Even If the Sky Falls

by Mia Garcia

  I don’t want to be lost anymore.

  I rub my face with the hospital blanket, gathering my thoughts. What is the quickest way to get rid of Tavis? Each time I look up he’s waiting, waiting for me to want something from him. To want him.

  “I need food—I’m starving.” I turn to Tavis with what I hope is a convincing smile. “Can you get me something?”

  “Don’t think the cafeteria is open . . .”

  “Vending machines?” I try again, reaching over to touch his hand. “Please, my stomach is gnawing away.”

  He squeezes my hand, his eyes bright. “All right, of course, you’ll be okay without me?”

  I pull my hand away. “I’ll survive.”

  Tavis heads off, and I do my best impression of a healthy person and slowly rise from the bed. I feel my body booting up. I follow the cables that end in sticky patches on my chest and pull those off first—no alarms sound. I keep checking the door for Tavis. I hope the vending machines are far away, tucked in a corner no one can find or somewhere on a different floor blocked by a maze of hospital employees. I’ll need every second I can get. I leave the IV for last; my hand shakes as I reach for it.

  “Hey now, girl, what do you think you’re doing?” A voice comes through from the past, each syllable a melody. My body sags in relief. “You trying to get ol’ Julius fired?”

  My eyes start to water as a familiar face comes up to me, sitting me back down.

  “Like the caesar,” I reply.

  “Damn straight,” he says. “And this here is my empire for the last twenty-five years. So where do you think you are going?”

  “I need to find someone.” I try to stand, and he sets me back down once again.

  “You need to rest.”

  I shake my head—Julius must understand, it’s why he’s here, I know it is. He’s supposed to help me find Miles. “Please, please, I don’t know if he’s alive, I have to know if he’s alive.”

  He tucks my hair behind my ear, a paternal gesture. “You aren’t the first person to say that to me today, darling.”

  “Doesn’t make it any less.”

  “I suppose.” Julius turns, reaching for my chart. “Julia Marie Eagan Hostos.”

  Only my grandmother and mom called me Julia. I’ve been Julie to everyone else since I could talk. I can hear Abuela now: We named you Julia, not Julie, asi que that’s what I’ll call you.

  “That is a long name, darling.”

  “Just Julie.”

  “Well, Just Julie, you are a lucky girl. Lots of bumps, bruises, ten stitches.”

  “Just ten?” Feels like a hundred.

  “Could’ve been worse, but you should really stay another day. Not to mention you’re a minor.”

  “And my parents aren’t here,” I finish. “Did you call them?”

  “Me personally? No. But I imagine someone did.”

  Then they’ll be here soon, and I’ll never find Miles—they’ll never let me out of their sight after this.

  “I just need to know if he was as lucky as I was.”

  Julius looks through my chart one more time, placing it back on the end of the bed. “You’re going to pull that out the second I leave, aren’t you?”

  “Smart and handsome.”

  “Laying on the sweet talk, I see.” He sighs. “What’s this boy’s name?”

  “Well—”

  Julius goes out to the nurses’ station to see if any seventeen-year-old boy was checked in around the same time as I was.

  When he comes back he shakes his head. I think of collapsing, of crying again, but I don’t. I gather whatever strength that storm didn’t take and call it forth.

  Without another word Julius turns to the cabinet at the back of the room and pulls a plastic bag that looks like it’s filled with mud, but turns out to be my clothes and wallet. He pulls the tape from around the IV, then gently removes the needle—I barely feel it amid all the background pain.

  “You’re going to need shoes.”

  Meet the Press

  ANNALISE BAKER IS SIXTEEN.

  Annalise Baker has a curtain of long black hair that reaches just halfway down her waist. Plaited and pinned up in a ponytail, it complemented her demeanor, her smile, and her ready answers during class. We weren’t friends and we never hung out, but on occasion we shared the same exasperated look when a teacher droned on for too long. I didn’t know what she wanted to be when she graduated or which colleges she planned to apply to. I knew Annalise existed and that she was happy as far as what she chose to show the world.

