Wintergirls

by Laurie Halse Anderson

  ::dizzy/gravity/floor/darkness::

  058.00

  I wake up in his bed. All my clothes on. Under the blankets, my feet are propped up so high on pillows, I can’t see past them.

  Elijah leans over me. “Are you okay? What the hell happened?”

  I touch a lump on my forehead. “Must have passed out. You didn’t call an ambulance, did you?”

  “Should I?”

  “No.” I struggle to sit up.

  “Are you sick?”

  “A little.” The black dots dance in front of my eyes again. I lay back down. “I was in the hospital for a couple days because I was dehydrated. I’m still a little wobbly, but it’s not a big deal.”

  His eyes bug. “Are you kidding me? It’s a huge deal. You can’t come with me—you can’t even be here. If I wind up with another dead girl, the cops won’t care if I have a video alibi. You have to leave.”

  “I can’t go home.”

  “I don’t care where you go. You just can’t stay with me.”

  I point out the window. “You see that storm? The police don’t have enough people to handle all the accidents; half of the roads are closed because of pileups. I’m eighteen, I’m sober, I don’t have any outstanding warrants. They won’t come looking, I promise.”

  “Maybe not, but your parents will.”

  “They have no idea I’ve ever been here. I didn’t tell them where you worked or how I met you.”

  He picks up the deck of cards on top of the television and drops them, one by one, back onto the pile. A few slide out and land on the floor, random. “I don’t have a good feeling about this.”

  He’s going to kick me out and I’ll have to call them and they’ll pretend they were worried long enough to get me in a car and they’ll drive me to a mental hospital where the windows are painted over and I’ll never know if it’s day or night and they’ll keep me there until I forget my name because after that, nothing will matter.

  Rain falls down my face again. “Please.”

  “No, don’t. Don’t cry. Stop. I hate it when girls cry.” He goes into the bathroom and comes out with a roll of toilet paper. “Here.”

  I pull off a strip, wipe my eyes and blow my nose, but the tears keep leaking out.

  “What happened?” He kneels by the bed so we’re on the same level. “What the hell is going on?”

  “I messed up,” I whisper. “Big. Really big.”

  “Are you pregnant? Smoking crack? Robbed a bank? Shot somebody?”

  “I’ll show you.”

  I sit up again slowly, and pull off my sweatshirt, turtleneck, and long underwear shirt. As I reach for the last layer, he puts up his hands.

  “No. Hold on. We’re not going there. This is already not working. At all. Wait, is that blood?”

  I pull off my camisole, wincing. “Help me up.”

  He lets me lean on his arm. I stand, counting to ten to make sure I’m not going to pass out again, then I unwrap the bandages and let the gauze fall to the ground.

  His eyes drift over the cuts and stitches, black threads poking out like broken wire. The bruises have surfaced, sunset colors stretched over the tight bones. He doesn’t see my breasts or my waist or my hips. He only sees the nightmare.

  “What happened?” he whispers.

  “I fell off the edge of the map.” I reach for the camisole and pull it back on. It is softer than the bandages. “My sister saw me do this. Her name is Emma. She’s the one who plays soccer, even though she hates it. She’s nine and she loves me a lot and”—I wait until my voice comes back—“and I messed her up for the rest of her life. I can’t stay here. I hurt too many people.”

  The snow floats down, each weightless flake resting on top of another until they are heavy enough to crush in a roof.

  “Can I touch your arm?” he finally asks.

  “Sure.”

  He takes my right hand in his and pushes his thumb up the forearm along the indentation between my ulna and radius. He curls his fingers over the knob of my elbow and makes a circle with his thumb and first finger that slips easily over my bicep.

  “How much do you weigh?” he asks.

  “Not enough.” I sniff. “Too much.” A sob escapes. “I can’t tell.”

  “Get dressed.” He hands me my shirt. “You can come with me on two conditions.”

  “What?” I poke my head and arms through, pull the shirt down, and pick up the turtleneck.

  “You have to eat enough to keep from passing out or dying.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “Second. You have to call your parents and tell them you’re safe.”

  “No. I can’t talk to them.”

  “If you don’t call them, you can’t come.”

  “How often do you call your family?”

  His face tightens. “I don’t have a family.”

  “You said your dad was a jerk, but you loved your mother.”

  “I lied. I was hatched. Raised myself.”

  The wind blows the storm against the motel.

  “You said you weren’t going to lie anymore,” I say.

  He looks past me at the empty walls. “You want the truth?”

  “Yes.”

  Elijah picks up my sweatshirt, his thumb rubbing against the soft inside of the fabric. “My mother is dead. She died when I was fifteen. My father beat me for the last time a week later. He threw me out because I fought back. Best thing he ever did for me.”

  He hands me the sweatshirt.

  “Oh,” is the only thing I can say.

  “I’m not bluffing,” he says, stone-eyed. “If you don’t call them right now, I’m on the phone with the cops and reporting you as an intruder.”

  I leave a message on my mother’s answering machine at the house, so it will be a while before she gets it. I tell her I’m safe, I’m with a friend, and I’ll call her later.

