I am shivering. I wish I had socks so that my toes, long and spindly as a spider’s legs, weren’t so exposed. I hold on to my robe like it’s a life raft, like it will save me, pulling it around in order to warm myself, even though I’m cold down to the marrow of my bones, a place that robes and blankets can’t possibly touch.
“And Mom?”
I am little more than a whisper now, stripped down and broken. This is my father. And he’s leaving us. And I know that in some ways, even standing here still looking at me, as present as he’s ever been, that he’s already gone, that he disappeared the moment the gun first went off. I know that when he leaves, the back door will open, then close quietly behind him with no more than a small squeak of the hinges. My mother will turn over in her sleep, her mouth slightly open as she chases away her dreams, a stale glass of water at arm’s length.
“Your mother and I . . .” He stops for a moment, searching for the words. “Your mother and I can’t seem to talk anymore. Not without fighting. So we don’t talk at all.”
He sounds so resigned as he says this, so defeated that I have to resist the instinct to go to him, to throw my arms around his neck the way I did when I was little, when I would wait impatiently, every night, for the sound of his key in the lock.
“Where are you going?”
As much as I try, I can’t keep the pleading note from my voice, the hurt ringing through my words.
He sighs. “I don’t know, exactly. I’m just going to travel around for a while, Alys. I’ve taken a leave of absence from work. I have some vacation time saved up. I’m using it.”
A leave of absence. A polite term for walking out on all of your responsibilities, on everyone you supposedly love.
“So you’re leaving. Just like that?”
I concentrate on making myself hard, impenetrable as wood. As I stand there, my sadness and disappointment slowly begin to turn to something colder, something more removed, icy at the core. He’s not acting like a father, a little voice inside of me says, so you don’t have to be a daughter now.
“Alys.” He takes a step toward me and reflexively I shy away, shielding myself against his touch. “I don’t know if I can live with the guilt, the knowledge of what he . . .” He swallows hard, choking on the words. “Of what Luke did. To all those people. I can’t bear the weight of it. I sit up every night wondering if I did something . . . to make him that way, if I caused it somehow. I turn things over and over in my brain, until I’m so tired that I’ve talked myself out of sleep. I try not to blame myself or your mother, but who else is there, really?” He says this with his palms open, beseeching me. His voice cracks, and I want to look away, but I’m stuck, hypnotized. What about me? I want to scream. Don’t I need a father too?
“If you walk out that door . . . then you’re really no better than Luke.” He blanches at my choice of words, visibly startled. “He may have ruined our lives—and his own—but you’re making things worse for all of us, just because it’s easier for you, just because it’s . . . inconvenient to feel bad all the time.” I take a deep breath, my chest tight, and exhale before continuing, the butter-colored walls of the kitchen blurring around the edges, the paint suddenly neon bright.
“Nobody talks to me at school anymore. Ben and Delilah, my two oldest friends in the world, they walk by me in the halls like I’m invisible. But I’m still here, Dad. If you want to take the easy way out, fine. Luke sure as hell did—he bought a gun, he hurt people, he hurt himself.”
Except sometimes, in my darkest moments, I think it must have been the hardest way of all, putting that gun against his head, closing his eyes, and pulling the trigger, the world exploding in a burst of red and black. I want to stop, to rewind and take back everything I’ve said. But I’ve gone this far now. And since I have, I let go completely, falling all the way over the edge.
“I guess, at the end of the day, it’s true what they say.” I am daring him to react, to stop me, grab my arms and shake me until I fall to the floor, limp as dirty hair. “Like father, like son.”
Anger ignites behind my father’s eyes, and he turns abruptly around, grabbing the duffel bag off of the table and pushing past me. I hear the back door open, and there is a beat, a hesitation, a long moment where I hear an owl hooting mournfully in a tree, a lone car passing on the road, swish swish, the click and whir of the night itself, drunk on its own routine mechanism. My father walks out the door, the moment of his departure stretching out unbearably, minute by minute, until I think I will scream or cry out. But I don’t.
