Every Last Word

by Tamara Ireland Stone

  I pull the blanket off my head so I can see Sue’s face.

  “And it worked. So after that,” she continues, “Caroline came around when you needed her to. After your fights with the Eights. When you were nervous about following a group of strangers down a dark, narrow staircase. When you had to read on stage for the first time. She was there today, after you told your friends about AJ, right?”

  I mentally transport myself back to those moments, and then to all the others Sue didn’t mention. Whenever I was upset about something and needed to write, Caroline would be right there, waiting at her locker. We’d joke about it, like it was a coincidence. Then we’d go to the theater together.

  “Your mind found a solution—a pretty positive one, I might add—and the more it worked, the more real she became to you.” Sue reaches for her tea and takes a sip, watching me over her mug, like she’s giving me time to let it all sink in.

  “Has she been showing up a little less frequently?” she asks.

  Now that I think about it, she hasn’t been at her locker in the morning, not every day, like she used to be. I never see her between classes.

  “Over the past few weeks, I’ve really only seen her in Poet’s Corner.”

  It fits Sue’s theory. I’m always anxious about going down there during lunch. I’m afraid the Crazy Eights are going to follow me and find out about that place, and I’ll be the one who exposes the group and the room. It’ll be my fault. I’m always a wreck until that door bolts closed. Then I start to relax.

  “You read about a girl named Caroline over a year ago, and you thought you forgot all about her, but she stuck around in your subconscious. You gave her characteristics you have a hard time expressing. And she became that kind, caring voice you needed to hear.”

  All this information is making me feel better in the way concrete facts often do. That last bit even makes me feel a little relieved.

  Still, Sue’s talking about this whole thing like it all makes perfect sense, like it’s perfectly logical, but it doesn’t and it’s not. This whole thing is completely insane.

  “You can go ahead and say it, Sue. I’m crazy.”

  She’s quiet for a full minute, staring into the fountain and trying, I assume, to figure out how to deliver this news.

  “Crazy,” she finally says, her eyes still fixed on the water. “Do you know the dictionary’s definition of ‘crazy’?” I shake my head. “It means both ‘insane’ and ‘a bit out of the ordinary.’ That’s a pretty broad scope, don’t you think?”

  I nod.

  “Crazy is such a subjective word. I’d never use it to label anyone—certainly not you. Look, your brain functions differently from other brains, Sam. And because of the way your brain works, you got to know this wonderful person named Caroline. No one else had that privilege.”

  “Like your patient, Anthony…The guy who could hear colors.”

  “Exactly.”

  But I was getting better. Feeling normal.

  Two days ago, I wanted Sue to consider stepping down the meds and cutting back my therapy. Now that I’m having full conversations with imaginary people, I’m assuming the opposite is true. More meds. More therapy sessions. No more Caroline.

  “We need to be sure Caroline’s gone for good, right?” I say, sad about the diagnosis, but proud to beat Sue to the shrink-think.

  “Do you want her to go away?”

  “No.” Caroline felt as real to me as everyone else in Poet’s Corner. She’s only been gone for a few hours, but I’ve never missed anyone more. The idea of never seeing her again makes my whole body feel hollow.

  Tears start sliding down my cheeks again.

  “Remember Wednesday, when you listed all the things that made AJ so incredible?” Sue hands me another tissue. She’s giving me that look, the piercing one that makes me feel like she can see right into my soul. “Do the same for Caroline—not the girl you learned about today, but the girl you’ve come to know over the last few months—your friend, Caroline.”

  My mind starts racing and I feel that same sensation I do when I first step up on stage, my chest tightening, that uncomfortable tingling in my fingertips. Maybe that’s why I close my eyes.

  I begin counting, starting with my thumb. “She has this energy about her—I can’t explain it—but it’s kind of contagious. She listens to my poetry, even the really stupid stuff I should never share with anyone, and she never laughs at me. And she doesn’t just listen to the words I write, she hears what I’m really trying to say and helps me figure out how to express it. She seems to know when I need her.”

