A Flicker in the Clarity

by Amy McNamara

  Before I can find the right words for that, a car pulls up on the curb. Mrs. Sullivan’s in the passenger seat, her face lit blue from the glow of her phone.

  They tracked us.

  Mr. Sullivan leaps out, barking Emma’s name. He rushes over to us, rigid with fear or fury, and yanks Emma to the car by the arm, eyes wild.

  ••• _ _ _ •••

  SNOW.

  Mountains of it melting. Blue, blue skies and ice pods clasped like little glass hands around the green buds on trees. Everything’s messed up.

  Emma’s gone.

  Mrs. Sullivan called my mom first thing this morning.

  “She didn’t want you to worry,” my mom explains, pouring me another glass of water. “They’re taking her out of town for a little while.”

  “How long?” I down the glass. I’ve never been this thirsty and my head feels broken.

  My mom shakes her head. “She didn’t say.” Then she makes this face and I know whatever’s coming next is going to hurt.

  And it does.

  “Honey, they asked that you not call.”

  Because we went to that party together.

  Because we were both drunk.

  Because I let them down and didn’t get help when I knew she was in trouble.

  I stare at the wrinkled egg on my plate. It quivers there, a blurry yellow eye holding me in its gaze.

  When I start to cry, my mom says, “What if I call Patricia . . . ?” But then I look at her and she quits talking.

  Everything’s wrecked. Theo. Jack. And now the Sullivans hate me. I will never forget Mr. Sullivan’s rage-filled face when I told them she’d been throwing up. I thought it would make them feel better, but that’s when he yelled so loud his voice cracked.

  When your friend’s in danger you call for help!

  Like we were repeating what happened with Patrick. I don’t know. Maybe we were.

  And Mrs. Sullivan, so freaked out, trying to keep the peace, waggling her phone at me, and saying how grateful she was for tracking, how the minute I turned Em’s phone on they knew where to come.

  I push my plate away. My mom clears it without a word.

  In psychology class last year, Ms. Jesme said that on a scale of human emotions, shame hits the lowest note.

  It rings deep in me all day long.

  I hide in my bed. My mom murmurs outside my door, her voice quiet through the heavy wood.

  You’re a good kid. People make mistakes.

  I’m sure you thought you were doing the right thing.

  Emma might be going through something friendship can’t fix.

  When the heat kicks in, the air in our apartment shrinks. I force myself to get up, put clothes on, and take Marcel out into the snow.

  I walk to Emma’s block. It’s the only place I feel like going. I travel a mental timeline back to when things were less out of control. That Evie was so innocent. She had no idea what was coming. I make her brave enough to stand up to Emma’s parents and tell them Mamie’s project is messing with her head. How in Em’s mind everything is brighter and darker than it is for other people. Needle-peak highs, fathomless trenches. I explain that the rest of us have to help her keep it all straight.

  A fantasy. All of it.

  I unwind Marcel’s leash from my wrist and wrap it around my other hand. He stops and looks up at me like, at least to him, I’m still among the decent people of the world. I give him a treat. While he snuffles it up, I glance back at my tracks.

  A map of my route could be made in Morse code. Stuttered starts and stops along the snowy street. I would make it more distinct, like an SOS, while I try to figure out what I’m supposed to do. Emma needs someone to stand up for her. Why am I so scared to be the one to do it?

  Their house is dark. No dogs. No lights.

  I brush some snow off their stoop and sit. The steps are biting cold. I press my hand into the snow and watch it melt away from my fingers.

  Mamie’s show’s at the end of the week and Em’s going to miss it.

  Broadcast from Another Plane

  EMMA’S VOICE IS THIN, like she’s made of air.

  “Why am I like this?”

  I was dreaming. Deep. Something about looking for Emma in water, or maybe under ice, and now she’s here in my ear sounding like I found her, near the bottom and only barely gathering herself together long enough to form words.

  I fumble with my phone, drop it in the sheets, grab it again, and struggle to make out what she’s saying.

