Now Is Everything

by Amy Giles

  When the muffins are cool, I take them upstairs with me, hiding them in a plastic bag in my purse.

  Around nine o’clock, Lila wakes up to use the bathroom.

  “There you are,” I say, as she pads by me, still half-asleep. “Hungry?” She nods and grumbles.

  I go downstairs to make her a sandwich. And then I make her a chocolate berry smoothie.

  Years ago, Claudia gave me chocolate after one of our lacrosse games. After a horrible morning of not being able to get off the toilet, I still didn’t figure out what happened until the following Monday, when Olivia told me Claudia was blabbing all around school how she had given me chocolate-flavored laxatives. As the blender crushes the berries, I toss in two “chocolates.” I know from my own experience that Lila will be fine by the afternoon, but she’ll be stuck in the bathroom all morning. She won’t be able to go up to Ithaca, and Mom will have to stay home with her.

  I throw the box of laxatives into the kitchen garbage with the coffee grinder and the can of nuts and take the bag outside to the trash can on the curb. By six thirty tomorrow morning, all the evidence will be hauled off in a garbage truck.

  My mother’s perfume and idle chatter in the car absorb all the oxygen in the air. I gasp the entire ride, trying desperately to get air into my lungs.

  She wasn’t supposed to come.

  Up until yesterday, my plan was that Dad would have an allergic reaction while he was flying, forcing me to land the plane, somewhere remote enough that help would arrive too late. But I’ve never landed a plane by myself. I knew there was a good chance neither of us was coming home. I accepted that the odds weren’t in my favor, if it meant Lila would be safe.

  But now Mom is coming.

  I almost aborted the plan after Mom called Grandma. But then I looked at Lila’s broken arm, pictured my father throwing her down the mountain. I remembered the morning he yanked her out of her seat so hard he pulled her arm out of its socket and told the doctor at the hospital it was my fault.

  Next time, she might not be as lucky. It might be her neck, or her head cracking against the corner of the wall after he kicks her. Visions of him beating her the way he beats me propel me forward.

  Dad has a way of making our injuries seem like accidents. And now so will I.

  I have to stick to the plan. But I also have to nail the landing. My last lesson with Phil months ago was a mess; he had to take over the controls after I came in to the runway too low, too fast.

  We pull into the airport. Dad peels off a couple of twenties from his wallet, and I run to the terminal to get coffee and breakfast. My heart sinks when the new guy serves me. He won’t remember me. I need an alibi. They need to know I bought the muffins here and I made sure there were no nuts. Then I see Lou’s familiar back behind the counter, fiddling with the coffeemaker. Lou will remember that I asked.

  My lungs are useless lead balloons in my chest as I walk to the bathroom. I check each stall to make sure it’s empty.

  I open the paper bag of muffins that I just bought, placing them on the metal countertop by the sink. Next, I take the plastic bag of muffins I baked last night out of my purse. My hands shake as if I’m handling live grenades. Lined up next to each other, mine don’t look glaringly homemade. I put the store-bought ones in the plastic bag and throw them in the garbage and replace mine in the bakery bag.

  After another failed attempt to breathe normally, I head toward the door. With the door handle in my hand, my phone buzzes in my back pocket like a security alarm.

  I know it’s Charlie even before I check.

  With cold, trembling hands, I read his message.

  I already miss you. Hurry home.

  It’s as if he’s standing right next to me, smiling. His easy, honest smile.

  My shaking knees can’t hold me anymore. Leaning up against the bathroom tile, I sink down until my butt hits the ground.

  Visions of Charlie, then Lila, disarm me. Lila handing me the framed picture at Christmas. Sisters. Best Friends. Charlie pulling those summer concert tickets out of his back pocket. Both of them, with their unwavering faith in me. Trusting me to be there for them.

  I can’t go through with this.

  This wasn’t just about protecting Lila. This was about getting back at my father for years of being his punching bag. I allowed my rage and hate and bitterness to choke out hope. If I go through with this, he wins. I will have turned into him.

  My need for vengeance gives way to a feeling of overwhelming relief.

  It stops here. Now.

  Carefully, I pull myself back up on shaky legs. I take the plastic bag out of the garbage and switch the muffins again.

  Today, we fly to Cornell. When we get home, I will call CPS. I will make them reopen the case. I will stand up to my father. I will be brave. I will fight back.

  Cold, bracing air rushes into my lungs as I meet my parents outside by the plane. My body, tense and ready to strike for so long, is limp with relief.

  Within fifteen minutes, we’re up in the air. While Mom and Dad scarf down breakfast, I stare out the window, imagining a future with a glimmer of hope.