  I open my eyes and bite my lip because, yeah, the reason that one’s true is now pretty obvious.

  Sue brushes her fingers over her own eyelids, silently telling me to close mine again.

  I pick up where I left off, holding up my fifth finger. “She’s a little bit damaged, just like me. She doesn’t give a shit what people think of her. I love how she doesn’t wear makeup. I love her snarky T-shirts.” I feel a smile spread across my face. “She always makes me laugh, even when she isn’t trying to.”

  The tenth one pops to mind immediately, and I start to say it like it’s no big deal, but I find myself choking on my words.

  “That’s nine,” Sue says.

  Caroline told me to knock on that door. She never spoke for me, but she gave me the words to say. When AJ kicked me out of Poet’s Corner, she told me to fight my way back down there again. When I was terrified to read on stage, she came up behind me, rested her hand on my shoulder, and said, “Don’t think. Just go.” And I did. She was always there. And yet, she never was.

  “She made me brave,” I say.

  Sue reaches over and takes my hands, gripping them hard in hers. It strikes me how dainty but strong they are.

  “Good. Here’s what you do now. You take those parts of Caroline and honor the fact that they’re part of you. You start being kind to yourself, making decisions that are best for you, not best for everyone else. You look around at the people in your life, one by one, choosing to hold on to the ones who make you stronger and better, and letting go of the ones who don’t. I think that’s what Caroline wanted. She didn’t make you brave, Sam. You did that all on your own.”

  We sit there for a long time. I drink more tea. I listen to the water cycle through the fountain.

  “She’s not coming back, is she?” I ask.

  “I don’t think you need her anymore,” Sue says gently. “If she shows up again, tell me, but don’t panic. Let her do her job. She seems pretty good at it.”

  She’s not coming back.

  I keep thinking about Caroline and how she left today, and that leads me to a memory of AJ and how he had to be the one to tell me that my new best friend had been dead for eight years.

  I’m mortified. I didn’t want him to find out. Not now. Certainly not like this.

  “I didn’t want AJ to know about me,” I say.

  Sue takes a sip of her tea. “Are you sure about that?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Caroline could have left at any time, in a number of ways. She could have told you exactly who she was in the privacy of your room. She could have disappeared without ever saying anything at all. But the way she left, the things she said…”

  “What’s your point?”

  “You say you didn’t want AJ to know about you, but if you think about it, a big part of you did.”

  I didn’t wake up feeling brave on Saturday, and I don’t feel brave on Sunday either. I feel sad and confused, scared and lonely, missing Caroline more than ever, and wishing everyone would just leave me alone.

  Paige keeps knocking on my door to see if I want ice cream, and I can hear Mom on the other side of the door, telling her to give me my space. It’s good advice. I wish she’d take it herself, because she keeps checking on me, asking me if I want to talk, and I keep telling her I’m fine and sending her away.

  While I was rocking in the dirt last Friday even
ing, AJ came to my house looking for me. Instead, he found my mom. He told her what I’d said about Caroline, and that he was worried about me. And she politely thanked him, hid her surprise that I’d never told him about my OCD, and protected my secret like she always has. Then she sent him away, asking him to leave me alone for a few days so I could figure things out.

  I’m sure he was relieved. Every time I think about that look on his face when he first heard me say Caroline Madsen’s name, I want to be sick.

  To distract myself, I’ve been going through my poems, thinking about the ones Caroline helped me write. Not always, but sometimes, there was that moment at the end, when we finished a piece and read it aloud, and the words were so perfect, so fitting, they gave me chills. I’d feel the urge to hug her, but I never did, and now I wonder what would have happened if I had. Would I have felt her the same way I felt her hand on my shoulder? Or would she have ghosted right through my arms as my body discovered that my brain had been tricking me all along?

