Rocks Fall Everyone Dies

by Lindsay Ribar

  She stopped. But she didn’t turn around, and she didn’t say anything. Which meant it was up to me to speak first.

  “Tell me about Heather,” I said.

  There was a pause, and Leah shook her head.

  “I’m serious,” I said. “You wanted to talk about Heather. So talk.”

  She turned to face me again. The not-quite-smile had faded from her face, leaving exhaustion in its wake. Exhaustion and no small measure of distrust.

  “You don’t want to hear about that,” she said.

  “Yeah, I do,” I said, finding that I actually meant it. “Here, sit down.”

  I sat cross-legged in the grass and, after only a moment of hesitation, she did the same.

  “You know Sherlock Holmes?” she asked.

  “Uh, yeah, doesn’t everyone?”

  But then I remembered Heather’s letter. The way she’d addressed it: For Sherlock’s Eyes Only. The fact that she’d signed it as Dr. W.

  “We used to dress up, Heather and me,” she said. “I was Sherlock. She was my Dr. Watson. We were, like … ten. Well, it started when we were ten, anyway. I’d put on that deerstalker hat and carry a pipe, and she’d wear a stethoscope and walk with a stick, and we’d solve mysteries together.”

  “A stick?” I asked, confused.

  “Yeah. Like a cane? Because Watson was injured in the war?” She raised an eyebrow like, hello, everyone knows that.

  “Oh, okay, sure,” I said. “So … you solved real mysteries?”

  “Some. Mostly we made up our own. But there were a few real ones—like the Case of the Weird Green Goo in the Bathroom.”

  “Ew,” I said.

  “Yeah, it was completely gross. We bottled up a sample of it, and Rachel got us into the high school chemistry lab so we could run tests. Except we never solved the case, because Professor Moriarty caught us in the act.”

  “Professor Moriarty … ?”

  She grinned, and for a second I could see an echo of the ten-year-old she’d been. “The janitor at the high school. He got us in trouble, therefore he was our archnemesis. Hence, Moriarty.”

  “I see,” I said, realizing that I’d started grinning, too.

  “We read all the old stories together,” she said. “The Arthur Conan Doyle stuff. We watched every movie and TV version we could get our hands on—and believe me, there are a lot. Five million Holmeses, five million Watsons. Awesome ones, shitty ones. Subtitled ones… .” She took a deep breath, her face sobering. “So, then Heather stole my sister’s voice—”

  “By accident,” I said.

  “I know that now,” snapped Leah. “But yes. Heather stole it by accident, and I stopped talking to her. I stopped having anything to do with her. Including the Holmes stuff. I gave away all my books and DVDs, and I started hanging out with Sadie and Jesse and a few other people instead.

  “But Heather didn’t find new friends. Not real-life ones, I mean. She found a ton of them online, though. All these people I’d never heard of kept popping up on her Facebook wall, and all of them were talking Holmes with her. I’d click on their profiles, and they’d be from, like, Europe and India and California and stuff. Never anywhere close.”

  “You stalked her on Facebook?” I said. “Even though you didn’t like her anymore?”

  Leah shot me another look. “Of course I did. But the point is that she kept up with it. All the TV shows and movies and fan fiction and whatever, and once in a while she’d … you know … shoot me an email, or stick a note in my locker, or even come up to me in the hallway. ‘Hey, you’d like this thing on the BBC,’ or ‘Hey, you should read this fanfic,’ or ‘Hey, do you still have the hat?’ Stuff like that.

  “And I tried to be nice about it, at first. Just sort of smile and say no and then ignore her. But she just kept going. Like, for years, to the point where I couldn’t see why she didn’t just get over it already. I thought she was pathetic and whiny and clingy, so … I got mean about it. Really, really mean.”

  “Mean how?” I asked.

  She reached down and started fiddling with the hem of her jeans. “Just … stuff I said. I’d call her a baby and tell her to grow up. It was always Sadie who said the really bad stuff. Started rumors about her, made fun of her for being a nerd and a loner and whatever. That was all Sadie. But I didn’t stop her. I just sort of stood there and listened and watched Heather get sadder and sadder, because I figured, hey, it doesn’t matter if nobody in real life likes her, right? She has all those internet people.”

