34 Pieces of You

by Carmen Rodrigues

  “But what are you going through?” Mrs. Medina says. The question seems obvious, but she’s the first to ask it since everything fell apart.

  “I’m fine.” I slip my eyes downward, toward the crumpled paper. I wonder if it is a love note someone dropped by mistake or a blank sheet discarded only because it was torn. The latter possibility seems unbearable.

  Mrs. Medina’s hand slides forward like she’s reaching for me.

  “I’m fine,” I repeat, and her hand slides back. She sets it on her hip and waits. I wait too.

  Finally, she says, “Okay, Jess. If that’s how you really feel . . .”

  It takes some doing, but I give her the confidence stare, the one that makes teachers believe you know the answer to any question they might ask. In return Mrs. Medina offers a kind but concerned smile. She says, “Okay, Jess, you can go for now.”

  At her door she hands me a hall pass and sighs. I carry the weight of her breath for a long while.

  BEFORE. JULY.

  I didn’t understand what Meg was saying when she burst into my bedroom, shouting. I just knew that Meg was being Meg and I was being me.

  Meg was eleven, slightly tomboyish, and happy to fight about everything from sparkly stickers to bike horns. My mom often called her “the little shouter,” and it wasn’t unusual for her to fly into a room, excited about something.

  It was Saturday, which according to Lola was pedicure day, and even with the sudden disruption her steady fingers still moved swiftly across her toes. “Meg, just go and play with your Barbies, okay?” she murmured, without looking up.

  “I don’t play with Barbies,” Meg said, but the whole Barbie world set up in the corner of our basement said otherwise.

  “God, do something about this already, Jess.” Lola gave me a look that usually meant that I had done something wrong, even if that something was not doing anything at all.

  “Come on, Meg.” I picked up a pillow and tossed it lightly at her head.

  “Hey!” She dodged the pillow, a hurt expression spreading across her face. “It’s my house too!”

  “But not your room,” Lola said.

  “Fine. I’ll just go watch Sarah make out with Tommy by myself, then.”

  There was a bit of silence. It was the first time either of us had heard about Sarah and Tommy. I glanced at Lola. She looked as shocked as I felt. Meg, guessing she had revealed a really juicy secret, let her smile grow until it covered half her face.

  Lola spoke first. Her voice sounded almost calm, but I could hear the underlying tremble. “You’re lying.”

  Meg’s smile faltered. “No, I’m not.”

  Lola shot off the bed and partly waddled, partly hopped over to Meg. “You’re lying!” she said again. Meg took a step back, her entire body shrinking inward.

  “I—I’m not,” she stammered. “I’m not.” She looked to me, then back to Lola, her mouth hanging partially open.

  Lola snapped her fingers in front of Meg’s face. “Details. Now.”

  Meg took a deep breath and began to tell us a complicated story about playing hide-and-go-seek with some of the neighborhood kids. Lola interrupted her and said, “Just get to the end.”

  “Well,” Meg said, “I hid behind the cottage, and that’s when I heard Sarah’s voice, and . . .” She paused to catch her breath. “She and Tommy were totally in his room, making out!”

  “Fuck me!” Lola said, and Meg’s eyes grew wide. We weren’t allowed to curse in the house or anywhere else.

  “You can’t say those words,” Meg said. “Jess, tell her she can’t say that.”

  Lola tore the cotton balls from between her toes, shoved her flip-flops on, and waved her arms at me impatiently. “What are you waiting for, Jess?”

  I was waiting for her common sense to kick in, but I didn’t say that. Instead I said, “No, thanks,” and looked back at my feet.

  “You’re going,” she said.

  “Nope. Sarah can make out with Tommy even if he is disgusting,” I told her. “We can’t just spy on them.”

  She gave me an intense look I couldn’t quite read, grabbed my flip-flops, and shoved them into my hands. “You’re going.”

  Once we got outside, Lola stopped in front of Jake’s house and said, “We can just go through that side gate.” She pointed to a path on the left side of the house and squared her shoulders like she was preparing for battle.

