When the Truth Unravels

by RuthAnne Snow

  For the first time in months, Elin’s room was clean, her bed perfectly made. I glanced around, as though she might be hiding somewhere. Did she go to the lodge with her parents?

  I spotted my copy of Frankenstein on her nightstand, right beside the lamp where I’d left it, and heaved a sigh of relief. I did not want to go buy a new copy. I crossed the room, picking it up and thumbing absently through the pages.

  Then I saw a folded piece of paper on Elin’s pillow, labelled Aron, Cat, Mom, and Dad.

  A chill washed over me, and without knowing why, even though it was none of my business, I reached over and unfolded the paper.

  I’m sorry. I love you so much. Please don’t ask why.

  “Oh my God.” I turned in a circle, panicked. Where was Elin?

  The sound of running water came from Elin’s bathroom.

  I dropped the paper and my book.

  The door opened. I opened the door.

  Elin was in the bathtub.

  Elin’s mouth and nose were under the water.

  I ran to her side, slipping on the bathmat, which was soaked through, and banged my knee against the side of the tub. One of the candles on the edge of the tub toppled into the water, and for a second, I thought, Fire! but the water put it out.

  I reached into the water, turning my white sweater pink, and slid my arms under Elin’s armpits. She was heavier than I expected, slippery as a fish, and she hit the tile floor with a wet slap as I fell backward and cracked my head against the knob on the cupboard under the sink. My scalp stung.

  Her arm was oozing blood.

  I reach for my waist, but I hadn’t worn a belt that day, so I turned to the drawers and yanked the first one open so hard it came off its hinges, scattering bobbypins and nail polish bottles everywhere. Elin’s flatiron. I pulled it out and wrapped the cord around Elin’s arm as tight as I could and pressed one hand against her bleeding wrist as I fumbled for my phone in my back pocket.

  “911, what is your emergency?”

  “My friend, she tried to kill herself. Hurry, you need to come.” My voice was not mine.

  “What is your address?”

  My mind went blank. The Angstroms have lived one street over and two blocks up from my family my entire life—had I ever known their address? “I’ve got to call you back,” I blurted, hanging up.

  I called my dad. “Jen, you better be home in twenty minutes,” he said when he picked up, sounding annoyed.

  “Dad, where do the Angstroms live?” I gasped, and now my voice sounded like mine.

  “What?”

  I started to cry. I couldn’t believe I wasn’t already crying. “Where do the Angstroms live?” I sobbed, pressing my hands against Elin’s wrist. “The 911 lady needs to know their address.”

  I heard nothing for one second. “Are you at the Angstroms’?” my dad asked, his voice flat and calm.

  “Yes!”

  “Your mother will call 911 and tell them the address. What’s wrong?”

  I told him and I heard the ding-ding-ding of him climbing in his car, the growl of the revving engine. He told me to stay calm and he would be right there. His voice in my ear was even, telling me to check for Elin’s pulse, telling me he was a block away, telling me not to worry because Mom had called, asking if Elin had a pulse and telling me it was good that I could find it, asking if I could remember anything from my CPR class, it’s okay that I couldn’t, just stay calm, he was outside and coming through the door, and then I heard him running and shouting my name over the phone, his voice echoing through the house.

  “I’m here!” I screamed, and my dad came through the door.

  My dad hit his knees next to Elin, next to me. “Move, Jenny,” he said, and he hadn’t called me Jenny in years. “Other side.” There wasn’t enough room for him to kneel down between Elin and the cupboards.

  I scrambled to the other side as my dad checked for Elin’s pulse. Her face was white, her hair plastered to her cheeks. He tilted her head back and checked her airway. How did I forget that step? So stupid.

  My dad reached over, gripping my shoulder. “You’re going to do the compressions,” he said, his eyes staring into mine, and for some reason him telling me to do them instead of asking me helped me remember how it was supposed to work.

  “Her arm,” I said weakly, knitting my fingers together over Elin’s chest, pressing my palms over her chest. Doctor or not, she would be so embarrassed if she knew my dad was seeing her naked.

  “It will be fine,” he says. “We’ve got this, okay? You and me.”