  “People she’d never have to meet,” I murmured, curling my fingers protectively into my palms as I thought of Aunt Holly. Heather’s mom didn’t have any friends, either, as far as I could tell.

  “What?” said Leah.

  “Internet friends,” I said. “They were all far enough away that they probably wouldn’t end up here on May Day, putting stuff under the tree with everyone else. She wouldn’t run the risk of having to steal from them somewhere down the line.”

  Leah looked so stricken that, for a second, I thought she might start crying again. “I never thought of that.”

  I shrugged. Maybe, if I decided to stay up here, it was just as well that I sucked at being a friend.

  “You remember that one thing she said in her letter? About not being a parasite?”

  “Yeah … ?”

  She smiled tightly. “I called her that. Just a few months ago.”

  I winced. “Ouch.”

  “In the middle of the hallway at school. In front of … well, everyone, really.” She paused, biting idly at her bottom lip, looking off into the distance with soft eyes. I watched her jaw work. “She was trying to talk to me about this TV show, I guess, and I told her to go away, and she wouldn’t, and I snapped. I started yelling. Calling her names. Leech, parasite, all kinds of horrible stuff. God. The look on her face. But she just stood there and waited till I was done, and then …” Leah gave me a weird, strained smile. “Then she asked me if saying all that stuff made me feel better. She asked if I could finally forgive her now, and she said she still wanted to be friends again. I mean, can you imagine?”

  I thought about all the messages Mom had left me: I love you and I miss you and Come visit, no matter how much I’d ignored her.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I can imagine.”

  “And I felt bad, obviously,” said Leah. “So I took her aside and … and that’s when I tried to make a deal. If she could give Rachel her voice back, and make Jesse fall in love with me, we could be friends again. She said no. That was that. And now she’s …” Leah cut herself off, biting her lip and looking down at the grass.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Yeah what?”

  “Yeah, that’s pretty bad.”

  She crooked a smile. “See? Look at us. The two most horrible people in the world, sitting under a tree together. We’re a supervillain team in the making.”

  Without any warning, I found myself smiling back. This was, against all odds, kind of making me feel better. Not about what my dad had done, but about … well, I wasn’t sure yet, really. But with Leah here beside me, cracking bleak jokes, everything seemed just a little less awful.

  I sighed, leaning back on the grass. Leah lay down beside me.

  “What I still don’t get,” she said, “is why they covered up Heather’s death.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Something about living off the grid? A combination of stealing people’s memories and straight-up lying—and there’s tax evasion in there, too, I’m pretty sure.”

  Leah frowned. “Yeah, I know about all that. It’s to protect Willow, right?”

  “I think so.”

  “So, okay, they cover up her death on a big-picture level or whatever, fine. But why hide it from me? Her mother knew that I knew about the reaching and the ritual for the Cliff.”

  “She did? For real?” Aunt Holly really didn’t seem like the type to put up with that kind of thing. But then again, these days, Aunt Holly didn’t seem like the t
ype to do much of anything except drink and scowl at people.

  Leah nodded. “Why didn’t she tell me?” There was fury in her eyes now. “Heather was my best friend, and she’s been dead since February. I had a right to know.”

  “Yeah,” I said uncertainly. “Maybe you did.”

  Leah stood up and brushed off her jeans. “Come on,” she said.

  “Wait, come on where?”

  “I’m giving you a ride home,” she said, smiling grimly. “I want to have a chat with Heather’s mom.”

  BEFORE

  “How come your mom makes that face all the time?”

  We were in my family’s apartment when Heather asked me that. She’d just come back from a tour of some art school—one of the many art schools she’d never end up transferring into when freshman year rolled around—and my parents weren’t home from work yet.

  “What face?”

  “You know.” Heather stretched her features into a squinty-eyed grimace. “That one. She makes that face and she says to be careful. Be careful about what?”

