Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “You’ll see,” she said.

  “Do your parents know about this?”

  “I told them we were going for a walk. I didn’t say where. As long as we stay hidden, it’s okay. Mom’s tired of keeping you in the basement.”

  “How can you go along with them, Chloe?”

  We walked along in silence for a while, dead brown leaves crunching under our feet. Then she stopped short and wheeled around. Her face was bright red. Her green eyes sparkled with tears.

  “I don’t have a choice,” she said. “You must see that.”

  I couldn’t say a word in response. I used to think all people had choices, but over the last forty-two days, that belief had been wiped out. We kept walking, crossed the brook. My foot slipped on a wet, moss-slick stone, but I caught my balance.

  In the distance, beneath the sound of wind whistling through branches, I heard music. At first I thought it was Irish—it reminded me of the Celtic bands my family loved so much. But there was also a country twang. The sound was so sweet, it actually made my heart soar.

  The path climbed a hill, then rounded a bend. There in the clearing was a dilapidated hut—basically just a roof held up by stone pillars, no walls. A band of remarkably cool and raggedy-artistic-looking kids perched on milk cartons and bales of hay, playing instruments. And I knew them—or had seen them before: Casey Donoghue and the friends he’d been with at the cider mill.

  There was that ethereal-looking girl on a fiddle, her wavy strawberry blond hair cascading down her back, wearing a sheepskin vest over a long yellow-print dress; the dark-haired boy playing guitar, his head bent low in concentration as his fingers flew over the strings; the stocky boy with shaggy red hair and beard, wearing a T-shirt that said MERLEFEST and playing an odd-looking guitar with a large silver disc where the sound hole should have been; and Casey in his torn jeans and barn jacket, his turquoise eyes seeming to scan the sky, coaxing heart-piercing sounds from his mandolin.

  Drawn by the magical strains of music, I started walking out of the trees toward the hut. Chloe gripped my wrist.

  “We can listen, but we can’t talk to them,” she said.

  “Do you know them?” I asked.

  “Casey, of course. The others, no. They go to the high school; they’re older than me,” she said. “They’re a bluegrass band, and they practice here almost every day.”

  “What’s the name of the band?” I asked.

  “Sapphire Moon. I don’t know that much about them. They’re Lizzie’s age. Your age. I just like coming out here.”

  We sat on the ground, in tall, dry grass. I watched as Casey’s fingers danced over the mandolin strings, tickling and chopping them into a cool, thumping melody. The girl’s fiddle tugged at every emotion I’d ever known. One guitarist played a rhythmic bass line and the other made this haunting, sliding sound. All four voices harmonized, rising and combining, high and low, singing the song:

  Last night I dreamed of the mountain

  And our cottage in the dell,

  And I dreamed a love story,

  Of the girl I knew so well.

  I tapped my knee in time to the beat, feeling a combination of unbelievable bliss and sorrow. I heard true love in the lyrics, and the feeling resonated deep inside my chest. I wondered who I felt it for. I wished it was for a boy. I tried matching it to Dan Jenkins, but that didn’t feel right.

  Maybe it was for my family.

  For my sisters.

  For Lizzie.

  For myself—the girl I used to be.

  I had no clue. Instead I just listened to the band. Had one of them written the song, or was it a folk tune from long ago? I watched Casey play the mandolin. I stared at his beautiful, cloudy eyes and wondered exactly what he could see.

  “We’d better go home now,” Chloe whispered.

  “What happened to him?” I asked, reluctant to leave.

  “To who?”

  “Casey. His eyes?”

  “His mother had some kind of disease when she was pregnant. She was raised overseas and didn’t get the right vaccines as a kid, and he wound up with birth defects—vision problems. I don’t know, that’s what my mother says. Come on, let’s go. She’ll be waiting.”

  She: Mrs. Porter.

  As we headed back through the woods, I walked as slowly as possible, to hear the song to the end. Someone in the band began to play a harmonica, its crooked, keening sound adding an extra note of poignancy. Then Chloe and I rounded the bend, and the music was lost.