  “You’re the only one who really knows me. All the ugly parts, and you don’t care, you love me anyway. Right? You love me no matter what?”

  “No matter what,” I whisper. I force my eyes to focus. Check the time. It’s 4:40 a.m. Marcel’s asleep on a pillow below me, his breath a steady whistle-snore.

  “Emma, can’t you sleep?”

  “I want him back,” she says. “I want to start over, undo every stupid fight we ever had. Keep him the hell away from her.”

  “Mamie?” I’m trying to follow her, but I’m still waking up, a little disoriented.

  Marcel makes a small senseless sound, like he’s watching a squirrel at the window.

  “Why’d he die? Patrick was perfect. I’m the one who messed up. Every time my mom tells someone we lost Patrick I think maybe that’s the way to find him—lose myself too.”

  “Em, stop.”

  Mapping the distance between us would be like trying to bridge infinity. She’s out of reach. This is a one-way broadcast from a nowhere plane.

  “They’ve been a part of it since the beginning.” Emma’s voice rises, a little louder, higher. “She started the whole thing with my parents, painting them holding a picture of Patrick. My mom says she needed to be part of it, even if I wasn’t ready to understand. She says it made her feel closer to him, and if I could stop blaming people I might feel close to him too.”

  Her despair has infinite mass.

  “I thought at least if we went and messed up her show I might feel better, like I did something. Because nothing makes me feel close to him.”

  Electromagnetic waves traveling through the vacuum of space.

  “Emma—”

  “You have to help me, Evie. Why do people like her?” she cries. “Why is Mamie back? Why is everything I do wrong?”

  Before I can respond I hear a voice in the background. Low tones. Her dad. My limbs buzz hot. He’s going to yell at me again.

  “Emma,” I whisper quickly before he can. “I’ll help fix this. I promise.”

  There’s a rustling sound, then the line goes dead.

  Topo Map of Nebulous Force

  I’M WEDGED DEEP IN THE SOFTEST, saggiest part of the couch. Nights like this usually make me feel better. Mom and me together, watching TV. She’s in the corner with her legs across my lap, scrolling through the menu of options. I keep my eyes on the screen, like I care what she picks, but I’m all over the place, bouncing between Emma and Mamie’s show and Theo. Stupid Theo. I’ve started a fight with him in my head. I tell him I don’t need a hero, I am the hero. Then my mind loops back to what he said about anger poisoning you when you keep it in. Oh yeah? I demand in my head. Well, what happens if you’re not sure how to let it out? Or what it’s even about?

  He never has an answer for that one.

  I shift on the couch and bite a particularly satisfying hangnail from my middle finger.

  “Your dad did that too,” my mom says, keeping her eyes on the screen. “When he was worried about something.”

  I drop my hand to my lap. She says that every time she sees me do it.

  “This looks good, right?”

  She’s picked a British legal thriller. When my dad got sick, my mom deferred law school, and she loves these. She’s grinning at me, so I grin back. It’s obvious she’s super invested in thinking I’m feeling better, that she’s the only one who secret-cries in the tub, that this week without Emma is flying by and soon enough everything’s going to go b
ack to normal.

  “Looks great.” I reach across her and click Play on the remote.

  We hunker down under this crazy pink, green, and black zigzag afghan my great-grandma made and balance the huge bowl of popcorn between us.

  Some people go upstate or have big family dinners. This is our version, the two of us on the long couch—well, me and mom and the space where Dad would be. She digs into the popcorn, but I’m not hungry. My stomach’s been tight for days.

  “So, what are you worried about?”

  When I don’t answer, she goes on. “Honey, Emma’s parents know all about her . . . struggles. They’re trying to get her to turn her attention to more positive things.”

  I snort. Take a handful of popcorn. “Positivity is like using a bandage when surgery’s required.”

  My mom pauses the intro to our show.

  “I think it’s pretty clear now to Patricia and Frank that they need a better plan.” She tilts her head so she can see my eyes. “Emma’s been in trouble for a long time now—long before Patrick died—you know that, right?”

  I nod, blinking fast so I don’t cry.

