Damn it. There’s a stain right between her boobs. Allie’s mind skims over the other things she could wear today. “He can take a bus. Or walk—”
“There’s not time. He’s seeing a specialist about his knee.”
Allie, desperate, goes for a half truth. “Mom. I have a commitment. It’s an orchestra thing—”
“They can do without you for one day.”
“I have a solo!” This part, at least, is true.
“And your brother needs his knee fixed so he can keep doing track. Which is just as important as your music.”
“Like he’s going to spend the rest of his life running,” Allie retorts.
“Alexandra Marie Healey. Do you hear yourself?”
Allie takes a breath. “Music is—”
“A waste of your time. You’re going to be a doctor, not squander your life on music.”
“Can’t he Uber or something? I’ll pay for it. Out of my own money—”
“He’s fourteen! He can’t go alone, and I need to sleep. I need you to do this.”
“But—”
“Enough! You’re just like your father. Music was his god and nobody else mattered. Do you really want to be that person?”
“But—”
“Pick your brother up after school. Here’s the address and a note giving him permission to be seen.”
Allie stops arguing. Feeling hopeless and defeated she changes into her usual jeans and shirt. But when she picks up the cello case to put it back in the music room, the cello whispers a caress and rebellion kicks in.
Her whole life depends on this audition. This one time, she’ll do what she wants. She just won’t show up. Trey’s appointment can be rescheduled.
Allie kills the engine and leans her forehead on the steering wheel. God, she’d been so selfish, defiant, rebellious, and that had killed Mom and Trey. Ethan is the only spot of color in a world gone gray, and he’s about to leave her. If she doesn’t go through with this, she’ll be betraying his trust, breaking her word again.
She breathes in the car smell for the last time, catching a faint whiff of Trey, sweat and feet and enthusiasm.
“You’ve got the whole world still, Allie,” his voice says, as clearly as if it comes through the speakers.
“I don’t want it,” she whispers, and that gets her out of the car and into the room where Ethan is lying on the bed, waiting.
He’d said he’d make preparations, that this would be a celebration, and he’d meant it. The cheap, scarred table is transformed by a white tablecloth. Laid out, as if on an altar, are two crystal glasses, a bottle of whiskey, and two small crystal bowls. A candle burns at the center.
He doesn’t move when she walks in, his dark gaze burning all of her doubts away.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
“I wasn’t sure.”
“Are you sure now?”
Allie floats to the bed. Her body has no weight. Now that she’s decided, everything is easy. Nothing holds her anymore. She’s free.
This time, the lovemaking feels natural, inevitable. She loses herself in the pleasure of Ethan’s hands and lips, the way her body rises to meet his when he enters her. After it’s over, she lies quiet against him, both emptied and filled with a sense of wonder.
He strokes her hair, and she drifts on the edges of sleep.
“Ready?”
Her heart contracts out of rhythm, a hard squeeze in her chest, sending a burst of heat out to her skin. Cold follows.
Her certainty has vanished again. The pleasure of sex has wakened the possibility that there might be other pleasures in the world. What might she be missing if she leaves her life behind now?
Ethan is certain enough for both of them.
“Here, I brought you something.”
He rummages in a backpack beside the bed. Allie watches the muscles in his back ripple under his skin. She’s awed by the miracle of muscle, how the cells form together to create bands that contract and release together on command to make the body move. What a wonder the human organism is. How did she live all of her life and never notice?
A wave of sadness washes over her, grief that this beautiful boy will no longer be in the world, that those muscles will be cold and stiff tomorrow. Her own life is a small, dark thing, but his seems beautiful to her, glorious even.
Ethan turns to her with something white and floaty in his hands. “Put this on.”
She takes it from him, a flimsy bit of silk and lace. Heat rises to her face.
“Please,” he says, and she sees in her imagination the tableau he’s creating. The table, with its candles and roses. Allie dressed in white.
“Here, I’ll help you.”
She raises her arms as if she’s a child, and he pulls the nightgown down over her head, smooths it over her breasts and hips and thighs. He runs his hands through her hair, arranging it on her shoulders.
“There. You’re perfect. Shall we?”
His hand closes around hers, warm and steady where hers is cold and trembling. She lets him lead her to the table. Sits when he pulls the chair out for her.
He lowers himself into the chair across from her. She watches him pour amber liquid into their glasses. His eyes glow with anticipation as he raises his glass for a toast.
“To what comes after.”
Allie lifts her own glass and touches it to his. “To what comes after.”
Ethan drinks effortlessly and smoothly. Allie lifts her own glass to her lips and swallows. The whiskey burns, and she chokes, coughs. It’s a full-size tumbler, and she’s not even halfway through when Ethan pours himself a second glass.
He smiles at her. “You’re smaller, so it will hit you harder. Take your time. No rush.”
While she sips, he brings out three pill bottles and divides the contents into the crystal bowls. One for him, one for her.
“What are we taking?”
“Just trust me.”
She thinks about stories she’s heard. Failed attempts. Ruined livers and kidneys. Brain damage.
“I want to know.”
“Don’t ruin it. Okay? I planned everything. One of these first.”