  I pick up my pen and tap it against my notebook, but I can’t write a poem. Not now. I don’t know what to say, not even to a blank sheet of paper that no one else will ever see. Besides, poetry isn’t going to help me piece all these emotions I’m feeling into a cohesive solution I can wrap my brain around.

  I’m scared of my mind’s power. I’m angry with Caroline for leaving. I’m confused about all her personality traits, struggling to make sense of the ones I fabricated and the ones that might have existed in a girl who committed suicide in 2007.

  I open my red notebook and label the left page “Caroline Madsen.” I label the right page “My Caroline.” And for the next two hours, I research everything I can find on the real one, listing it on the left, and detailing everything I know to be true about the one I created on the right.

  When I’m done, I see the similarities, but I also spot distinct differences. And I realize that Sue was right: I took a face in a photo and gave her a lot of traits that deep down, I wish I possessed.

  I bury my face in my pillow to block out the sunlight. I cry for a long time. And when I finally feel myself drifting off to sleep, I don’t fight it.

  I hear a knock on my bedroom door. “Sam?” Mom says quietly.

  “I’m sleeping,” I yell.

  “Sam, there’s someone here to see you.”

  I open my eyes and force myself to sit up. My room is dark. My T-shirt is tangled around me, my hair is matted against the side of my head, and I smell like sweat. My notebook is still splayed open across my comforter, and I slam it closed as Mom opens the door and steps inside.

  “Please,” I say, pointing dramatically at my face. “Tell him I don’t want to see him right now.”

  It’s true, but still, my chest feels a whole lot lighter. I knew he’d come over, even though my mom told him not to. I don’t want AJ to see me like this, but I’m dying for him to wrap his arms around me and kiss my forehead and tell me to stop thinking so hard. He’ll tell me to talk to him, and I will because all he has to do is say those words and my mouth seems to kick into gear before my brain can stop it. I start combing my fingers through my hair, hoping I can force it to comply with gravity.

  “It isn’t AJ, honey. It’s Hailey.”

  “Hailey.” Her name hits me like a punch in the gut. I haven’t seen Hailey or any of the Eights since I left the cafeteria last Friday, and none of them know what happened after I did. I’d practically forgotten about our fight. My whole face ignites with the thought, and I fall onto my bed and bury my face in my pillow.

  I can’t deal with this right now.

  “She looks pretty intent on coming upstairs,” Mom says as she sits on the edge of my bed. “She even brought flowers.”

  “Flowers? Why? She didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Mom starts rubbing my back. “Let her come in, Sam. Hear what she has to say. Who knows, maybe she’ll cheer you up.”

  “I don’t want to cheer up.” I want to see Caroline. I want her to not be dead so I can not be crazy.

  I can tell Mom’s not letting up, so I give her a “fine, whatever” as I climb out of bed. I stand in front of the full-length mirror, pulling myself together.

  “Hailey has always been my favorite,” Mom says as she leaves the room.

  A few minutes later, Hailey walks in with her head bowed low. “Hi, Samantha.” She hands me a bouquet of cheery-looking flowers.

  “Thanks. You didn’t need to do this.” I bring the bouquet to my nose. The scent reminds me of Sue’s garden, and I’m taken aback by the wave of sadness that passes over me when I think about sitting out there, talking about Caroline last Friday night.

  I miss her.

  “Are these from you? Or from all of you?”

  Hailey understands what I’m really asking, and I know the answer before she even says a word; I can tell by the way she bites her bottom lip and shuffles her foot on the carpet. She’s not here as the group’s representative.

  “Just me.” She glances around my room. “I’m so sorry. You stood up for me and I didn’t do the same for you. Twice.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “Wow…It’s been months since I was in your room. Why is that?” she asks, changing the subject.

  “I don’t know,” I say, but it’s not true. The last time she was here, we were preparing for the Valentine’s Day fundraiser and my floor was covered with red roses and pink ribbon and sappy love notes.

