Rocks Fall Everyone Dies

by Lindsay Ribar

  “How can you not?” she asked. “You called me every day for weeks, trying to piece together an unsolvable puzzle. You were determined to believe that Heather’s death was a mystery, and you were determined to solve it.”

  It wasn’t a mystery. Not anymore. Now that I knew it was a triad ritual gone wrong, the real mystery was why nobody knew that except for me—and why Leah and Corey hadn’t even known that she’d died.

  And the real real mystery:

  “I don’t remember that,” I said. “Why don’t I remember?”

  Silence again. Then, slowly, Grandma’s eyes fluttered closed. Her shoulders sagged, and she rubbed at her temples with her hands. “Your father,” was all she said.

  “What about him?”

  “This is only speculation,” she said. “But your father has never been entirely comfortable with our family rule.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  She lifted an eyebrow. A second passed.

  Then, all at once, I understood what she was getting at. “You mean he stole my memory of the funeral?”

  “I’m only speculating,” she said again. “But it certainly would explain a lot, don’t you think? I’ll call him tonight. I’ve been meaning to have a word with him anyway.”

  “No, I’ll call,” I said. “He makes me follow that rule. Hell, he taught me that rule. Why would he do that?”

  Grandma shook her head and murmured, “Do as I say, not as I do.”

  God, I hoped she was wrong. But the more I thought about it, the more right it seemed. I wasn’t the kind of person who went around forgetting stuff. Especially important stuff.

  “Why’d you have to wipe the doctors’ memories?” I asked.

  The look on her face was confusion-pity-anger, all in a row, rapid-fire. “The same reason we clear our names from government records, Aspen. You know that.” When I gave her nothing but another blank look, she sighed. “We have to strike a balance. We always have. A balance between being a present and active part of the community, and living off the grid.”

  “Does my dad do that, too?” I asked. “Do I just not know about it?”

  “No, goodness, no,” said Grandma. “Your father lives exactly as your government wants him to. Everything documented, everything out in the open. He even pays taxes.” This last with a wrinkle of her nose, like she’d just caught a whiff of ripe garbage. “No, it’s only us. The Quicks of Three Peaks have always had another layer of protection in place—a degree of anonymity, if you will—because of the work that we do.”

  “The triad ritual?”

  “The very same. It’s secret work, and it’s dangerous. If anyone ever figured out what we do, or what we are … Well. It would end badly for us, I can assure you of that much.”

  That wasn’t the only reason it was dangerous. Heather’s letter was proof of that. But unless Grandma was a better liar than I’d ever given her credit for, she didn’t know anything about it.

  “Aspen, sweetheart,” said Grandma, reaching over to take my hand. The trembling was less of a shock, now that I knew to expect it. “I’m so sorry for what happened to you. Your father, if I’m correct about what he did, had no right to dig into your mind like that.”

  Damn straight. Stealing memories was a thing we did to other people, not to each other. That was the opposite of how things were supposed to be. It was just wrong.

  “And for whatever it’s worth, I want you to know that you can trust my Holly to follow the rule. Me too, obviously, since I can’t reach at all,” she added with a smile. “Just don’t let one incident mar your trust of our family, all right? You’re safe while you’re up here.”

  I hadn’t even thought of that—that Dad might not be the only Quick who broke our family’s cardinal rule.

  “Thanks,” I said, letting her squeeze my hand. Despite the weird tremor thing, despite how old she was, I was struck with the sudden sense of being absolutely understood, maybe for the first time ever. My grandmother, of all people, totally got how I felt about all this. And I hadn’t even had to tell her.

  I went upstairs, ready to fling accusations at my dad—but when I got there, I found a missed call on my phone. Not from Dad.

  From Mom.

  She hadn’t called in a couple of days.

  All at once, the rage leaked out of me, leaving my legs so weak that I sank down onto the bed. She’d called, and she’d left a voicemail, which I’d obviously delete, like usual, because it would just be the same shit as always: She loved me, she missed me, she wanted me to visit, blah blah.

  But this time, for whatever reason, I pressed PLAY.