When the door closes, I sink to the floor, wrapping my bathrobe around my knees and hugging them to my chest. All at once, Luke is behind me, and even though I don’t turn around to face him, I can feel that his energy tonight is quiet, almost pensive, not his usual frenetic heat, his stench of rotten nectar and hot coals. I feel his arms slip around my shoulders, his breath on the back of my neck, his hair brushing against my ear as he hugs me close, rocking me back and forth, the way he used to when I’d fall down and skin my knee, the pavement hard beneath my legs. Miranda appears at my side, one hand running sweetly through the length of my hair, petting me as if I am an animal pried from a trap, something to be cradled and pitied. I try not to look at the hole in her head, how it resembles a flower gone wrong, its broken petals cascading down the side of her face.
“Shhhhh . . .” Luke says, his voice as liquid and soft as hot milk, a gentle whisper.
“Shhhhh, Alys.”
And with his arms wrapped tightly around me, his voice in my ear, it is then, only then that I finally let go, that I let myself break down and cry.
TWELVE
I wake up startled the next morning, sitting up in bed, my hair sticking to my temples. But when I look around the room, no one is there and the house is quiet. I lean back against the headboard and try to catch my breath, propping myself up on my elbows. If I was dreaming, I can’t remember it. The sunlight peeps through the curtains, and there is a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach when I think about getting up for school. Then I realize that it’s Saturday, and I’m free, and relief washes over me in an enormous rush. Until I remember that my father is gone, that he walked out last night, and then the depression creeps back in, obscuring everything.
At the knock on my door, I sit straight up. The door swings open, and I pull the covers up to my chest with both hands. My mother is dressed in a pair of jeans and a gray sweater the color of low clouds before the rain. She sits down on the edge of the bed, and I wonder if she knows that my father is gone, if he told her last night or even left a note.
“I was thinking,” she begins, reaching behind her head and securing the low ponytail she wears with a gentle tug, “that we might go to the mall today and get you some new clothes, do a little spring shopping.” She reaches over and pushes the damp hair back from my face, her fingertips butterfly light.
I want to go shopping about as much as I want to be sold into white slavery.
My mother hates the mall, hates most girly stuff like shopping, and avoids it whenever possible, so I nod slowly, trying to process the situation, feeling it out like a blind girl, arms outstretched in darkness. Then I remember prom, Riley, and the fact that I have absolutely nothing to wear, and reconsider. The mall, as much as I may loathe every minute of it, might actually be a good idea after all.
“I need something . . . for prom.”
I stop, gauging her expression, watching as her face lights up momentarily, then falls slightly, the corners of her mouth turning downward in dismay.
“But . . . you never said anything!” She pulls me close, and I rest my head on her shoulder, breathing in the familiar scent of her perfume, the laundry detergent on her clothes, her skin, fresh from the shower. If I could climb back inside her body somehow, float there in a warm sea of tranquility, I probably would.
“It just happened the other day.” I pull
back and rearrange the covers around me, suddenly embarrassed. “I was meaning to tell you—I must’ve just forgotten.”
She still looks hurt, her bottom lip quivering almost imperceptibly, so I spill the beans all at once, hoping it’s enough to perk her back up.
“It’s no big deal—I’m going with Riley. Just as friends,” I add quickly.
My mother raises one eyebrow, her lips quivering with amusement. “How did that happen?”
I sigh, sitting back against the headboard. “We’ve just hung out a few times. It was nothing special.” I cross one leg over the other, stretching my toes under the covers, hoping that she won’t ask me for more details. I look at the ceiling, the crack that runs partway across it, the one my dad said he’d fix when he got around to it, which clearly won’t be any time soon.
“I need to talk to you about something,” she says, taking a deep breath and picking a piece of white lint off her pants. She waits a beat, as if she’s not sure how to say what she needs to tell me, how to find the words. “Your father and I are going to separate for a while—he’s going to do some traveling.” She exhales hard, the air hissing like a deflated balloon. “I don’t know how long he’ll be gone—a couple of weeks at least, but we just can’t seem to live together right now, Alys.”