  I leaned over Elin, my arms straight, counting out loud. I heard a crack and my dad leaned over, his hand under Elin’s neck, blowing into her mouth on my count. Her chest rose. I repeated those actions for I didn’t know how long, and then my arms got weak and my elbows started to bend and I knew I wasn’t doing it right anymore and my dad said It’s fine, Jen, they will be here soon and then my dad was doing the compressions himself and leaning over to blow into Elin’s mouth and I wasn’t helping at all.

  I leaned back and stared at my dad. I felt so fucking stupid. Captain Von Trapp. Ket calls my dad Captain Von Trapp because his posture is so straight and his hair is always perfect, but he didn’t look like Captain Von Trapp anymore. He was starting to panic, and wasn’t it a bad sign when a surgeon starts to panic?

  I heard footsteps in the hall. “Paramedics!” someone shouted, and my dad and I yelled, “In here!” at the same time.

  My jeans were clinging to my skin. I looked down. The faucet was still running, the tub overflowing. I was sitting in a puddle of Elin’s watery blood. I should change. Elin would have let me borrow a pair of her pants, she would understand that I didn’t want to leave the house in bloody jeans.

  My dad pulled me to my feet and me out of the bathroom, giving the paramedics room to work, pulled me down the hall to where my mother was waiting, her face tight and white, and she wrapped her arms around me so tight it hurt, not a hug, a vice.

  “What were you doing here, what were you doing here?” she kept whispering into my hair, and my dad wrapped his arms around both of us and I heard him start to sob.

  I blinked, staring over my mom’s shoulder through the open front door at the ambulance parked at the curb, red and blue lights flashing. “Prom committee went late,” I said.

  47

  Elin Angstrom

  April 19, 2:00 AM

  Dr. S told Elin to talk about herself in the third person whenever she found talking about her feelings too difficult. If talking was too hard, she should write it.

  Once upon a time, a girl with no feelings but sad tried to escape her life. She was rescued at the last moment and sent to a white castle. When she returned to her old life, she found that she no longer wanted to leave—but she still wasn’t happy, either.

  She didn’t know if she’d ever be happy again.

  Cheesy, right?

  The third person idea was bullshit.

  “Hey!”

  I sat up, setting my book down. I pushed off my blanket and crawled over to the window, peeking down into the yard.

  Rosie, Ket, and Jenna stared up at me, all wearing identical expressions of annoyance.

  “Do you know how long we looked for you?” Rosie hissed.

  “Young lady,” added Ket, hands on her hips. Even with a scowl on her face, she couldn’t resist making a joke.

  “I texted you,” I said, puzzled. “Jenna should have gotten it.”

  “Seriously?” Jenna snapped, grabbing onto the rungs of the ladder. “That text told us nothing, Elin.” She began climbing, stumbling a bit as she stepped on the hem of her skirt. I reached out to help her into the treehouse.

  One by one, Jenna, Ket, and Rosie crammed into the tree house. All four of us sitting on the wooden, slatted floor, Jenna knee-to-knee with me and Rosie, Ket tucking her legs neatly underneath herself by the entrance. I shared my blankets around and we spread them over ourselves as much as we could, Jenna’s skirt doi
ng its poofy part to keep everyone warm. I moved the camping lantern to the center of our circle.

  “So,” I said, a grin spreading over my face. “How was the rest of the dance?”

  “Too soon,” Ket said, scowling.

  “Sorry,” I said, widening my grin. “I know it’s not funny.”

  “It really, really isn’t,” Jenna muttered.

  Rosie was looking around the treehouse. “How long has it been since we were in here?” she said softly, almost reverently.

  Ket put her hand on the window sill, looking around. “Jeez. Years, for sure.”

  “I remember it being bigger,” Rosie said.

  “We were smaller,” Ket countered.

  My parents had the treehouse built for me when I was eight. Jenna and I would spend hours up here after school and all summer long; we had filled it with old throw pillows so the floor wasn’t so hard. I’d save my allowance and buy things to make it nicer. A shelf to house our model horses. An antique birdcage. A sachet of potpourri that I hung from the ceiling with a ribbon, thinking it made the place homey. After we became friends with Rosie, Ket, and Teddy, the treehouse became filled with books and comics. Jenna brought over an old Igloo cooler and we’d fill it with ice and glass bottles of soda—because glass bottles just seemed more special.

