The drugs were apparently “recreational,” like she took them as an after-school sport she could have put on her resumé if she hadn’t accidentally died instead. Lake Main is blazing with warnings about the dangers of drug use and “teen suicide prevention.” Of course, I haven’t asked any real questions out loud, either, so I should hardly be flinging rocks at other people’s glass walls. But I can’t help wondering: if beautiful, talented Claire M. couldn’t bear to stay alive, how will I?
The school put up a display case in the tenth-grade hallway “to honor Claire’s memory.” Ms. Mabel described the trophies and pictures to me: Claire as a six-year-old, in a tutu and slippers; Claire kicking a soccer ball; Claire in a swimsuit, her arms around a teammate; Claire in the sunlight, with her streaky hair everywhere. While Ms. Mabel was talking, I remembered Claire’s long, pale neck, and a locket she wore every day when we were kids. It had in it some shards of teeth she’d lost when she fell off her bike. She showed them to me once and I said, “Gross.” She just shrugged and said other people wore shark teeth around their necks, so why couldn’t she wear her own? I remember thinking it was a good point. And even though I didn’t touch the little chips of ivory then, only saw them, now I remember what they felt like.
Ms. Mabel started to tell me what was on the floor, but I stopped her; I could smell the sickeningly sweet lilies, and I reached down to feel the crinkly wrappers on candy and bouquets, the marble-eyed bears, swim goggles—maybe for Claire in heaven, which my parents don’t believe in. I wonder if Claire’s still do, if they think she’s swimming in the afterlife even though she drowned in this one. They weren’t the most religious family in our town—that would be Blythe’s or Deirdre’s—but maybe they think she’s “gone to a better place.”
Heaven or not, there’s definitely a better place than Sauberg somewhere. But I don’t see how that makes what happened to Claire any more palatable. Nothing does. Now words sound hollow, falling out of people’s mouths to the ground like dead seedpods: We’re just so shocked! In this place, of all places! Such a nice community. Such a safe town. We still can’t believe it happened here. To hear us tell it, Sauberg is not the kind of place where that kind of thing happens—although I’ve never heard anyone be like, “Yeah, our town loves this kind of thing,” when a girl’s body washes up. Mostly, people are surprised by totally pointless and horrifying death, so maybe no town is that kind of town. Or maybe every town is.
Sarah calls Sauberg a “conservative, small-town lunatic asylum stuck in the nineteenth century.” She’s angry that we live here. Sarah and Leah and I were born in the city, and it was because of me that my parents decided they had to move here, which of course Sarah holds against me. As if I got a vote about whether to be born. Or when. Or being their third kid under three, which meant that they couldn’t even hold all of our hands crossing the street. Not to mention they were about to have four more kids. Sauberg is close enough to the city that my dad can drive to the hospital where he works in under an hour, and far enough away that we can have wholesome childhoods and a four-bedroom house. We’re two to a room, with Baby Lily in my parents’ room, which is pretty civilized for a family with seven kids. If we were in the city, we’d all be sleeping on top of each other. By the time Baby Lily needs her own bed, Leah will be away at college, and so will Sarah, if she can manage to finish a single application and get in anywhere. It’s funny that even though she’s the one who can’t wait to get out of this “vile dump,” she hasn’t even started her applications and they’re due in December.
It’s almost Halloween again, the biggest see-and-be-seen holiday of the year. I’m planning to read or sleep through it. The truth is, I’ve been mainstreamed for almost eight weeks, but I’ve only left the house to go to school and to doctor’s appointments. I’ve only asked to leave twice with Lo, and both times my mom said she’d prefer that we hang out here. She wants me safe in the house, and I don’t know if it’s because of me, or because of Claire. All our parents are stricter and more annoying than ever. But that’s been true for me since last year, and lately I can actually feel that year underneath this one, like something jagged and dangerous, slicing up and tripping me back in time. I’m trying to forget about last year, the gold couch, Mr. Otis, braille lessons, Briarly, the way Seb smelled like tangerines and leather jackets.