  “Miles . . . your face!”

  Cold dread replaces all the blood in my body.

  I threw them away!

  The bag. I must have contaminated the bakery bag when I put the homemade muffins in there.

  I unbuckle my seat belt and lean forward between their seats. His sleeves are pushed up to his elbows; red blotches bloom along his forearms.

  Mom tears through her purse. “There must have been nuts in that muffin!”

  “Hurry up!” he yells at Mom. He faces straight ahead, blinking rapidly, but I feel it, the gradual descent. He’s preparing the plane for an emergency landing.

  Mom empties her purse in her lap. “Where’s the EpiPen!” she cries, as her lipstick, wallet, and tampons fly around the cockpit.

  It’s home, in the junk drawer, where I put it after I snuck it out of her purse in the middle of the night.

  Dad coughs and tugs at his sweatshirt collar as if that’s what’s suffocating him. There’s a second yoke, in front of my mother. I can barely land from the left seat where I’ve been practicing, let alone the right, which requires me to swap flying hands and read instruments from a different angle. And landings are already the hardest part about flying. I need to get into Dad’s seat.

  “Dad! Listen to me.” I lean forward again, ducking my head between their seats. “You’re not okay. You need to let me land the plane.”

  My father turns his head. His clammy, blanched face looks back at me, bewildered, scared. Vulnerable. Familiar, even though I’ve never seen this side of him. Then I recognize where I’ve seen that helpless expression before. In the mirror.

  I can fix this. I can make this stop, right now.

  “Hadley! Is there an EpiPen in the first aid kit?” Mom cries over her shoulder.

  Yes! I had forgotten about the first aid kit!

  I look out the windshield at the open sky. He’s still in control. The plane is level, slowly descending. I reach behind my seat and grab the first aid kit from the storage cargo. Opening it, I grab the two-pack of EpiPens and hand one to Mom.

  Her hands shake, and she’s crying and whimpering and praying “Dear God, dear God, dear God” all at the same time. With two hands, she thrusts the needle into his thigh through his jeans. He flinches and cries out.

  Beneath us, we pass houses. The steeple of a church. A street congested with traffic. We’re getting closer to the ground, close enough now that everything below us looks like model toys. A stream. A mall. A highway.

  “Dad!” I yell again. “You need to get out of your seat! I can land, but only from your seat!” I reach for him, grabbing at his sweatshirt sleeve in desperation.

  As the tiny toy model of the world beneath us passes by, Mom and I both try to force him out of his seat.

  Oh God, help me! Help me, please!

  I claw at him, desperate to save us fro
m what I’ve done.

  He nods, finally conceding, and struggles to unbuckle his harness. Mom reaches over to help him, tugging at him to hurry. He’s too big, she doesn’t even shake him.

  “Hadley, give me the other pen!” I hand her the second EpiPen, and she gives him another injection. “Why isn’t this working?”

  With one last groan, Dad loses consciousness and collapses on the yoke.

  It’s too late.

  As we plummet down, I buckle myself in and put my head between my knees.

  “I’m sorry!” I scream, then . . .

  The acrid scent wakes me.

  Smoke ripples before my eyes in waves, distorting my vision. My arms dangle down, grazing the ceiling, which is now the ground.

  I’m upside down.

  My father’s body is crumpled on the ceiling/ground beneath me, his neck pitched at an awful, unnatural angle. One shoe is missing from his foot. Blood seeps through his Cornell sweatshirt.

  The smell is stronger now, fuel and smoke, a horrible combination. My brain reboots, transmitting signals to move faster. To get out. But the fog doesn’t want to lift, and part of me fights to go back to sleep.

  I unbuckle my belt with my right arm—my left is aching and useless—falling on top of my father’s lifeless body with a loud cry of horror and pain. I crawl forward to reach my mother. She hangs upside down in her seat, her harness still on, her wide blue eyes vacant but somehow still frightened.

  I want to unbuckle her and hold her in my arms, tell her how sorry I am.

  Instead, I drag myself across the ceiling to the torn hole in the back of the plane and crawl through.

  My world is upside down. The bright-blue sky greets me like the bottom of the ocean.

  now

  Brady sees right through me. All of them know, I can tell, even in the way Grandma holds herself stiffly in the chair next to me, the inches separating us like miles. He’s toying with me. He’s about to tell me that my father’s security cameras caught me in the act of pouring crushed nuts into the muffins that killed my father.

  He exhales loudly, his thin, dry lips flapping from the weight of it all.

