Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “Must have been cool,” Casey said.

  Mrs. Porter prodded me.

  “Was it cool, Lizzie?” she asked.

  “Uh, yes,” I said.

  “It was really great,” Casey said. “Your family moving in last year—we don’t exactly get a lot of new people around here. It’s a little rural.”

  “It’s just so scenic and beautiful,” Mrs. Porter said. “A great place to raise a family.”

  “That’s what my parents said when we moved here,” he said, looking straight at me. “But I was a lot younger than you and Chloe.”

  His eyes seemed to bore into me, but at the same time, they looked through and past me. Did the cloudiness mean his vision was impaired? But he’d walked over so easily, sure of himself, no cane. Still, there was something.

  “Everyone’s waiting to meet you,” Casey said. “Let me get my friends.”

  He started to walk away, and I was shaking. I couldn’t help myself—as if my hand had a life of its own, as if it knew this was my best chance for help, I reached out toward him. My fingers brushed his.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  Mrs. Porter clutched my upper arm so hard, I felt her fingernails through my thick jacket.

  I twisted, trying to wrench out of her grasp. But she wouldn’t let me. She held on tighter.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  Her grip dug into my bicep.

  “I’m fine. I’m just … happy to meet you.”

  “Yeah, me too. Let me get the others,” he said.

  “Another time,” Mrs. Porter said. “We have to get going. See you soon, Casey.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Well, see you at school, Lizzie.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Walking away, I glanced back at Casey. He hadn’t kept walking. He was looking in my direction with that spooky long gaze that seemed to see beyond what was actually visible.

  “Poor boy,” Mrs. Porter said. “Legally blind. His mother was very foolish and didn’t care for him properly.”

  “What did she do?” I asked.

  “Just another case of a bad mother,” she said. “Like yours. Not like me, that’s for sure. I would kill for my children.”

  A chill shuddered down my spine, and I stared into her sparkling emerald eyes.

  “Now, you weren’t going to say anything to him, were you?” Mrs. Porter asked.

  “No, of course not.”

  “Why did you grab for his hand?”

  “I didn’t,” I said.

  “You little liar, I saw you! And I’ll tell you—he can see, but not well enough to get a license. He’s considered legally blind. He can’t drive you anywhere, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

  I shrugged, trying to convince her she was wrong, that I had no idea what she was talking about.

  She was wearing the red plaid wool jacket with big square pockets. Her smile went away, replaced by that hollow sorrow I’d seen the night she’d told me about her demons. And then as if it was the last thing she wanted to do, as if it gave her actual pain, she reached into one of the pockets and surreptitiously showed me the bone handle, the glint of silver blade.

  Suddenly the red of her jacket was the color of blood, my mother’s. The knife was the one I’d seen on FaceTime, the same as the one in my dreams: long, sharp, and jagged. There, in the midst of Jeb’s Olde Cider Mill, I stood frozen. My mind went stupid and numb again. I didn’t scream, I didn’t run. The picture in my mind made sure of that.

  Mrs. Porter and I climbed back into the car. Chloe and Mr. Porter were sipping cups of hot cider. Chloe opened a box of fudge and passed around the creamy walnut-studded squares. I didn’t take one.

  When we got back to the house, Mrs. Porter ripped off pieces of wax paper, and while she hovered over us, Chloe and I took turns arranging the meager leaves we’d picked up, shaving crimson, orange, and yellow crayons in swirling patterns, and pressing a second square of paper with a hot iron, creating the waxy stained glass windows Lizzie had always loved.

  Later, we peeled apples for a pie. Going through the motions, I sliced the apple skin into long red curls. I pasted them onto the pie, and when it baked, they turned golden brown. I wondered about the phrase legally blind. How, if a person could see, could they be considered any kind of blind?

  “This was a good day,” Mrs. Porter said, pulling Chloe and me close in a hug. “I’m so happy we’re all together.”

  “Yeah, it’s great,” Chloe said, giving me a look as if it was anything but.

  “One thing,” Mrs. Porter said to me, peering at my face.

  “What?”

