“You’re too much,” I said, but slipped my arms through it.
“Perfect!” She waved her phone in the air. “Go explore. I’ll text you in a little bit.”
And like that, she was off as if we really were living our future and had simply made plans to meet after our classes. She headed down the path and the funny thing was, I could see our future happening for the first time in a long time. My future. All of this seemed more real than I could have ever imagined.
73
Across from the front gates was a small downtown area with a coffee shop, bookstore, post office, and bars lining the brick-paved road, so I headed toward that.
I ducked into the coffee shop first. I was starving. The doughnut felt like a lifetime ago. I ordered a Mediterranean bagel, with feta and fire-roasted red peppers. Foods that never existed in our house because Abby was such a boring eater.
“What do you want to drink?” the girl asked. She had thick dark curls and her nose was pierced. She chewed loudly on a piece of gum while she waited for my answer.
“How about a chai tea with almond milk,” I said; the combination sounded foreign and exotic.
“You got it. Grab a seat and someone will bring it out when we’re done.”
I picked a booth right next to the window so I could see outside. The sidewalk was full of students. They walked in groups or alone; some talked on their phones, while others moved their heads to whatever song was playing through their headphones. Life moved on, people passed by, and not one of them noticed me.
And for once, I wasn’t the sister of Abby the cross-country star or the girl whose sister disappeared. I didn’t have to try to be like my sister or live the life I thought she should be living.
Here, I was nobody.
And it felt amazing.
I paged through a newspaper that was on the table. The Westing Post. It said it was student-produced under the title and each article had the author’s name and graduation year on it. Many of them also included the author’s major, but not all of them. It was the ones that didn’t have the major that I read. These students wrote about rallies going on around campus, a project that was being done in a history class, and an opinion piece about the value of taking a public speaking course. I studied each of them. I tried to find hints of indecisiveness between the lines, but their words were strong and confident. Nothing in them told me they worried that they didn’t know what they wanted to do yet. They didn’t sound confused or lost. And maybe that wasn’t the case at all. Maybe instead, it was freeing. They had the whole world in front of them and a lifetime to decide what to do.
I glanced around the coffee shop and wondered how many people here knew what they wanted to do. And for those that did, when did they decide? Was it something their parents had forced on them? Did they follow in the footsteps of someone else? Did their teachers push them toward something? Or were they like me and never felt they had the chance to even think about it, because their lives were spent living in the shadow of others? How many of them looked deep inside of themselves and chose what they loved? And were they happy with their decision? It was impossible to tell, but maybe that was the way it was with a lot of things. If there was anything I’d learned in the last few months, it’s that you can never be certain of a single thing.
I finished my lunch and headed back to the front gate and the path Tessa had disappeared down earlier. I pretended I went here. There wasn’t a soul who knew my story, so I created my own. I walked along the path as if I belonged. Students passed on either side and not one of them noticed me. I followed a group of girls into a building and took a seat behind them in a large lecture hall. The seats began to fill and there must have been over a hundred people in one single class.
A boy slipped into the seat next to me.
I waited for him to call me out, to tell me I didn’t belong here, but instead, he pointed at his textbook.
“Did you do the reading last night?”
I shook my head and he nodded.
“Same here. I swear, Dr. Kohlings gives us more work than any of my other classes combined.”
“Tell me about it,” I agreed.
“Guess we’ll have to just wing it. I won’t tell if you won’t,” he said and winked at me.
“Deal,” I said as a bubble of nervous excitement began to form in my stomach. Was this boy flirting with me? A college student? But as quickly as the idea came, I pushed it back down. What would he think if he knew the truth about me and what I did to my own sister? And how was it fair that I was here and Abby wasn’t?
You’re allowed to live, I thought to myself, Tessa’s words a mantra. But if that was the truth, why was it so hard to believe it?
A man I presumed to be Dr. Kohlings walked into the room and began to talk about an experiment that must have been a part of last night’s reading. Something about rats being trained to do specific things in order to get a reward, even if it meant they’d harm themselves. Was that what it had been like with Tommy? Did I go after him even when if it would ruin everything? But what was the alternative? To be in the control group and never experience what it was I wanted? What would life have been like then? There was no right answer to this, only the consequences.
“So, I was wondering,” the boy next to me whispered when class was over. “Since we both didn’t do the homework, it might help us actually do the work if we had a way to remind each other.”
“Remind each other?” I asked.
“Like if you texted me to see if I got it done, or I could text you,” he talked fast and fidgeted.
“Are you asking me for my phone number?”
“Maybe . . . well, yeah,” he said. “If that’s okay. I mean, if you’re dating someone, it’s cool. Forget I said anything.”
“No, no, I’m most definitely not dating anyone,” I said.
“How about I give you mine,” he said, his eyes lighting up. “That way, if you don’t want to talk, no worries. I won’t make it awkward.”
I surrendered my phone to him and he typed in his number.
“I’m Dylan,” he said. “In case you want to know who you’re talking to.”