  This is the space that she inhabited in my life and I in hers.

  That is, of course, until.

  The first time I snuck into the hospital, Annalise’s mom screamed at me. How she knew who I was or what I was doing there I didn’t know. My face had yet to make it on to the local news. I slipped in through the side entrance, kept my head down, and lurked in corners like a weirdo. I hovered, not knowing what I planned to do, or what I was expecting, what I needed to see. But my legs kept taking me there day after day.

  She came like a Fury ready to peel off skin and rip into my entrails in retaliation for any wrongdoing.

  And I let her.

  After, I stood there feeling my skin prick as the pain—the burning—rose to the surface. I felt lighter, spent, and unsure why.

  At home my phone buzzed as I entered the kitchen—another message from Em. Why won’t you talk to me?

  I ignored it.

  My mother hovered by the sink, moving plates from sink to pantry and back again. Rearranging, cleaning, throwing out questionable preserves in the fridge. “Where did you go?”

  “Walk. Where’s Adam?”

  Her eyes met mine only briefly before she went back to cleaning. “In his room.”

  I went up the stairs and right past Adam’s room. He hadn’t spoken to me since we paid his bail. Just as well; I have no idea what to say to him anyway. Every time I was near him our fight echoed in my mind.

  In my room, I poured over the newspapers and let every sentence, every word sink in. I found Annalise’s blog and fell down a black hole of old posts. I read her ramblings, her thoughts, pored over her photographs, made a mental list.

  Annalise loves pistachio ice cream. Her favorite movies are all the collective works of Wes Anderson, despite the fact that she found the one about aquatic life to be not “in her wheelhouse.” She got her first camera when she was twelve, and she wants to be a professional photographer even though it would be a challenging career to have. She plans on getting a second job to support this dream.

  Annalise was—is—a very good photographer. Dozens of her photographs, provided by friends and family, were published all over the local newspapers. Her favorite subjects were old women with kind faces. There was a series of fifteen of them on her blog. I memorized them and recognize two of them from my own church. I imagined them posing for her while they told her their life story. I imagined she was the type of person you would tell your whole life to. Annalise liked to laugh, she hated skirts, thought aardvarks were funny, didn’t like people who chose paper cups over waffle cones, and didn’t really read a lot but reread her favorite novels over and over again. She had one serious relationship that she referred to with quotation marks: “James” texted me today.

  I read and reread her entries until the words blurred. I opened Facebook and searched her name, but she didn’t have a page. A page dedicated to her recovery had already sprung up with new well wishes coming in every day. I wondered how many who posted on it actually knew her.

  I scrolled down until I’d read all the posts calling Adam a drunk who should’ve died in the accident, speculating if he was always this way or “Did, like, the war over in that country, whatever it’s called, cause this?”

  Not that it matters because someone totally saw him holding a beer one time or remembered how much he liked shots and doesn’t that just prove that he’s a drunk? I almost reply but then clicked over to my own page
. Seventy-eight unanswered messages and countless posts asking me if I knew Adam had a problem, had I even tried to stop him? “I hope you get hit by a car too!” After each post Emma and Kara had come to my defense. Not that it mattered. As Kara would say, you can’t argue with stupid.

  A chat came through as I was closing the window. I’d forgotten to turn off the feature when I logged in.

  Jules?

  Kara. It felt wrong not to write her back—I missed her. I missed Em. They are parts of me that are gone and it was all my fault.

  Jules, talk to me. Pretty, pretty, please?

  I stared at the screen as Kara kept typing, I felt so lost, incapable of anything but drifting into my own hatred.

  Kara Lee Arnold is typing.

  Okay. You probably left . . . probably. Or you’re looking at this and ignoring it like my texts, which is fine . . . ha. No, friends don’t use fine, right? Right. But I know—we know—it’s hard for you to talk right now, but we love you, so we’ll be here. Standing creepily under your window until you’re ready to talk. Promise. None of this is your fault.

