Rocks Fall Everyone Dies

by Lindsay Ribar

  “Dad, come on,” was the next thing she said. “Just because one guy was … Yeah, I’m listening. Sorry.”

  She shot me a look. My neck tensed right up. I had a feeling I knew what was happening.

  A few moments later, Brandy sighed into the phone. “Toronto? We’re nowhere near Toronto… . Yes, I know New York borders Canada. But we’re nowhere near—oh my god, yes, I hear you.”

  I sat up and rubbed her back. I never saw Brandy more anxious than when she was talking to her dad.

  Finally, she shut her eyes. “Okay, I’ll check the bus schedule. I’ll let you know tomorrow.” A pause. “No, I said tomorrow. It’s late, Dad. I’m not packed, and anyway, nobody would be able to drive me to the bus stop tonight.”

  Oh, god, seriously?

  “Fine,” she said. “Yeah, fine. Love you, too. Bye.”

  She hung up. Looked at me silently, visibly seething.

  “Toronto?” I said.

  “Someone got shot,” Brandy said. “A gang thing.”

  “In Toronto.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Toronto, which is like five hours away. Maybe six.”

  “Yyyyyup.”

  “And he’s making you go home?”

  Her answer was a grimace, only slightly exaggerated. “Honestly, I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. And I can’t say no when he gets like this. You know I can’t.”

  I did know. How many times had she trudged out of various classrooms during the school year, ready to spend the rest of the day at home because her paranoid dad had decided she wasn’t safe without him? Stupid me, assuming this vacation would turn out any different.

  But then, everything clicked into place. The answers to the questions that had been circling my mind ever since the Mario Kart tournament.

  “Hey. Brandy. What if he didn’t get like this?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Because I really want to suggest therapy for a fourth time. God, I am so done with that conversation. I just have to wait till graduation when I can move out and—”

  “You really think he’s gonna get better after you move out?” I asked. “I guarantee it’ll be exactly the opposite. No, listen, I’m talking about … fixing him. Permanently.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “You sound like you’re planning on killing him or something. Which, for the record, please don’t do that.”

  I laughed. “No, no, I mean … Okay. Um. Brandy?” This was it. I was finally going to stop lying to her. This was it. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

  “Ohhh, I knew it,” she said. “You’re pregnant, aren’t you.”

  “Har-har. No, I’m serious. This is … I’ve never told anyone this before.”

  This time she didn’t reply with a joke. She just tilted her head and stayed quiet, waiting for me to go on.

  “See, when I said I could fix him, I meant—god, how do I even say this?—I meant taking away his paranoia. Just reaching into him, finding it, and taking it out.”

  She blinked a few times. Frowned. “Isn’t that what therapy does?”

  “Over time, probably, sure,” I said. “But I’m talking about instantly. Insta-cure!”

  Brandy rolled her shoulders: an unsubtle hint that I should get my hand off her back. “I’m not sure what you mean, Aspen.”

  Of course she didn’t. I was explaining this really badly.

  “I can take things away from people. That’s … it. That’s the thing.”

  But Brandy was still frowning. “Like what kind of things?”

  “Any kind of things. Thoughts. Memories. Physical stuff.”

  “So you’re like … what, a wizard?” Brandy looked very, very unimpressed.

  “Ha. No. Look, I can prove it.”

  God, this was making me nervous. Even more nervous than when Leah had shown up in my room, all rain-soaked and wild-eyed, knowing all my family’s secrets. I mean, where was I even supposed to begin?

  “Your burn scar!” I said. “Remember the burn scar you had on your arm? Ninth grade. You said it was from your hair curler. You told me you didn’t like it, so I took it away for you.”

  She made a noise of disgust. “That healed, Aspen. That wasn’t you.”

  “No, it was me,” I said. “Here, hold out your arm.”

