by Sara Wolf
“You are insane.”
“Omigod! Did I tell you?”
“That you’re insane? Already figured it out, thanks.”
“No, dummy! Wren asked me out to Senior Prom!”
I feel my mouth drop open. “The one with glasses?”
“Uh, duh, what other Wren do you know?”
“Was he…was he drooling or shuffling or moaning about brains?”
“Ew, no! He was in his right mind and I’m like, 99% sure he wasn’t a zombie, okay? Is it so weird that someone would want to take me to Senior Prom?”
“No, it’s just – Wren isn’t exactly, like, bold?”
“I know!” She squeals. “Which is like, the biggest compliment, if he got all gung-ho to ask me and stuff, right?”
“Yeah. Are you gonna say yes?”
“I already did!”
“What happened to him being a nerd-king?”
“He’s a slightly….cooler nerd-king now? I mean, I just – we’ve had woodshop together and it’s been really fun, we made this birdhouse and it came out really cute, and I cut my finger on the bandsaw a little and he got really concerned and took me to the nurses and –”
“You like him.”
Kayla chokes on nothing. “I-I do not! Like him! I just happen to want to go to Senior Prom! And he’s cute enough! And he’s nice!”
“He doesn’t drive.”
“That’s fine! I do! And anyway I’m totally gonna ask Daddy for a limo and you and Jack are definitely invited.”
“Uh, thanks? But me and Jack aren’t a thing.”
“You slept in the same bed.”
“Yes?”
“You’re a thing,” she asserts. “I’ll see you on Monday!”
I sigh and hang up. Having friends is great. Having friends determine your romantic status is not so great. Yeah, Jack and I slept in the same bed. And he touched my hair. And smiled a lot. And he was warm, and –
I run into the bathroom and grace my head with a cold shower. Mom’s surprised to see my wet hair when I drive up to her shrink’s.
“Did…did something happen?”
“Jesus blessed me with his holy water.”
“Oh?”
“Took a shower. How was your session?”
She laughs. “It was…it was alright. We talked about you, mostly, and Stanford.”
“Oh yeah?” My voice pitches up. “Cool.”
“It would be so wonderful for you, honey. And with your dad willing to help with the costs – you could really do it. You’d meet so many new people, and learn so many amazing things.”
“Yeah. And they’ve got these awesome foreign exchange programs – ” I pull onto the highway. “I’ve been looking at this one in Belgium, it’s like, four months, so one semester, but you live with a host family right in the city and there’s all this cultural exchange stuff in your program, like going out to the countryside, and visiting France for a week, and it sounds so –”
I stop when I see Mom raise her hand to her face out of the corner of my eye.
“Mom? Are you okay?”
“I’m sorry,” she sniffs, laughing. “I’m fine. Really, I’m okay.”
“Are you crying?”
“I’m fine, sweetie! I-I’m –”
Her crying gets louder. She’s shaking, her shoulders quivering and her hands quaking as she desperately tries to hide her face from me.
“Mom!” I pull over onto the shoulder lane and put the car in park, lacing my arm around her. “Mom, are you okay? What’s wrong? Tell me, please.”
“N-No,” she whimpers. “I’m being selfish. I’m sorry. Please, just drive us home.”
“No! Not until you tell me what’s making you cry like this!”
She sobs into my shoulder, every echo of her pain tearing a hole in my heart. I shouldn’t have gotten so excited about Stanford. It probably hurts her just to hear me talk about going away so far.
“I don’t want you to go,” she cries. “Please, stay here. I need you here.”
I wince, and shut my eyes. I pull her closer to me, her trenchcoat enveloping the both of us.
“Hey, it’s okay,” I say softly. “Mom, it’s okay. Don’t worry. I’m not going anywhere. I promise.”
“No! I want you to go,” She looks up, eyes panicked and red. “But I don’t want you to go. I know you have to. You have to grow and learn and fly on your own. But I don’t know what I’ll do without you. I’m sorry. Please, go. Please do whatever you want. Just…just promise me you’ll come back and visit sometimes, alright?”
