Borrowed

by Lucia DiStefano

  Except.

  Except.

  I couldn’t reach the keys today.

  I stretched—I stretched—I stretched ’til it hurt. I stretched ’til I swore I was nothing more than humanoid taffy with a beating heart inside. Did they move it even higher? But why?

  There’s nothing that kills a righteously indignant, furious exit more than needing to drag a chair up so you can palm your getaway keys.

  I pull into the rec center’s parking lot, my hands still shaking. When Mom went over the boys’ camp schedule yesterday, I hadn’t bothered to pay attention. So I don’t know where in the L-shaped compound to look for my brothers. And I wouldn’t dare bother Mom at work this week—big case: man suing Blue Cross because they denied his wife’s brain cancer surgery and she died. Mom hasn’t been a bouquet of sunshine prepping for this one. Her rule when she’s litigating: unless one of the boys is bleeding, handle it.

  I see Race first, on one of the outdoor playgrounds. He doesn’t see me. He’s nestled among a bunch of other kids at a long low water table, submerging brightly colored plastic cubes and watching them sink or float. The fact that life could ever be that simple pierces me right between the ribs.

  There are two staffers, around my age, standing around. Bored as hell. I softly lift the latch and slowly open the gate. I head for the swings. I’m wondering if Mom knows how easy it is to breach the fortress of the camp she likely paid big bucks for and wondering if I should tell her. The empty swing I’m eyeing is a few footsteps away when I hear, “Excuse me, can I help you?”

  I turn around and face a tired-looking girl wearing a photo lanyard and a whistle around her neck. As if I’m in the middle of a bank heist, my heart is going crazy in my chest. She’s followed me over here while the other one looks on from afar. I can tell she’s fazed by the shiner Ezra gave me but tries not to show it. “Excuse me, who are you?” she asks.

  I’m really getting sick of that question.

  “Hiya.” I aim for breezy. “I’m a sophomore at UT, Early Childhood Dev.”

  “And?”

  “The director said I can do an interview.”

  She relaxes. She yawns. Whatever happened to her last night, waking up in a freezer with a meth-head hovering over her is likely not part of it. She shrugs. “Okay, whaddya want to know? How much I love the little scamps?”

  “My assignment is to interview the kids.” Wish I’d thought to bring a notebook. A pen. Props.

  “Oh. Yeah. You want one of them, two of them?” Another yawn, this one barely suppressed by the back of her hand.

  “I’ll get one from the water table.”

  “Knock yourself out.”

  “Thanks,” I say over my shoulder. “Oh, and one part pomegranate juice to two parts Topo Chico is great for a hangover.”

  She laughs. “And raw beef is good for a black eye.”

  “Race,” I whisper. I squat to his level. He smells like maple syrup. Even though there are other kids close by, they all melt away when I look at him. I’m ashamed I haven’t given him more time at home.

  “Yeah?” He’s preoccupied with drowning a neon plastic cube that keeps trying to resurface when he lets it go.

  “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Let’s go over there for a bit.” I point to the swings, but it’s a wasted gesture since he doesn’t look up.

  “I can hear you right here,” he says. He’s wearing a Longhorns shirt I’ve never seen. It’s too big on him. I swear he looks taller than he did yesterday, but maybe that’s a trick of the shirt.

  “Race …” I sigh.

  He looks up finally. “Am I in trouble? Because Jason said we were allowed to spit in the water as long as we weren’t sick.”

  I smile, though it feels more like an exercise in facial muscle stretching than anything else. “Nobody’s in trouble. It’ll only be a quick second, okay?”

  It’s his turn to sigh. He lifts his hands out of the water gracefully, like pelicans lifting off into flight, and gives them quick hard shakes. Before I can find him something to dry his hands on, he’s rubbed them on his shirt.

  “Race,” I say when we’re out of earshot of the others. “What’s going on—”

  “Does it hurt?” he says.

  “What?”

  “Your face.” He points to my cheek. “It looks like it hurts.”

  “Oh, that. Nah, not so much.”

  “Race, I need to—”

  “What happened?” he asks. “To your face.”