He hands her a small tablet, and she turns it over and over in her fingers, looking at the markings etched into it and wondering what they mean.
“So we don’t puke. Melt it under your tongue.”
They dissolve the pills together, and Allie takes another drink to wash the taste away.
“I’m glad you’re with me,” Ethan says. He picks up his dish of pills and dumps half of them into his mouth, washing them down with the whiskey.
Allie picks her pills up one at a time, filling her palm. Twelve oblong tablets. Ten small round ones. They feel cold and alien, an overwhelming amount, and it’s not even half of what’s in the dish. If she doesn’t consume them all, it won’t be enough. She’ll still be here, left behind, while Ethan is gone.
She glances behind her at the door. She could run out, only she’s wearing the nightgown and where would she go? There’s nothing out there for her.
“You can do it,” Ethan encourages, and she shoves the whole handful into her mouth. Her throat fights her, closing against the chalky ovals. She swallows whiskey, but that chokes her too, and she gags on the whole mess, eyes watering. By the time she fights off the spasm of nausea and manages to swallow, Ethan has emptied both his glass and his entire dish of pills.
He leans back in his chair, watching her. Already there is a distance in his eyes, his face. He’s moving away from her.
Allie still has half of her pills to go. Her stomach is churning. Her throat burns with whiskey and a bitter chemical aftertaste. She can’t do this.
Panic hits.
Ethan is going to die and leave her behind. She’s going to sit here and watch him stop breathing, stop being Ethan. She’ll be left in this wretched place alone, alive, have to call her father and ask him to come and get her.
This is not an option.
Maybe she can take the pills with water. Maybe she can swallow them one at a time. Maybe she can still . . .
I don’t want to die.
The thought begins as a slow vibration at her core. It spreads up through her spinal column and into her skull, down through the bones of her legs, into her arms, her hands.
I don’t want to die.
It resonates outward, through her muscles and into her skin, every delicate nerve, every blood vessel and capillary. Into the room, which is spinning now, gently.
Allie hears music. Not the cello this time but a song with words, her father singing to her as he tucks her into bed. She feels safe, drifting off to sleep, knowing he will be watching out for her.
She doesn’t understand the words, something French, but she knows they mean he loves her. All of the music he shared with her is still with her.
A realization comes to her, now, when it’s too late.
Her father does love her, always loved her. The hours spent listening to him practice, the times he put the bow in her hand and guided it to make music. The cello lessons he insisted on, even after he was gone, that was love. And the breakfasts she’s despised, the oatmeal, that also was love.
Ethan is slumped in his chair. His pupils are dilated, his lids half closed. He looks younger without the tension in his jaw, almost childlike, and Allie wants to stop him from dying, only the room keeps spinning and her limbs are swaddled in cotton.
“Almos’ forgot.” He fumbles with something in his pocket and brings out a phone. It’s an old phone, worn. The screen is cracked. This means something, but before she can grasp it, the strains of the Bach suite in G drift into the room. Not just any version, not Casals’s or Yo-Yo Ma’s, but the Braden Healey version.
At first she thinks it’s the music she’s been hearing in her head, and then she understands. She wants to tell Ethan no, but her lips won’t work and the word sticks in her throat.
“’Cause you loved the cello,” Ethan says. “Downloaded the album just for you.”
Loved. Past tense.
Only it isn’t past, not at all. Loves. She loves the cello. More than anything else in the world. As the music washes over her, she understands her father’s words to Phee. He does love her, just as she loved her mother and Trey. It’s just that the cello is a part of him, a part of her. Cut that away, and what’s left is something undead, like a zombie. A tortured thing without a soul.
“Beautiful music to die to,” Ethan says.
Allie shakes her head, which is a mistake. The room spins faster, and she closes her eyes. It takes two attempts, but she finally coordinates her mouth and tongue to shape words.
“Have you ever seen anybody die?”
Ethan doesn’t answer. His eyes have drifted closed, his head nodding forward.
“Ethan. Have you?”
“What?”
“Have you seen anybody die?”
Still he doesn’t answer.
Allie watches Trey die all over again, as if her closed eyelids are a movie screen. His body twitching, convulsing. The desperate, ragged breaths. It wasn’t beautiful, at all. It was horrible and wrong.
Is this different?
She tries to force her eyes back open, but they are too heavy. Her limbs are weighted. She fights it.
The phone. There’s something about the phone.
A dim memory, her own phone hurtling into the ocean. Ethan’s lecture about phones and tracking devices.
“Whose phone?”
Ethan blinks slowly. He’s sliding out of his chair, leaning sideways. “Mine.”
No. You don’t have a phone. You said.
She’s waiting for the answer that never comes before she realizes she hasn’t spoken, that the words are only in her head. It’s so hard to think, the music making it even harder. She can’t give in, not now, something is wrong.
Allie wrestles with her body, trying to make it sit up straight, to make her arms and hands work. Little by little, she manages to fumble one of the pill bottles into her hand. This seems like the most important thing, a reason not to die. Her vision keeps going in and out, but she can just read the name on the prescription.
Ethan Bannister.
Not right. A doctor wouldn’t prescribe all these for him.