  Elijah finds a Christmas movie on television. We watch it in silence. He eats a couple of slices of pizza and points at me. I eat a couple of crusts.

  Two hours and two sleeping pills later, I fall asleep. No Cassie in my head. No Cassie stench in my nose. No knives, no locks, not even a single shadow in the corner. I have pizza crusts in my belly and I don’t even want to stab it.

  I wake up twice.

  The first time the clock says 1:22 A.M. I’m dreaming about shoveling ashes. The handle of the shovel is so hot I drop it. I open my eyes. The pills made my head too heavy to lift off the pillow.

  Elijah is sitting at the tiny table by the window, cigarette in his mouth, the flickering shadows from the television lighting his face. He shuffles cards once, twice, three times. Deals a hand. Puts it back in the deck and shuffles again—once, twice, three times. His sleeves are rolled up to his biceps. The man/monster tattoo on his forearm glows brighter than the end of the cigarette. Smoke rises from his skin and hangs above his head like it’s on fire. Elijah becomes the monster in the skin or the monster becomes Elijah; they switch back and forth as fast as the cards being dealt on the table: flash, flash, flash.

  My eyes fade to black.

  The second time I wake up, the sun is burning through the holes in the curtains.

  He’s gone.

  059.00

  I open the curtains. The space where the El Camino was parked is partly drifted-in with snow. Looks like he got stuck twice getting out of the lot. I should have heard the spinning tires, the whining engine. I would have if I hadn’t taken that second pill.

  He’s not really gone. He probably went to buy gas and pick up some breakfast. We should have talked about that last night. I bet I could eat a half bagel, maybe some yogurt.

  I crawl back under the blankets that smell like smoke and fall asleep.

  One o’clock in the afternoon. It’s Christmas, I think.

  The plows have been by. Did he have an accident? Did he get lost?

  I drink cups of hot water from the tap until my head finally clears. Two sleeping pills is definitely a mistake b
ecause it has taken me this long to realize that the milk crate with his notebooks is missing. So are his bags of pages and clothes.

  But he’ll come back. He has to.

  At two I turn on the television and knit, back and forth, back and forth, making the half knots and twists that pull it all together on the long needles. I knit the afternoon away. I knit reasons for Elijah to come back. I knit apologies for Emma. I knit angry knots and slipped stitches for every mistake I ever made, and I knit wet, swollen stitches that look awful. I knit the sun down.

  I sleep.

  Wake in the dark, reach for the light, get up to pee. When I come back, I see the piece of paper under my purse. I unfold it. There is a key inside and his note.

  L—

  I know you’re haunted, it’s in your eyes. You have to pay attention to your visions. Deal with them.

  You can hate me for stealing your money, but not for leaving you behind. Your family wants to help. They love you.

  It’s not right to run from that.

  Peace,

  E

  P.S.—The key opens the office. The vending machine is unlocked. Don’t eat the cheese crackers. They’re older than you are.

  He left me a twenty-dollar bill. To pay for a cab, I guess.

  It’s snowing again. I eat two more pills and fade to white.

  060.00

  They say, “Eat this, Lia. Eat this please eat please just this please little bit.

  “Please.”

  The crows stalk me, wings folded neatly behind them, hungry yellow eyes weighing my soft spots. They circle around me once, twice, three times, claws scarring the stone floor of the church.

  I curl up on the frozen altar. They flutter close, black feathers filling my mouth and eyes and ears.

  my body

  my motel room

  alone

  They feed. They snatch bites with their beaks—one from my calf, one from the inside of my elbow—tug the meat from the bone and fly away with their treasure.

  061.00

  It takes hours to drag myself out of dream and back into the bed in room 115. No, days. Hours or days or weeks. I can’t tell. I don’t know how many pills I took.

  Everything hurts. Worms are gnawing on my cuts, through my joints, inside my ugly bones. My heart runs rabbitfast, then lies in the mud to hibernate. If I had a knife, I’d cut deep enough to end this game. I don’t even have a plastic fork.

  I pick up my knitting needles.

  I could.

  If I really want to die, right now, this minute, in this empty place, I could stab myself in a vein; they’re easy enough to see. I could walk into the blizzard and lie down in the snow and bleed out. Hypothermia and blood loss is like going to sleep, like pricking my finger on a thorn or a spindle.

  I could.

  A spider dangles from the lamp shade. She swings toward me, brushing over my face and landing on the headboard. She dances the thread in place and swings back. Againagainagain. Playing out thread from her tiny hands, legs slicing through the light like black knives. Her web grows, strand by strand. Each laying a path for the next step. Up-and-down threads first, then connecting them with side-to-side threads. More silk, more tension, more places to walk, weaving a world made from the inside of her.

  If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Mattresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn’t need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again.

  They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip.

  The spider sighs and sings quietly to herself.

  My name is Lia. My mother is Chloe, my father is David. And sister, Emma. And Jennifer.

