Pretend She's Here

by Luanne Rice

  That meant I had to go to Boston, to the best cardiac surgeon in New England.

  Dr. Cho wasn’t just in Boston—he was at Lizzie’s old hospital.

  Because it was an emergency, there was no time for good-byes to Carole and other friends. Casey had been in the OR waiting room with my family, waiting for news about my condition, when the decision was made to airlift me. They let him see me, but they made him wear scrubs, including a funny-looking cap and surgical mask.

  “Dr. Donoghue,” I said through an oxygen mask as he approached my gurney.

  “You’re not leaving,” he said.

  “I know, I refuse,” I said.

  “Well, it turns out you have to,” he said.

  “Stop,” I said. “It hurts to cry.”

  “I sent an audio file to your phone,” he said.

  My real cell phone—the one I hadn’t had the last two and a half months.

  “It’s a bunch of music I played, some I wrote,” he said, “for you to listen to while you get better.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “And I have an app for texting, so you’d better text me back.”

  “I will.”

  The pilot and medical staff who would take me on the air ambulance—that’s what they called the plane that would transport me to Boston—were ready, so they came to get me. Anne and Bea, and Iggy and Patrick, all with surgical masks on, started to lift my stretcher, to carry me into the ground ambulance. Casey helped, too. The five of them hoisted me.

  “When are you coming back?” Casey asked.

  “As soon as she gets better, she can make plans,” Anne said.

  “The minute the surgery’s over,” Bea said. “The second she’s ready, she’ll be in touch with you.”

  “When will that be?” Casey asked.

  “Tomorrow,” I said, through the oxygen mask. A doctor had slapped sensors on my chest and hooked me up to a heart monitor. A blood pressure cuff was inflating and making my bicep sore. A nurse checked my IV. Casey kissed my forehead, then the staff hustled me away. The ambulance sped to the airport. I was loaded onto a private jet, we took off and banked over the Maine woods, and that was the last I remembered until I woke up in Boston.

  The surgeries weren’t exactly a piece of cake, but they were a lot better because the OR staff let me wear headphones during all of them. Casey’s music took me completely away, to a place of peaceful feelings. Sometimes the anesthesia made me hallucinate. I’d see people, strangers and friends, and imaginary creatures, including an octopus with twenty legs and pink wings. I’d see Mrs. Porter’s green eyes, but not her face, and I’d scream, but no sound would come out. Once I dreamed of flying knives. They were aimed at my mother, but I had superpowers and was able to stop each silver blade before it hit her.

  Chloe often appeared to me through the haze of surgical drugs. I’d see her in that place, Casco Bay. I hated that she was locked up. Sometimes I’d forget I was in Boston and wonder if I was back in Royston. I would feel Chloe standing beside me. We were ice cold, just like all those mornings at the bus stop in the snow fort, sheltered from the wind. We’d both be stamping our feet to stay warm, listening for the school bus to come down Passamaquoddy Road, waiting in comfortable silence, almost like sisters.

  Almost.

  I wasn’t the same.

  Twenty-five days had passed since I escaped from the Porters, and I didn’t know who I was.

  Is this really where I live, this house in Black Hall, where I grew up? I found myself thinking. I love my family so much, more than ever. But I am different than I used to be.

  * * *

  The experience of being kidnapped, of being held captive for two months, changed me. No one, no matter how they try, could understand. For the first time in my life, I felt separate from my family. I actually started to wonder if I belonged.

  My first night home, I slept between my parents in their bed. Nearly every other since then, I slept in Bea’s bed. She was always careful, turning over gently, trying not to jostle me. My chest still hurt, as if the knife was still in there. It would have been easier to sleep alone, but I needed my sister’s closeness. Otherwise the nightmares were too bad. When I woke up, Bea would be right there, telling me everything was okay, no one would ever take me again, no one would ever kidnap her little sister, Emily, again. Ever.

  Bea said my name a lot, as if she could erase the fact that for two months I was supposed to be Lizzie.