  Brandy hesitated, but eventually did it. I turned her hand over so it was palm down, then pointed to a small clump of freckles near her wrist. The same freckles I’d tried, and apparently failed, to steal for the triad ritual this afternoon. “Watch those,” I said.

  Then I touched her shoulder. I reached through the fabric of her T-shirt, into her mind, into all the things that made up the girl sitting beside me.

  The freckles were near the surface, tangled up in the confusion of what I’d just told her, and her irritation with her dad, and her sadness at having to leave two weeks earlier than she’d planned, and her annoyance at not being able to steady her hands. It was a small enough thing, though, that I pulled it away with ease. I dropped my hand, and I let the freckles go.

  Her wrist was empty.

  Brandy stared at it. And then at me. And then at her arm again. She touched it gingerly, like she was afraid it would feel different.

  “Told you,” I said, grinning and giddy now that the telling part was over.

  “You …” She shook her head slowly. “Did you really … ?”

  “Yeah!” I said. “See? This is good! I can fix everything. With your dad, I mean. I can take away his paranoia, and he won’t think you’re dead every five minutes, and you can stay here with—”

  “No,” Brandy said softly. She’d started shaking her head a couple seconds ago, but this was the first time she’d spoken. “No, no, you can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you can’t! Okay? That’s my dad you’re talking about. You can’t just turn him into some … some alien body-snatcher version of himself.”

  I completely did not understand why that was a bad thing. “He’d be totally the same. Just without the part that drives you—”

  “You’d be stealing his personality,” she said. “His thoughts. The stuff that makes him who he is. You can’t just change stuff like that.”

  “I mean, it’s not like I haven’t done it before,” I said. “I’m really good at it. He wouldn’t even know anything was missing.”

  Brandy narrowed her eyes. “You’ve … done it before.”

  “Well, yeah.” My neck tightened. This was not the reaction I’d hoped she would have. “Look, I’m just trying to be honest, okay?”

  Brandy paused. Stared right into my eyes, right past them, like she could see the blood and bone and gray matter that they were hiding.

  “Have you stolen thoughts from me?”

  I hesitated. I’d stolen feelings, for sure. Doubts and suspicions and other things. But did those technically count as thoughts?

  On the other hand, I’d meant what I’d said: I was trying to be honest. And honesty meant not avoiding the question because of a technicality.

  So I said, “Kind of.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Well, there was this night you started getting jealous of Corey, because, I dunno, she’s Theo’s new girlfriend and you were his old one, so I took your jealousy away—”

  “Are. You. Serious.”

  “Well, I mean, it was making you sad,” I said. “Don’t you think I wish I could’ve made myself not be jealous, every time I saw you and Theo making out? I tried, actually. But I can’t steal stuff from myself. That’s why I … uh.”

  Brandy was very, very still. “That’s why you what?”

  Shit. I’d come so close to slipping and telling her the one thing I knew I had to keep secret. “Um. I mean, that’s why I stole some stuff that made you sad.”

  “Some stuff,” she repeated, very softly. “So that wasn’t the only time.”

  “Uh. No.”

  “Go ahead, then. Give me the list.”

 
I froze. Suddenly I couldn’t think of anything else that I’d stolen from her, because my entire brain was full of the thing I wasn’t telling her.

  Before I could make my mouth form words, though, Brandy’s expression morphed from disgusted into dangerous. “Wait. Aspen. Why did we start dating?”

  I felt my heart speed up. “Well, because you hit on me at that party.”

  “You didn’t, like … like make me hit on you, did you?”

  “No! God, no.” That, at least, was one hundred percent true. “That would be gross. I’d never do something like that.” Then I made myself stop, because I was fast approaching protesting-too-much territory.

  Brandy nodded. “But that night … I remember thinking it was fast. I even said so, in the car. I’d just broken up with Theo, and there I was, all ready to get it on with you, and I thought it was weird. Nobody gets over a breakup that fast. Just, nobody, ever.” My neck tensed up as I realized what she was about to ask. “Did you make that happen?”

