse Fascist.”

  “You know what, that has a ring to it. Not a bad idea, sugar cube.” He kisses the top of my head, and Mom releases a little whimper.

  “We’ll give you a minute,” Mrs. Phillips says, then slips back up the stairs with Mr. Phillips.

  Mom pulls me into a hug. “It’s only for a few weeks,” I remind her.

  “And then you’ll go off to college,” she says. “You’re too grown up. Stop that.”

  “Trust me, I tried.”

  Mom laughs, and snorts back her accumulating tear-snot. “We really are so proud of you.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Call us, sugar,” Dad says, nudging my chin with his hand.

  They leave, and I dissolve onto the bed. If only Beau were here, I wouldn’t feel so scared or empty. If only I knew where Grandmother had gone.

  26

  Joyce Kincaid calls me Saturday morning to remind me about the benefit tonight. They’ve combined it with Raider Madness, a portion of the proceeds going to Matt’s medical expenses and the rest to the football team.

  “I just hope that, wherever he is, he knows,” she sniffles. “That he sees how much everyone cares. And I’m so happy you could stay through all of this. It would mean so much to him.”

  “Yeah,” I say, “I’m happy I could stay too.”

  Truthfully, I’d been desperately trying to convince myself I didn’t have to go to the benefit, while driving myself insane with the thought that, very likely, Beau would be there, if in another universe. Even standing on the other side of an impassable veil from him sounds better than the last couple of days without him. When I hang up with Joyce, I slip out the back of Megan’s room onto the patio. The air is cooler than I expected, and dark clouds hang in low clumps over the pond and the woods. Everything’s completely distorted by fog, but I set out anyway, taking my phone with me. I try to get ahold of Beau again, but the call won’t go through, and I’m left trudging aimlessly through the forest, straining my mind in an attempt to open his world again.

  My phone starts buzzing in my hand, and I nearly drop it before accepting the call and planting it against my face just as I process the name onscreen.

  “Rachel?”

  “Well, hello to you too,” Rachel says, apparently indignant at my surprise.

  I sigh. “Is there a reason you’re calling, Rachel?”

  She lets out an even longer sigh. “Look, I’m sorry about what happened between me and Matt. He was wasted, and I guess I was . . . curious.”

  “It’s fine,” I say sharply. “Is that all?”

  “God, Natalie, I’m trying to apologize.”

  “You don’t need to.” The anger in my voice makes my words unconvincing, even though I honestly don’t know who I’m upset with anymore.

  “Fine, whatever,” Rachel says. “I was just calling—I just wanted to know if you wanted to ride together to Madness tonight.”

  “Why?” I say, genuinely confused.

  “Because no one else gets it,” she replies fiercely. “Because I don’t want to spend another freaking second listening to Molly Haines sobbing like she knew him. I don’t even want to go tonight, but now that it’s for Matty . . . I just thought if you went . . .”

  She trails off, and I’m so surprised I don’t know how to answer.

  “Hello?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Okay what?”

  “We can ride together. I don’t really get why, but fine.”

  “Fine,” she says. “You can pick me up at nine. I don’t want to be there all night.”

  “Wow, really? Thank you so much.”

  “And people think I’m the bitch,” she retorts.

  Rachel lives in a trailer park out past Derek Dillhorn’s McMansion neighborhood, like the city planners thought it might be a good idea to remind poor people they were poor and rich people they were rich. It’s a complete grab bag as far as upkeep. Rachel’s house is one of the nicest, with a neat yard she’s probably responsible for tending since both her mom and sister work night shifts and sleep mostly during the day.

  When we were kids, we loved to have slumber parties over there on nights Janelle, her sister, was in charge because there were no rules. As we got older, though, the invitations to Rachel’s house stopped coming, and it’s been ages since I’ve been here.

  She’s waiting out in the yard, another thing she used to do when we came over, to make sure no one knocked or rang the doorbell while Mrs. Hanson was sleeping. Watching her walk up to the Jeep, I feel an ache of regret. Not that I feel bad for her—I don’t—but I remember all the reasons I love her. All the reasons we used to be friends. She may be a bitch, but she’s a genuine bitch with heart. She’s a fighter, keeping everything together for her family, and working hard to graduate, despite the fact that Mrs. Hanson’s been telling her she was pretty enough not to have to since we were ten years old.

  “Never thought I’d see an Ivy League girl in my driveway,” Rachel says as she plops into the passenger seat. “So, what made you decide to stick around in the boonies for the rest of summer?”

