Far From You

by Tess Sharpe

I go downstairs. “Good day?” I ask.

  He smiles at me. “Yeah, honey, it was okay. Did you stay here the rest of the day?”

  “I went to the nursery and got some more soil. And some daisies.”

  “I’m glad you’re still gardening,” Dad says. “It’s good for you to be out in the sun.”

  “I was gonna call Mom and see what she wanted to do for dinner, but my phone’s charging upstairs. Can I borrow yours?”

  “Sure.” He digs in the pocket of his charcoal trousers, coming up with it.

  “Thanks.”

  I wait until he’s disappeared into the kitchen before going out onto the front porch. I call my mom first, just so I’m not lying, but it goes to voice mail. She’s probably in a meeting.

  I punch in Trev’s number.

  “It’s Sophie,” I say quickly when he answers. “Please don’t hang up.”

  There’s a pause, then a sigh. “What is it?”

  “I have some of her things. I thought maybe you’d want them. I can bring them by.”

  Another long pause. “Give me a while,” he says. “Around six?”

  “I’ll be there.”

  “See you then.”

  After I hang up, I get antsy. I can’t go back inside. I can’t just sit upstairs, next to the scraps of her I’ve dumped in a box. I go around back to my garden, because it’s the only distraction I have left.

  Dad’s pulled the bags of soil out of the car and lined them up next to the beds for me already. I wave at him from the yard, and he waves back from the kitchen, where he’s washing dishes.

  I collapse in an awkward heap on the ground, reach out, and dig through the soil of the last neglected bed, rooting out stones and throwing them hard over my shoulder. The summer sun pounds down, and sweat collects at the small of my back as I work. Bent at this angle, my leg is killing me, but I ignore the pain.

  I tear open a bag of soil and heft it over the edge of the wood, spilling new dirt into the bed. I dig my hands into the moist soil over and over, letting it filter between my fingers, the rich smell a little bit like coming home. I mix it deeper and deeper into the bed, turning up the bottom soil, combining old and new. The tip of my finger brushes against something smooth and metallic, buried deep. I grasp it and pull a tarnished, muddy silver circle out of the ground.

  Astonished, I lay the ring on the flat of my palm, brushing off the dirt.

  It’s hers. I remember she thought she’d lost it at the lake last summer. Mine is in my jewelry box, locked away, because it doesn’t mean anything without its match.

  I curl my fingers around the ring so tightly, I’m surprised the word stamped into the silver doesn’t carve its way into me the way she did.

  20

  THREE AND A HALF YEARS AGO (FOURTEEN YEARS OLD)

  “Get up.”

  I pull the covers over my head. “Leave me alone,” I moan.

  I’ve been home from the hospital for a week and I haven’t left my bedroom. I’ve barely left my bed, the walker just another reminder of how much everything sucks. All I do is watch TV and take the cocktail of pain pills the doctors keep giving me, which leaves me so fuzzy, I don’t want to do anything, anyway.

  “Get up.” Mina yanks at my blankets, and I can’t fight her with just one hand, my other still in a cast.

  “You’re mean,” I tell her, rolling slowly over to my other side, smashing my extra pillow over my head instead. The effort it takes just to roll over makes me groan. Even with the pills, everything hurts, whether I’m still or moving.

  Mina plops down on the bed next to me, not bothering to be ­gentle. Her weight jostles the mattress, making me rock back and forth. I wince. “Stop it.”

  “Get out of bed, then,” she says.

  “I don’t want to.”

  “Too bad. Your mom says you won’t leave your room. And when your mom starts calling me for help, I know there’s a problem. So—up! You reek. You need to shower.”

  “No,” I groan, smashing the pillow into my face. I have to use that stupid shower chair for old people with bad hips. Mom’s hovered outside the door each time, basically worrying herself into a fit about whether or not I’ll fall. “Just leave me alone.”

  “Yeah, right, that’s really gonna work on me.” Mina rolls her eyes.