  “I … um … bumped into a tree.”

  “Oh.” He seems disappointed.

  “So, buddy, what’s going on at home?”

  “Huh?” He looks wistfully over his shoulder at the shouts coming from the water table. “I’m gonna swing.” He clambers up on one and starts to pump his legs. I walk around him to give him a push, but he says, “No! I got it!”

  Sure enough, although it takes a bit of doing, he does have it. He starts soaring. I watch him, and the sun blinds me when he’s at the top.

  “Is Max mad at me?” I ask when he’s closer.

  “You know Max too?”

  Something cold and slippery twines itself around me, starting at my ankles and snaking upupup till it seizes my throat. “Know Max? Of course I do.” My voice is so shrill it’s breakable.

  When he sails near me, I catch the swing, stop it. I hook an arm around his waist so that the abrupt halt doesn’t tumble him off the seat.

  “Hey! No fair!” He climbs off and glares at me. The sun is behind him, lighting up his head like a fiery mane.

  “I’m sorry.” I take a deep breath. “But I really need your help, Mr. Hops-a-lot.”

  He brightens. “Hey! Harper used to call me that!”

  The cold and slippery thing is squeezing itself around my heart now.

  “Race. Who do you think I am?”

  His little shoulders hike and sag in a shrug. There’s a collective whoop from the water table. He looks back at it with longing. “No way!” one of the boys yells.

  “Racey, over here. Who am I?”

  “I dunno,” he mumbles, looking at his feet. I’m scaring him. He’s going inward. “A new teacher?”

  The one thing tethering me to the world snaps. I can’t control the violent quaking that starts at my core and sends aftershocks through me. “Race. Listen to me. I’m Harper, buddy. Harper.”

  He’s beaming now. “I knew you’d come back! Me and Will said you would, but Max said it was inpossible.”

  He faces a little palm out toward me. It takes me a second to realize he’s waiting for a high-five. Reflexively, through my brokenness, I give him what he wants.

  He leans into me, sniffs. “You smell like Harper. But why do you look so different?”

  “Different how?”

  “Everything,” he says matter-of-factly. “You have yellow hair now. You’re supposed to have brown hair. And you’re short. How’d you get short?”

  I saw myself in the mirror this morning when I scraped my hair back into a ponytail and brushed my teeth (with a brand new toothbrush I got from the medicine chest when I couldn’t find mine). My same face. Dark hair.

  And yet. I have an image of my stretched fingers nowhere near the car keys hanging on their hook.

  “Where were you?” he asks.

  “I was out, buddy, but only for the night.”

  He shakes his head. “You were gone for a whole year. You missed my birthday and everything. I had a fire truck cake. Shelby got it. But Mommy was too sad to sing.”

  “A year?”

  “Why didn’t you come back sooner?” His brow is deeply furrowed.

  “Race, I don’t …”

  “Maxine said dead people can’t come back, but me and Will knew you would. It’s in the Bible.”

  “Dead?”

  “Maybe when dead people come back,” Race says, his eyes shining, “they come back different.”

  “Dead?” I clasp m
yself in a hug. I’m all there. “Who said I died?”

  “Everybody.”

  “Everything okay over here?” Sleepy calls from the water table.

  Keep yourself together. Breathe.

  “F-fine,” I manage. “Everything’s fine.”

  You’re dead. How can you be fine when you’re dead?

  “My sister came back!” Race volunteers. I don’t think she hears.

  “Buddy, you can’t say anything to anyone about this, okay? I mean, not here at camp.”

  He nods with seriousness. Sleepy starts walking toward us.

  “I have to go now,” I say. I don’t know where. I just know I can’t lose my shit in front of him.

  He throws his arms around my neck. “You can’t go! I’m scared you won’t come back again.”

  “I’ll see you at home. Okay?” I breathe him in. Maple syrup. Baby shampoo. Hope.

  “Promise?” His voice teeters.

  “Promise.” My voice teeters too.

  18

  HARPER

  I’m sitting in Maxine’s car in the rec center parking lot. I may be sitting, but I’m slightly out of breath from pawing through the goddamned glove box and finally scooping every last thing in it out onto the crumby floor mat. Not one lone cigarette. Max, of course, cares about her lung tissue too much to smoke.