Benj helps most. Maybe because he lives in the present tense, which makes it easier for me to be there when he’s around. Or because other than Spark, he’s been the one least freaked out by my accident. Little kids have an easier time than the rest of us adjusting to “I see with my hands and ears and mind instead of my eyes.” Once I promised Benj that I remembered just what he looks like, he was okay with the rest of whatever my accident meant.
All we’d been talking about all week was Halloween, which I didn’t want to think about, when he tumbled down the steps of the preschool bus on Thursday afternoon, shrieking, “I winned! I winned! The rabbit will come!”
“I won,” Naomi said. She was swinging her violin case against her legs.
“What rabbit?” I asked.
“Bigs,” Benj said, grabbing one of Leah’s hands and one of Naomi’s and swinging and leaping between them. I could both hear and feel his legs kicking, his rain boots stomping and bouncing on the sidewalk. Then Naomi tripped and I heard her violin case go flying.
“Hey!” Leah shouted. “Are you okay?” She picked up Naomi, who was wounded but not crying, and poured some water on her knee, which she had apparently scraped badly enough to tear through her tights.
Jenna rescued Naomi’s violin and there was a scramble of kids as we fell all over each other. I wondered if there was anyone else on the sidewalk, anyone who could see us. When there are other people looking at us, I don’t know how to think of my family, don’t know if we’re clean or dirty, sane or crazy, tame or wild. Even when I could see, it was hard to imagine what my own clan looked like from the outside, maybe like it’s difficult to gauge anything you’re inside of. When we all started walking again, I was thinking how I hadn’t been any help. If it weren’t for my eyes, Benj would probably walk between Leah and me, instead of between Leah and Naomi. Naomi wouldn’t have fallen over. Leah wouldn’t even have to walk us all home every day. She’d be hanging out with her friends instead, like Sarah, who, when my mom asked if she could help with drop-off and pickup, just said, “No thank you.” Maybe I’d be in charge. I wonder if I’d be happier if I were in charge. Probably I’d be resentful of having to help so much, and not even realize how little I had to complain about. It’s not like I spent my whole sighted life being like, “This is so fabulous, to have my eyesight.”
I wonder when I’ll be done with the what-ifs and if-onlys. I hate them, and they play in my mind on a loop, like the voice-over lady in my phone, screaming for a password I can’t type in fast enough. Will the questions ever stop?
I held my white cane with my right hand and Spark’s leash with my left, trying to calm Spark down. Naomi’s walking was odd and jolty. She was probably either trying to avoid the cracks or to step on all of them. Benj was shouting: “Sometimes he, I mean she—you know, that rabbit—will come to my house when we have no school, because it will be my turn for Bigs!”
“Ow,” Naomi said. “Stop pulling on my arm like that.”
“It’s my house, too, Benj,” Jenna said. Scratch, click, scratch, click. I felt something—a stick, maybe—something in the way.
“Careful,” Leah said, seeing me notice it. “There’s part of a tree branch there.”
When an actual rabbit arrived the next day, which was a Friday, Jenna was almost as delighted as Benj, because the kindergarten gecko died and they haven’t replaced it yet. Naomi pretended for about six seconds to be above the excitement, but as soon as Bigs showed up, she immediately wrote a star vehicle play for the rabbit, mysteriously called “Buffalo Rabbit on the Jungle Shore.”
I was in the living ro
om, waiting for Logan, listening to cabinets opening, drawers sliding along their metal tracks, Jenna and Naomi fumbling and shuffling, drawers slamming shut. Then came the furious, thick snipping. Pop of the hole punch and Jenna’s, “Mom? Where’s the yarn? Nomi and I can’t find any yarn,” to the discovery that we were out of yarn and they’d have to use string or ribbon. To tie what they were making—construction paper ears—around Benj’s and Jenna’s heads, so they could be rabbits, too. The doorbell rang and I felt my way along the wall until I reached the foyer table. I opened the door.
“Hi, Lo,” I said as she came in. She smelled like herself, candy with a faint chemical spritz. She took quick stock of the scene. “More animals joining the Silver circus?” She laughed. “Let’s go to your room.”