  “But it feels like it.”

  I closed out of the screen, cutting her off.

  I took a different route to the hospital that morning, down a different street. A street I knew to be dangerous. I felt the pulse beating at the back of my head and for a moment when I stepped out into the road, I envisioned the silence that would follow before the bile rushed up my mouth and a horn blasted me back into the present.

  I jumped back onto the sidewalk, embarrassed and angry. I turned, going home. I didn’t deserve to go to the hospital today. I didn’t deserve to see Annalise. I crawled into my bed, shoes and everything, and slept through the night.

  THE NEXT MORNING I felt sick. The smell of butter on toast made me want to puke. I grabbed an old apple, pocked with brown spots, and stuffed it in my backpack. I didn’t notice Adam sitting at the kitchen table until I turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” His voice was barely above a whisper.

  “Hospital.”

  Adam’s back stiffened, and I dared him to say anything else as I walked out the back door. I was getting really good at sitting in the waiting area, letting the buzzing of the fluorescent lights above me turn into a sort of melody. I picked up a magazine, leafing through, never really looking at the pages. There was a puzzle at the back, but someone had already completed it. Jerk.

  I didn’t notice Annalise’s mother as she slipped in and stood in front of me. She reached for the magazine, tugging it away from me. Placing her hand under my chin, she forced me to meet her eyes. “Back again?”

  “Yes.”

  She pursed her lips, crossing her arms over her chest. “Annalise is asleep now. You’ll have to come back later.”

  “I can see her?”

  Mrs. Baker’s answer was slow, deliberate. “Maybe. That’s up to her. Or so she tells me.”

  “I’ll wait for maybe.”

  She deflated just a bit, falling into the seat next to me. I took a moment to really observe, every part of her worn and drawn. Again I doubted myself. Why was I here? Why did I keep coming back? She caught me looking, and I turned away, embarrassed. I was useless and probably getting in the way, but now that I was here there must be something I could do. I pulled the apple from my bag, offering it up.

  She shook her head, leaning back on the chair and closing her eyes. “That apple looks more tired than I am.”

  We didn’t say much for a while, just sat and waited.

  “It’s Julia or Julie, isn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  “Why do you come here, Julia?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  Which was true. I had no idea why I came. Why I wanted to see Annalise. Did I want forgiveness? Should I be forgiven? Should I be blamed?

  Her stomach made a rumbling sound, and I offered the apple once again. She took a bite, small, tentative, then turned to me. “I’m afraid it’s no good.”

  The apple went in the trash, and Annalise’s mother walked out the door.

  MY LIFE AT home had become a silent film. My parents and I shuffled around each other, not saying a word. Adam kept to his room. Annalise’s parents hadn’t pressed charges, not yet, but the police were investigating and everything was a jumbled mess of legal terms that I didn’t understand and couldn’t follow. My parents spoke to our attorney, and I was advised not to visit the hospital anymore.

  I did not follow their advice.

  “Why do you go?”

  Adam caught me leaving the house the next day, a fresh apple tucked in my bag.

  “Why don’t you?”

  “I can’t leave the house, you know that.”

  “Would you go if you could?”

  He didn’t answer right away. “I don’t think I could look at her.”

  “Why not?”

  Adam curled his arms around himself, trying to pull the words out but they were unwilling to come. I sat down, reached for his hand, hoping he would let me hold it. His arm would not budge, and he let mine rest on top of his.

  “What happened that night?”

  “You know what happened.”

  “I know what they say. What they keep talking about on the news, but I don’t know, what you saw, what you did . . . I don’t know how you didn’t see her.”

  Adam shuddered. “I did see her.”

  I made my brain stop. Told it to wait for him to continue, knowing there was more to the story.

