Far From You

by Tess Sharpe

  Forcing my thoughts away from the past and into the present is exactly what I need. I’ll never find Mina’s killer if I keep falling apart. Rachel’s right. I need a plan that involves a lot more than dousing Kyle in bear spray.

  “I have to start from scratch,” I say, grateful for Rachel’s reboot. “From the source. Mina was working on a story. I need to go to the Harper Beacon’s office and talk to her supervisor. If anyone knows what she was chasing, it’d be him.”

  “Okay, good. What else?”

  “I need to find her notes on the story. The police searched her computer and didn’t find anything, so that means they’ve got to be somewhere else. Maybe in a notebook. Her mom was always going through her room and reading her diary, so Mina hid stuff. I bet the police missed some of her hiding places.”

  “How are you going to get in her room to look?”

  I sigh. This is the part I’ve been avoiding. “I’m going to have to use Trev.”

  Rachel lets out a sympathetic hiss. “Ouch.”

  “There’s no other way to get into the house. If I asked him if I could search her room, he’d slam the door in my face. He doesn’t want to see me. But I have some of her things. I can put a box together, use it as my excuse to get in.”

  “Has he even talked to you since you got back?” Rachel asks. “When you were at Seaside, your letters said he wasn’t writing back to you.”

  I shrug. “He doesn’t believe me.”

  “Well, he should,” Rachel says hotly.

  “Rachel, why do you believe me?” I blurt out.

  She leans back in the seat. “Why shouldn’t I?”

  I shrug. “Sometimes I wonder, if you’d known me before…if you’d think I was lying, like everybody else does.”

  “Anyone who saw you in the middle of that road…” Rachel pauses, and then goes on. “Anyone who saw you the way I did that night, they’d understand you weren’t capable of coming up with a lie—you could barely talk. And then in the hospital…” She pauses again, and I know we’re both thinking about it. How I’d yelled and thrown things when the nurse tried to make me take off my bloody clothes. I can still feel the prick of the needle against my skin, the sedative moving through me as I begged, “No drugs, no drugs, no drugs,” when I really meant, “She’s dead, she’s dead, she’s dead.”

  “But you didn’t have to stick around. At the hospital, or after. I mean, you barely knew me.”

  “You went through something horrible,” Rachel says quietly. “And it isn’t fair that everyone blames you. Even if you had been buying drugs that night, it wouldn’t matter. The only person who’s guilty is the guy who pulled the trigger. And we’ll find him. I bet you. Ten whole dollars.”

  She smiles determinedly at me, daring me to smile back.

  I do.

  14

  ELEVEN MONTHS AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

  I don’t mean to steal the prescription pad.

  I really don’t. It never even crosses my mind until the Saturday I take Dad lunch at his office. It’s hot that summer, topping 110 some days, and I should be out at the lake or something, but I like to spend time with Dad. He does free teeth cleanings for kids on every fourth Saturday, so I usually grab some takeout to share on his lunch break.

  “Give me a second, sweetie?” he asks after one of his dental hygienists lets me into his office. “I’ve just got to check on some things. Then we can eat.”

  I set the bag of pastrami sandwiches on his desk, next to the burl wood clock that Mom got for him for one of their anniversaries.

  He closes his office door behind him, and I sit down in his swivel chair, wincing when it leans back too far.

  Dad’s desk is orderly, everything in its right place. There’s a picture of me and Mom, standing side by side, our shoulders nearly touching, framed in silver, and one of Dad on the sidelines, from before the accident, when he coached Mina’s and my soccer team. There’s a black-and-white one of me when I was eleven or twelve, my hair long and tucked behind my too-big ears. I’m smiling at something off camera, my eyes lowered, almost hopeful as my hand reaches out. For Mina, of course. Always for Mina. She’d been making faces at me while Dad took the picture. I remember how hard it was to not let my face scrunch with laughter.

  I brush my fingers across the top of Dad’s stash of pens, neatly grouped together by color. I pull open his top drawer. There’s a bunch of Post-its, color coded again, and underneath that…

  Prescription pads. A stack of them.

  And suddenly it’s all I can think about.

  I’d always have enough pills. I’d never have to worry. Never have to keep count, just in case the doctors noticed. It’d be so good. So right.

  The paper tickles my skin as I thumb through one of the pads like it’s a flip book. I’m giddy, almost high on the mere thought of it.

  I don’t plan on stealing them.

  But I do.

  I don’t even think about the trouble it could cause as I shove them in my purse.

  I’m too in love with the idea of more and numb and gone.

  15

  NOW (JUNE)

  When I hear the front door open, I think it’s Mom checking on me. She came home yesterday during lunch, and we sat across from each other at the kitchen table, silent as I picked at my food and she drank a cup of coffee, shuffling through legal briefs.

  I stop at the top of the stairs. I catch sight of him before he sees me, and I have a second, just a second, when I can hope.

  But then his eyes fix on me and the awkwardness sparks in the air, as it has every time since he found my stash and the triplicates I’d stolen from him.