  My mom starts the show, but now I can’t focus on the screen, so I picture us from overhead instead, outlined like a topo map, our blanketed bodies lumpy mountains on the couch. I’d draw us green and blue, like eroded hills, then blur in some white pastel mist for the Ever Missing, our nebulous force. But this is annoying.

  I slouch down low and pull a pillow to my chest. I’m sick of drawing my way through stuff, tired of trying to see anything at all, of being myself, of always looking for more than what’s right in front of me.

  My phone vibrates. It’s been buzzing all week with texts from Jack. He follows me through school, begs me to meet him for lunch or coffee.

  Only it’s not Jack. A Photogram notification pops up instead. @WrenWells accepted my follow request. I click her name and images appear. Nothing personal, pictures of paintings, street art, a few small strange abstractions.

  After that night on the beach, she disappeared. It felt like she died too. But Emma’s right. Here she is getting a do-over. Mamie’s made a new life, and it looks pretty great. My stomach forms a fist.

  “Oh no! This is that one where the girls die,” my mom gasps, covering her eyes with a buttery hand. “I didn’t remember the title.”

  We skip the shows that feature long-haired girls tossed like litter in bushes.

  “Tell me when I can look again.”

  She pulls the afghan over her eyes.

  I tell her I will, and lean in to her like I can shield my mom from TV misogyny. But my head’s somewhere else.

  The sound track vibrating the plastic speakers on our TV is percussive, urgent.

  Do. Some. Thing. Do. Some. Thing.

  Criminal

  SO I DO.

  After school, I trek to the far edge of Chelsea to scout Mamie’s dad’s gallery. The whole way over I’m out-of-body, someone else, a girl who plans and executes. I’m definitely off the map, and people off the map are fearless. My skull’s a noise box, Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” blasting between my ears. I’m a disrupter, a defender, stomping in imagined combat boots.

  The gallery is midblock. I shoulder open silvery windowed doors and step into a silent white space. The gallery’s an empty blank between shows. Before I can ponder what it means, the silence, all this whiteness, a pencil-thin young man with severely combed hair and black glasses bigger than his head looks up from his desk and says in a crisp tone, like the irritation of addressing me is terminal, “We’re not open—there’s nothing to see.”

  I stand and gape for a second because in the larger space, just past his station, as red and crackling as a burning bush or some other portent, I see it.

  A bright-red box, its lever marked “PULL.”

  Emma was right. It’s simple. I could pull the fire alarm. Clearer instructions have rarely been offered.

  I lift my eyes. The ceiling is studded with flowerlike sprinklers. A field of them, metal daisies ready to rain Mamie’s paintings away.

  Gallery Man sniffs, irked by my continued existence, and informs me the gallery’s preparing to host a private event. Then, he says, they will close for a week to mount the next show, sculpture by Rachel Someone. He taps a bored finger on the top of a stack of colorful postcards. I feign interest, take one.

  Because snapping a phone picture of the space would be too weird, I thank him and stand there another minute, memorizing the room. It’s empty, waiting for something to happen. Concrete floors, white walls, and that beautiful shock of red, that powerful little box with its lever sticking out like an invitation, and those silvery sprinklers dotting the ceiling, apocalyptic, ready to rain.

  Exhilarating.

  I can totally do this. Sometimes you have to go big to get people to pay attention. That idea alone makes me feel more like Emma. Less thinking, more doing. Like that day at Urban. I suck in air, like I’m surfacing in water. The rush is intense.

  The private event Mr. Pointy mentioned has to be Mamie’s show. Her dad’s a big deal, and this is his gallery. It will be crowded. The never-ending nepotism kids at Bly take for granted is going to smack her back like the biggest karmic boomerang ever. The shelf behind the reception desk is heavy with monographs, a few of which bear her father’s name. He’ll pack the house for her. It’s what fathers do. Jealousy bubbles in me, volatile.

