The Beauty That Remains

by Ashley Woodfolk

  The whole time I’m getting dressed, all I can think about is the queued posts. Was this the only one? And if not, how many more of them did she set up? How often can I expect them? I check out the queue functionality, and it looks like I can select a postdate infinitely into the future.

  Will the world still be receiving messages from my sister years from now?

  In the kitchen with Mom, as I’m zipping up my backpack, I keep thinking about everything Sasha was doing while she was sick that neither of us knew about. Mom’s sad music is playing, and it makes me feel bad that I was giving her a hard time about going to school. She’s upset about something this morning too.

  “Did you get my text about my chemistry test?” I ask, hoping to distract her from her sadness. She turns to look at me.

  “I did!” she says. She smiles. “Did I not remember to text you back? I got it during a meeting. I’m so sorry, honey. Great job, really.” I press my lips together and nod.

  “Did you notice that I haven’t missed curfew in a while?” I ask next.

  She puts her keys down on the counter instead of slipping them into her pocket. “I had noticed that,” she says.

  “Oh. Good.” I nod again. I’m not sure what reaction I was expecting, but I was expecting something. I finish packing my bag, without saying anything else.

  When I look up, Mom is walking across the kitchen toward me, and her face looks drawn. She slides her bag off her shoulder and turns down the music that’s been playing instead of turning it off, like we’re not leaving yet.

  “I got a call from your coach yesterday, though. I wanted to talk to you about it. I was going to wait until tonight, but I guess we can do it now.”

  I freeze. “He called you?” I ask, and she just keeps watching me. “Well, it only happened one time,” I assure her. “We don’t need to talk about it now. Aren’t you running late too?”

  She touches my hand. “Shay, I’m just worried. He said he noticed that you’ve been having a lot of trouble since…” She trails off.

  I don’t know why, but the way she’s looking at me, the way her voice sounds, it makes me angry. I’ve been working so hard to try to make her happy, and it’s as if it doesn’t even matter. She brings up my only failing, and it feels like a betrayal—like she’s ignoring everything else.

  “Since I became twinless?” I ask. My voice sounds calm, but I said it to hurt her. I regret it almost immediately.

  “Shay,” she says. She sounds calm too, but she’s shaking her head and frowning. “What a horrible thing to say.”

  Sasha’s post floats through my head. If you’re reading this, I’ll never turn sixteen. That’s the real horror here, not anything that I’ve said.

  “It’s true, though,” I say. “It’s what I am. And I’m okay with it. You don’t have to worry, Momma.”

  I’m surprised by how well I’m holding it together. If I can make myself believe it, I can definitely convince her. I take a deep breath, and I hear Sasha’s voice in my head. You’re okay.

  “I’m perfectly fine,” I say.

  “Shay. We should talk about this,” she insists. But I ignore her.

  “I think I’m going to bike to school,” I say. “I already missed practice, and like you said, I can’t afford to miss any more classes.”

  She hesitates, but I think the twinless thing has shaken her up. She doesn’t want to talk any more than I do now. “Are you sure? I’ll be home late, so I can go in a little later this morning.”

  What else is new? Sasha says. Though, maybe that was me.

  My insides are starting to tense up, but my mouth smiles. I can’t get in a car with her. Not now.

  “I’ll see you tonight.”

  My phone beeps as I’m climbing onto my bike.

  I know I should be asking if you’re okay after the way you ran away last night. But have you looked at Sasha’s blog today?

  It’s a text from Rohan.

  Yeah, I send back. Queued post.

  Shit. I thought I was losing my mind. Or being haunted or something.

  Lol, I send. I thought she’d been hacked.

  So are you? Okay, I mean? Between the post and finding out about Tavia, I’m all messed up.

  Not really. I tried to fake sick, I send. Then I asked my mom if she’d noticed how much better I’d been doing with everything.

  What she say, he asks.

  She told me Coach called her and she wanted to talk. She didn’t even care about anything else.

  The queued post and the nonfight with Mom is stirring something up inside me: a nervous energy I worry might spill over into a panic. I need music or movement, or both, and fast.

  Where are you? I ask him.

  Still in bed.

  I already missed track practice. Wanna run?

  YES. Meet you in the usual spot in ten.

  When I get there, Rohan is already waiting, sitting on the bumper of his van, like he’s been there for a while. He has his black hair pulled back with an orange headband, and he’s wearing a gray sweatshirt along with some red fingerless gloves.

  “Sorry,” I huff, steam filling the air between us. “This backpack filled with actual books slowed me down.”

  Rohan kinda grins but doesn’t say anything; just pushes away from his van and slides the back door open. He puts my bike in, then walks back to me and takes my bag. He doesn’t really talk when he’s in run mode, as Sasha used to call it. His face is serious, and his normally playful eyes are steady and focused. He lifts his heavy brows at me and tilts his head in the direction of the densely wooded area in front of us—his way of asking if I’m ready without using any words. The entrance to the path is sun dappled and pretty, but it’s treacherous once you’re in there.

  I grin and nod, bouncing on the balls of my feet, a new burst of energy filling me up like pages in a book. Rohan slips in his earbuds because he can’t run without music.