  Oh, now I knew which face she was talking about. “About stealing,” I said. “She’s afraid I can steal stuff by accident, just by touching things.”

  “Oh my god, that’s so dumb,” said Heather. “It doesn’t work like that. Duh.”

  “Well, I know that. But it’s not like she can reach, right? She’s just watching out for me.”

  I remember wondering at my sudden urge to defend my mom. Usually her cautiousness around my abilities drove me nuts. But there was something about the way Heather was talking. All contemptuous, like we were somehow better than my mom, instead of just different.

  “That’s so dumb,” she repeated. “She really needs to get over it.”

  I agreed with her, at least a little bit. But right then, mostly I still just felt defensive.

  Which was why I told her that she should shut up, because she didn’t even know what it was like to have two parents. She’d never even met her dad. She’d told me so, back when we were little.

  Heather looked stricken for half a second, but the expression soon turned right back into a smirk. “That’s because my mom had the right idea,” she said smugly. “Why bother marrying someone who can’t do magic? We’re better off just the two of us.”

  I didn’t speak to Heather for the rest of the day.

  The next morning, she made pancakes for just her and me—an apology in food instead of words. And just like that, we were cool again. But for the rest of their visit, I couldn’t help wondering if, just maybe, Heather was right about my mom.

  “Aunt Holly?” I called, throwing the front door open.

  Almost immediately, she came running. Well, walking fast, at least. There was a glass of amber liquid in her left hand, and she was taking obvious care not to spill it.

  “We were wondering where you’d gone,” she said—and then looked behind me. Her eyes hardened. “You. Get out.”

  “No,” said Leah, stepping forward. She lifted her chin just a little, and her dark eyes were full of fire, and in that moment I had absolutely no doubt that if she wanted to, she could totally take Aunt Holly in a fight.

  Aunt Holly swallowed, like she was thinking the exact same thing. “No?” she echoed, like she didn’t quite understand the word.

  “No,” said Leah again. “I want to talk to you. About Heather. I want—”

  “Get out!” said Aunt Holly, her face contorting as soon as she heard Heather’s name. “You do not come into my house uninvited and talk to me about my own daughter. You, of all people, after what you … you …”

  She was shaking with rage, and the glass was starting to slip from her fingers. I darted forward and, before she realized what I was doing, snatched the glass away.

  “She’s not uninvited, Aunt Holly,” I said calmly. “I invited her.”

  “This isn’t your house, Aspen,” she said, eyeing me—and her Scotch glass—as I moved out of her reach.

  But Leah jumped in again before I could reply. “Listen, Mrs. Quick, I just want to talk to you. Okay?”

  “Miss,” said Aunt Holly.

  Leah blinked, clearly thrown.

  Aunt Holly smirked a little. “Not ‘Mrs.’ Heather’s father and I were never married, so don’t address me like I’m someone’s wife. Got that? It’s Miss Quick or Holly.”

  So, she’d had maybe one or two drinks already. Drunk enough not to care what she was saying, but still sober enough to say it without slurring.

  “Um, okay,” said Leah.

  “And why the hell should I talk to you about my daughter?” Aunt Holly went on, creeping closer to Leah, her eyes bright. “After everything you did. You were her only friend, you know that? You broke her heart. She was never the same after you dropped her. And you never even told her why.”

  “Heather knew why,” said Leah softly. “It was because she stole my sister’s voice for one of your ritual things.” Aunt Holly’s mouth fell open, but Leah went on: “It was an accident, and she tried to tell me so, but I refused to believe her. I was so shitty to her, and I know I should have let it go. Made friends with her again, said I was sorry.”

  “You …” But Aunt Holly trailed off, apparently at a loss for words. In the silence that followed, Willow stepped out of the living room and into the foyer.

  “No swearing in the house, please,” she said.

  Leah, ignoring Willow completely, kept talking: “Now I’ll never get to apologize. I’ll probably regret that for the rest of my life.” Leah took a deep breath. “But I want to know something. Why didn’t you tell me that she died?”

  But before Aunt Holly could answer, Willow said, “Why do you know about the ritual? Holly, I thought your daughter removed her knowledge of what we do.”