A tear falls from one eye and plops down her cheek, then another, falling this time onto the stark white coverlet of the bed, and I try to keep my face impossibly still.
“I know this is hard. But it’s just for a while. And it has nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing to do with you. Do you understand?”
I nod mutely, but my brain floods with the memory of my father last night in the kitchen, the hopelessness and desperation that leaked from his pores like poison.
“I saw him last night,” I say, unable to look her in the eyes. “In the kitchen.”
My mother freezes for a moment, taking it in.
“Did he say anything to you?”
Every time I look at you, I see his face . . .
I swallow hard, a lump the size of a basketball welling up in my throat.
“Just that he was leaving. Just that. Nothing else matters anyway.”
My mother is quiet, her chest rising and falling with her breath, and I can feel her hand shaking as her grip tightens slightly on my leg, holding on.
“Do you really think he’s coming back?” I ask, my voice growing smaller, less sure of itself.
“I think so,” she says, swiping at her eyes. “I don’t know. I wish I knew, Alys.”
I lean forward, petting her arm, trying to console her. I concentrate on the feel of her arm beneath the sweater she wears. I imagine my hand transmitting some kind of energy, some radiant warmth that will creep deep inside her, healing the most broken bits until she is fixed, until she is whole again.
• • •
When we get to the mall, the lot is packed, and we drive around in circles looking for a spot until I am vaguely nauseous. When we finally park, my mother shuts off the engine and we sit there for a moment, just waiting. She checks her eyes in the rearview mirror, then puts her big black sunglasses on. She takes a deep breath, steeling herself, clutching her purse in her lap, and I wonder why she wanted to come here at all.
“Ready?” She turns to me, her face illuminated with false enthusiasm, and by way of answering, I grab on to the door handle, pushing it open even though I am anything but.
The mall is crowded with people, but once we’re inside, a calmness falls over me. Maybe it’s the elevator music piping through the speakers overhead, or the smell of chocolate chip cookies drifting from the food court on the top level, but all at once I zone out, lulled into a stupor by the window displays featuring spring dresses the color of Easter eggs, the glass atrium shining transparently above us.
Each time we pass a crowd, I dip my head, not wanting to make eye contact. If anyone recognizes us, I can’t tell. My mother stares straight ahead, her face half hidden behind her sunglasses. She holds on to my arm, her fingernails digging into my jacket. It’s warm inside the mall, and I am sweating. I want to take my jacket off, but it feels like I need it for protection, some kind of armor. Besides, she is gripping my arm so tightly that it would be more trouble to disentangle myself than it’s probably worth. My stomach growls loudly, and it slowly dawns on me that, with the exception of those few moments in the diner with Riley, this is the first time I’ve actually been hungry—with all the physical sensations that go along with it—in ages. The smell of grilling hamburgers, fried chicken, and the fried rice at Panda Express wafting from the food court tantalize me, making my mouth water.
“Can we get some food afterward?” I ask, and without warning, the memories of my old life come crashing in. Me and Delilah eating frozen yogurt with Oreo cookies mixed in, licking the spoon languidly, kicking each other under the table with booted, pointy feet. Ben’s face that one summer afternoon when I came out of the dressing room at Dillard’s wearing a short black dress, how he kissed me right there among the shoppers shuffling around like zombies.
Suddenly I’m not hungry anymore.
“Sure,” my mother says. “But let’s find you a dress first, okay?” She makes a sharp right turn, and we are standing in front of a department store, the makeup counters gleaming like caskets full of jewels. Vials of perfume, with their complicated, delicate alchemy, beckon with a whisper of ambergris and musk, the allure of colored glass. You smell great, Ben growled in my ear the last time we made out, his hands under my shirt as if he never wanted to find his way out again, my face buried in his neck. There is a sharp pain in my stomach, and I stop, one hand over my abdomen. I try and breathe deeply through my nose, remembering that Luke told me once that you take in more oxygen that way.