“Mom, I’m not going –”
“You are!” Her expression suddenly turns furious. “You are, don’t listen to me! Don’t hold yourself back for me. I want you to go to Stanford.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“Yes you do, Isis. I know you do. And you’re giving it up for me, and I can’t have that. You need people as smart as you, sweetie. You need challenges, and you’ll get that at Stanford. God, my little girl, going to Stanford. I’m so proud. So, so proud.”
She composes herself, and I start driving again, and she smiles and talks about mundane stuff like grocery shopping and what the neighbors said about her yard and how work was, but I know she isn’t done with the sorrow, because when we get home, she locks herself in her room and turns her music on. And she only does that when she doesn’t want me to hear her crying. My chest burns as I look over the Stanford brochures again. They’re a wonderful, impossible dream. I can’t leave her. There’s no way I can leave Mom here with a good conscience. I’d be too far to help if anything happened again – and she’d be too lonely. She wouldn’t get better if I was gone, she’d only get worse. I have to be close. Very close. Community college close. I have to stay with her until she’s strong enough to stand on her own two feet again, and going to Stanford won’t make that happen. Shit, going to Ohio State won’t make that happen.
My path is clear.
My path has always been clear.
I put the brochures in my desk drawer and cover them with my old sketchbooks from elementary school. Things I don’t touch. Things I won’t touch, ever again.
My email beeps, shakes me out of my misery, and then piles more on. The email’s from the same address that sent me the picture. Nameless.
‘Hi, Isis!
How’ve you been? You got my pic, right? That Jack guy seems really cool. Have you guys fucked yet? :)’
I fight the urge to puke and lose, fantastically.
The darkness wells up in the bathroom. It bleeds out of my eyes and my mouth that cries with no sound. I lock the door and huddle on the floor, hugging my knees.
I’m not safe. I’ve never been safe.
I’ll never be safe. Jack’s wrong. He can’t do anything. He can’t help. Nameless lives inside me, and always will. The darkness will always be here.
There is a nest inside of me, and all it takes is a few words from the boy who raped me to bring the monsters roaring out of it.
-10-
3 Years
30 Weeks
5 Days
Naomi isn’t pleased with the fact I’m leaving town. She’s never been pleased when I leave, ever, because Sophia gets sad, and that probably makes her job harder. She escorts me to Sophia’s room grumpily.
“Something the matter, Naomi?” I inquire. Naomi grunts eloquently.
“Don’t try to schmooze me.”
“I’m just wondering why your face is more lovely than usual. New eye cream?”
“Are you really going to Harvard?” She snaps. “Do you know how far away that is?”
“In another state, I believe.”
“What about Sophia, hm? What is she going to do when you’re gone?”
Naomi’s words dig a needle straight through my heart. She seems to see that, and sighs and rubs her forehead.
“I’m sorry, Jack. I – she’s been here so long, I care about her so much, and with the surgery coming up I’m just so worried. Dr. F
enwall says her likelihood of pulling through -”
“She’ll be fine,” I say. “She’s tough, even though she doesn’t look it. She’ll live. She’ll be able to live her own life when it’s over.”
Naomi nods. She pushes open the door to Sophia’s room, and gasps. It’s empty. I walk over to the windowsill, where every single one of the vases I’d bought her are smashed. The floor’s littered with pottery, sharp and gleaming and just begging for someone to step in and shed blood.
“Where is she?” Naomi moans. “I told her you were coming, and to stay in her room so I could bring you here. Oh no, oh, no no no -”
“We’ll split up. Check her usual spots,” I say. “I’ll take the top floors, you check the bottom. And ask Dr. Fenwall if he’s seen her.”
Naomi nods, and we run out of the door. I take the steps two at a time and weave around wheelchairs and interns. She’s not in the cafeteria, and the servers say they haven’t seen her all day. The recreation room is nearly empty, and when I ask a kindly old woman if she’s seen her, she shakes her head. Nurses who work with Naomi say they haven’t seen her either. The bathrooms are fruitless. Finally, I get to the kid’s ward, where Mina and James are playing videogames. They look up, and Mina smiles.