  My mother can put her hands inside the open chests of strangers and fix their broken hearts, but she doesn’t know what music I like. My father thinks I am eleven. His wife keeps her promises. She brought me a sister who is waiting for me to come home and play. My name is Lia.

  My bones drag out of bed, across the floor to the window. I pull the cord that opens the curtains. The sun is stuck near the ground. I don’t know which way is east. I can’t tell if it’s twilight or dawn.

  I sit back down. The mirror reflects the dim light in the window behind me, and the snow. I cannot see me in the glass. I am not there. Or here. I close my eyes, open them. It doesn’t make any difference.

  I turn my head at a sound—air bubbling through water. My lungs. I’m still breathing. That’s a good sign.

  There is a chance I might want to live, after I get some sleep.

  062.00

  I wake in black.

  Time is stuck in molasses, blackstrap molasses poured into a mixing bowl. The mirror shows the dark outside. Night. The sun was setting, not coming up.

  I am in the Gateway. 115. The monster-boy left. I pick up the phone: no dial tone. The motel is sleeping, shut down for the season.

  My arms fight the blankets and my feet find the floor. They’re not waiting for me to make a decision. They’re going. We’re going. The cold swirls around my ankles, hungry to pull me to the ground. It takes a month to find my jacket. A year to lace up my boots.

  Take knitting. Take purse. Take key.

  My heart quivers, cranberry sauce dumped from a can.

  Step outside.

  The snow has stopped. The crescent moon hangs high, stars rubbing their hands together, teeth chattering. A glacier wind cuts into the spaces between my ribs and through the tiny cracks in my bones. I don’t have much time.

  I shuffle toward the office. The door to 113 is open. The lights are on.

  no.

  That can’t be. Everything is shut down. Everything is frozen.

  no.

  yes.

  I peek inside. Cassie is sitting cross-legged on the bed, a solitaire game spread out on the blanket. As I cross the threshold, she throws her cards in the air.

  “Finally!” she shouts. “Why are you always late? You got lost again, right?”

  Her room is warm. A cheap cartoon plays on the TV. There is a platter of half-eaten gingerbread cookies on the table along with a bottle of vodka. Popcorn is popping in a microwave.

  She pulls me down to sit next to her. “Okay, listen. The next couple of minutes are totally going to suck. There’s no way around that, sorry. I’d make it easier if I could.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She chuckles. “Stop kidding. This is a serious moment. You’re crossing over.”

  “I have to call my parents.”

  “You can’t.”

  “What? What is going on?”

  She pats my shoulder with stone fingers. “Lia, honey? You’re dying. Kind of dizzy, right? Feel wicked weird? Your heart is about to stop.”

  I push her hand away. “I don’t want to play.”

  “You don’t have a choice. This is your fate. It’s time.” She reaches for me again. Thin trails of mist flow from her fingers and twine around my arms. “Relax. It doesn’t hurt that much.”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Look both ways before you cross.”

  “I have to teach Emma how to knit. I promised.”

  “They’ll get her a DVD.”

  “But I don’t want to.”

  She speaks slowly. “Your kidneys failed a couple hours ago. Starvation plus dehydration plus exhaustion topped off with an almost-overdose? Nice job, Lia-Lia. Nice job, indeed. Your lungs are filling. Just a few more minutes. Relax.”

  She leans forward and exhales a wreath of mist that falls over me like bonfire smoke. My heart flops once. I try to breathe. My lungs don’t expand.

  For a moment, one glass-coffin moment, I want to give in. Freeze. Bleed out. Surrender would be easy to swallow. I could sl
eep forever after.

  My stupid heart flops again in the mud, not ready to hibernate yet. One more time, and then a third beat, faster. It kindles a tiny fire in my blood.

  I wave my arms to break through the mist. “Open your mouth.”

  “Huh?”

  “If I’m dying, you have to be nice to me. Come on, Cass, one little favor.”

  She shrugs and sighs, then opens up. On her tongue lies the green disk, see-glass born inside a volcano and buried with her in the ground. I snatch it.

  “No!” she shrieks.

  I try to get up, but my legs aren’t listening.

  “It’s mine!” She slaps my arm.

  The glass flies through the air and bounces on the carpet. We scramble over each other, body and shadow, bone and shimmer. She lands closest, but she doesn’t see it. I reach under the side table, pretending it’s there. She grabs the back of my jacket and heaves me to the side.

  “Ha,” she mutters, groping under the table.

  I tip-tip my fingers through the carpet until they find it. Her head is halfway under the table. I hold the glass to my eye.

  It’s filthy.

  I lick it, green lollipop sizzle on my tongue. The noise makes Cassie freeze. She turns around as I hold it up again and look through the leaf-colored crystal out the window to the stars lining up above us.

  Her scream is wrapped in white velvet, elegant and muffled.

  The light beyond my eyes flashflashflashes with a hundred futures for me. Doctor. Ship’s captain. Forest ranger. Librarian. Beloved of that man or that woman or those children or those people who voted for me or who painted my picture. Poet. Acrobat. Engineer. Friend. Guardian. Avenging whirlwind. A million futures—not all pretty, not all long, but all of them mine.