  I always thanked her. What I didn’t say was that I didn’t feel like Emily anymore.

  * * *

  The only thing that soothed me was thinking about Casey. His long silky hair, his gaze, the feeling of his lips on mine, his sea-glass-colored eyes. I tried to remember every word we ever said to each other. The feeling of his arms around me when we flew down the toboggan hill, when he held me after Mrs. Porter stabbed me, until the paramedics came.

  Maybe I should have known that when I saw him at Royston Hospital, before they put me on the helicopter to Boston, it would be the last time—or it felt like the last time. He didn’t drive, and never would. I didn’t have my license yet. There were hundreds of miles between us.

  So I lived for our texts. Some of his were audio files he sent me. My favorites were the ones where he played music.

  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 shivered—it was the first song of his I’d heard, when Chloe and I had hidden, listening to him and the band playing in the woods. Even though it seemed crazy, it felt as if he had written the song for me, long before we’d met, even before we’d known each other existed.

  * * *

  One afternoon, lying on my bed in the room I shared with Bea, I got a new text from Casey.

  Casey: How are you?

  Me: Not sure.

  Casey: Why not?

  Me: Home doesn’t feel like home anymore.

  Casey: Then come back here.

  Me: Not sure the fam would be wild about that idea.

  Casey: They can come, too.

  I smiled.

  Then I heard footsteps in the hall. Seamus, our golden retriever, lay on the floor beside me and lifted his head to see who was coming. My stomach tightened, the way it did when I’d hear Mrs. Porter approaching. Noises did that to me—they triggered an avalanche of memories and set me on guard, always ready to defend myself.

  There was a knock on the door, and Patrick and Bea were standing there, looking so alike with their black hair, lightly freckled skin, and Atlantic Ocean–gray-blue eyes.

  “Let’s go,” Patrick said. “You need to get out of here.”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “A ride. The beach, Gillette Castle, anywhere but your room,” he said.

  “We’ll disguise you and spirit you past the reporters,” Bea said.

  “No disguise!” I said, louder than I intended, thinking of the months I’d spent wearing Lizzie’s hair, face, clothes.

  “Okay,” she said quickly.

  I wanted to jump up, be the same excited, enthusiastic younger sister who’d always followed Bea and Patrick anywhere. But it was as if the bed was a magnet and I was an iron bar: I couldn’t move. I didn’t move. Neither did Seamus. He barely left my side lately. He knew I needed him.

  “I don’t want to go out,” I said to my brother and sister.

  “You’ve been cooped up too long,” Bea said. “You’re depressed, Em.”

  “Can you drive me to Maine?” I blurted. “Then I’ll be undepressed.”

  “The scene of the crime? I don’t ever want to go back there again,” Bea said. “I can’t imagine why you would.”

  “Casey,” I said.

  “Well, of course,” she said. “Duh, I’m an idiot. Well, he’ll have to come visit you here.”

  “I get why you don’t want to be disguised,” Patrick said. “So we’ll sneak you ou
t the back door, into the car. You can duck down so the reporters won’t see you.”

  “My little celebrity sister,” Bea said.

  The press. The media. Exclusive interview. Celebrity. How could you get to be a celebrity for something you hadn’t done yourself? Getting kidnapped and stabbed? It seemed disgusting. Everywhere I went there were news trucks—at both hospitals, here at home in Black Hall, outside the doctor’s building, outside the therapist’s office. Some of the news trucks were like fancy mobile homes, with lounges for the reporters to relax in and studios for them to edit and transmit footage.

  They did whatever they could to get shots of me. Their cameras zoomed in, trying to see through our curtains. They caught me biting into a piece of toast, a glob of strawberry jam sticking to my chin. When I walked outside, from our side door to the car in the driveway, they followed my every step. They yelled my name.

  “Come on,” Patrick said, sitting beside me on the bed. “Please? I’m worried about you. You’re supposed to start school Monday, but how are you going to do that if it’s so hard even to take a ride with us?”