  “Stuff,” I offer.

  She runs her hands through her hair. “Sounds important.”

  We lapse into silence as I pull out of the neighborhood and turn back toward the school. We’re still ten minutes off when Rachel’s eyes snap to the passenger window. “Pull over,” she says anxiously.

  “What—why?”

  “That’s it, the memorial!”

&
nbsp; “Memorial?” I say, scouring the side of the road up near the next intersection. “For Matt? He’s not dead.”

  “Shrine, vigil, whatever you want to call it—just pull over.”

  I slow down and rumble to a stop beside the poster stapled to the telephone pole that reads PRAY FOR MATT KINCAID #4. Teddy bears and notes and flowers and jerseys sit in piles around the sign, and Rachel jumps out and runs to them before I’ve turned the car off. I step out and follow to where she’s kneeling in the gravelly shoulder, two fingers pressed to the sign.

  “What are we doing here?” I ask softly as I approach.

  She opens her eyes and sighs in annoyance. “What does it look like? I’m praying. What, are you too sophisticated to pay your respects?”

  “Rachel, can we cut it out with your whole snobby Brown bit?” I say, sitting down beside her. “I’m really not in the mood.”

  She glances at me sidelong. “Why did you stay? I mean, was it because of Matt?”

  I run my fingernails over the sides of my scalp. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe partly. But mostly, I’m just trying to figure out what I’m supposed to be doing right now. It didn’t feel like a good time to leave.”

  She drops onto her butt and pulls her thighs up to her chest, resting her chin on her knees. “You’re lucky.”

  “Why?” I ask, suspicious.

  “Because you’re one of those people who’s supposed to be doing something, while the rest of us just do what we do, you know?”

  “No,” I say. “I don’t think there are people like that.”

  She gives a brittle laugh. “Natalie, you’ve wanted to go to Brown since you were fifteen. That year, all I wanted was for Janelle to invite me to her parties and to go to homecoming with Derek. I thought I was just enjoying my life, you know, while you were trying to get away from yours. But everything I’ve ever wanted was wrapped up in high school, and now it’s like there’s just nothing. Nothing except Matt in a coma, and all my friends going off to UK. And you, getting the hell out of here like you’ve always wanted.”

  “It’s not you guys I wanted to get away from,” I say quietly. “You know that, right?”

  She gives me a disbelieving look then glances back at the poster. “At least you want something, even if it is just to leave. I have nothing to want, except for everyone to come back. Nothing, forever.”

  “What about dance?”

  “I never wanted to dance,” she answers. “I wanted to be on the dance team. That’s different.”

  “I don’t know if I want to go to Brown.” It comes out like a balloon deflating, but there it is, hanging in the air for the first time ever. “I want to be smart. I want to know the truth, and to matter.

  “That’s stupid,” she says.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s stupid,” she repeats bluntly. “You won’t matter because you went to Brown. You already matter.”

  “Rachel,” I sigh. She doesn’t understand—and how could she?—but she opened up to me, and today, right now, I want to try. “Look. When I was fifteen, I lost someone who was really important to me. She knew me better than anyone, than even my family or Megan or Matt. Like, she totally got me and was more like me than anyone I’ve ever met, and once she was gone, I stopped feeling like I knew who I was, and I especially stopped feeling like I fit in. I went back to feeling like a five-year-old kid who had to prove she was just like everyone else. That’s why I quit dancing—I felt like it was feeding into that feeling, and I wanted to learn how to be myself, unapologetically. And I want to know about my heritage, because I’ve still never really looked. That’s why I chose Brown. Because it’s far away, but not too far away, and they have Native American and Indigenous Studies and dance, and yes, because it’s Ivy League. It’s a little easier to explain wanting the supreme college experience than all the other stuff.”

  “You could’ve explained that, if you wanted to.” Rachel appraises me with the same look she used all those years ago when we first met. “Well,” she says finally, “Brown won’t make you become yourself either. You just are yourself, whether you want to be or not.”

  “And just because you don’t know what you want yet, it doesn’t mean there’s nothing to want.”

  She rolls her eyes, but then a smile lifts up her mouth. “Whatever.” She pushes against her knees to stand and dusts off the back of her jeans. “We should get going.”

  I nod. “Just give me a second?”

  “Sure.” She walks back to the car to wait for me.

  I turn to the poster, unsure of what I need from it exactly. I touch my hand to it like Rachel did and close my eyes. “Help me,” I whisper.