  “Aspen, it’s Mom. I’m just calling to say I love you. You know everything else I want to say, so I won’t say it all again. But that’s the one thing that’s always worth saying, isn’t it? Even though you’re mad at me. I love you. Call me back. Please call me back.”

  Yup, same old same old. Except, just, I hadn’t heard her voice in so long. I’d been deleting her voicemails since before spring break.

  Suddenly I didn’t have the energy to call Dad anymore. Maybe I could just stay in Three Peaks, live in my dead cousin’s room, and forget I ever had parents. Or maybe I could steal Dad’s memory of me, so he’d forget he ever had a kid. It would serve him right.

  I lay back, staring at the ceiling, trying to convince myself to suck it up and call my father and ask what I wanted to ask. Or, barring that, to call Leah and tell her I’d found Heather’s letter.

  But before my mind could triumph over the lazy matter that was my body, Brandy appeared in my doorway.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey,” I replied, waving feebly. “Sorry I had to ditch you guys before.”

  “No biggie.” She came over to sit beside me—after shutting the door behind her, which usually meant good things were about to happen. “You feeling okay?”

  “I am now,” I replied truthfully.

  She leaned over, kissing me long and deep. “Glad to hear it,” she said. “Because that was a long time that I had to sit there just now, watching Theo and Corey flirt. You have no idea how much it sucks being a third wheel during someone else’s honeymoon phase.”

  “Um,” I said.

  She looked at me blankly for a second, before her expression turned sheepish. “Oh yeah. I guess you do have a pretty good idea… .”

  “Maybe a little,” I said. “But did it work? Did my absence make your heart grow fonder?”

  “Oh my god. So fond. I have the fondest heart ever. You don’t even know.”

  Her hand moved higher up my leg, inch by inch. Her pretty hand, with its soft, warm skin and nimble, talented fingers. Yeah, this was exactly what I needed right now. I could deal with Leah and the letter tomorrow. Maybe I’d even deal with my dad tomorrow.

  Tonight, though? Tonight was all about Brandy and me.

  I left early the next day, excusing myself from the breakfast table with Heather’s note folded up in my back pocket. Brandy asked where I was going, but I just told her I’d be back soon.

  Leah was counting bills behind the register when I walked in, and she looked up at the sound of the little bell above the door. “Aspen,” she said, lowering a small stack of fives into the till. “Hey.”

  Instead of answering, I just held up the envelope. For a few seconds she looked confused—and then she got it. Bumping the register closed with her hip, she darted out from behind the counter and snatched the envelope from my hands.

  “You read it already,” she said, frowning as she ran her fingers along the torn edges of the envelope. “Didn’t you.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” I said, a little annoyed at her tone. I mean, I’d done her a favor by finding that thing, hadn’t I?

  “She wrote it to me, not you,” said Leah. “You shouldn’t’ve read it.”

  “Look, I had to know what was going on—”

  “It’s my letter,” she said. “You had no right to read it first.”

  “Is th
is young man bothering you?” came a familiar voice from behind me. Harry, the owner of the store, wearing an expression that was half joking, but also half not.

  “No,” said Leah, rubbing a hand over her forehead. “Sorry. Didn’t sleep well last night. D’you mind if we use the back room for a bit?”

  Harry gestured at the empty store around us. “I’ll yell if there’s a stampede.”

  Leah didn’t reply, just nodded and marched toward the back of the store. Then I realized that she’d just said we, so I followed.

  She led me through a seventies-style beaded curtain, into a dusty hallway full of tall metal shelves crammed with more books than I would’ve thought possible. We ended up in a tiny office, just big enough for one wheely chair, a desk, and another narrow bookshelf. An orange cat was curled up on the desk, its head pillowed on a crusty-looking computer keyboard; it blinked at me a few times, but then went right back to sleep.

  “This is Chekhov,” said Leah, running a hand fondly down its spine. “He’s the laziest animal in the known universe.”

  “Hi, Chekhov,” I said, and gave his head a quick scratch. He didn’t seem to notice.