  We entered the house to the disgustingly sweet scent of a baking cake. I wished I was back in the woods, surrounded by the smell of fallen leaves and a clear-running brook, by a song that echoed the yearning in my heart.

  * * *

  That night the Porters sang “Happy Birthday” to me. The name on the cake was Lizzie. I blew out sixteen candles, even though I wouldn’t actually be that age for two more days.

  On the anniversary of Lizzie’s death, the day between the birthdays, Mrs. Porter came to my room while I was still asleep. Instead of creeping silently around, she shook me awake. When I sat up in bed, she drew my eyebrows on.

  She frowned, stroking the black pencil along the ridge of my brow, just beneath the scrawny over-plucked line.

  “It’s important you look like yourself,” she said. “Every day, but especially today.”

  “I miss her, too,” I finally said.

  “The point is to not miss her—but to be her. By next year, I hope you’ll understand that much better than you have so far. I need you to succeed. For now, you’re a disappointment. Get dressed.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “You’ll see.”

  * * *

  It was barely dawn, a thin line of orange shimmering through the trees. Back into the minivan, where Chloe and Mr. Porter waited for us, down the Porters’ thickly wooded driveway, onto the main road. Next thing I knew, we were on the highway, and by the time the sun came up, we were crossing the Connecticut state line.

  We were on the way to Black Hall to visit my grave. Well, Lizzie’s grave. I felt like two girls, half one, half the other. The Emily part of me had been fading away, but right now I was totally awake, on high alert. What if we’d come here so Mrs. Porter could do something terrible to my mother?

  This was my hometown. Whichever girl I was, I had lived here all my life. Each sight was equally familiar to Lizzie and to Emily. The graceful white church painted by so many famous artists—the American Impressionists who had come here over a hundred years ago, pulled by the beauty of the beaches and woodlands. I stared at the sea captains’ houses, the golden salt marsh.

  The salt marsh stabbed the Emily part of me in the heart—this was where Mrs. Porter had walked with my mother and Seamus and first shown me the knife. I stared out the car window, wondering if I’d see a woman who’d lost her daughter, walking her dog. But today the path was empty.

  We stopped at the Black Hall Garden Center. I waited in the minivan while the Porters shopped. Why didn’t I bolt? I was held in the back seat by invisible chains. I was frozen in place; if I didn’t move, my mother would be okay. We’d get through this. Summer flowers were long gone, replaced with rows of potted chrysanthemums. The shades were autumnal—maroon, burnt orange, vibrant yellow—and when Mr. Porter placed two large plants in the back of the minivan, they smelled dusty.

  The cemetery was set along the banks of Blackbird River, one of five rivers in our town. Sunlight glinted on the water. Wind in the branches sounded like the whispers of ghosts. It was late fall, and I remembered past All Hallows’ Eves, when my friends and I would visit the oldest graves, some from the 1600s. We would light candles and ask the dead to come forth.

  We hadn’t called these sessions séances, but that’s what they were. Lizzie and I had memorized the names on the most ancient headstones: Ada Lord, Matthias and Penitence Morgan, Charles and Letitia Griswold. We would sit cross-legged on the
ground, ask them how they had died, whom they had loved, what they missed most about life.

  We had asked them to tell us about the afterlife.

  We had never really gotten answers. That’s when I had written my play Ghost Girl. It was inspired by Ada Lord. The dates on her headstone, worn down by time and weather to spidery script, were 1698–1714. She had been sixteen when she’d died. Across the cemetery, in a grove of pine trees, was the grave of Timothy Lathrop, also dead at sixteen, but a hundred years later: 1814.

  My English teacher Mrs. Milne had loved the play, and had encouraged me to work with the theater club to produce it. And we did. I played Ada, and Dan Jenkins played Timothy. We met as ghosts. On nights of the full moon, we rose from our graves and were given our lives back until the moment of sunrise. In the last scene, we stood on the banks of the Blackbird River. The sky was lightening in the west. Lizzie worked the stage lights, to create a rose-gold glow. Timothy kissed Ada, and then he walked into the river and Ada returned to her grave.