“Hey, Jack! Sophia was just here.”
“Where did she go?”
“Upstairs. To the roof, I think. Even though we’re not supposed to be up there.”
I kiss the top of Mina’s head and ruffle’s James’ hair, and take off through the door. Four flights of stairs leave me breathless and sick to my stomach – why the roof? She only goes there when she’s irrevocably sad, or depressed. And with all the smashed vases? She loves those vases. She’d never –
I climb faster, and burst through the emergency door and into the weak sunlight.
Sophia’s standing at the edge. Not on it, like I’d found her so many times, like I was afraid she’d be. She peers over it, watching the world spread out below. Her hands are clasped behind her back, her platinum hair billowing in the wind like moonlit threads of gold.
She looks over her shoulder, and smiles at me.
“Hey.”
“Sophia –” I run towards her, turning her to face me and inspecting her for wounds. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just wanted some air. You don’t look so good, though.”
I exhale all the worry out. “I was – I came to visit, and your room, all the vases were broken. Did you do that?”
She nods. “On accident. I was dancing to dubstep and got a little crazy. I didn’t want to deal with it, so I just left it there for the janitor to clean and came up here. Mean of me, I know.”
“No, no it’s fine – you just worried Naomi and I.”
She cocks her head and hugs me. “Oh, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to, really.”
I put my arms around her and inhale the smell of her hair, making sure she’s still here. She’s real. She has a scent and a feel and she’s realer than anything in my life. She always has been.
Half of me wants to tell her about Isis. The other half knows she’d take it badly either way, and with such an important surgery coming up, her mental stability has to be rock-solid. I’ll tell her after, when she’s healthy and whole again.
“I love you,” I say. She giggles and pets my hair.
“I know. I love you too. Thank you for being so strong for me all this time. Thank you for trying so hard, for so long. It’ll all be over soon.”
“You’ll be able to do whatever you want. Go wherever you want. You’ll be free.”
She laughs, and hugs me tighter.
“I already am.”
***
Today is easier.
It’s not any brighter – the darkness still lingers on the edges of my vision but I punch it in the gut and drive to the hospital anyway. I pause in the doorway of the ER.
The first time I came in here, I was a different person. Also, unconscious and bleeding. But also extremely different. Louder. And more obnoxious. And less evil. It’s clearly not a fair trade. But no trades are ever really fair. I’ve learned that much.
“Isis!”
I look over to see Dr. Mernich coming towards me, her flyaway hair even fuzzier today.
“M-dawg! What’s going down in crazy town?”
She laughs. “Nothing much, really. All the interesting pranks conducted around here suddenly and mysteriously stopped once you left.”
“Ah, well. What can I say? Poltergeists are fickle. Also, supernatural and imaginary. But mostly fickle.”
“Are you here to visit Sophia?”
“Yeah.”
“You look much better,” she says, looking me up and down. “You sound better.”
“Do I? Because I feel like shit now more than ever.”
“But now you’re feeling it. Not running away from it. That’s a good start. Little steps, remember?”
I nod. “Yeah. I think I’m getting there. I mean, a fancy mind-wipe machine like in Eternal Sunshine would be helpful and extremely welcome, but hey, you scientist guys are slow and always out of funds. I forgive you.”
Mernich smiles, but it fades quickly. “Isis? Just between me and you – how is Sophia doing, you think?”
“I dunno. One minute she likes me, the next she hates me, the next she’s crying on me. But she seems like she’s stronger, somehow. She’s focused on the things that really matter to her, now. And she’s still nice. She’s always nice.”
“Except when she isn’t,” Mernich offers.
“Yeah. That.”
Mernich turns my words over, and finally claps me on the shoulder.
“Well, thank you for coming to visit her so often. She really does like you, you know. Deep down. She sees you as herself, and wants you to be happy like she can’t always be.”