  Fathers. Unknowable creatures from the country of men. One time at the Sullivans’ when I was around ten, Mr. Sullivan sent me up from the basement to ask Mrs. Sullivan to bring him a beer. We were down there building a soda volcano, but the mesh kept collapsing under the weight of our clay. When I went up to the kitchen, I couldn’t figure out how to say it, what to call him when I relayed his request. I stood there tongue-tied, clearing my throat and blushing a painful crimson, because the words your husband were impossible for me, too intimate or adult or something, and my mouth couldn’t shape itself around the words Emma’s father any better. I finally settled on Mr. S and avoided referring to him altogether after that.

  The gallery man makes a raspy throat-clearing sound like he’s trying to sweep me out. I shake off the memory and straighten up. I’m not that girl anymore. I’m someone new. I take my time, refuse to scurry, lingering at the door to look once more. Ms. Vax has taken us to art openings before. Clusters of people stand in clumps, wearing dramatic clothing and clutching plastic cups of wine. It’ll be easy to lean against the firebox, catch it with my shoulder blade. I’ll reach for it if I have to. I’m nobody. I’ll go unseen. No one will notice me, and honestly, I don’t care if they do. It’ll be like civil disobedience, only emotional. That lever’s coming down.

  Kick-Ass Ninja

  I WEAR BLACK. BOOTS, tights, and a skirt. Button up a weird blouse Emma gave me for Christmas last year, which I never put on because I thought it looked more like her than me. She’s always doing that, giving me gifts she’d like, but I’m grateful for it now, the strange silky material, little puff shoulders, and long ties at the neck for making a droopy bow. It makes me feel beautiful like her. Only strong. Strong and anonymous. Sometimes the forces of anarchy need to blend in. I keep the ties undone, let them hang, then check myself in the mirror.

  Nailed it.

  Kick-ass ninja, Emma-style. I check my last texts from her. Two bubbles at four a.m.

  Did you mean it?

  You’ll fix it?

  I pass my mom on the couch on my way out. Part of me wonders if she’ll comment on my outfit, but that’s stupid, because she never does. She trusts me to make good choices. She looks up from her book for less than half a second. Blows me a kiss. No questions about where I’m going. It’s super lonely being trusted all the time.

  By the time I walk up to the gallery I’m perfectly no one. Another New Yorker out for art early on a Friday night. And I was right about the crowds. Mamie’s dad’s packed the place. I can’t see her, but she’s here somewhere, a star in her con
stellation of important people.

  I slip in as quietly as possible, another face in a white box full of faces. Someone’s speaking near the center back wall, but the room’s all a-murmur and I can’t make out what’s being said. I grab a flyer from the reception desk and hold it in front of my face, like I’m reading the stupid stuff some Anna woman has written about Mamie’s work.

  Then people quiet down.

  I look up.

  Mamie’s talking.

  Seeing her is a shock. I’ve been so focused on stopping this event I didn’t really work through what it would feel like to see her again. The memory of how badly I wanted to be her rushes back. She looks small up there, stammering, terrified, more human than I remembered. Less cool and perfect. I’m deaf with embarrassment for my younger self until I hear her say Patrick.

  His name hits me like a slap and my whole plan slithers out from my imagination and into the real. Today’s his birthday. I scan the room for the Sullivans, but they’re not here. One small victory for Em, at least. I take a shaky breath. There are more than a few Bly faces. The dean; Ms. Hennessy, the photography teacher; and next to her, Ms. Vax. People who will hand out extra-special punishment if they see me pull the lever.

  A thin trickle of sweat runs down between my breasts. The room is close, too hot, overcrowded. My blouse clings to my back. I raise the info sheet in front of my face again before anyone sees me. My hands are trembling, but I take a deep breath and work my way toward the wall with the firebox.

  I have a job to do, and I’m done letting fear hold me back.

  When I get close, I lean against the wall, then inch over casually until I’m in front of the box, the metal cold through my thin blouse, the contours of the lever right under my shoulder blade. I give it a little test nudge. The lever doesn’t act remotely like something that’s going to budge without being deliberately pulled down. Possibly with both hands. My heart thunders.