  “When your first kiss is a stage kiss,” Lizzie had said afterward, teasing me.

  Now I wondered if it would be my only kiss.

  As we drove down the hilly dirt road through the cemetery, I closed my eyes and remembered the beautiful song I’d heard yesterday. I wasn’t sure how, but suddenly I knew Casey had written it. I imagined the feeling of his lips on mine. Was that weird, dreaming of a kiss, surrounded by death and mourning? But I couldn’t help it.

  Mr. Porter slammed on the brakes. The minivan screeched to a halt. I craned my neck to see what was happening. There was a crowd gathered around Lizzie’s grave. Kids from our class held candles. My heart stopped: They must have gotten time off from school, to remember Lizzie. Jeff stood by the headstone, his head bowed. I thought I caught a glimpse of Lizzie’s ring on the chain around his neck. I saw Tilly McCabe pushing her sister Roo in her wheelchair alongside Newton, Roo’s boyfriend. Dan was there, too, right next to Lauren Kingston. He had his arm around her waist. Gillian was in the past, and obviously so was I.

  Tilly spotted the van. She pointed at us, said something to the others, and they waved, started hurrying in our direction. When the group began to break toward us, I saw that it wasn’t only classmates: There were parents and teachers, too. There was my mother. There were Bea and Patrick. I nearly flew out of my skin.

  “Fix this situation, Ginnie. It will look strange if we drive away,” Mr. Porter said.

  “Back up, John,” Mrs. Porter said. “Chloe, run over and meet them, stop them from coming closer.”

  Chloe was out of the van like a shot, slamming the door behind her. I lurched across the seat, grabbed the door handle. My family was right there—this was my chance. I opened my mouth to yell for help, and Mrs. Porter wriggled between the two front seats and pulled my hair so hard my head smashed the headrest. She slapped my face.

  “Duck down,” Mr. Porter snapped at me. Mrs. Porter had now wriggled her way into the back seat beside me. Fingers still tangled in my hair, she tightened her grip, shaking my head, making every nerve in my scalp scream with pain. I didn’t care—I was going to get away from her.

  “You idiot,” she hissed. “You stupid girl. You really don’t get it? You don’t believe I’ll kill your mother here and now? I don’t care if everyone sees. It will take me ten seconds to get to her, and her life is over. You want that?”

  My body froze. Mrs. Porter violently tugged a fleece blanket from the pocket behind the driver’s seat and thrust it at me.

  “Cover yourself with this,” she said. She started tucking it over my head, but before it fell over my eyes, I saw her touch her jacket pocket, weighted down with the knife. That’s all it took. She didn’t have to say another word.

  I heard Tilly’s voice: “… a vigil for Emily and a memorial for Lizzie …” Then Bea—her voice breaking, making my heart crack in half: “I can’t take it—I just want Emily to come home …” Then my mother, her voice low and gravelly: “Ginnie, John, I’m so glad you’re here. Our two girls … here, take my candle. I’ll get another.”

  I screamed. Not out loud, but in my head. In my mind I tore out of the van, ran faster than I ever had in my life, grabbed my mother, and got her to safety. But Mrs. Porter was right there with her now, she’d stab my mother in the heart before I could take two steps.

  My body was so tense, a sheet of ice, I thought I’d shatter. Be okay, be okay, Mom. At least I knew the red shoe had come from her closet, not off her body.

  She’s going to kill you; she’s going to murder you.

  Was I talking to myself or my mother? I prayed to the cemetery ghosts to surround my family and protect them.

  My mother’s voice sounded strong, steady, not drunk. Now my fantasy changed, and I imagined my father yanking open the car door, rescuing me. I felt Patrick and Bea holding me tight, creating a shield between me and the Porters. Then I heard the sound of Mrs. Porter’s blade crunching through muscle and bones, saw my mother lying on the ground.