  Dad isn’t disappointed in me like Mom is. He doesn’t have that mix of anger and fear that’s fueling her. Instead, he doesn’t know what to do or how to feel with me, and sometimes I think it’s worse, that he can’t decide between forgiving and blaming me.

  “Hi, Dad.”

  “Hello, Sophie.”

  I stay at the top of the stairs, hoping the distance will protect me. “Did you have a good trip?”

  “I did. How have things been? Have you settled in?”

  I want to tell him everything. How Trev looks at me like he’s a masochist and I’m the embodiment of pain. How Mom and I are stuck in this sick game of who’ll break first. How I should go out to Mina’s grave but I can’t, because I’m afraid if I do, it’ll make it so real that I’ll slip. I’ll fall down and never get up.

  Once upon a time, I’d been a daddy’s girl. I loved him wholly, preferred him to the point of cruelty. But that girl is gone. I rotted away what was left of her with pills and loss.

  I’m not the daughter he raised. I’m not the daughter my mother wanted.

  I’ve become something different, every parent’s nightmare: the drugs hidden in the bedroom, the lies, the call in the middle of the night, the police knocking on the door.

  Those are the things he remembers now. Not the time he took me to The Nutcracker, just him and me, and I’d been so scared of the Mouse King that I’d crawled into his lap and he’d promised to keep me safe. Or how he had tried to help Trev build me raised flower beds in the backyard, even though he kept slamming his fingers with the hammer. A dentist has no business hammering things, but he’d done it anyway.

  “Sophie?” Dad asks, his voice breaking me from my thoughts.

  “I’m sorry,” I say automatically. “It’s been fine. Things have been fine.”

  He stares at me longer than he should, and there are worry lines on his forehead I haven’t noticed before. My eyes flick to the gray at his temples. Is there more since I last saw him? I know what he’s thinking: Is she zoning out, or is she on something?

  I can’t bear it.

  Nine months. Three weeks. Three days.

 
“I was going out to my garden.” I gesture toward the backyard, feeling stupid.

  “I’ve got some work to do.” He hesitates. “I could do it out on the deck? If you’d like the company?”

  I almost say no, but then I think about those worry lines and the gray in his hair, what I’ve done to him. I shrug. “Sure.”

  We don’t speak for the hour we stay out in my garden. He just sits at the teak table on the deck and goes through his files while I dig and root rocks out of the soil.

  It feels like what I used to think safe was.

  I know better now.

  16

  NINE MONTHS AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

  For three weeks, Macy plays hardball: no phone, no computer, nothing until I start talking to the shrink she sends me to, until I follow the schedule Macy’s given me, until I finally admit that there’s something wrong.

  The only order I’ve obeyed is doing yoga with Pete. Pete’s nice; I like him. He’s quiet; he doesn’t pester me with questions, just helps me through the poses he’s shown me, the ones adjusted to my problem areas. That first week, I’d heard him on the phone, deep in conversation with my old physical therapist. The next morning, he’d dropped a mat on my bed and told me to meet him in the brick two-room studio in the backyard. The bamboo floors were cold underneath my bare feet, and Pete had some sort of cinnamon oil in a diffuser so it smelled like Christmas.

  I won’t admit it to Macy, but I like that hour every morning. After years of dulling all my senses with anything I could get my hands on, it’s weird to focus positively on my body. To pay attention to my breathing and the way my muscles stretch, to let my thoughts go, to push them away so I can feel—feel the air and movement and the way I can make my bad leg bend and make it do what I want for once.

  Sometimes I falter. Sometimes my leg or back wins.

  But sometimes I can go through an entire sun salutation without one mistake or wobble, and it feels so amazing to be in control, so singularly powerful, that tears track down my face and something close to relief surges through me.

  Pete never mentions the tears. When I’m done, we roll the mats up and head into the house, where Macy’s making breakfast. My cheeks are dry and I pretend it never happened.

  But the feeling, the memory, it lingers inside me. A spark waiting for enough fuel to spread.

  One night, when Macy’s off chasing down another idiot trying to jump bail, Pete knocks on my door. I’m allowed to keep it closed, but there’s no lock, something I’ve hated since I got here.

  Macy never knocks. She says I haven’t earned it.

  “Come in.”

  Pete holds up an envelope. “Something came for you.”

  “I thought the warden said no contact with the outside world.”

  “Just don’t rat me out.”

  “Seriously?” I can’t believe he’s going to give it to me. But he places the letter at the foot of my bed and ambles out of the room, whistling.

  “Pete,” I call. He turns and grins. His front teeth are a little crooked, and there are acne scars pitting his cheeks, but his eyes are big and green and sweet, and I suddenly understand why Macy looks at him like he’s the best thing she’s ever seen. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” he says, his smile wide and innocent.

  I look down at the letter. My name, above Macy’s address, is written in loopy purple letters.

  Mina’s handwriting.

  I tear the envelope open, almost ripping the letter in my hurry. I unfold the notebook paper, my heart pounding like I’ve been holding a pose for too long. The words are written in pencil, which is weird, because she’s stockpiled purple pens for as long as I can remember.

  Sophie—

  I know you’re still mad. I’m not sure you’ll even read this. But if you do…

  Please get better. If you can’t do it for yourself, do it for me.