  I really could use something to calm me down. A food truck pulls up near me, Street Food Is Not a Crime painted on it, unfurled handcuffs beneath the slogan. The guy gets out, props up a sandwich board describing tacos al carbon and tacos al pastor. He waves at me. I’m dead, don’t you know? What are you doing waving to dead people?

  I move the car to an empty part of the lot. As I take my foot off the brake, I feel the paper in my pocket, sharp against my leg. I fish it out. It’s a note.

  Not my handwriting. I stare at it until my eyes water. Linnea Schiaparelli? Didn’t the guy from the restaurant call me Linnea?

  Shouldn’t that name be like fingers snapping me out of this nightmare?

  I google Linnea Schiaparelli. The closest I get is a whitepages listing for an E. Schiaparelli in Hyde Park.

  My brain is a long hallway, restless thoughts pacing behind a bank of doors, threatening to elbow into the space.

  Mr. Leo restarts my heart, swearing I’m someone I’ve never heard of.

  Slam

  My sister and boyfriend don’t know me.

  Slam

  My guileless little brother says I died a year ago.

  Slam

  I check the date on my phone—not the home screen square that only tells me it’s the third of April. I open the calendar app and hunt down the year. My God. I lost a year somewhere.

  Slam slam slam.

  That’s how you deal with the impossible to reconcile. You shut it out. Even in the absence of an explanation for the otherwise inexplicable. And yet. Aren’t I the one open to something beyond what meets the eye? The one to say humans would be a sorry bunch if this is all there is? Even when Mom and Max roll their eyes, isn’t it me who says there’s got to be more to our existence than what the brain can comprehend?

  The phone is heavy in my hands. I’ve never felt more divided. One half of me intensely wants me to do what I’m thinking of doing, the other half is scream-begging me not to.

  The first thought wins out and kicks the doors open.

  Ignoring the batch of new texts from Max and Ezra demanding I bring the car back or they’ll report it stolen, I open a new browser window … and google myself.

  Teenager Found Unconscious in Town Lake; Police Ask for Information

  A jogger called 911 after pulling the lifeless body of a teenage girl out of Town Lake last night. Harper Tretheway, eighteen, is a senior at Stephen Austin High School. She remains in Seton Hospital’s ICU without regaining consciousness. Police are not commenting on whether they suspect foul play, but they are asking those who may have been in the vicinity after midnight to come forward.

  There has not been a drowning fatality in the city’s beloved site (known to the locals as Lady Bird Lake) in more than four years.

  I’m alive in that article. Unconscious, but alive. But then I thumb back to the search results.

  Teen Dies

  Harper Tretheway, eighteen, has died as a result of her injuries at Town Lake earlier this week.

  Originally from Burlington, Vermont, Tretheway is survived by her mother, Beatrice, an Austin attorney, a younger sister, and two younger brothers. She is predeceased by her father, James, of Roanoke, Virginia.

  Services are private.

  And six months later, without a lead, the cops folded the investigation up in the “accidental” locker. Case closed. Have a nice death.

  Because the Internet is one never-ending comma, I can’t stick a period in my search. I fall into the trapdoor of the Harper Tretheway, in memoriam Facebook page.

  The worst is seeing comments from people who I know hated my guts, like Trish Parette (RIP, girl. Will miss you always xx) and Joella Bryant (Prom won’t be the same without you. We voted you queen, BTW. Wherever you are, hope you’re dancing).

  No, the worst is seeing the comment from Ezra, who I happen to know is super-private about his emotions. My bruised cheekbone throbs as I read. I try to soothe it with the bag of peas, but it’s thawed by now and makes a sploosh when I toss it aside.

  Harper, as long as I live, I know I’ll never meet anyone like you. I’ll watch over your family.

  I have to close the window before reading what Max said.

  There’re only so many times one person can die.

  “Hello?” I say as I unlock the back door with the key I found in my pocket. I creep inside. Mudroom. Laundry room. And then louder, less tentatively. “Hello!”