“None of us can be happy all the time.”
“Yes. But you certainly try more than anyone else, don’t you?”
Her words hit hard. She smiles one last time, and turns and walks down the hall, calling out to another doctor.
I peek into the kid’s ward, but Mira and James are out to lunch in the cafeteria. Sophia’s door is open, and I walk in to see her and Jack, hugging. I back up immediately, and Sophia hears me first and pulls away.
“Isis! Hey!” She runs over and hugs me, and I look at Jack over her shoulder. He’s expressionless, the slightest frown on his face.
“Hi, sorry, wow. I just barged in here without even knocking first. Dang. I’m really sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay! I’m just glad you’re here. You, and Jack, and me, all together for once. It’s great. Isn’t it?” She turns to Jack and asks. He nods, stiffly, and then locks eyes with me. It’s quick, but it lingers, and reminds me of everything that happened that night in the hotel – how kind he was, how warm. I feel my face burning up, and Sophia staring at me.
“I should go,” Jack says suddenly.
“What? Why? Work again?” Sophia tilts her head.
“No. I just don’t want to get in the way of any girl talk.”
“Periods,” I say to Sophia immediately. “Huge, bloody periods.”
“Tampons!” She shouts.
Jack pushes past us, and out the door. “I’m going to get something to eat. I’ll be back.”
When he’s gone, Sophia turns to me.
“So? What’s up?”
I hold out the silver bracelet. It jingles faintly in the air. Her blue eyes widen, and she reaches out, reverently, to take it. She strokes the name engraved on it with her thumb.
“Tallie,” she whispers.
“I couldn’t bring back…um. The rest of her. I mean, that’s her grave, so that’s where she should stay, you know? That’s where she rests. But I thought you’d like the bracelet.”
Sophia’s quiet for a long time. She traces the bracelet chain over and over. Just as I start to feel awkward for staying, she raises her voice.
“Jack got it for me. After it happened
. It’s nice to have it back.”
I try to smile, but it comes out crooked.
“It’s been with her for years, now,” she continues. “In the ground, with her. I could see her, or visit her. But now it’s with me.”
“Now she’s with you,” I offer. Sophia looks up, eyes wet, and flings her arm around my neck.
“Thank you. Thank you so much. Let me make it up to you, okay? I really wanna make it up to you.”
“You don’t have to, actually, I know things have been really hard? And like, your life is hard? So I don’t want to make it extra hard?”
“You won’t be! Avery’s doing the entire party, so I won’t be doing anything stressful. All you have to do is wear something ‘rad’, or whatever, and come!”
“Uh, historically I haven’t had the greatest experience at Avery’s parties.”
“Neither have I,” She reminds me. “But it’s my birthday party, and she’s promised to behave herself. And I’ll be there, so I’ll keep an eye on her. I’d just like it if you came. Wren’s coming, and so is Jack. And a bunch of other people who I was supposed to go to school with, so like, most of your class.”
“Big party?”
“Huge! And there’s a cake, and a DJ, and please, please come!”
Her face is shining, in the same way it used to shine when I’d make her laugh, back at the beginning. Back when I first came here.
“Yeah. Yeah, alright. I’ll come.”
Sophia smiles, relief carving her features.
“Awesome. Okay, it’s on the 28th, up at her house. It’s supposed to start at seven, but you should arrive fashionably late, because the booze is also arriving fashionably late.”
“You know me too well.”
Sophia shakes her head, and laughs.
“I thought I did. But, no. No, Isis. I don’t know you at all.”
-11-
3 Years
31 Weeks
1 Day
Avery’s house is familiar in all the wrong ways. I park in the same place I always do – easy to back out and easy to drive away fast if I gotta. The music is thumping across the lawn, down into the street, and permeating the gated community. It bounces off the trees and the dozens of cars parked haphazardly in her yard. People are already drunkenly stumbling out of the front door, lying on the lawn, wrestling with each other and chasing each other with toilet paper and the hose.