  “Honestly, I don’t get why this is such a big deal to you.”

  “Just come on,” she said, and started toward the path, but I held steady. A second later, Meg was standing beside me.

  “I want to come!” She tugged at her jeans, which had ridden up on her thighs so that her ankles stuck out awkwardly. I felt bad for her. Eleven was one of those ages where you were caught between so many phases. You were too young to stay up late, but old enough to get your period. You had to wear bras, even though you barely had boobs. And boys wanted to kiss you, not because they liked you, but because someone dared them to. But the worst part about being eleven was realizing that your older sister, the person you always considered your best friend, wasn’t even your friend at all.

  Lola turned back, her eyes narrowing at Meg. “Effing A, Meg. Go home. You’re too young for this shit.”

  “I’m only four years younger than you guys,” Meg protested.

  “Oh, God. Jess, please.” Lola raised her arms in frustration.

  “Meg,” I said, ignoring her pleading look, “you have to go.”

  But Meg didn’t budge, and I admired her for her toughness.

  “Look at this shit,” Lola muttered. She crossed toward Meg and barked meanly into her face, “Go home, you little squirt!”

  Meg’s eyes filled with tears. “Jess?”

  I remembered the day Sarah threw me over in favor of Ellie, but I told myself that this wasn’t like that. That I was sending Meg home to protect her from whatever Lola was dragging me into.

  “Go on, Meg,” I said.

  Meg looked from Lola to me, her chin shaking. Then she turned on her heel, her awkward ankles slowly carrying her home.

  Lola grabbed my arm, but I yanked it away from her. “Just wait,” I said, keeping my eyes on Meg until our front door shut behind her. Then I turned to Lola and said, “Okay, let’s go.”

  10.

  What do you tell me? What do I tell you? I feel like there are so many things I can’t tell you. Are there things you can’t tell me? Do you know who your father is? Do you want to know?

  I know who my father is, but I don’t know him at all.

  Sarah

  FIVE YEARS BEFORE.

  “Aren’t you happy we came?” Ellie asked me the night of my party. Everyone else had gone home, but Ellie stayed behind to help me clean up. Afterward, we sat on the concrete floor in the middle of my basement, the disco ball spinning fluorescent colors above us. “They worship Jake, you know. It’s ridiculous,” she said. She rolled up her jeans so that her ankle was exposed, and pulled off a Band-Aid, picking at the scab beneath.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Then why pick at it?”

  She shrugged and ripped off a big chunk of the scab, exposing a round patch of puckered pink flesh. A surprising amount of blood started to seep out. She watched for a second, almost fascinated, and then asked for a tissue.

  I returned quickly from the bathroom with a wad of toilet paper, which she pressed over the wound. “We should do something for your birthday tomorrow, even if you can’t have a party,” I said.

  She laughed. “We just did.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Your party,” she said. “It was my party too. Why do you think so many people showed up? And did you check out all the gifts I got?”

  I stared at Ellie, wondering if she might be a little crazy. The evidence was stacked against her: She picked at scabs until they bled, kicked or nudged you whenever she felt like it, and apparently made up impossible sto
ries. “I invited everyone that came tonight,” I said slowly, before it clicked in that a good number of people I hadn’t invited had also shown up. I stood up and crossed to the gift table. I picked up several gifts and flipped open the gift tabs. All but one were addressed to Ellie. “But how did you know who I invited?”

  Ellie looked from the disco ball to me. “Tori and Vanessa told me. We’re kind of best friends . . . except lately, I think they’re totally boring.” She smiled. “Nobody was coming to your party until I said we were having a joint party—”

  “But you didn’t even know I was having a party . . .” I felt a knot twist in my stomach.

  “Vanessa told me weeks ago. I never said I didn’t know about your party—”

  “But you asked if I was having one—”

  “But I never said I didn’t know what your answer would be.”

  “It’s the same thing,” I protested.

  “No, it’s not. Anyway . . .” She smiled triumphantly. “I fixed it. So it’s no big deal.”