  I open my eyes, and something flutters across my vision. My heart starts within my chest as I try to catch hold of the change. The poster is gone, a new stone sign appearing in its place. The paraphernalia littering the shoulder is gone too, replaced with a mound of purple and yellow wildflowers, but before I can read the new words on the sign, they change again. Not back to Matt’s name and number either, but to a wooden cross with words etched into it that vanish before I can process them, PRAY FOR MATT KINCAID #4 reappearing almost instantaneously.

  Oh God.

  Alice must be right.

  There are more than two worlds.

  Either that, or I just moved through time again. Maybe the poster will be replaced someday. Maybe it used to say something different. All I know is there are at least two other signs occupying this exact space.

  Just then Rachel honks the Jeep’s horn and shouts, “Hey, Nat, it’s hot, and God can hear you fine in the car, okay? Come on.”

  Before Grandmother disappeared and before there were more than two worlds and before my childhood love was in a coma, Raider Madness used to be one of my favorite events of the summer. I remember all the excited nerves jostling around inside me freshman year as Mom drove me over. The carnival-style night ends with an open football practice, and it was Matt’s first year on the team.

  I wondered if they’d give him any playing time, or if Devin Berskhire, the senior QB, would be out strutting across the field the whole time. I actually worried that Matt would get to do a few plays and mess up. Not because I cared whether or not he was good at football, but because I knew how embarrassed he’d be, and the kinds of things his dad would say to him later. It’s weird to think that Matt was only weeks away from escaping Raymond’s constant criticism, and now . . .

  The things that used to scare me seem so small now. An increasingly familiar pain pushes against me, an ache to have Beau here. I can’t help thinking everything would be okay, or at least better, with Beau here.

  Rachel and I make our way through the parking lot, snagging a fair amount of stares and whispers. Rachel responds by baring her teeth. “Goddamn gossips,” she says. “Staring at us like, what are those two girls who’ve both made out with Matt Kincaid doing standing beside each other?”

  “It’s not you,” I say. “It’s me.”

  “Well, that’s not egotistical.”

  “It’s a fact. I’m the one who made out with someone else at Derek’s, then argued with Matt in the street before he drove off. They all think it’s my fault, and they’re not exactly wrong.”

  Rachel stops walking and snorts. “Oh my God. You don’t honestly buy that?”

  “Don’t you?”

  She sort of glances around then grabs my sleeve and drags me behind an inflatable obstacle course. “Look,” she says. “Matt told me something. And he really didn’t want me to tell anyone else, but if it’ll help you get over this phase, then I guess it’s worth it.”

  “Go on,” I say.

  She crosses her arms and looks down at her sandal, which she’s twisting against the ground. “Matty’s an alcoholic.”

  “What?” I say. “No, he’s not.”

  “I mean, that’s
the short version, not his words, but yeah,” Rachel says. “He told me the night of his birthday party. Or . . . the next morning, actually.” I stifle a groan as she looks back up at me. “He started drinking more when you guys broke up, and I guess it got out of hand. Lately, the guy hasn’t been able to take a sip without finishing the bottle.”

  I shake my head in disbelief and slump against the moon bounce. “How could I not have known that?”

  She shrugs. “No one did. We all just thought he was partying, like the rest of us. He only told me because he felt bad that we almost screwed and he barely remembered it. He was really ashamed. It wasn’t the first time he blacked out, and he knows he’s a dick when he drinks too. He just hadn’t figured out how to let go of it yet.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel says, though she doesn’t know the half of it.

  She doesn’t know how the Other Matt refused a drink that fateful night of the party, how Beau tensed when I even offered it.

  Nah, I shouldn’t, he’d said.

  How, after Matt and I fought by his car, Beau dragged him off me and threw him down in the street.

  And then that morning, in the hospital, when Beau sat apart from the Kincaids, Joyce’s upper lip raised in a near-snarl like she blamed him for the accident. The Other Megan affirming, that yes, in fact, Joyce did blame him. Not for the accident. For the drinking in general.

  It’s all making sense. Matt may have just become an alcoholic in our world, but he’d already been one in Beau’s. A golden boy with a predisposition to addiction, regardless of his circumstances.

  “Are you all right?” Rachel asks, gripping my shoulder. That’s when I realize how lightheaded I feel. Rachel steadies me as I slide down the side of the inflatable castle to the ground.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I say.

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “It’s raining.”

  “You really are a genius.” But I barely hear Rachel. I’m distracted by the faint shadow of a person moving across my line of view behind her.