And then she sees the letters following the name. Sr.
But Ethan’s dad is dead. He said so. Died from suicide years ago. These pills can’t be his, unless that was a lie, just like the phone.
Her tongue is made of cotton, and her lips are disconnected from her brain. She manages to get her eyes half open.
Ethan’s breath snores in and out of his throat. Drool trails down over his chin. He’s not beautiful anymore.
Her brain is a small spark of consciousness, but it flickers like a candle in the wind.
Ethan lied. About the phone. About his father.
She doesn’t want to die as part of a lie.
Call for help.
She reaches for his phone, but her fingers won’t work right, and it slips away, out of reach. She tries to stand, but her legs seem to belong to some other girl and drop her onto the floor. The carpet stinks of mold and old tobacco. Her eyelids are heavy while the rest of her body is floating. Moving is hard, too hard. She’d like to say goodbye to her father, to tell him that she loves him. But even that seems too far away. Maybe it’s too late for it to matter.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
PHEE
Phee lays a clean white cover over the instruments she’s working on and puts her tools away. Everything as usual, everything in its place, except for her thoughts. She’s thoroughly at war with herself, not that this is anything new.
“Obsessed,” “incorrigible,” “obstinate”—these are words that have woven themselves into her being from the time she was a very small child. Every lecture that came her way from her parents or her teachers involved the word “too.” Too loud, too excited, too bossy, too opinionated, too much.
Somewhere along the line, she’s made peace with that, has turned the words into an inside joke for her own private amusement. Her business cards read:
Ophelia MacPhee, Luthier
Your instrument is my obsession
She has to make a decision and make it soon. A vacation rental cabin somewhere in the woods or the cabin she has in mind. Just because Braden’s sister didn’t want to talk to her doesn’t mean she can’t figure out where it is. Does she proceed? Or take a step back. Let Braden and Allie find their footing with each other. At least the cello is in a place where she can keep an eye on it.
She’s just getting ready to climb into bed and let go of the day when her phone rings.
Braden.
Her hand moves toward the phone in slow motion, and her voice sounds dry and tight when she answers.
“Phee. Thank God you picked up. It’s Allie. She’s tried to kill herself and she’s taken the car and—”
“Oh God. Oh, Braden. Keep talking. I’m already moving.”
Adrenaline floods her as she squeezes the phone between her shoulder and her ear and puts on her shoes and jacket.
“She’s at the Sunset Motel. The cops are on their way. I’ve booked an Uber, but it’s going to be a bit and you’re closer than I am. I can’t bear the waiting. Go there, Phee, don’t come here.”
“All right.” She can hear his panicked breathing, the sound of him pacing. “Easy, Braden. Maybe she’s okay. How do you know—”
“I was worried. Had a bad feeling. I looked at her laptop. She always takes it with her, she never leaves it here. There was an IM conversation between her and Ethan . . .” His voice breaks on a wrenching sob that threatens to turn her inside out.
She grabs her keys and runs to her car.
Braden manages a quavering breath, and goes on. “They made a pact, Phee. And they were meeting hours ago. If she’s . . .” He breaks off again, unable to say the words.
“I’m on my way. Give me an address.”
He rattles o
ff the number and street, and she enters it into her phone. “That’s not far from here. Stay with me, Braden. I’m in the car. Moving.”
“Oh God. I should have done something, Phee. Taken her to a counselor. Sent her off with Alexandra. All of this is my fault.”
“Sounds like Ethan has some blame in this.”
“Lilian would never have let her date that boy.”
“Did you?”
“No, but—”
“She’s a seventeen-year-old girl. You can’t just stop a kid that age from doing shit unless you physically lock her in a room. Maybe not even then. I speak from the voice of experience.”
She sees flashing lights ahead. Dread writhes in her belly. The seedy motel is garishly lit, on again, off again, by the red and blue lights. Two cop cars. An ambulance. A group of people huddles beside the ambulance watching the show.
“Phee?” Braden’s voice asks. “Where are you? What do you see?”
“I’m here. There are cop cars. An ambulance.”
“Oh God.” It’s a groan, a prayer.
“I’m going to see what I can find out. I’ll call you back.” Phee disconnects. If it’s bad news, she doesn’t want him to hear it live.
The motel has two floors, all of the doors opening out toward the parking lot. Up the stairs, to the right, one of the doors is open. A uniformed officer stands outside.
“Hey,” she says, approaching the bystanders. “What’s going on?”
“Suicide. That’s what the cop told the EMT,” a girl says. She can’t be much older than Allie, but the high boots, short skirt, and amount of makeup hint that her presence in the motel is more professional than recreational.
“Asshole kids creating trouble,” a man says. He’s skeletal thin, twitchy, his right front incisor missing. “Should never have rented them a room.”
The girl surprises Allie with a swift response. “You’re right, Finn, you shouldn’t have.”
“And you’d better make your pretty ass scarce before the cops come out here and get interested in you,” he retorts with venom.
Phee walks away from both of them, starts climbing the stairs.
The cop swivels toward her, one hand automatically resting on his service weapon.
“Ma’am, go back to the parking lot.”
Everything You Are Page 22