  I still have the pillow pulled over my head, so I feel, rather than see, her get up off the bed. I hear the sound of water being turned on. For a second I think she’s turned the shower on in the bathroom, but then the pillow I’m holding is yanked out of my hands and, when I open my mouth to protest, Mina dumps a glass of cold water over my head. I shriek, jerking up way too fast, and it hurts, oh shit, it hurts. I’m still not used to how I can’t twist and move my spine like I used to. But I’m so angry at her that I don’t care. I push up on the bed with my good arm, grab the remaining pillow, and hurl it at her.

  Mina giggles, delighted, dancing out of the way and then back, tilting the empty glass in her hand teasingly at me.

  “Bitch,” I say, yanking my dripping hair out of my eyes.

  “You can call me whatever you want, smelly, as long as you shower,” Mina says. “Come on, get up.”

  She holds her hand out, and it’s not like anyone else who’s offered themselves to me as a temporary cane. Not like Dad, who wants to carry me everywhere. Not like Mom, who wants to wrap me in cotton and never let me go anywhere again. Not like Trev, who wants so desperately to fix me.

  She holds her hand out, and when I don’t take it immediately, she snaps her fingers at me, pushy, impatient.

  Just like always.

  I fold my hand in hers, and when she smiles, it’s sweet and soft and full of the relief that can only come after a lot of worry.

  21

  NOW (JUNE)

  The Bishop house has pink shutters and white trim, and an apple tree’s been growing tall in the front yard for as long as I can remember. I walk up the porch stairs carefully, the rail taking most of my weight as I balance the box on my hip.

  Trev opens the door before I can knock, and for a second I think my plan will fail, that he won’t invite me in.

  But then he steps aside, and I walk into the house.

  It’s strange to feel unwelcome here. I’ve spent half of my life in this house and know every nook and cranny: where the junk drawer is, where the spare Oreos are stashed, where to find the extra towels.

  And all of Mina’s hiding places.

  “Are you okay?” Trev’s eyes linger on the way I’m favoring my good leg. “Here.” He takes the box from me and forgets himself for a second, reaching back for my arm.

  He remembers at the last moment and stops, snatching his hand away. He rubs it over his mouth, then looks over his shoulder into the living room. “You want to sit?” he asks, the reluctance in his words ringing through the room.

  “Actually, can I use your bathroom first?”

  “Sure. You know where it is.”

  Like I’d expected, his attention’s already fixed on the box of Mina’s things. He disappears into the living room, and I go down the hall. I pause at the bathroom door, opening and closing it for effect, and tiptoe through the kitchen to the only bedroom on the ground floor. Mina had liked it that way. She’d always been restless at night, writing until dawn, baking cookies at midnight, throwing rocks at my window at three A.M., luring me out for mini road trips to the lake.

  Her door’s closed, and I hesitate, worried about the sound. But it’s my only chance, so I grab the knob and slowly turn it. The door opens and I slip inside.

  When I thought up this plan, I worried that I might make it all the way here, only to find all her things boxed up or gone already.

  But it’s worse: everything is the same. From the lavender walls to that girly canopy bed she’d begged
for when she was twelve. Her cleats are next to her desk, stacked haphazardly across each other, as if she’s just toed them off.

  The room hasn’t been touched. Mina’s bed’s still unmade, I realize with a horrible swoop of my stomach. I stare at the rumpled sheets, the indentation in the pillow, and I have to stop myself from pressing my hand into where her head had rested, trailing my fingers through sheets frozen in the curled shape of her last peaceful night.

  I have to hurry. I drop to the floor and crawl on my stomach under the bed, my fingers scrabbling for the loose floorboard. My nails catch at the wood and I lift it up and away, pulling myself farther beneath the steel framework.

  My fingers search below the floor, past some cobwebs, but I don’t feel anything hidden in the nook. I dig my phone out of my pocket and shine it down into the space under the floorboards.

  There’s an envelope tucked in the corner underneath the loose board, way in the back. I reach down in the gap of space to grab it, crumpling the paper in my hurry. I’m putting the floorboard back when I hear Trev call my name from the hallway.