  “You really need to shape your eyebrows. Lizzie’s were always perfect. In fact, I’ll do it for you. Let’s get the tweezers.”

  “No, I can,” I said quickly.

  “Okay,” she said. “Get the arch right. Do it before I see you tomorrow.”

  That night we sat in the living room watching TV. The news came on. No mention of me, no clips of my family. I thought: If I’d made a fuss at Jeb’s, begged Casey or someone else for help, Mrs. Porter would have sped away.

  She could have gotten to Black Hall in a few hours. If that had happened, this newscast could be very different. There would be a story of Mary Lonergan found murdered in the marsh, her throat slit and the cold, weedy tidewaters rising around her body.

  Mrs. Porter hadn’t had to say a word to me. She’d only had to show me the barest glimpse of that knife.

  I was becoming like a dog so used to being beaten its owner had only to raise a hand, a rolled-up newspaper, to send it cowering into the corner.

  This was mine. This middle seat on the comfortable chintz-covered couch where I sat between Mrs. Porter and Chloe, the TV droning on, Mr. Porter across the room in his lounge chair, eating a second piece of pie.

  This was my corner.

  It’s terrible when your eyebrows get messed up. It’s not as bad as getting kidnapped, of course, I reminded myself, with a twisted smile.

  My approach to makeup and grooming was always less is more. I was more natural than Lizzie. She studied YouTube for the technique, and she had these expensive Tweezerman bling slant tweezers that felt bizarre in my hand. That night, I stood at the bathroom mirror and went at it. I made one mistake, and compounded it by keeping on. I wound up leaving myself with these scrawny little crooked lines of eyebrows.

  I fell asleep in despair. Being kidnapped and kept in a dungeon was surreal, and being forced to have my friend’s eyebrows tripled the nightmare. The next morning, I checked the mirror—they were worse than I’d thought.

  I stepped into the shower and turned the water as hot as I could stand, feeling it almost burn my scalp. I kept touching my eyebrows. Horrible. The smell of Lizzie’s shampoo had started to make me sick. I shouldn’t be using it—she should. She should still be alive, filling her spot in the family. Fury had replaced my grief.

  “You did this, Lizzie,” I shrieked into the water. “Why did you leave? Why didn’t you fight harder? Why can’t you be alive? I hate you. I hate your eyebrows.”

  I wanted to hear her answer me back, to be outraged, then to tease me, to tell me I was being a loser and a jerk and the worst eyebrow plucker in the world. I wished so hard to hear her voice, that laughing lilt as she agreed with me about her mother.

  “Your father, though,” I said. “What’s up with him? He can’t stand having me here, I can tell.”

  Idiot, what do you expect? Lizzie would have asked. You’re not me.

  I dried myself off with her towel. As disgusted as I’d felt at her shampoo, the touch of the terrycloth comforted me. The weird thing was, it had been so easy to feel Lizzie with me back home in Black Hall, when I’d walk along talking to her. Since being forced into her family, I’d barely sensed her presence.

  But right now, I pretended my best friend was here—she was out in the bedroom while I was drying my hair. We’d pick out the clothes we wanted to wear and head to our favorite spot on Main St
reet for chai lattes. She’d get pumpkin because she loved pumpkin everything in the fall, and I’d get cinnamon.

  We’d go to school, study in our favorite out-of-the-way nook. It was on the second floor, called the Apiary because many years ago a science teacher had built a beehive directly into the wall. It was covered with glass so students could study at tables and watch the bees fly in and out of the brood chambers through a passage to the outdoors, where they’d build their honeycombs.

  Looking in the mirror I had that jolt—it wasn’t me staring back. It wasn’t even Lizzie. It was some freak. I felt like one of those bees trapped behind glass in our school apiary. The bathroom door was closed, the air steamy. I thought I heard someone in the bedroom; I froze, listening to footsteps. The closet opened and closed. Same with drawers. Someone was taking inventory, maybe searching for signs I was planning to escape, to fight back.

  Finally, silence.

  I stepped into the room, looked around. At first everything looked normal. I hadn’t yet made my bed, so the covers were rumpled. There was something dark red on the white sheet. I approached slowly, my heart pounding.