But we hadn’t even sat down on my bed when Jenna screamed and we raced back into the living room with Spark, who didn’t know what to make of the chaos. “Bigs had a pee accident,” Jenna told us in her teacher voice, the one she uses when she’s trying to sound like Naomi, who’s trying to sound like her teacher. Jenna was calm now, but Benj was crying.
“Gross,” Logan said.
“Don’t cry,” I told Benj. “Just go get Bigs, and Logan and I will clean up the pee. Where is it? On the rug or the wood?”
“The wood. Over here,” Jenna said. I leaned down to pet Spark, who was frozen in his warning position. “It’s just the rabbit,” I told him. “Don’t worry.”
“If you have pee in your body, you have to go to the potty right then,” Benj told me and Logan, sniffling. “Don’t delay!”
“Right,” Logan said. “I guess Bigs didn’t get that memo.”
She had already picked the rabbit up and now she handed it to me, and I was surprised by how un-fluffy Bigs was. Maybe she was some hideous, short-haired, prickly rabbit breed. Logan saw my face and laughed until she snorted.
“Ew, right?” she said. “And you should see her creepy-ass red eyes. Like a picture no one fixed.”
“Ass is not a nice word, Logan,” Jenna said, drawing out the s’s so the word lasted a full ten seconds. “You can’t say ass at school. Only at home.”
“Help me with this, will you, Jenna?” I asked. I felt for the edges of the cage and gently set the rabbit back down in it and went with Spark to get some paper towels from the kitchen. My mom now keeps everything in its perfect place on the counters or in the drawers, so I can find whatever I need. It’s the thing we’re most organized about. She tries to keep toys off the floor, but that’s been a bigger challenge. So I’m careful. Naomi reappeared, wearing tap shoes and carrying a bin of blocks, which she immediately dropped. I couldn’t tell whether by accident or not, but the noise was enormous.
While Jenna and Naomi collected the blocks, Logan helped me mop up the pee puddle. Logan hates animals, except for Spark, whom she loves because he’s part of me. I could feel her thinking sarcastic thoughts. Logan and I know each other so well that most subjects require almost no discussion, including family and the fact that mine is better than hers, and she’s always over at my house, so that’s why it’s okay for her to complain about how many kids there are, how there’s always some kind of crisis or other and we’re always cleaning something horrible or looking for lost toys or consoling someone who’s hysterically crying or eating a dinner with so much shouting and interrupting and craziness it’s a circus. Calling my family a circus is Logan’s second favorite shtick. And coincidentally, since we were cleaning up after the rabbit, Logan got to say her first favorite thing about whatever drama is unfolding at the Silver house: “This is all because your parents are like rabbits.”
Saturday morning, Bigs was not in her cage and no one knew where she’d gone. I heard my mom come down the stairs barefoot, carrying something she set down—a plastic basket, from the sound of it—and start looking right away. This meant she considered it a genuine emergency. Usually she “triages demands,” as she and my dad like to call it, which means throwing the laundry in first and taking care of whatever crises there are with the epic pajama washing already underway. But she went straight to the couch and ripped off each of its eight velcroed cushions. No rabbit. There were creaks and scrapes as she pushed the couch across the floor, checking behind or under it. She sighed. Still no rabbit. She unlatched and opened up the iron and glass cabinets, although how a rabbit would have launched herself into them—or opened the doors—is anyone’s guess. Maybe my mom thought Naomi or Jenna had stuffed Bigs into one—with the sculpture of us my mom made recently, a tangle of cooked, painted clay I can’t stand to feel for some reason. It’s the first thing she’s made (other than Baby Lily) since my accident, and she’s very proud of it. Sometimes she goes into the old carriage house in our backyard, where she used to paint, when she’s not hopping through the house with Baby Lily tied to her body or running the small country of our family.