  Leah sat down in the only chair, pressed her lips together, and began to read. The clock on the wall ticked. The cat purred softly as he slept. I leaned on the doorframe, watching Leah.

  “A parasite,” she murmured after a moment, then fell silent again. I couldn’t tell if she’d meant to read the word out loud.

  She flipped the paper over to the other side.

  After another moment, she muttered, “Super dramatic, a hundred percent true.” She was blinking faster now. I wondered if I should leave.

  Finally she laughed, sort of wetly, then touched her hair and looked up at me. She looked like she wanted something. Tissues? A profound statement that would magically make her feel better about the whole thing? A hug?

  I made myself speak. What came out was: “So … yeah. That’s the letter.”

  She put it carefully, first page up, on the desk. Smoothed it out with her hand and said, slowly, “So it’s really true. She’s really dead. And it’s because of me.”

  “No, see, that’s exactly what she wrote,” I said, pointing to the paper under her hand. “She said not to feel guilty.”

  “Oh, good,” said Leah flatly. “Poof. I don’t feel guilty anymore. Magic.”

  “I’m just saying, it wasn’t because of you. It was because of something she did for you.”

  “Yeah. This is totally working. You should be a professional therapist.”

  I threw my hands up. “God. Fine. Never mind.”

  Leah shook her head. “Sorry. Sorry. Just … cut me a little slack, okay? This is a lot to take in all at once.”

  “I know the feeling,” I mumbled, thinking of my conversation with Grandma yesterday evening. The one about my dad.

  “Hm?”

  “Nothing.” I straightened up, watching as she ran her index finger over the first line of the letter. “Hey, I wanted to ask you …”

  She swallowed. “Ask me what?”

  “That stuff she said she was sorry about. A ‘Jesse thing.’ And also someone named Rachel. Who’s Rachel?”

  “My sister.”

  “Oh. What happened to her?”

  She splayed her hand over the letter. Hesitated a moment. “I’m … I’m not sure anymore. I thought she was lying. Heather. I really did. But she talks about the Cliff like … oh god … and I didn’t believe her… .”

  Pushing myself off from the doorframe, I braced my hands on the desk and leaned over, trying to catch her eye again. “What happened to Rachel?” I asked again, soft but firm.

  “Rachel’s mute,” she said. “For five years now.”

  “She lost her voice?”

  “She didn’t lose it, you moron,” Leah snapped. “You people stole it from her.”

  Oh.

  I straightened up slowly, a zillion things sliding into place in my head, all of which added up to:

  “That’s why you and Heather stopped being friends.”

  Leah nodded. “Well, that was the beginning of it, anyway. This one day, about five years ago, Rachel woke up without a voice. I asked Heather if she knew why. Heather said she hadn’t meant to take away her voice—she’d meant to take away Rachel’s preppy fashion sense, because she knew that would make me happy. It would have made me happy, is the thing, because Rachel always dressed like a freaking senator or something. Still does. But … but that’s not the point. The point is, Heather said she didn’t mean for Rachel’s voice to get stolen. She told me so, right after it happened, and I didn’t believe her.” She paused. “I should have, but I didn’t.”

  Rachel’s voice. The result of the Cliff taking something bigger than what my family had offered it. Heather hadn’t been the first victim of that kind of situation. It had happened before.

  “And she kept bugging me to be friends again. For years she bugged me, and I just kept blowing her off, until …”

  “Until?”

  Leah swallowed hard. “Until I changed my mind. I tried to make a deal. At first, it was just, you know, if Heather could steal someone else’s voice and give it to Rachel, we could be friends again. She said no. Then I said if she made Jesse fall in—” She cut herself off, eyes wide.

  But she’d already said more than enough. “Fall in love with you?” I finished for her.

  She nodded, cheeks going pink as her eyes fixed firmly on the unmoving Chekhov. “She said no to that, too.”

  “Well, we can’t exactly do that stuff. I mean, the voice thing, maybe. But then Rachel would sound like someone else. And the falling-in-love thing?”