  We look at each other. We look at the path. Then we run.

  * * *

  —

  “I think I’m gonna skip,” Rohan says after we’re back in his van and he’s driving in the direction of school. He’s clenching his jaw, and even though I’d pledged not to skip anymore, something about how Mom was this morning and how wound up Rohan seems, even after a run, tugs at my heart.

  “I guess I have to skip too,” I say, like it’s not a big deal. “In solidarity or whatever.”

  Rohan lifts his eyebrows, but he doesn’t say anything, and I’m glad. He turns the van around.

  In his garage, he plays guitar and sings all our favorite songs all morning—music is his outlet too. I strum my air guitar and lip-sync like I mean it. We order lunch with the money Mom left me for dinner, and then he finally plays some Our Numbered Days tracks for me. He stares at me as the first song starts. I stay silent until the last one ends.

  “You guys are good, but…”

  “Don’t say it,” he mutters.

  “You already know.”

  “Yep.”

  I stand up and switch the music to an Unraveling Lovely song, and in seconds, Logan’s voice swims into the air. UL is just better. They had something that’s hard to put into words.

  We watch Intervention the rest of the afternoon. I fall asleep on his couch after the third episode, feeling more relaxed than I’ve felt in months.

  I don’t realize I left my phone in Rohan’s garage until he shakes me awake and I start looking for it.

  “Uh-oh,” I say as I climb into the Band Wagon. I literally have eighteen missed calls from Mom.

  When we pull up in front of my house, I turn to him. “Regardless of what happens when I get in there, thanks for today,” I say.

  He nudges my shoulder and says, “Anytime. But I hope it was worth it.” My phone buzzes again. It’s Mom, again. As I climb
out of the car, Rohan whispers, “Nice knowing ya” before he drives away.

  I try to ease silently into the house, but Mom is standing in the living room, waiting for me. She’s still in her blazer. But she’s gripping the phone in one hand and holding a Bible in the other.

  “Um…,” I say.

  “I hope you have more to say than that,” Mom says. “Where on earth have you been?”

  “I thought you were going to be home late?”

  “That does not answer the question I asked you, Shay Patricia Malone,” she says.

  I cringe. She only Patricias me when she’s really mad.

  I sit down on the couch and start untying my shoes. I kick them off and keep my eyes on the bit of carpet between my feet because I’m too afraid to look up at her. There’s a tiny speck of brownish red, and I know it’s probably from one of Sasha’s nosebleeds. The sight of it makes my heart beat a little too fast, and I feel the amazing day I had with Rohan slipping through my fingers.

  “Start talking,” she says.

  “I went on a run with Rohan since I missed track practice. And I told you I felt crappy this morning. I just wasn’t up for school today.”

  “Can you imagine,” Mom says slowly, “what was going through my head when I got a call that you’d never shown up to school this morning?”

  When she walks over to me, I notice tears caught in her eyelashes. I open my mouth, but no words came out. This is exactly why I haven’t told her the whole truth about the panic attacks. It’s why I’ve been trying to be better behaved. Those tears in her eyes, and the fight I feel coming, is exactly the kind of conflict I’ve been trying to avoid.

  “If you ever again tell me you’re going to school or you’re going anywhere, and then I find out you’re somewhere else, there won’t be a discussion. It’s not okay. It never has been in this house.”

  I heave a sigh, and I feel something dark creeping up and out of me.

  “ ‘In this house,’ Momma? Seriously? You’re hardly ever in this house. It’s like you don’t even notice that I’m here unless I do something that upsets you!”

  I’m surprised at myself. I never talk back to Mom. I stand up and kind of back away from her.

  She blinks hard, and the tears that were hanging on the edges of her lashes suddenly fall like stones. I expect her to ask who I think I’m talking to or to tell me to go to my room. But something about her has softened. What she says is “How can you say that, Shay?”

  I don’t answer right away because I thought she’d get angrier, not ask a question. I pull off the beanie I’m wearing today—Sasha’s candy cane one—and I look at it instead of Mom while I talk.

  “Because it’s true. I’m sorry, Momma, you know it’s true. Sasha got sick. And it was like you disappeared. You were working most of the time, and with Sasha the rest of it. And look, it’s fine because she needed you more—believe me, I get it. Sometimes it just feels like now that she’s gone, you don’t know how to love a kid who isn’t dying.”

  As I say it out loud, I realize it’s true. She’s just looking at me, so I wonder if she doesn’t get it. I keep talking, trying to explain.

  “Maybe you’re so used to worrying all the time that when I do something good, you don’t know what to say. But the second something bad happens, you’re all over me.”

  I look at her again. I hate looking directly at her for more than a few seconds. The mask she always wore to protect her sick kid from everything she was feeling has melted away, and sometimes there’s no shield left for me. The raw emotion that’s on her face right now reminds me of the way Rohan looks sometimes—like it hurts him to see another person walking around with Sasha’s face.

  I pull the hat back down over my hair. Even if I’m right about her needing the burden of worry to show love, I still hate that I’ve failed her again.

  “Like I said. You don’t need to worry about me, okay? I’m fine.” I hear Sasha say, Shay, you’re not. You need her. But I don’t listen.