  I could have lied. I should have lied, maybe. But the look on her face told me she already knew the truth. So I nodded. “You and Theo both. You guys were devastated after you … after the breakup. So I … you know. I fixed it.”

  “You fixed it,” she said. I nodded. God, my neck was killing me. “Okay. Did you make us break up, too?”

  “No, you did that yourself. I just—”

  Shit. Shit shit shiiiiiiiiiiit.

  I made myself continue: “I just, uh, watched it happen.”

  Could that have been a worse cover-up? No, no it could not. Brandy’s chest heaved as she took a deep breath. “Watched it happen. That wasn’t what you were going to say.”

  No. It wasn’t. I rubbed furiously at my neck.

  “So you didn’t make us break up,” she said. “Then what? You stole something that led to me breaking up with him?”

  I couldn’t say no. I couldn’t lie to her. Her lips went thin and oh my god this was it she was going to leave me. Unless I fixed it. I could reach into her right now and take away her anger, and hope that there was understanding buried beneath it.

  Reach, I told myself. Do it.

  I couldn’t move.

  “What did you steal from me?” She was standing now, staring me down.

  “The, um. The love you had for him.” My mouth was so dry. It made my voice sound grimy. “For Theo, I mean. That’s, um. That’s what I stole.”

  “Really,” she said softly.

  I nodded. “You guys fought all the time. It’s not like it would’ve worked out in the long run, so—”

  “In other words, you made me fall in love with you.”

  “No!” I said. “No, no. I just … took your love for Theo away, so you’d have room to fall for me instead. I told you, I would never—”

  “In other words, I’m incapable of deciding for myself who I should be with. You were holding the strings the whole time. None of those decisions were actually mine.”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “No, no, totally not,” she said, crossing her arms protectively over her chest. “Except that is literally what you just said.”

  “Brandy.”

  She looked at me with clear eyes. Shook her head slowly. “I always thought you were different from the other guys,” she said after a moment. “All the other guys I’ve dated, all the other guys at school.”

  “I am,” I said.

  “Yeah. You definitely are. Just not in the way I thought.” She was edging away from me now, edging toward the door. She bent down and picked up her purse.

  “I’m gonna go pack,” she said. “I’m leaving in the morning, and I do not want to see you again before I go. Oh, and here’s some free advice, okay? Never date anyone again. Ever.”

  “Brandy, just wait a second—”

  But she didn’t wait. She stormed out of my room, out into the hall, toward the east wing. I followed her, saying her name over and over until finally, she rounded on me.

  “Stop it, okay?” she said. “Just stop it. Don’t you dare follow me another step.”

  So as she went into her room and slammed the door, I just stood there and watched.

  Because the thing was, I didn’t have to follow her in order to stop her. She’d left her phone on my bed. All I had to do was reach into it and take away her desire to leave. Or maybe all her negative feelings about the secret I’d just told her.

  Or I could take away her memory of this whole conversation. We’d be better off that way, wouldn’t we? Happy. Like before.

  I picked up the phone.

  Does that girl know anything true about you?

  Brandy knew the truth about me now, and she’d decided, with eyes wide open and all the facts at her disposal, that she didn’t want me. If I didn’t erase her memory, Brandy and I were over for good.

  But if I did, I’d have to live with knowing that I’d done to Brandy exactly what my father had done to me.

  I sat there with the phone in my hands until, a few minutes later, she knocked on the door. She held out a shaky hand. I gave her the phone. And just like that, it was too late to change my mind.

  BEFORE

  Disco balls overhead. The smell of sweat underlining the cloying sugary perfume of punch and cookies and cake. Some truly heinous pop song blaring from the speakers. Everyone dressed in their awkward teenaged best. It was more carnival than prom, with distractions enough to get lost in—but I wasn’t lost. I knew exactly where I was (leaning on the wall, not too far from the soda table, next to this shrimpy kid named Omar), and I knew exactly where Brandy was (dancing with Theo), and that was all that really mattered.