I paused. Abby’s name dangled on the tip of my tongue, because she’s the one who caught boys’ attention and got phone numbers. But that wasn’t who I was. That wasn’t who I was supposed to be. And maybe my world could be different.
“I’m Rhylee,” I said and smiled.
“Rhylee,” he repeated, and I liked the way my name sounded. “Hopefully, I’ll get to talk with you soon.”
He slipped out of the seats and followed the crowd out of the room. I stayed where I was until everyone was gone. The lecture hall stood empty. A room so big you could fit my graduating class in it, but I didn’t feel alone. In fact, for the first time in forever, I felt as if I actually belonged. And not because I was Abby’s sister, but because I was Rhylee.
74
Tessa didn’t ask me how my day went, so I didn’t say anything. I kept it deep inside of me so I wouldn’t lose the magic that the day had held. When she dropped me off at my house, I reached across the front seat and gave her a hug that was so much like the infamous hugs she always gave me.
“What’s that for?” she asked, surprised. She knew that wasn’t my usual style.
“Today,” I told her. “Thank you.”
“It was pretty great, wasn’t it?”
“The best,” I said as I got out of the car.
Tessa leaned out her window. “You’re pretty awesome, Rhylee. Don’t forget that.”
“I won’t,” I said and waved. Tessa blew me a kiss, and I laughed. The sound still felt unnatural, but I liked it.
I headed toward my house, where I lived surrounded by everything that was so familiar. But my view of the world had changed. I’d moved out of my sister’s shadow, if only for a minute, but it was that taste of freedom that I held on to and the thought that maybe one day I really could get out of here.
Today no one knew
my sister or what I did.
I could leave and live my own life.
I could be myself.
75
That evening I stayed away from the fields. Instead, I opened my desk drawer and pulled out the two pieces of the picture I had found in Abby’s notebook. I lined our faces back up next to each other and carefully placed a piece of tape down the middle to put them back together to make us whole.
The image was complete again, but you could still see the tears around the edges. It didn’t fit perfectly together, but did it ever? Did we ever? And did we need to?
Abby was my sister, and I loved her, but we still had our flaws. We both made mistakes, we both fought, we both resented part of each other, but the important thing is that we also loved each other.
“I miss you,” I whispered to the image. The pain of her loss consumed me. The void she had left behind was the size of the world.
“And I miss us,” I said. “I miss us so bad.”
But what did “us” mean?
I wasn’t exactly sure of the answer, but what I did understand was that Abby and I were never meant to be the same person and I needed to figure out how to stand on my own. I wasn’t my sister. I wasn’t defined by her. And I didn’t need to be. You could exist alongside a person without being that person. And maybe that could be enough.
76
The next morning, I’d just gotten out of the shower when I heard a rush of voices outside. I pulled back the window and saw everyone from the circle racing toward the woods.
The bathroom was hot with steam around me, and yet goose bumps appeared all over my skin.
I went to Abby’s room and looked at our field. The Miracle Seekers were frantic, most running toward the edge of the woods, their belongings scattered as if a tornado had blown through. Mom and Collin were in the middle of the group, the two of them moving with the same urgency toward whatever caused the commotion.
I threw on some clothes and got myself out of there as fast as I could.
“What’s going on?” I asked a neighbor who stood on the edge of the crowd.
“It’s your sister. We saw her. She was beyond the trees over there.”
“What are you talking about?” I turned to look where she pointed. I couldn’t spot Mom anymore. Had she gone into the cluster of trees that guarded the edge of the field?
“She’s here,” my neighbor said. “We saw her before she went into the woods.”
I searched the crowd again for Mom and instead found Collin. He was still in his Spider-Man pajamas and sat on Mary Grace, sobbing. As I got closer, I saw that his lip was bleeding. Mary Grace held a tissue against it as tears ran down Collin’s cheeks.
“What happened here? Is he okay?”
“He tripped and fell when everyone was running. It doesn’t look too serious; he’s a bit shaken up, though.”
“Where’s my mom? Why isn’t she with him?”
“She ran into the woods with the others.”
Anger flashed through me. How could Mom let this happen? Did she really think it was okay to leave Collin here alone?
“Hey, buddy.” I got down on his level. “You’re being really brave right now.”
He wrapped his arms around my neck and buried his face in my shoulder. I stroked his hair, trying to calm not only him but myself. This was ridiculous. The town was going mad and no one seemed to be the voice of reason.
Collin clung to me until his sobs turned into sniffles. He pulled his face away so he was facing me. “I saw her, Rhylee. She was here. Why did she run from me?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what’s going on.” I untangled myself from Collin and held out to him one of the tissues Mary Grace passed to me. “How about you keep this against your lip to stop the bleeding?”
He placed it against his lip and looked up, his eyes two giant watery orbs.
“Do you think you’re okay? Can you wait here so I can go and see if I can find Mom?”
He shook his head and his eyes filled back up with tears. “Don’t leave me.”