  “I’m not going back to school,” I said.

  Bea and Patrick just stared at me. They’d told me the journalists hovered just off school property, shouting questions at them. Reporters went to my older siblings’ colleges, to my dad’s job sites, and into the marsh to stalk my mother walking Seamus. Seamus, the greatest watchdog in the world, would apparently just wag his tail at them.

  All I wanted to do was stay right here on my bed. It was comfortable. It had a squishy pillow-top mattress. The color of my comforter was persimmon—somewhere between red and orange—warm and bright and cozy. My side of the room was painted Tuscan gold with dusky lavender window trim. I used dark ink to draw tendrils and vines of English ivy, the leaves outlined with real gold leaf, a technique I’d learned in set design class. I’d copied the colors and design from the lobby of the Nehantic Theater, where I’d acted in a play the summer of eighth grade; the colors were the opposite of Lizzie’s black-and-white and earth tones palette, and they used to make me feel so happy.

  “Look,” Patrick said finally. “I don’t want to pull age rank, but I’m about to. Seamus needs a walk. You need fresh air. Bea and I need coffee. I’ll carry you to the car if you really want me to.”

  “I’ll walk,” I said. I stood slowly, and my ribs screamed. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: My hair was two-tone. The bottom half was Lizzie black, and the top two inches were Emily reddish-blond. My eyebrows had finally grown in, and I thought they looked pale and boring without the kohl. And this fact weirded me out: I felt naked without the beauty mark. Now that I didn’t look like Lizzie anymore, I also didn’t look like myself.

  * * *

  Even though we tried to escape the press people, they spotted us leaving the house. Their shouts made me block my ears.

  Emily! Over here! How are you feeling? Do you hate the Porters? What was it like? Why didn’t you try to escape? Why didn’t you run away when you were at school? Will you testify against the Porters? Will you testify against Chloe?

  Their words rang through me as if I was a hollow bell. The word that hurt the most was Chloe. Bea, Patrick, and I herded Seamus into the station wagon, backed out of the driveway, and headed down Shore Road toward town. Patrick drove fast, backtracking down dirt roads to shake our pursuers. The news trucks must have not wanted to get their fancy tires all muddy, so they dropped away.

  The radio was on. Patrick sang loudly to Bon Iver’s “Flume,” and I felt this crazy fondness—my brothers always sang at the top of their lungs without knowing they were awful. We rounded the corner by the Congregational church and stopped at Black Hall Roasters. The café was on the first floor of a yellow Federal-style house with white columns. Bea and I stayed in the car, and Patrick ran in to get three black coffees. The Lonergans are hard-core; no milk or sugar for us.

  “What do you think will happen to Chloe?” Bea asked me, turning around in her seat.

  “I don’t want to talk about Chloe,” I said.

  “Was she really part of it?” Bea asked.

  “I told you! I really don’t want to talk about her!” I said, a little too loudly.

  Bea stared at me with an air of older-sister disappointment, letting me know that snapping was unacceptable.

  But her questions reverberated in my mind. Chloe had lured me into the Porters’ minivan right here, on this exact street. She had made me write that first email to my parents. She had reminded me about her mother and the knife. Yet I wouldn’t have gotten out of the basement without her.

  I stared out the window.

  “Em,” Bea began. There was silence while she struggled for the words. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Didn’t I what?”

  “Run when you could. Why didn’t you call us when they let you go to school?”

  “Gee,” I said, feeling sarcastic and miserable. “I don’t know, Bea. But what a good idea. Why didn’t I think of that? Why didn’t I just escape?” I glared at her. “Why didn’t you find me? Look harder? When I sent those emails, why didn’t you trace me?”

  “Emily. We tried. But the IP address came up as somewhere in Iceland, then Australia. The FBI said …”

  “I know,” I said, deflating, all the anger toward my sister going out of me, along with all the air in my lungs. Evil Mrs. Porter and her fake proxy server, her virtual private network. As Chloe had said, her mother had thought of everything.