  Shit. I snap the board into place and push myself out from underneath the bed. I have to bite hard down on my lip when my leg twists the wrong way getting up and pain stabs down my knee. I want to lean against the bed for a second, deal with the pain, but I don’t have the time. Breathing fast, I shove the envelope in my bag without opening it.

  “Soph? You okay?” Trev’s knocking on the bathroom door.

  I duck out of Mina’s room, closing the door quietly behind me before hobbling into the kitchen and grabbing a glass from the cupboard.

  Footsteps. I glance up at him as I turn the faucet on and fill up the glass. I swig the water, trying not to look suspicious. “Water’s supposed to help with the muscle cramps,” I explain, rinsing out my glass and putting it in the sink.

  “Still doing the all-natural stuff?” he asks as we make our way into the living room. I sigh in relief; he doesn’t notice that I’m out of breath. One of her books from the box lies open on the coffee table.

  “Mostly it’s yoga and herbs. Cortisone shots in my back. Non-opiate pain pills.”

  We sit down on the stuck-in-the-seventies couch, a careful amount of space between us. Other than us, the only thing that’s changed in the room is the mantelpiece. All through our childhood, candles and crucifixes had surrounded a large black-and-white picture of Mina’s dad, beaming down at the room. When I was little, spending the night, sometimes I’d watch Mrs. Bishop light the candles. Once I’d seen her kiss her fingers and press them to the corner of his picture, and something sick churned inside my stomach, realizing that we all go away in the end.

  Mina’s picture is next to her father’s now. She stares back at me from her mass of dark curls, that sly, secretive smile flirting at the corners of her mouth, her explosive energy just an echo in her eyes.

  Some things can’t be contained or captured.

  I look away.

  “Your mom—” I start.

  “She’s in Santa Barbara staying with my aunt,” Trev says. “She needed…Well, it’s better for her. For right now.”

  “Of course. Are you going back to Chico State in the fall?”

  He nods. “I have to repeat last semester. And I’m gonna commute. When Mom comes back…I need to stay close.”

  I nod.

  More excruciating silence. “I should go,” I say. “I just wanted to give you the box.”

  “Sophie,” he says.

  He says it so much like she used to. I know him. Every part of him, probably even more than I ever knew Mina, because Trev’s never bothered to hide from me. He’s never thought he had to. I know what he’s going to ask. What he wants me to do.

  “Don’t,” I say.

  But he’s determined. “I have to know,” he says, and it comes out so fierce. He looks at me like I’m denying him something necessary. Oxygen. Food. Love. “I’ve spent months with police reports and newspaper articles and rumors. I can’t stand it. I need to know. You’re the only person who can tell me.”

  “Trev—”

  “You owe me this.”

  There is no way I’m getting out of here without answering his questions. Not without running.

  Running from Trev used to be easy. Now it’s impossible.

  He’s all I have left of her.

  I rub at my knee, digging my fingers in the sore muscle between my kneecap and bone. I can feel the bumps of the screws if I press down deep enough. It hurts, doing this, but it’s the good kind of hurt, like a healing bruise. “Go ahead and ask.”

  “The doctor who examined her…he said it happened fast. That she probably didn’t hurt at all. But I think he was lying to make me feel better.”

  I don’t want to be near him while he does this to me—to both of us. I move to the end of the couch, tilting my body away from him, protecting myself from the onslaught.

  “It wasn’t like that, was it?” Trev asks.

  I shake my head. It had been the opposite, and he’s known that all along, but when I confirm it, I can see how it breaks him.

  “Did she say anything?”

  I wish I could lie to him. Wish I could say that she gave a proper good-bye, that she made me promise to watch out for him, that she said she loved him and her mom, that she saw her dad waiting for her on the other side with open arms and a welcoming smile.