  The five of us would hang out for hours, laying on our backs, our feet propped up on the window sills. We’d talk about the adventures we’d have after high school. Jenna knew she wanted to go to Princeton, like her dad, and work for an international philanthropy. She wanted to get married and have two kids and a pool in the backyard. Rosie was going to move to some cool city and live in a lofted apartment over a Chinese restaurant, writing books, and only the four of us and Will would be allowed to visit, and she would only go see her parents when she wanted to. Teddy wanted to become a musician and tour the world and fly his grandparents out to see him. Ket changed her dream weekly—fashion designer, makeup artist for movie stars, a person who created floats for parades. She and Jenna had fought over whether that last one was even a real job.

  I never dreamed as big as they did. “Oh, I want to go to college, but I want to move back to Park City after. Get my own cat from a rescue. Live near my parents.” But none of them, not even Jenna, ever made fun of how simple my dream was.

  Eventually Ket and Teddy decided they wanted to paint the treehouse. My parents wanted it to stay white with blue trim on the outside, but gave us free reign to do what we wanted on the inside. We painted a midnight sky on the ceiling, mountains on the north and east sides, a lake on the south, a forest on the west, all under Ket’s directions. It stank like chemicals for weeks, but we thought it looked so cool. And then we all sort of lost interest, the way kids do after a big project.

  It still does look kind of cool.

  But Rosie was right.

  It did used to seem bigger.

  I stared at Rosie, suddenly realizing what was wrong with the picture. “Whose jacket are you wearing?” I asked, pointing at the overly large suit jacket she had on over her dress.

  Rosie glanced down, and I could have sworn she blushed in the shadows. “Umm …”

  Ket’s jaw dropped. “You dirty whore! Did you steal Fisher’s date?”

  “No!” Rosie said.

  “Then whose jacket is that?” Ket demanded.

  “Well … yeah, it’s Lincoln’s. I mean, FDR’s.”

  “You’re on a first-name basis with FDR?” squealed Ket.

  “Who is FDR?” Jenna and I said simultaneously.

  “Fisher’s date,” Rosie said at the same time Ket said, “Rosie’s new boyfriend.”

  I leaned against the wall of the treehouse, grinning. “Jeez. I ditch one dance and Rosie gets a boyfriend?”

  “He’s not—” Rosie began.

  “Ket and Teddy were holding hands on the ride here,” Jenna blurted.

  Rosie and I turned to her, eyes wide. Ket smacked Jenna, who smirked unrepentantly.

  “Umm. So I guess there’s something I need to tell you guys,” Ket began, in her signature everything is super fun voice. “I sooorta have a big crush on Teddy.”

  “No kidding,” Jenna said at the same time Rosie said, “Seriously? Teddy?”

  “What?” Ket said defensively to Rosie. “Just because you didn’t like him like that doesn’t mean that no one would.”

  “I know that,” Rosie said, leaning back in surprise. “I just … you never said anything. You tell me everything.”

  Ket shrugged, glancing down. “I figured you would come around to him. And then it would be weird that I liked him.”

  “It’s not weird,” Rosie assured her. “And I was never going to come around. He’s like my brother.”

  Jenna pursed her lips primly. “So. To recap the evening. Rosie broke into the city library and has evidently hooked up with Fisher’s date—”

  “Not a hook-up,” Rosie interrupted.

  “Ket, who was apparently this-close to making a sex tape with Vaughn Hollis, confessed her crush to Teddy, who, judging from the aforementioned hand-holding, received the information favorably.”

  “Yeah, he did,” Ket said, waggling her eyebrows suggestively.

  “Also, who did you go clubbing with?” Rosie interrupted, turning to me. “We found a bunch of creepy older dudes who said they saw you with some girl?”

  “What? Oh.” I shook my head. “Alex Kingston, from physics. I used her phone to text my phone. Why didn’t you just call her? I ran into her outside of school, her date was off puking and she was pissed. She said her sister could get us into this club, so I figured why not? I didn’t want to go back to the dance and I figured I’d meet up with you guys later.”

  “And you guys stole FDR’s car?” Ket asked, her eyebrows raised.