  “She’s just so hot,” said Omar, beside me.

  “Yeah,” I agreed—and then realized he probably wasn’t talking about Brandy. “Wait, who?”

  “Tanuja,” he said, nodding toward a girl I vaguely knew from English class. She was standing with a group of her friends, wearing a silvery sleeveless dress.

  “So go ask her to dance,” I said.

  Omar grimaced. “She’ll say no.”

  “What if she doesn’t?”

  “She will.”

  Tanuja was single, as far as I knew. And I remember thinking that if Brandy were single, I’d’ve asked her to dance before the music even started. Basically, I would’ve killed to be where Omar was.

  I put a hand on his skinny shoulder, reached into him, and looked for his shyness. It wasn’t hard to find; it had woven itself like a fungus through his entire personality, which meant it would’ve taken far too long to steal away. So I bypassed that and went for the quick fix instead: I took away his certainty that Tanuja would turn him down.

  Then I leaned down and said, “Dude, just ask. You’ll regret it forever if you don’t.”

  Omar straightened up a little, took a deep breath, and marched over to Tanuja and her friends. Moments later, I saw him leading her onto the dance floor.

  Moments after that, I spotted Brandy again. She wore a midnight-blue dress that swished against her calves, tiny straps highlighting the ridges of her shoulder blades. She’d pinned her hair up with sparkly things, leaving a few tendrils loose to drift down her back. She was moving toward me. She was smiling.

  “May I have this dance, good sir?” she said.

  The music was just changing: fast to slow. It was that song “Every Breath You Take.” The one that sounds like a love song until you realize it’s kind of stalkery, and then you feel gross for having thought it was romantic.

  Brandy was holding out her hand. Smooth pale skin, nails painted pink, Theo’s corsage on her wrist.

  “Where’s your date?” I asked, more out of politeness than anything else.

  “Stuffing himself with cake,” she replied. “He’s sick of dancing. And between you and me, he’s kind of terrible at it. So how about it?”

  I was hardly going to say no a second time. So we danced, Brandy and me, swaying slowly to a song that had probably been popular like four hundred years ago.
My hands on her back. Hers around my neck. Me, pretending for four minutes that I’d come as Brandy’s date, not as part of her giant group of friends.

  When the slow song ended and a faster one began, Brandy leaned up and kissed me on the cheek. I almost stopped being able to breathe.

  I love you, I wanted to say.

  “You’re great,” was what I said instead, which, ugh.

  Brandy just laughed. I would remember that laugh for the rest of my life. That laugh, and “Every Breath You Take.” Because if Brandy wasn’t ever going to be mine, at least I’d always have those four minutes of pretending.

  They were gone by the time I woke up the next morning. Both of them. I didn’t know what Brandy had told Theo, but he didn’t pick up his phone when I tried to call him and ask. It’s because he’s driving, I told myself.

  Yeah. It was that. It was not because Brandy had told him everything and he’d reacted badly and decided never to speak to me again.

  As I made my way through breakfast—through coffee and eggs and Grandma asking after my friends and Aunt Holly looking on with narrowed eyes—I wondered why I wasn’t freaking out more. But I didn’t feel like freaking out. I didn’t feel much of anything. Just sort of shell-shocked. Sort of numb. And I stayed that way for most of the day.

  Eventually, Grandma asked if I was all right, which meant she could tell I wasn’t. And since I had zero desire to spill my guts about my girlfriend—ex-girlfriend, now—to my zombie one-million-times-great-grandmother, I left the house.

  I didn’t realize I was heading for the May Day field until I actually arrived there. I thought about walking the rest of the way into town, maybe getting food. But I didn’t want to do those things. I just wanted to sit there and play stupid games on my phone and wait for the numbness to fade.

  My phone rang, jostling me right out of my Bejeweled-induced brain haze. But it wasn’t Brandy, like I’d hoped it would be. Or Theo.