  The kitchen is sunny. Airy. Neat. It takes me a few moments to stop tiptoeing like a cartoon burglar. There’s a calendar on the fridge. An arrow runs through this week, Mom away written above it. This must be the mom from the note. There was no dad mentioned.

  Convinced I’m really alone, I relax into a self-guided tour of the house (mostly tasteful and understated except for a hideous recliner that looks ripe for the curb). Heading down the hallway, my fingertips skim framed portrait photos of the same girl, chronologically arranged. She’s pretty, not beautiful, her thick, wavy sandy-blond hair her most memorable feature. The older she gets, the more delicate she appears, the less convincing her smile, like she’s been siphoning off her energy and diverting it elsewhere.

  Vicious hunger pangs distract me. I can’t remember the last time I ate. Which is ironic, when you consider I woke up surrounded by food. The last thing I remember eating: P. Terry’s cheeseburgers at the lake with Tyler.

  Why can I remember that and not what happened to me? Did Tyler take off, and I decided to go for a swim? Why didn’t I make it out?

  Raiding the kitchen for food yields nothing but frustration. There’s one whole cupboard devoted to different-size aluminum muffin tins and cookie sheets. Another for glass pie dishes. Another for cake pans, dark, light, rubber, springform. “Really?” I say out loud. Even the pantry is stupid that way, its shelves stocked with lots of useless ingredients in too many varieties. Flour, for example. Why you’d need more than all-purpose, I have no idea, but there’s cake, coconut, almond, teff (teff?). Same for sugar. You’d think brown and white would be enough. But there’s granulated, super-fine confectioner’s, turbinado, raw.

  The fridge has similarly been hijacked by sweets, and I’m more of a savory girl. The freezer is stacked with neat rows of desserts, wax-papered and Ziploc-ed. Not a Hot Pocket or Pizza Roll in sight.

  “Jesus, how loudly do you have to rattle your ghost chains to get a sandwich around here?”

  I’m hungry, and I don’t want to get back in the car, so I drag the pastries out of their comfy freezer hidey-hole and dump them on the counter. I start on the cupcakes with bouffant hairdos. I throw a couple in the microwave and nuke them for a minute. The frosting ends up as a
foamy puddle on the glass tray. I take a bite anyway. The outside is scalding hot, the center cold. I abandon it. Next: a fat brownie studded with nuts and chunks of white chocolate. I unwrap it and send it to the hotbox too, and though it fares better after the atomic apocalypse, it’s so sweet that it makes my teeth curl. Casualty number two.

  And it goes on and on, through some things I can name—tart cheesecake, blueberry scone, peanut butter cookie—and some I can’t—something grainy, shaped like a pyramid, that crumbles into dust after its rude nuke-thawing—me peeling these items out of their wrappers as if I’m shucking corn and taking bites that get increasingly messy and unsatisfying.

  I get nauseous, not full, the sugar making me feel fizzy. The kitchen island looks like a patisserie crime scene, frosting-smeared scraps of wax paper lying around like evidence, toothed leftovers sacked out like corpses.

  There’s a knock at the back door.

  “Go away,” I say. Wait, what if it’s Max? What if she’s found me here and is planning to beg me to come home, to tell me we can figure everything out together?

  I open the door. Not Max. A guy. Cute. Not my type, but cute.

  He’s holding a plated cupcake that looks like it was made by a toddler. “You inspired me,” he says. He’s smiling. Until he sees my face. Then his smile slides off like nuked frosting. He sucks in his breath.

  “What happened to your eye?” he says.

  “Look, I’m gonna skip the part where you mistake me for someone else. I’m not her.”

  I don’t have the heart to shut the door on him and his obvious confusion.

  “This is the part where you say something,” I say.

  “I don’t understand,” he says. “Are you okay?”

  “Other than being stuck in an episode of Black Mirror, yeah. Just peachy.”

  “Linnea, are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Well, that’s the first bullet point. I’m not Linnea.”

  He looks past me as if expecting an explanatory cue card to walk out.

  I sigh. “Shit, you might as well come in.”

  In the kitchen, he says, “Did I say something that upset you?”