  “I didn’t think he’d care,” I said. “It’s not like I had to break into it. I had his keys and just beeped them until I found it. Was he mad?”

  Rosie threw her hands in the air. “I mean, not really, but is that actually the point?”

  “I mean, kinda,” I said, shrugging. “If he wasn’t mad, then it wasn’t really stealing.”

  “Dude, that is not how that works,” Ket said, smirking. “But at least you weren’t the only one breaking the law tonight.” She nudged Jenna, who sighed.

  “Right,” Jenna said, shaking her head ruefully. “Me. I committed many infractions, misdemeanors, and possibly a felony, the worst of which was promising Hannah Larson my senior party budget. I hereby swear I am never drinking again.”

  “Hallelujah,” said Ket.

  “Amen,” said Rosie.

  “And Elin, who was elected prom queen—you’re welcome, by the way—was in her clubhouse all along.”

  “I’m prom queen?” I said.

  “Congratulations,” Jenna said dryly. “Have I missed anything?”

  “How is Miles?” I asked.

  “Gorgeous, as always.” Jenna met my gaze for the first time in weeks and grinned.

  “I like how no one is congratulating me about the fact that I didn’t make a sex tape, but that I was willing to,” Ket complained.

  Rosie put her arm around Ket’s shoulders. “That really was the friend moment of the night.”

  “Why would Vaughn even want to make a sex tape?” I asked, puzzled. “I thought you said his ween was crooked.” I held up a pinkie finger to illustrate.

  “Don’t ask me to explain that boy’s thought processes,” Ket said, leaning her head on Rosie’s shoulder. “Maybe he was planning to work his angles.”

  “Also, why didn’t you just tell us that Vaughn was bullying you?” Rosie asked, playing with Ket’s hair. “We would have helped.”

  Ket shrugged. “It just seemed like something I had to solve on my own.”

  “That was dumb,” Rosie said.

  Jenna leaned her head against the wall. “I am so tired,” she said. “I did not get enough sleep at Fisher’s.”

  “Oh! I think we’re friends wit
h Fisher now,” Ket said suddenly. “Well. Maybe not Rosie, since she stole FDR.”

  “His name is Lincoln,” corrected Rosie.

  Ket shrugged. “I’m sticking with FDR.”

  “I’d like to note for the record that you didn’t deny stealing him,” Jenna remarked, eyes still closed.

  “Oh my gosh, I did not steal him,” Rosie said, crossing her arms over her chest.

  “Then why do you have his coat?” Ket asked, elbowing her in the ribs.

  “Because he’s a gentleman,” Rosie said defensively.

  We all stared at her—even Jenna sat up, and for a second there she had looked like she was about to fall asleep. “Did you really just have something positive to say about a guy who isn’t Teddy?” Ket said.

  Rosie huffed. “If I admit we made out a little, will you guys get off my back?”

  The three of us gasped simultaneously. “He’s so gorgeous,” I whispered. “Is he a good kisser?”

  “Are you guys going to start dating?” asked Jenna.

  “Rosie’s first kiss!” Ket squealed.

  Rosie frowned. “No, my first kiss was at Bear Lake in eighth grade.”

  “None of us believed that,” I assured her.

  “Not for a second,” Jenna added.

  Ket stretched her arms out in front of herself and then folded them behind her head. “Oh Rosie, I knew one day my whorish influence would rub off on you.”

  “Could all of you just shut up about it?” Rosie asked, glancing down. “Gosh, you’re making me feel defective.” “No,” I said. “I’m the one who is defective.”

  The light-hearted feeling in the treehouse evaporated. My friends glanced at each other—they’d been doing a lot of that lately—and then down.

  Looking anywhere but at me.

  I cleared my throat. “You know Will tried to talk to my parents about it. After,” I said finally.

  Rosie looked up. “Really?”

  “Yeah. Do you remember when we did Comparative Government homework at your house, a few days before?”

  “Of course,” Rosie said. “I couldn’t stop thinking about it. After.”

  I swallowed. “Well, you left for a minute to go grab something, and I asked Will to take better care of you. He didn’t get what I meant. I told him it was about Teddy and college and stuff. But later, obviously, he put it together.”