  I was silent. I couldn’t decide how I felt: embarrassed that nobody had wanted to come to my party; mad that Ellie had tricked me into believing she was some poor girl just like me, desperate to be included; or—this somehow felt like the worst possibility—grateful that her deception had prevented my total humiliation.

  “Hey,” Ellie said. “I was just trying to help out. You’re not mad or anything, right?” Her droopy eyes were slightly watery again.

  The truth was, I wanted to be friends with her. She was unpredictable, popular, Jake’s sister. All very good things. But I still felt like I needed some loophole to act okay with what she had done. “Were you really just trying to help me?” I asked.

  “Yeah,” Ellie said, with zero hesitation. “Totally.”

  “Then no . . . I’m not mad.”

  Ellie smiled, her watery eyes suddenly dry. She lifted her hand, extending her pinky with a grand gesture. “So, friends?”

  I let her finger slip into mine. And when she gave it a hard twist, the disco lights casting a shadow across our linked hands, I pushed all doubt aside and said, “Friends.”

  11.

  Your Christmas card, the one with that cheerful picture of you with your family lounging beneath a palm tree.

  Did you notice how much your little girl looks like me?

  It’s proof, don’t you think?

  That nothing between us is sacred, not even the most invisible lines.

  Jake

  AFTER. FEBRUARY.

  Amber comes to my dorm room with her long hair in pigtails and boots on her feet. She doesn’t say hello or wait to be invited in. She simply sways on by. When I turn around, she’s leaning against my window, staring at me.

  She says, “I haven’t seen you in a while, kiddo. You never returned my texts, and Janie says you haven’t been to lit class in weeks . . .”

  I haven’t seen Amber since Ellie died. But I do vaguely recall the texts and e-mails she sent in December, a drunk-dial voice mail on New Year’s Eve, a Post-it note stuck on my door in January. “Who the fuck is Janie?” I ask.

  “She’s my roommate. She’s in your class. Anyway . . .” Her voice rises lightly, like she realizes we’ve gotten off to a bad start. “Seriously, though . . .” She sets her jacket on the window ledge and sighs. “Have you gone into hiding?”

  She brings her eyes back to mine, but I can’t hold her gaze, because all I can see is that night, that final phone call with Ellie, and suddenly it’s hard to breathe.

  “You okay?” she asks.

  I stare at my feet. “I’m fine.” I pull my hands away from my temple and the headache that’s been there since I got back from Ohio.

  “To be absolutely honest,” she says, her gentle voice piercing, “I heard about your sister, and I thought maybe you needed someone to . . . you know . . . talk to about it.”

  I lift my eyes. She’s still watching me, her head resting against the windowpane. “What’s to talk about?” I ask dully.

  “I don’t know. When’s the last time you went to class? Any class?” She pauses. “You look like hell. When’s the last time you left this room?”

  “Why is that your business?”

  Her forehead wrinkles in surprise. She retreats a little then. Looks out the window at the street traffic below. It’s an all-too-familiar view. For the last few months I’ve missed class after class, lost in the monotonous lives of those tiny people, the fascinating predictability of the traffic lights as they change from green to red.

  Amber says, “I can see the bar we met at that one time. It’s right . . .” She extends her index finger toward something beyond the pane, and her voice fades away. Her hand falls to her side. “Do you ever think about probabilities?”

  “As in . . . ?” I reply, not quite sure where she’s going with this or why she’s even still here.

  “As in what are the chances”—she clears her throat—“of being hit by lightning twice? Or two planes crashing in one week?” She laughs hollowly. “Sometimes, I console myself with probabilities. Like if a plane crashes the week I’m supposed to fly, I say, ‘Well, thank God that’s out of the way.’”

  I don’t know what she’s talking about. Or why she’s now striding across the room, stepping over piles of dirty clothes and forgotten bags of take-out food. I only know I’d rather stand at the edge alone than be here with her.