  Patrick came out with the coffees. Seamus let out an impatient yelp. He was ready for his walk. We drove down to Old Granite Neck, parked in the lot, tried to ignore the reporters who pulled up next to us. Patrick opened the tailgate, and Seamus bounded out, running along the trail to Long Island Sound.

  Bea opened the back door, waited for me.

  I shook my head.

  “A walk on the beach,” she said. “You know how much you love that.”

  “Not today,” I said. “I’m just going to stay in the car and drink my coffee.”

  Bea stared at me for a few seconds. She didn’t follow Patrick and Seamus. She stayed with me, to protect me from the reporters. We sat in the car, not talking. I felt numb. I felt encased in a hard shell—me soft as a snail inside, everyone else on the outside. They couldn’t get to me, and I couldn’t get to them.

  I tried not to remember how it used to be, when my sister and I would be talking and laughing so fast and constantly, tripping over each other’s words. Since returning home, I’d barely had any conversations at all.

  * * *

  More weirdness:

  Being back in Black Hall, you’d think I’d want to text and see my old friends, my lifelong friends, catch up with them and get back to where we’d been before I was taken, right?

  We texted, but I’d see their names on my phone, and my heart would do nothing at all. No feeling of happiness.

  I lurked on Instagram and Facebook, not posting anything, scrolling back through the months to see what people had said about me. To my shock, Dan had posted all these photos of the Ghost Girl play, including a shot of us kissing.

  My girl Em, he’d written under one.

  Whattttt?

  Then a slew of girls from our class commented: Oh, poor Dan! My heart is with you. She WILL come home. You have to heal. Can I help?

  He didn’t reply to any of them, just posted another picture of me—he’d obviously taken it during rehearsal, me standing onstage pointing and looking kind of bossy: the director I was.

  Dan texted me, too.

  Hey its Dan u free for a sec to talk?

  This would have been my greatest dream a few months ago. And I was free, but I couldn’t talk. I just couldn’t.

  Sorry, busy, I wrote.

  Dan: R u well? Will u tell me?

  Me: Yeah, I’m fine.

  I didn’t want to be a jerk, but I didn’t have that much to say. I knew that what everyone—including Dan—really wanted was to talk abo
ut THE KIDNAPPING. To ask what it was like to be abducted. To delve into the creep factor, of me being forced to be Lizzie. My friends, like everyone in Black Hall, wanted to know why I didn’t bolt.

  But Casey and Carole got it.

  Carole: What r u doing?

  Me: Not sure. What’s the meaning of life?

  Carole: Ur so existential

  Me: That’s me. Changing my name to Françoise Sagan.

  Carole: Bonjour, Tristesse. Best depressed girl novel ever. U depressed?

  Me: Massively.

  Carole: Gee I wonder why

  Me: A mystery

  Carole: Could be fact u were held captive by lunatics? Just a thought.

  Me: Ur a genius

  Carole: *sigh* the cross I bear. Ok, gotta go. Class. Ms. LeBlanc.

  Me: What r u reading now?

  Carole: Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Ur my favorite pilgrim.

  Me: Ur mine.

  And then there was Casey.

  Did you really write that song for me? I asked after yet another new tune.

  Casey: I write them all for you.

  Me: Why?

  Casey: Because L.

  Me: L?

  Casey: You know what I mean.

  Me: Not really. What?

  Casey: It’s the first letter in a word.

  Me: How many other letters?

  Casey: I’ll let you take a guess on that.

  He didn’t give me an actual answer on that, but the next song was titled “Three Letters.” The first line of the song was:

  In case you’re wondering, they’re O-V-E.

  I had to admit, those two texts made everything much, much better for the next few days.

  * * *

  One cold January morning, my mother and I were the only ones at home—my dad was at work, Bea and Patrick at school. Mom and I were in the kitchen when the phone rang. My mom answered, listened to whoever was on the line with a frown on her face, then started to smile. When she hung up and came over to me at the kitchen table, she was beaming.