  “I’d forgotten how cozy it is in here. And the paint is really pretty.” She walks over to the collage on my wall, runs her fingertip along the words THE CRAZY 8S, and studies the photos. “Wow. Is this really us?” Hailey asks. “We were so sweet and happy and…we look like we genuinely liked each other.” She lets out a laugh. “I remember thinking I was the luckiest person in the world to be part of this group. When did we change?”

  “I don’t know. But I’m starting to think we can’t change back.”

  There’s a long pause. “Actually, I did stand up for you. It was a little late, but I hope it still counts.”

  “You did?”

  She nods. “And then I chased after you.”

  “What?” No. That welcome sense of relief pops like a balloon. Now my mind is racing as I step through everything that happened in the minutes after I left the Crazy Eights in the cafeteria. I went straight to my locker. Caroline was there. She touched my face and told me she’d heard everything. We talked. When she disappeared, I followed her. I yelled her name through the corridors.

  Oh, God. Hailey saw me talking to…nobody. She knows.

  “We all got in a huge fight after you left the cafeteria. I told Kaitlyn she owed you an apology, but you know her. Alexis sided with her, of course, even though she looked a little unsure about it.”

  What did you see?

  “And Olivia…” Hailey rolls her eyes. “She could have come with me to find you, but…well, she didn’t.”

  What. Did. You. See?

  I try to think of a way to ask her without really asking. “Why didn’t you tell me this on Friday?” I ask, my voice shaking.

  Hailey plops down on my bed and leans back on her hands. “I couldn’t find you,” she says.

  I sit next to her and let out a sigh of relief. “You couldn’t?”

  “No. I went straight to your locker, but you weren’t there.”

  “Huh,” I say.

  “You’re leaving us, aren’t you?” She folds her legs underneath her and sits up straight. “I wouldn’t blame you if you did. And you have a boyfriend now, so it would probably happen anyway, but…”

  “Hailey.” I hug her. She squeezes my shoulders so hard, it’s like she’s being pulled underwater and I’m the only thing she has to keep her afloat. “I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. But if I do leave, you can always come with me.”

  She pulls away, shaking her head. “I’m not sure I could do that.”

  I know what she’s thinking. Leaving the Eights changes everything. No more
lunches. No more concerts. No more sleepovers or parties. We wouldn’t be included in Kaitlyn’s grand plans for Junior Prom, or invited to stay at the hotel in the city afterward. The rest of our high school experience would be completely different from the one we expected.

  Or worse, the remaining Eights would give us the same treatment they gave Sarah. We’ll be shunned in the halls. They’ll start rumors about us, just in case the rest of our classmates consider feeling sorry for us or taking our side instead of theirs.

  “How can I help you at school tomorrow?” she asks.

  It might be the nicest thing she’s ever said to me, but I honestly don’t know how to answer her. I can’t face the Eights. I can’t go to Poet’s Corner. I’m too embarrassed to talk to AJ right now, and my heart can’t handle the idea of going to my locker multiple times throughout the day, looking for Caroline at every stop, knowing I won’t see her once. My eyes start to well up and I swallow a gulp of air.

  “Actually, you can do two things.” I walk over to my desk and grab my backpack. “You know my combo. Would you get all my books out of my locker and meet me at yours before first period tomorrow?”

  “All your books?” she asks.

  I nod. Hailey throws my backpack over her shoulder. “No problem. What’s the second favor?”

  “Will you please start calling me Sam?”

  I’m not sure I can get through the entire week without accidentally running into any of the Eights or the Poets, but since I couldn’t talk my mom into homeschooling me for the rest of the year, that’s the plan for now.

  I drive around the student lot a few times until I can park on a three. Then I cut the engine and stare at the digital clock, giving myself just enough time to make it to Hailey’s locker and then to class. When I arrive, Hailey hands me my overstuffed backpack, and I hug her before I take off for first period.