  It was a shoe.

  I’d know it anywhere: maroon suede, old laces that were slightly frayed, a leather sole that had recently been replaced. My love of quirky clothes had been inspired by my sisters, and before them, my mother. My mom usually wore this shoe and its mate with a tartan skirt and a brown leather bomber jacket. She loved to put together comfortable shoes and clothes in her own style, a combination of preppy and tough Irish girl, and this shoe was part of one of her favorite outfits.

  Inside the shoe was a note:

  I came into your room last night and saw what you did to your eyebrows. You have ruined yourself, you look nothing like Lizzie, and until they grow back, you are not leaving this room. Did I really need to remind you of what can happen? It was so easy to get this memento of your mother. So easy.

  My hands were shaking. My mother kept her shoes in her bedroom closet, on the second floor of our house. How had Mrs. Porter possibly gotten it? Had she attacked my mother, pulled it off her foot? Or had she somehow …

  My house key. It had been in the pocket of my army jacket the day they took me. Had Mrs. Porter found it? Would she have dared let herself into my house while my parents slept? I hated myself for letting her get to my key, but I prayed that she had done just that.

  The alternative was too much of a nightmare to even consider.

  Do you know how long it takes eyebrows to grow out?

  Basically forever.

  On the other hand, my roots had started to grow out. Chloe delivered a batch of black dye and told me her mother wanted me to touch them up. The dye was sticky and gross, smelled like chemicals, and made my scalp sting.

  Wasn’t I supposed to start school? Weren’t Casey and his friends expecting me? The teachers? What was Mrs. Porter telling them?

  She checked me every night. I’d hear her enter my room like a sleepwalker, drift over to my bed, stand there staring down at me.

  I pretended to be asleep.

  She didn’t speak. Sometimes I felt the spider’s touch of her fingernails on my eyebrows.

  She’d stay long enough to give me a pit in my stomach, and then she’d leave, closing the door softly behind her.

  I never closed my eyes after her visits.

  I would lie awake and imagine who I would text if I had my cell phone. What I would say, how I would describe my location, how I could get my whole family to charge in and rescue me.

  She still didn’t speak to me during the days, but she continued to enter my room at night. She did the same thing as before—hovering, touching my eyebrows, tracing them with her fingernail, peering at them to see if they had grown out—but with one change: She began whispering.

  “Lizzie, my baby.”

  “Lizzie, my little girl.”

  “I carried you in this body, you were part of me, I was part of you. Oh, the days before you were born. I tried to imagine what it would be like, this little creature living inside me, who would you be, how would we feel about each other?”

  “How could I have known that you would turn me into a different person entirely? I was one Virginia Porter before you, another after you were born. How can I ever go back? I only exist as your mother.”

  “Sweetie, you are forever my child, forever my baby girl.”

  Her words made me sick. Once, after she left, I tore into the bathroom and barely made it in time to retch into the toilet.

  It was Lizzie’s birthday.

  We had always celebrated together, because mine was two days later. But Lizzie had died on the day in between, so last year I hadn’t wanted to even think about it. My mother and Bea made me a cake on my day, but I refused to eat it.

  I figured it would be the same here. Lizzie’s family would want these days to pass quietly, especially considering I was in eyebrow exile. But I was wrong.

  A note was slipped under my door. Happy birthday! This is your special day! Come upstairs for breakfast so we can celebrate!

  I’d almost gotten used to the creepiness of having Mrs. Porter come into my room every night. I barely slept, waiting to hear the door latch click. I’d tense up, sensing her move around the room, coming to stand over my bed. I’d feel her looking down at me, studying me. I’d wait for her spider-silk touch. I’d hold my breath for that, pretending to be asleep.

  Now I looked in the mirror. My eyebrows still hadn’t grown out much. They were scrawny, with sparse reddish-blond hairs poking through the skin. But it was “my” birthday, and I suppose that outweighed Mrs. Porter’s need to wait until my eyebrows were Lizzie-ready once again.