  “After I peeled off I was angry, so damn angry, figured I should keep driving until it wore off, figured it was safest. I can’t even remember how far I got; after a while it was just a lot of darkness and quiet. I felt heavy, pulled down, my eyes closing.” He paused, wiping the tears at the corners of his eyes. “Then, then it was too late and I felt like I was wading through, trying to wake up and move faster. I needed to move faster, and she was there and then she wasn’t. It felt like forever before the car stopped, before I reached the pedal, before I got out of the car.”

  Adam’s whole body was shaking. Small tremors that grew and grew until he broke, sobs tearing through him. “She was there, and I wouldn’t go near her. I just kept staring like it was all a dream—it felt like a dream. Everything was hazy and out of focus. I tried thinking, in my head, wake up, wake up, time to wake up. But she didn’t move. She didn’t move. She would’ve moved if it was a dream, right? Right?”

  “Yeah.” I came around the table behind Adam and wrapped my arms around him. I pressed my face into his neck, whispering, “Then you called 911, Adam. You called 911.”

  “It took me too long. The numbers kept bouncing around in my head. I couldn’t, couldn’t find them.”

  We’d gotten the report from the police. Adam held Annalise’s hand until they took her away and brought him to the station.

  I held Adam until he stopped shaking and relaxed against me.

  IN THE MORNING I sat down in my favorite waiting room chair, two apples in my bag that day. I sat and waited. When my heart threatened to leap out of my chest, I exited the room and went looking for Annalise. She wasn’t hard to find—there was a large monitor near the nurses’ station listing all the patients’ last names. I watched her mother from across the hall arranging the many bouquets on the tiny table in Annalise’s room. There was one bouquet of sunflowers. Annalise gestured for her mom to shift that one closer to her.

  In that moment, watching her and her mother talk and laugh, I knew how wrong it was that I was here, that I had come looking for something to make myself feel better, because wasn’t that the reason? I wanted to know that Annalise was all right so I could feel better about Adam. So Adam could feel better. I pivoted and was halfway down the hall when her mom’s voice called me back.

  “Leaving then?”

  It felt like forever before I turned.

  “Yeah.”

  Her mom leaned outside the door, and it clicked shut behind her. It didn’t escape my notic
e that she was blocking my way to her daughter. I did not blame her. “She’s doing better.”

  “Is she?”

  “As much as she can be.” She offered no more. I deserve no more.

  “Right.” Time slowed, it crawled, it dragged on until I thought of scratching my own skin off. “I’m sorry,” I said, wondering how that word could mean so much and so little at the same time.

  “I know you are.”

  I felt the tears prick at my eyes. “I know that doesn’t help, but I am sorry.”

  “It might,” she replied, coming closer. “Eventually.”

  Eventually.

  “Those for me?” she motioned to the lumps in my bag. I pulled out the two apples and handed them to her. She brought them close to her nose, sniffing and nodded. “Much better today. I might actually eat them.”

  With a ghost of a smile—the first she’d given me, it felt like a blessing—she turned and left me in the hall.

  THAT EVENING I spoke to my parents about leaving, about doing something outside our house. I didn’t tell them about walking into the street, or going to the hospital. I simply told them I needed to leave, and they understood because they wanted to as well.

  With a Little Help from Our Friends

  JULIUS LESTER JAMES IS AN ANGEL. I TELL HIM THIS, AND HE laughs. “Please tell my husband that,” he says as he pulls up on his Vespa. We are outlaws now, which is not true but it feels like it. I wasn’t formally discharged but no one put up a fight when I limped out of the hospital—there was far too much going on for that. I promised Julius I’d return once I found Miles. I make it three blocks on my own, wheezing, limping, and tripping over pieces of New Orleans the hurricane had dumped on the streets. I was certain that it would take me a year before I reached our meet-up spot when I heard the putt, putt, putt of Julius’s Vespa down the street. The mint-colored scooter brought tears to my eyes as it stopped in front of me.

  “Now I hope you didn’t think I was going to just let you walk all the way to Jackson Square in your condition?” Julius pats the seat behind him, scooting farther up to give me more space. He hands me a second helmet, and I hop on.