Luke told me a lot of things. Not all of them were true.
“Alys?” My mother stops, pushing her sunglasses on top of her head, one hand resting lightly on my back. “What is it, sweetie?”
I exhale sharply and stand up, the pain fading to a distant memory.
“I just had a cramp,” I say breathlessly, which I suppose is almost true. A half lie.
“Do you want to eat now instead of later? We can go upstairs and get some lunch.”
“No, no,” I say, shrugging off her suggestion. “I’m fine. Let’s go inside.”
In the dress department, I am immediately overwhelmed by the sheer variety of choices. Racks of dresses in daffodil, magenta, bronze, and rose red, lined up like cheerful friends, waiting to go for a stroll. I pull off my leather jacket, holding on to it with one hand as I run the other over yards of satiny material. My mother deftly pulls dresses from racks, draping them over her arm in a rainbow of color. I am pulled, almost magnetically so, toward the black dresses, simple gowns with a whisper of jet beading at the neck and waist, sweeping the floor lightly, without pretense. My mother wrinkles her nose, steering me back toward the light, pulling out a white tea-length dress from the pile and holding it up to my body in front of the full-length mirror. It is the shade of lightly sweetened cream, of day-old snow, the round neckline studded with shimmering pearls. My face glows as if someone’s turned on a strobe inside me, highlighting the slant of my cheekbones, the ivory pallor of my skin.
“With your hair up,” my mother says, reaching behind me to gather my ponytail, twisting it into a neat bun, “it would be perfect.”
“I don’t know.” I turn to the side, and she lets go, my hair tumbling back down again. “Isn’t it kind of bridey? I feel like I should be standing on top of a wedding cake or something.”
My mother rolls her eyes at me in the mirror.
“God forbid.” She chuckles, pulling the dress away and placing it back on the rack.
“How about this one?”
She holds up a dress of cornflower blue, the blue of spring skies, the bodice nipping in neatly at the waist, the skirt flaring ou
t at the knee. At the neck, there are two rows of discreet blue beading, sparkly and festive without being over-the-top. I take the soft material from her hands and hold it up to my body. The girl reflected in the mirror looks almost happy, her cheeks pink from the impending spring heat. Her eyes shine like the first twilight beams of the night.
“Do you want to try it on?” My mother points toward the fitting room at the back, and I nod. I quickly yank my sweater off, then throw the dress over my head, pulling it down around my waist before stepping out of my jeans, kicking my sneakers off. My mother zips up the back, and her hands are cold, the metallic sound reminding me of my father’s duffel bag, a kind of permanent closure. The fit is perfect. My mother’s face behind me is pensive, her eyes shining under a glaze of tears.
“Look at you,” she breathes, stepping back slightly. “You’re almost all grown-up.” She smooths my hair with the flat of her palm, cradling my skull for a moment before letting go. I look at my reflection, and a stranger stares back at me. She looks older, a little wiser, a slight wrinkling around her eyes, so tiny that you’d have to lean in close in order to see it at all. I notice for the first time the way my bones have suddenly risen to the surface of my skin, reaching toward the light. Whether it’s the weight I’ve lost or simply the act of growing up, I can’t say for certain.
“What do you think?” My mother’s voice breaks into my thoughts.
“It’s perfect,” I say, turning around to see the back, feeling the material swish out and leave my legs naked as I twirl. For the first time since the shooting, since Luke’s death, I feel almost weightless. I smile over my shoulder, unable to help myself, and my mother grins back, our faces stretched wide.
• • •
At the food court, I choose lemon chicken, fried rice, a cup of frozen yogurt. My mother grabs a diet soda, a small sandwich, an apple—food I know she will look at determinedly but won’t really ingest. I, on the other hand, am weirdly hungry again, the smells drifting from my plate making me salivate, my mouth loose and watery. The first forkful is pure bliss, and I close my eyes so that I can better savor it. But a few bites are all I can seem to manage. I push the chicken away and concentrate on the yogurt instead, licking the spoon carefully, making each cold, sweet spoonful last.
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