  She stops beside a chair and stares down at a large cardboard box filled with letters, sketch pads, and pictures. She tilts the box toward her, her eyes raking the contents. “Ellie’s things?” she whispers.

  “Please, don’t.” Hearing her say Ellie’s name is too much, and I feel that all-too-familiar pain in my chest. That pain that sometimes feels like it could tear me apart. “Just go. There’s nothing you know about this.”

  There is a long silence, and then she is beside me, reaching for me. I take a step back and another and another until I am where she began. The cold glass presses against my skin. She’s breaths away. “Jake . . .” She touches the side of my face, but I push her hand off. “What were the chances of us meeting that night, of me being here when she called? It seems so improbable. So unlikely, and ever since I found out, I keep thinking . . .” Her voice cracks. Her eyes fill with tears. “What were the chances?”

  “What difference does it make?” I ask, but I know what she knows: I know it made all the difference in the world. And I finally understand the reason for her visit. Why she just gave me her little speech. She needs what we all need: forgiveness.

  “Jake . . .” She strokes my chest. It feels strange to have another person’s hand on me, to hear another person’s voice beside me. “If we had never met . . .” Her eyes search mine. “If I had let you go . . .” She presses against me.

  “Amber, please.” I push against the window, but there’s nowhere else to go. For months my head has pounded with all the could haves and should haves, Ellie’s words constantly ringing in my ears: If I need you, you’ll come back for me?

  Amber’s lips slide across my neck. She whispers, “I just need you to know how incredibly terrible I feel. . . . I’ll never forgive myself.” She lays her head on my chest, her guilt soaking my T-shirt, as she says over and over again, “I’m so sorry.”

  When she kisses me, I don’t stop her. I let her lead me to the bed. I let her turn out the lights. And when she runs her hands down my back, I tell myself not to think about what comes next. That what we’re doing is okay. That this is what I need to feel better—the darkness of this night. The illusion that love is near.

  12.

  I miss sixth grade and that time you convinced me to play Barbies in your bedroom. We drew the shades tightly, afraid that someone might use a ladder to scale your walls and find us there, still being children.

  Jessie

  BEFORE. JULY.

  We crouched in the bushes outside Tommy’s bedroom. Lola heaved loudly, like we had just walked a mile instead of a hundred feet. She looked l
ike she might cry, but as far as I knew, Lola hadn’t cried all year.

  “What’s going on?” I finally asked.

  She stared at the grass like she was counting the number of blades. A butterfly darted by, and I watched its wings flutter, a smear of yellow and black fighting hard against a sudden current of wind.

  “Lola,” I said gently, “can you at least tell me why we’re here?”

  She started to cry then, and I couldn’t help but think that her cry was like some sort of a miracle, like seeing Jesus in a grilled cheese sandwich or something. Eventually, she wiped her hand across her nose, snot clinging to the edge of her wrist. She pushed her hair into her face and shook her head, like she wanted to keep whatever it was to herself. But then she said, “A few months ago I was leaving your house and Tommy was there and he asked if he could walk with me a bit . . .”

  She took a deep breath before continuing, her voice nearly mechanical, as if she had gone over this story a hundred times in her head. “We were just walking and joking around about nothing, really, but then he grabbed my hand and said I was pretty.”

  The music stopped, leaving us with the light sound of Sarah’s laughter. Lola cringed. When the music started up again, she continued, her voice harder than before. “My mom was out on a date with some new loser, and Tommy had some . . .” She halted; her expression made it clear she didn’t want to tell me.

  “What, Lola? What did he have?”

  She cleared her throat. “Pot.”

  “But you didn’t, right?” Lola had been the president of our sixth-grade D.A.R.E. chapter, and the first person to make fun of anyone holding a cigarette, but I knew that didn’t mean a thing if a boy was factored into the equation.

  “God, Jess”—her voice rose defensively—“I said no, okay? Give me some credit. But he wanted to go, and you know I can’t stand being in that house alone, especially at night. It’s just so spooky without my dad there and all those empty rooms. So I asked him to come in and just hang out.”