  I wish it had been like that. Almost as much as I wish it had been over instantly, so she wouldn’t have been so scared. I wish that any part of it could have been peaceful or quiet or brave. Anything but the painful, frantic mess we became in the dirt, all breath and blood and fear.

  “She kept saying she was sorry. She…she said it hurt.” My voice breaks. I can’t continue.

  Trev covers his mouth with his hands. He’s shaking, and I hate that I agreed to this. He can’t handle it. He shouldn’t have to.

  This is mine to bear.

  It would be so easy to drown all of this with pills. The urge snakes through me, it’s right below my skin, waiting to lash out and drag me down. I could make myself forget. I could snort so much that nothing would matter anymore.

  But I can’t let it take over. Whoever did this has to pay.

  Nine months. Three weeks. Five days.

  “I tried, Trev. I tried to get her breathing again. But no matter what I did—”

  “Just go,” he says tightly. “Please, go.” He stares straight ahead.

  There’s a crash that makes me turn around before I can get to the front door. He’s kicked the coffee table over, spilling the contents of the box onto the floor. He meets my eyes, and I throw the words at him to break him, because I want to in that moment. Because he made me talk about it. Because he looks so much like her. Because he’s here and so am I, but she’s not—and that’s so unfair, I can barely breathe through it.

  “Still can’t hate me, Trev?”

  22

  A YEAR AND A HALF AGO (SIXTEEN YEARS OLD)

  “What do you think of Kyle Miller?” Mina asks. We’re making the hour-and-a-half drive to Chico, where Trev’s working on his bachelor’s in business. Mina likes to drag me with her on these monthly trips. I never put up much of a fight because it’s usually nice to see Trev. Mina had wanted to leave early, so I haven’t had a chance to take anything extra and it’s making me jittery. I wish I hadn’t said I’d drive, but I hate being the passenger, especially for long distances.

  We pass by another roadside fruit stand, a crooked sign marked CLOSED FOR WINTER teetering in the wind. Miles and miles of walnut and olive orchards whiz by us on both sides, the branches stark and black against the pale gray sky. Tractors rust in the empty fields, along with the faded FOR SALE signs on the wire fences that have been hanging there forever.

  “Soph?”

&
nbsp; “Huh?”

  “Stop zoning out. Kyle Miller? What do you think?”

  “I’m driving. And why are we talking about Kyle Miller?” I don’t know why I’m playing dumb. When Mina gets bored, she toys with boys.

  “I dunno. He’s sweet. He used to bring us brownies when you were in the hospital.”

  “I thought his mom made those.”

  “No, Kyle did. Adam told me. Kyle bakes. He just doesn’t broadcast it.”

  “Okay, the brownies were good. But he’s not smart or anything.” I wonder if that’s the point. That he won’t be smart enough to notice. I’m always worried Trev will.

  “Kyle’s not dumb,” she says. “And he’s got those big brown eyes. They’re like chocolate.”

  “Oh, come on,” I snap, too on edge to hide my annoyance. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna start dating him just because he looks at you like he wants to be your love slave.”

  She shrugs. “I’m bored. I need some excitement. This year has been blah. Trev’s gone, Mom’s got her charities. Not to mention the biggest thing to happen in school all year was homecoming court.”

  “The look on Chrissy’s face when Amber hit her over the head with the scepter was worth the week in detention.”

  Mina snickers. “You’re the one who broke her crown.”

  I don’t bother to hide my grin. “I didn’t mean to step on it! That float was totally unstable. And I was already at a disadvantage.”

  “Uh-huh, I believe you, Soph,” Mina says. “Homecoming was fun. Detention, not so much. But I don’t want fun. Or detention. I want something interesting to happen. Like when Jackie Dennings disappeared.”

  “Don’t wish that! That’s twisted.”

  “Abductions and unsolved cases generally are,” Mina says.

  “Please tell me you aren’t getting into that again. The first time was creepy enough.”

  “I’m not being creepy. Something bad happened to her.”

  “Stop being so morbid,” I scold. “Maybe she ran away.”

  “Or maybe she’s dead.”