  “She could’ve found a way,” said Leah, in a tone that allowed for no argument. “But she didn’t want to. She didn’t even want to try—and trying would’ve been enough, you know? So I just kept ignoring her. For five years, I ignored her.”

  “Well, that’s—”

  “Sorry, wait, did I say ignored?” Her eyes were narrowed as she got to her feet, her voice sharp, her hands clenched. “I didn’t ignore her. Who am I kidding. I was so … so mean, and … and what the hell kind of stupid asshole of a person dies for someone who’s been mean to them for five whole years?”

  “That’s not what she meant to do, though,” I said, holding my hands up like that might somehow stop her from yelling. “She meant to—”

  “I know what she meant to do, Aspen! I can read!”

  And then, with no warning, Leah was crying. Sobbing. Hiding her face in her hands as her shoulders shook.

  Run away run away run away, said a little voice in the back of my head. Run while you still can. Crying people scared the shit out of me.

  Quietly, ignoring the voice, not to mention the death glare that the orange cat was now giving us, I moved around the desk and reached for Leah. She flinched when I touched her shoulders. But I didn’t move away. Just gave her a small smile and left the next move up to her.

  One heartbeat passed. Then two. Then Leah melted into me, cheek on my shoulder, tears soaking through the thin fabric of my shirt. “I didn’t even get to say I was sorry,” she murmured, her voice thick as I held her tight. “So many times … in school, around town … I’d see her and … she looked so lonely and … but … but I just couldn’t do it …”

  “It’s okay,” I said, because that was what you were supposed to say in situations like these. Wasn’t it? “It’s okay, it’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not,” she said, pulling away and looking at me with dark, watery eyes.

  And before I could figure out how to reply, Leah was kissing me.

  Leah

  Was

  Kissing me.

  And then I was kissing her back. My lips against hers, her chest against mine, her hand in my hair, my hand on her back, my fingers digging into the muscles of her shoulders as sparks flew through my brain, growing brighter every second.

  Kissing Leah hadn’t been an option. That was what I’d
thought, because she wasn’t my type, and she was kind of abrasive, and she didn’t even seem to like me all that much anyway. It hadn’t been an option at all, despite how weirdly magnetic she was, because I had too much other stuff going on. I had a girlfriend, for god’s sake. I was dating the girl of my dreams. So of course it hadn’t been an option.

  Until, suddenly, it was.

  She pulled away first, leaving me with a racing heart and a mouth that had forgotten how to say words and a pair of hands that didn’t have anything to hold on to. She looked calm. Vaguely perturbed, in a thoughtful kind of way, but calm.

  I had to be calm, too. Calm enough for my brain to remind my body that this was a completely horrible idea. That kissing other girls was not allowed. That I loved Brandy, and always had, and always would.

  Chekhov was calm. I rested my hand on his fur, letting my ring finger land on his collar like it was no big deal, and I reached into him and found his calm laziness resting right on top.

  I skimmed a little bit off, absorbed it into myself, and let my hand fall to my side again.

  “So,” said Leah, looking at me thoughtfully. “Yeah.”

  I resisted the incredibly strong urge to rub my whiskers with my hand. This was why I didn’t reach into animals very often. Thanks to the reaching-hangover thing, there were always a few seconds afterward when I had the disorienting sensation of being covered in fur.

  “Yeah,” I made myself say. “Uh.” I looked down at Chekhov again. Then back up at Leah. “You know I have a girlfriend, right?”

  “Oh. Right. Sorry.” She let out a long sigh, rubbing wearily at her forehead. “I didn’t mean to, like, jump you.”

  “It’s cool,” I said. “It was just kind of … like … I didn’t expect you to do that, is all.”

  She shook her head, two of her fingers swiping idly at her bottom lip. “I didn’t expect me to do that, either, to be honest. Sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Something tightened in my chest. “It’s okay,” I said, even though it wasn’t. It wasn’t okay at all, now that I actually stopped to think about it. But I went on: “We can pretend it never happened, right?”

  “No, we can’t,” she said, laughing weakly. “I’m not that good at lying to myself.”