“How about you come with me?” I asked and bent down so he could climb onto my back, even though he was too old for that. The two of us hiked into the tress, Collin only letting go of his death grip around my neck to knock branches away from his face. We headed toward the voices.
We found everyone in the clearing where our bonfire had been the night Abby disappeared. The group didn’t seem as frantic as the one outside of the woods. Instead, they sat around the burned wood and ashes, most people on logs but some right on the ground. They faced outward, everyone’s back turned to the center.
As Collin and I stepped into the circle, a woman stood and shouted at us. “Oh my god, it’s Abby. She’s here!”
The group turned toward us. Collin climbed off my back and people rushed at me.
“Abby!” A woman said and sobbed.
A gray-haired woman moved toward me with her arms outstretched, as if she planned to embrace me. I took a few steps back and held out my hands to stop her, but she wrapped me into a hug. Her breath was hot on my neck.
People gathered around the two of us and reached out to touch me, as if they needed to make sure I was real. I broke free from them and tried to separate myself from the group.
“No, I’m Rhylee. Not Abby,” I said and shook my head. It didn’t even occur to me to try and pretend for them. I wasn’t Abby. I wasn’t.
A few stayed near me as if to make sure I was telling the truth, but most sat back down. I spotted Mom and stormed over to her.
“What are you doing here?” I yelled. I didn’t care who saw me or what kind of scene I caused. “You left Collin in the field sobbing. He fell and cut his lip. He was bleeding.”
Mom inspected his lip. “You’re okay now, right? I had to follow everyone.”
“It was your sister,” a man prompted, and I shot him a disgusted look.
“That was not my sister,” I said. “She’s not out here.”
“I don’t get it,” a woman yelled in frustration. “Why does Abby keep doing this to us? Doesn’t she understand how much we want to see her? That we’re waiting for her to return?”
“It not right,” another woman agreed. “Her running away from us. How can she hurt us like this?”
“Are you kidding me?” I shouted at the group as they argued about the unfairness of this all. “Abby isn’t doing this. You’re not seeing her. How can you be mad at someone who isn’t even here?”
I tried to make them understand what I was saying, but it fell on deaf ears. Mom had already tuned out, and her eyes scanned the woods again. In fact, everyone had gone back to looking for a ghost that seemed more real to them than the lives they’d forgotten about.
77
Dad was getting out of his car when we all came out of the woods. Collin stayed close to my side, unnerved by everything that had happened, but when he saw Dad, he broke out into a run toward him.
“Hey, buddy,” Dad said and hugged him. It wasn’t until Collin pulled back that Dad noticed the blood all over him. “What’s this blood from? Did something happen?”
Instead of responding, Collin broke out into sobs. He tried to tell Dad what had happened, but couldn’t get the words out.
“Is he okay?” Dad asked me, and I shrugged.
“Physically, yeah, but those people are out of control. They all ran into the woods thinking they saw Abby. Mom followed too and left Collin all alone. Mary Grace found him on the ground; he had fallen and cut his lip open. It was bleeding all over, and Mom wasn’t even here to take care of him.”
Collin stuck his bottom lip out for Dad to inspect and wiped his nose with his sleeve.
“They saw Abby in the woods,” he told Dad. “Why can’t I see her?”
“That wasn’t your sister. They made a mistake,” Dad told him as he scanned the crowd of people. He found Mom and gestured to her to come over.
“What a morning, huh?” she asked.
“You could look at
it that way,” Dad replied. “Rhylee said you left Collin behind to run off into the woods. Is that true?”
“There was an Abby sighting. I had to go check it out. Collin was fine,” Mom said.
“You call this fine?” Dad asked and pointed to Collin’s bloodied shirt. “Your son was hurt and left alone. This is where I draw the line. I let these people stay in our yard, I didn’t say a word when you went outside to join them. But this—this is too much. Collin is not to go out into the circles anymore.”
“He’s okay,” Mom said at the same time Collin spoke up.
“That’s not fair. I didn’t do anything wrong,” Collin said and another round of fresh tears began.
“That’s the way it’s going to be,” Dad told him and looked Mom straight in the eyes. “That’s the way you’re going to make sure it is. No more encouraging him.”
“If he wants to go outside—” Mom began, but Dad cut her off.
“Collin is not to hang out in them anymore. If that’s too hard for everyone to understand, I’ll make sure the circles simply get cut down, so it’s no longer a problem.”
“Will, the circles are good,” Mom insisted.
“I didn’t say you can’t go out there, but I don’t want my son out there. This isn’t up for debate.”
“This isn’t fair. I’m not hurting anyone. I should be allowed in the circles,” Collin argued.
“End of discussion,” Dad said. “Or those circles will be gone by tomorrow.”
Collin stormed away to the house and slammed the door so loud that we could hear it from where we stood across the yard.
“I meant what I said. I don’t want Collin spending time out here anymore,” Dad told Mom, but I wasn’t sure she heard. Her eyes were focused on the patch of trees where Abby had been spotted, and I was pretty sure she was lost again in a world where real and make-believe merged.
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A Void the Size of the World Page 21