  “I can take care of myself,” I mutter more to Sasha than Mom, but part of me hopes they both hear. “I’ve been doing it for years.”

  JAN. 27, 7:56 A.M.

  I forgot you were dead this morning.

  I woke up, and while I was still in a sleepy haze, I reached for my phone and looked for your name.

  When I remembered, I couldn’t breathe.

  Tavia may not be on Hangouts right now. She’ll see your messages later.

  From: HeCalledItAutumn@gmail.com

  To: TaviaViolet@gmail.com

  Sent: Jan. 28, 1:56 am

  Subject:

  I almost chopped all my hair off last night. I was brushing my teeth when I noticed one of my stick-straight hairs coiled in the sink. My hair has gotten so long. There is so much of it weighing me down. I can’t get rid of the weight of your absence, but my hair seemed so easy to part with in the wake of everything else.

  I was only a few seconds away from doing it when my dad opened the bathroom door. I guess I was in there for a while. He called my name a few times, and I didn’t answer. I don’t remember hearing anything, but that’s why he got nervous enough to come inside.

  He took the scissors away and said, “What the shit, Autumn?” He sounded just like Willow. He looked so freaked out, like he thought I might hurt myself or something. Then he called for my mom.

  She was totally calm, though. She stepped into the bathroom and then tucked my hair behind my ears. She said, “I’ll take you to get it cut tomorrow. Pick out a style. Something different from anything you’ve ever had. We’ll get it cut however you want.” So I’m working on it. But I’m not sure how I feel about making such a big decision without you.

  Since I can’t seem to stay away from your house, your room, or your brother, I’m sitting in your den with my headphones on, looking at celebrity haircuts. Dante’s catching up on homework. He’s finally come back to school. Every now and then, I tilt my laptop in his direction and ask if he thinks a certain cut would work on my face.

  He looks at each photo, and then he looks at me for a little too long, and at first, I wonder if he’s trying to match these white celebrities’ hairstyles with my Asian features. But then he just says, “Your hair’s fine” or “You’re distracting me.” I keep asking, though, and he continues to look and offer some kind of answer.

  After a while, I leave him alone, and I start imagining what you would be saying instead.

  You’d change the subject. You’d say something about me needing to become a role model for Korean girls everywhere who might be looking for the right haircut. Like There aren’t enough famous Asian people, Autumn. Or You could totally be the first adopted and the first Korean Miss America or something.

  After an hour of searching for hairstyles, I start to see what you meant when you said stuff like that. Since I’m not having much luck with celebrities, I pull up Willow’s profile because she’s always been so much more adventurous with her hair than I am with mine. I wade through her varied bangs and streaks of blond and angled bobs—and the pictures of a few of her Asian friends—looking for ideas. But inevitably, your profile pulls me in like a magnet.

  Not for hair, obviously. Mine will never be as curly and wild as yours. But I click on your face and go through the photographs one by one, anyway, for what feels like the millionth time.

  I’m looking at a picture of us standing on top of one of those giant boulders in Central Park. I’m trying to remember what else we did on that day trip to the city, quizzing myself on the tiny forgettable facts about our life together—I want to remember everything I possibly can about you. When I go back to my feed and start scrolling, there’s a post with your name on it that stops me cold.

  Tavia V. Soto and 267 others like Unraveling Lovely.

  I take my hands away from the trackpad, like it’s s
uddenly gone hot, and the thought that immediately comes to mind isn’t one that makes sense. It is cold and painful, and the truth of it makes me want to double over.

  Tavia V. Soto doesn’t like anything anymore.

  I must say it out loud, because Dante looks up from his screen and pauses for a second, waiting for me to go on. When I don’t, he closes his laptop, leans toward mine, and says, “What?”

  I feel my chest tightening and my face getting warm. I feel my breath getting away from me. I close my laptop and move it slowly to the coffee table.

  “Autumn, what?” Dante says again.

  I stand up, and I make it all the way to the door before your brother grabs my wrist. I pull against him, trying to escape, but he holds on until I turn around.

  Tears are falling by the time I look at him, a torrent of them, and when Dante sees my face, his looks dark and full like the sky before it rains.

  “I’ve gotta get out of here.” I choke out. “Let me go. I can’t breathe.”

  When his grip loosens, I pull away and run out into the backyard without my coat or my shoes.

  The air is icy, promising rain or snow, and the ground is freezing cold under my bare feet. But I hardly feel it. There’s a pain in my throat that I’ve never felt before, like there’s something dangerous inside me, clawing its way out.

  As soon as I can get a full breath, I let out a tremendous sob. I run across your lawn until I get to the big oak, right beside the fence. Dante’s right behind me.

  When I collapse against the tree, I grip the trunk and my body won’t stop shaking. I need something to hold on to, and I guess Dante decides that thing should be him. He pries my hands away from the tree and pulls me toward him, and for a second, I fall against his chest and bunch the fabric of his shirt in my fists.

  “She’s gone” is what I say whenever the tears slow enough for me to use my voice. “She’s gone, and she’s never coming back. How is it possible that she’s never coming back?”