  “Here she is, the birthday girl!” Mrs. Porter said when I emerged from the basement a few minutes later.

  “Happy birthday,” Chloe said, sitting at the table and barely looking up from her notebook. She was writing furiously—probably an essay due that day. She was notorious for doing her homework at the last minute.

  Mr. Porter seemed as numb as ever. He pointed at my spot at the table, which was piled high with wrapped presents.

  “Happy birthday, sweetie,” Mrs. Porter said, throwing her arms around me. “I’m making your favorite chocolate pancakes.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Yummy, yummy,” she said, bustling back to the stove. She served me a plate of pancakes with smiley faces made from M&M’s—just as she’d always made for Lizzie. She drizzled them with fresh maple syrup. But before I could take a bite, she handed me a small, unwrapped purple velvet box.

  “It’s a tradition, as you know,” she said. “One present before first bite. Go ahead, open it.”

  I did. There inside was a necklace. A finely wrought gold anchor hung from a delicate chain. The sight of it made my hands shake.

  “A family heirloom,” Chloe said. “Lucky you.”

  “Stop the sarcasm!” Mr. Porter said.

  “Let me help you, sweetie,” Mrs. Porter said. Very gently she pushed my long hair off the back of my neck, clicked the tiny clasp. I felt the anchor dangle against my skin, against my collarbone. “How lovely, how beautiful. May it always anchor you in the safe harbor of our family. Do you love it?”

  “Yes,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “Okay, eat that breakfast before it gets cold!” she said. “And look at these cards—some of your friends wrote to us, remembering your special day.”

  I forced myself to take one bite, then another. The pancakes tasted like sawdust. The syrup tasted so sweet I thought I might get sick. I glanced at the cards. One was a sympathy card from Jeff—not written to Lizzie, of course, but to her parents. I still think of her every day, he’d written. And I always will, for the rest of my life.

  I believed that was true.

  After the pancakes were gone, Chloe pushed her chair back, and I took that as a signal.

  “May I be excused, too?” I asked.

  “Yes, sweetie. We’ll save the rest of your p
resents for tonight.”

  “Great,” I said.

  Chloe headed out to wait for the school bus, and I went downstairs to my room. I stared at myself in the mirror again. I held the gold anchor lightly in my fingers, fought the urge to rip the chain off my neck.

  The last time I had seen this necklace was on Lizzie, the day before she died. It had glimmered gold against her ashen skin. She had worn it for as long as I’d known her, a gift from Mame, brought back from one of her romantic travels. Other than the silver ring Jeff had given her, it had been Lizzie’s favorite thing—a reminder of her grandmother, of the fact that the world was so big, that there were other places than right here.

  I had figured the Porters had buried her wearing it. She would have wanted that. She had once told me she’d never take it off. It was bad enough she couldn’t wear Jeff’s ring. She had made him take it from her finger and place it on a chain around his neck, right after the ceremony by her hospital bed, the day before she died. She’d known her parents would have freaked out to see a wedding ring.

  And now, staring at myself—a girl with black hair and green eyes, wearing the gold anchor that had once belonged to a beloved grandmother, bought in some faraway port—I saw not Emily Lonergan but Lizzie Porter. I looked at that girl standing there and knew she-I-she was becoming someone else.

  * * *

  After school, Chloe came downstairs to find me.

  I was lying on the bed with my notebook open. I wanted to write, but I felt stuck. My insides were churning. I couldn’t find the inspiration that had always found me—I’d never had to go looking before. Without writing, without being able to create characters who expressed their feelings (that were really mine), I felt like a cove jammed with debris—fallen trees, sunken boats.

  “Come on,” Chloe said. “Let’s go out.”

  “‘Out’?” I asked. It sounded like a foreign word.

  She nodded and held out her hand. I wouldn’t take it, but I followed her up the stairs. The parents were nowhere to be seen. We walked out the back door, onto a narrow trail that led into thick woods, the trees bare of leaves. The afternoon was warm with ripples of a chilly breeze slicing through the sunlight. I heard a brook rushing, then saw the thread of silver water spilling over rocks.