  “I … I thought so too. She told me she had.”

  “Removed my … ?” Leah shook her head, a little laugh escaping her. “No, my knowledge of what you do is plenty intact, thanks.”

  Willow sighed. “Aspen, if you wouldn’t mind? We can’t have people roaming about, knowing this family’s secrets.”

  “Yeah, Aspen. Go for it. Steal from me.” There was a glint in Leah’s eyes, but I couldn’t tell whether it meant she was angry or just amused. She knew exactly what would happen if I tried to steal from her.

  “Guys, she isn’t gonna tell anyone,” I said. “She’s known for years and never told anyone.”

  Willow tilted her head a little, giving me a small, devious smile. “Aspen. Come now. Why the sudden reluctance? It isn’t as though you haven’t stolen anything from her before.”

  “You did what?” said Leah, looking at me in horror. “What the hell did you take from me?”

  “Nothing!” I said, which was technically true. But I couldn’t explain in front of my family. Not without giving Heather’s secret away. “I’ll explain later, okay?”

  Leah hissed a breath out between her clenched teeth. Shook her head. “I swear to god. You people.”

  “Hey,” I said, incensed. “You people? Come on. I didn’t even know you then.”

  “Aspen, it doesn’t matter if you didn’t know me!” she practically shouted. “You know me now. You had plenty of time to say something.”

  “Get out,” said Aunt Holly, for the third time.

  “No,” said Leah. “Not until you explain to me why you didn’t tell me—why—we were best friends for so long, and I never got to … if I’d known she was sick, I could’ve …”

  Ah, so that was her real reason for being here. She didn’t really want an explanation for the cover-up. She’d wanted to tell Heather she was sorry, and she was angry about it being too late.

  Willow rubbed her temples. “Aspen, for the love of all things holy, please remove this girl’s memory and escort her from the house.”

  “I’ll do it myself,” said Aunt Holly, her voice almost a growl as she lurched toward Leah.

  I caught her arm before she could make contact. “Aunt Holly, come on.”

/>   Leah, though, was already edging toward the door. “No, you know what? Never mind. You were right. I shouldn’t have come here. You’re all just … just …”

  But I never got to find out what we were, because Leah spun around and walked out the front door. It was a moment before I gathered my wits enough to go after her. “Leah! Wait up!” I called from the front stoop. She was already well on her way down the driveway, and she didn’t look ready to stop, so I ran after her.

  “Leah,” I said, reaching for her arm.

  But she shrugged me off, a gesture so violent that it made my neck tense up in sympathy. “Don’t you dare follow me.”

  “Come on—”

  That was when she rounded on me. Eyes full of fury, hands clenched into fists, chest heaving with some volatile cocktail of emotions that I couldn’t even begin to identify.

  “Get away from me,” she said. “And stay away, you got that? Look, I know you only want to be my friend because, whatever, you can’t steal from me so I guess you feel safe or something. But even if you can’t screw me up, you already screwed up one of my best friends—one of the most important people in my entire life. I’m done with this stupid family. I’m just done.”

  I opened my mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

  Leah turned around again and walked away. She got into her mom’s car, revved the engine probably a little more than necessary, and drove away.

  I stared after her. Was that really it? Was she really gone?

  “I’m going after her,” said Aunt Holly, who’d apparently followed me out onto the driveway.

  “Good,” said Willow, standing on my other side. “I can’t stand the thought of that girl knowing—”

  “And I’m not stealing anything from her, okay, Ma? So drop it.”

  Willow blinked rapidly, looking kind of stunned.

  “Then what are you gonna do?” I asked.

  “Talk to her,” said Aunt Holly curtly. “As much as I hate it, that girl was right. She was the only real friend my Heather had in this godforsaken town. She deserves … Heather would want … Aspen, you’re sober, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah,” I said, and offered her my sleeve. “Go for it.”

  Aunt Holly’s fingers touched my shirt for only a few seconds. Just long enough to steal some of my sobriety so she’d be okay to drive. Then she slipped her sandals on, grabbed her car keys, and left.