  Mina

  I press my fingers under the smudge the word me is written over, trying to make out the word she’d erased. I trace two letters, the ­shadowy, barely there curls of a U and an S she didn’t quite erase: do it for us.

  When Aunt Macy gets home, peeking into my room without knocking, I’m still sitting there with the letter in my lap.

  “Sophie?”

  When I don’t answer, she walks in and sits next to me. I keep my eyes on the letter. I’m not strong enough to look at her.

  “You’re right. I’m a drug addict. I have a problem.”

  Macy lets out a long breath, an almost soundless exhalation of relief. “Okay,” she says. “Now look me in the eye and say it.”

  When I don’t, she reaches over and grabs my hand, squeezing hard. “You’ll get there.”

  I believed her. I put in the work. I followed the rules from then on, talking to the therapist, starting up my mental calendar, making days turn into weeks and then months. I struggled and fought and won.

  I wanted to make myself better. For Mina. For me. For what I thought might be waiting when I got home.

  But this is the thing about struggling out of that hole you’ve put yourself in: the higher you climb, the farther you have to fall.

  17

  NOW (JUNE)

  I call Trev three times over the next week, but he won’t answer. After the third unanswered call, I switch gears and go by the Harper Beacon office, only to be told that Tom Wells, the head of the internship program, is out of town.

  With my parents still watching me so closely, I spend most of my days in my garden, among the redwood beds Trev built for me.

  After the crash, Mina had insisted I needed a hobby and presented me with a preapproved list. I’d chosen gardening to get her off my back, but then, as usual, she’d taken it to extremes. She’d shown up the next day, Trev in tow with lumber, hammer and nails, bags of soil, a box of seedlings, and foam knee pads so I wouldn’t hurt myself.

  I like the feel of dirt between my fingers, nursing delicate plants into strength and bloom. I like watching things flourish, like the swath of colors I can grow, bright and alive. It hurts to get up and down, but the pain’s worth the effort. At least I have something pretty to show for it.

  After a full day of weeding, removing rocks and clay soil from the neglected beds, I spend another filling them with fresh, rich compost. Midweek, I’ve got the first two beds in good enough shape to think about planting. I run my fingers compulsively over the worn wood, making lists in my head of flowers that’ll thrive this late.

  Mina had painted hearts and infinity symbols on the outsides of the beds, adding to them when she’d sit out here with me: her favorite quotes surrounded by stars, a pair of crooked stick-figure girls holding hands and faded red balloons. I brush my dirty fingers over the wood to touch what she’d touched.

  “Sophie.”

  I look up from my spot on the ground. Dad’s on the porch, dressed in his regular blue button-down and tie. His tie is crooked, and I want to reach out and fix it, but I can’t.

  “You have your first therapy appointment with Dr. Hughes in an hour,” he says. “I moved some appointments so I can drive you. You should clean up.”

  I let go of the wood and follow him into the house.

  Dr. Hughes’s practice is in one of the older neighborhoods, on a block where most of the houses have been turned into offices. Dad parks the car in front of the blue-and-white sign with Dr. Hughes’s name on it. The little one-story Craftsman is painted the same color as the sign, cheerful against the lighter blue sky.

  I’m surprised when my dad gets out of the car after me. “You’re coming in?”

  “I’ll sit in the waiting room.”

  “I’m not going to ditch therapy.”

  His mouth tightens, his hand drops from the car door. “I’ll pick you up in
an hour, then.”

  I’m almost at the door when he stops me in my tracks. “We just want you to be better. That’s why we sent you away. You know that, don’t you?”

  I don’t look at him. I can’t give him the confirmation he wants. Not without lying.

  I was already better.

  The office is full of comfortable-looking furniture and ­Norman Rockwell prints on the walls. A receptionist looks up with a smile from the papers she’s filing. “Good morning.”

  “Hi. I’m Sophie Winters. I have a twelve thirty appointment.”

  “Come with me, please.”

  She brings me to a large room with a desk, an overstuffed couch, and a few leather chairs. I take a seat on the couch as she closes the door behind her. My shoulders sink into the cushions, half of my body lost in brown suede.

  Dr. Hughes comes in without knocking. He’s an older man, with dark skin, a neat silver goatee, and square black glasses. He’s short—I’d be taller than him if I were standing up—and his sweater-vest is stretched snugly over his round stomach. “Hi, Sophie.” He sits down at his desk and spins in his chair to face me with a smile. His eyes are kind underneath his glasses. He radiates thoughtfulness. Just as a good therapist should.

  It makes me want to run.

  “Hi.” I burrow deeper into the couch, wishing it’d just swallow me up.

  “I’m Dr. Hughes, but feel free to call me David. How are you feeling today?”

  “Fine.”

  “I’ve talked to Dr. Charles on the phone about you, and I have her notes and your medical history. I’ve also had several sessions with your parents.”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you adjusting?”

  “It’s fine. I’m fine. Everything is—it’s all fine.”

  He taps his pen against his notebook, watching me. “Dr. Charles said you’d be a hard nut to crack.”