My mom headed out of the living room, and I heard the basement door swing open and, at the same moment, heard Benj come wailing and stomping down the stairs in his rain boots (which he wears every day, with Batman pajamas and a cape), creating such a thunderous racket that Baby Lily started crying, too. Crying is contagious in our house. I felt my way into the kitchen and crouched down, touching the floor under the counters until I got to the part between the stove and the fridge. I don’t know how else to explain it, except that my hands sensed her there, and sure enough, I reached into that small groove and felt fur. I grabbed Bigs, but as soon as I did, I knew something was wrong with the way she felt. She was too floppy, too limp, too . . . I don’t know, she felt like a toy.
My mom was back in the doorway of the basement staircase, and she must have been watching, because she said, “Leah, take Lily,” and then came rushing over and grabbed the rabbit. She stayed bent over me for an extra second; I felt her hair tumble down—long, curly, red—and she kissed the top of my head. Benj came running in then, his rain boots squeaking across the kitchen.
“Naomi and Jenna, come with me! We’re taking Bigs to the doctor, Benji. We’ll be right back.”
Then my mom and Naomi darted outside, with Jenna behind them, still in just her socks, as far as I could hear, leaving the door open. When it didn’t click shut, I felt my way over and closed it myself.
“Will Bigs have to get a shot at that damn doctor?” Benj asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. I made my way back to him and knelt down, reached out and touched his face, the cold little nose and scrunched eyebrows. Wet streaks on his cheeks. I pulled him toward me: toast with butter, bubblegum toothpaste, and tears. Baby Lily was still crying, too, and Logan was holding her now. Logan’s heels tapped the floor. She was rocking, and her hands went thump, thump, thump against the romper on Baby Lily’s hot little back. So Leah must have handed her Baby Lily and gone somewhere. I hadn’t heard her leave, but she wasn’t in the room. Sometimes I have to figure out what’s happening now before I can guess what happened a minute ago.
When I stood up, Logan handed me Baby Lily, and I rocked her while Benj kept clinging to my leg. If someone else is holding her, Lily feels to me like a puppety collection of little parts: chubby dumpling face, short arms, a leg here or there, and a voice—she screams like she’s being dipped in boiling oil. But when I hold her myself, I can feel the weight of her being a whole human being. I kissed her doughy rolls of neck.
Leah reappeared from the basement in a cloud of laundry steam. “Here, baby, come to Leah,” she said, taking Lily and tucking her into the wrap she must have tied to herself on the way up the basement stairs. As soon as she was in the cloth, Lily started snoring. Babies are like those cars that go from zero to a hundred in under one second. There’s something surreal about their ability to go from screaming to sleeping instantaneously, but also something practical about it. I held Benj’s hand again then, but I didn’t say anything else, because I don’t believe in lying to little kids, and I didn’t think “I have no idea what’s go
ing to happen” or “I think the rabbit’s going to be dead when mom comes back” would be especially comforting.
After a minute, I smelled fire, heard the flash and splatter of butter, reminded myself to breathe. Leah was shuffling through the third drawer over, the one that jams a bit and sticks when it opens, then sinking a knife through something soft to the surface of a plastic cutting board. Cheese. She was making grilled cheese sandwiches. I smelled bread land in the popping butter. The cupboard opened, and she took out a can; hooked and snapped it into the mounted opener, where it turned a slow, grinding circle until it came open with ragged edges and the opener stopped. The red smell arrived: tomato soup, my favorite. Leah unlatched the can and poured the soup into a pot that was already as hot as the butter, from the splatter of it. Logan was helping while I stood there, listening and working to follow, and when the food was ready, she put ours on a tray and took it to my bedroom, where we sat on my bed, pulling closed the green, filmy curtain and eating our soup in my tent. I left half of mine for Spark and put the bowl down next to the bed where he was resting; listened to him happily slurping and gobbling. I love him so much that when I hear him eating, it makes me feel full. Logan and I sat without talking for a long time. She was lying on her back, with her socked feet kicking the bottom of Naomi’s bunk bed. Metal springs. Creak, kick, creak, kick.
“Are you okay?” she finally asked me.
“Not really,” I said.
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