  Being in Black Hall felt unreal, a nightmare, full of nothing but threats and dangers. I checked out. I didn’t exist anymore, not in life as I used to know it. I was a lump on the minivan floor, and I merged with the blanket, and the gold anchor necklace of my dead best friend lay against my skin. A song filled my mind, a mantra, until I dissolved into the lyrics, the melody, the bright strum of a mandolin:

  Last night I dreamed of the mountain

  And our cottage in the dell,

  And I dreamed a love story,

  Of the girl I knew so well …

  The music entwined with my breath and my heartbeat, an invisible thread connecting me to someone, pulling me north. If I wasn’t here, if I did what the Porters wanted, my family would be safe. I listened to Casey’s music and stopped feeling the hot tears burning my cheeks.

  Emily’s birthday. My birthday. There was no cake, there were no presents.

  We were back in Maine. For the first time, I knew the name of the town where we lived. I’d seen the sign as we’d driven over the covered bridge spanning a stream: ROYSTON, POPULATION 656, WASHINGTON COUNTY.

  “It seems obvious they’ve accepted the story about you running away,” Mrs. Porter said to me that morning, as we sat side by side on the living room sofa. “That is very good. You’ll send another email soon, but not yet. It’s important you stay lost.”

  Emily Lonergan, lost girl. That could be a new play: Lost Girl. But who would write it? Lizzie wrote poetry. Emily had been the playwright. And whoever I was, or was becoming, I was still too stuck to let creativity, in whatever form, flow.

  “I’ve changed my mind about you,” Mrs. Porter said. “The trip to Black Hall proved that we can trust you.”

  I choked down shame and rage. I hated her for threatening my mother, and I hated myself for not screaming while my parents had been so close. All those brave saints whose names my siblings and I had chosen—I was nothing like any of them. I was a coward.

  “It’s time we enroll you in school,” she said.

  I couldn’t believe my ears. My heart began to thump. “Seriously?”

  “I’ve already talked to the high school, given them Lizzie’s records. In fact, if you hadn’t butchered your eyebrows, you would have started two weeks ago.”

  “But what about the last year?” I asked. “Lizzie wasn’t in school.” Because she was dead.

  “I’ve already told you, that day at the cider mill, don’t you listen? Pay attention. You’ve been in Europe, staying with your grandmother, attending school as an exchange student. We’ve laid the groundwork. There are rules, of course. We don’t talk about the past, and we don’t try to return to Black Hall.”

  “I know that.” I spoke quickly. I didn’t want to hear the words again; I didn’t want her to touch the knife pocket.

  “Then we’re clear, sweetie,” she said, hugging me to her. She wore floral perfume, but beneath the scent, I smelled something dead and swampy, as if she was rotting inside.

&n
bsp; “When can I start?” I asked.

  “A week from Monday,” she said. “After Thanksgiving break. That will give you a little more time to reflect on what you must do, how you must behave when out of the house. On your own.”

  I stared at her.

  “What do you say?” she asked.

  “Thank you,” I said. I’d gotten a birthday present after all. In nine more days, I’d be going to school again. I’d be out of the prison.

  “Go outside now,” she said. “Casey is on his porch. He’ll be in your class, and you have to be convincing as Lizzie. You’re going to have to explain why you haven’t started school since first meeting him.”

  “What will I tell him?”

  “That you picked up a virus while traveling. That it was contagious and very serious.” She paused. “He’ll accept that. His vision problem was caused by a virus his mother caught and could very well have prevented. Of course, the reason you got sick was that you were far away from me. I couldn’t do anything from here.”

  I nodded.

  “Remember: Be convincing. That is the only way this will work. In time, I won’t have to give you these little tests.”

  “Okay.”

  She patted my head.

  I walked slowly downstairs to change from my nightgown into Lizzie’s skinny jeans, black T-shirt, and fawn suede jacket. I pulled on her black ankle boots. They had silver chains, motorcycle-style, across the front. Checking the mirror, I still, as always, felt shocked to see myself. I felt weird in her clothes. I picked up the kohl pencil, darkened my reddish eyebrows to look Lizzie-black, made sure the beauty mark was drawn clearly in the exact right spot. I adjusted the anchor necklace around my throat. I made my way back upstairs. Mrs. Porter was loading the dishwasher. She pointed at the kitchen door, and I walked through.