  “The hospital reported unusual bruising on your body that didn’t correspond with the plane accident,” he begins. “The bruises on your buttocks had the curved imprint of being kicked. There was a tramline bruise on your hip, from being hit with a cylindrical object. The surveillance camera in the den captured a few of these assaults.” His eyes cloud over. Then he clears his throat gruffly.

  I glance over at Grandma. Her lips are pursed, the rims of her eyes are pink. She closes her lids and sniffs, then reaches for my hand, giving it a firm squeeze.

  “The investigation wasn’t adding up. No one radioed in. There was no mechanical failure that we knew of. We needed to dig a little deeper to rule out foul play,” Brady continues. “One of your mother’s friends mentioned that your mother had made a comment about frying his food in peanut oil to get back at him. The autopsy and toxicology reports indicated that he did in fact go into anaphylactic shock.”

  I let go of Grandma’s hand and knot my fingers together in my lap, waiting for the words that will condemn me.

  “The manager at the airport coffee shop said you made a point of inquiring about nuts in the muffins?” I’m terrified to look up at him, afraid of what he’ll say next.

  Brady continues. “We just found out yesterday that the facility where the muffins were baked is a small operation upstate. It seems they didn’t thoroughly clean the lines between different batches. This is the third report of a nut allergy linked to their plant.”

  My mouth drops open in genuine shock.

  “The third?” I whisper, repeating it to make sure I heard him right.

  “Thankfully, there were no fatalities with the other two cases. But those people didn’t have beta-blockers in their systems, or three thousand feet between them and the ground. As the only eyewitness to the incident, I needed to hear your account of what transpired that day. I can file my report now that it was a medical emergency.”

  He pushes a button on the digital recorder. The interview is over.

  It wasn’t me.

  now

  Grandma walks with me back to the rec room, where we sit down at the same table as before.

  Fiddling with her purse straps in her lap, she shakes her head and lowers her eyes. “How could I not have known?”

  All those times I tried to protect Grandma by not telling her. Tried to protect Lila by not telling her. They both ended up getting hurt anyway. We all did.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  Next thing I know, I’m in Grandma’s arms, my head pressed up against her chest, sobbing into her blouse. She’s rocking me back and forth like a baby, hushing me and telling me it wasn’t my fault.

  After Grandma leaves, I return back to my room. I’m exhausted after my meeting with Brady. My bed squeaks under me as I collapse on the thin mattress, the only familiar sound. The room is too quiet without Rowan. Now that she’s gone, I miss her.

  I miss everybody.

  Sitting up on my bed, I reach for my pillowcase and shake it upside down over my sheets. All the letters I’ve received over the past few weeks tumble out, from Meaghan, Noah, so many from Charlie, and the grape-scented letters from Lila that Rowan sniffed out of their hiding spot. All of them still sealed, because I didn’t want to know how much they missed me, I didn’t want to be tempted to “get well soon” or asked when I was coming home. Going back was never an option.

  Visions of my mother’s lifeless body dangling upside down will haunt me for the rest of my life. Her wide eyes, frightened, seemed to blame me for the accident. Believing I had killed her was what made me take the blade to my wrists. I couldn’t live with myself, with that image always there, condemning me.

  I pull one of Charlie’s letters into my lap, my fingers tracing his pointy handwriting on the envelope. I tear it open and read his letter, allowing myself to miss him, really miss him, for the first time. Then I read Meaghan’s. Then Noah’s. Then one of Lila’s that includes a clipped-out crossword puzzle from the newspaper “in case you’re bored.”

  Like any muscle that hasn’t been used in a while, my heart hurts at first. But the pain lessens with each letter, replaced with a longing to return to the people who love me. Still.

  My bed is covered in hastily torn-open envelopes and stacks of flattened letters when Janet peeks in on me. She has a pleased smile on her face. She nods and walks away.

  I think I understand now what they’ve been waiting to see from me.

  The day after the meeting with Brady, I check in with Dr. Bruce for our daily sessions.

  “Hello, Hadley.”

  Dr. Bruce gestures across from him to my seat.

  “How are you today?”

  “Fine.” I eye a pencil on his desk, wondering if he wouldn’t mind if I used that to get under the cast.

  “How’s your arm doing?” He watches me dig my finger under the cast to scratch.

  “Itchy.”

  He nods and smiles. “I remember. I broke my arm when I was a kid. When the cast came off, I walked around with it like it was still in a sling for weeks.” He crooks his arm against his stomach. “Funny, right? Even when something’s gone, it can still hurt. Its presence is still felt.”

  Dr. Bruce’s quiet, ruminative gaze lingers a few beats longer than necessary. His words make more sense than he may have realized. Or, knowing Dr. Bruce, his words were chosen with the absolute precision of a trained marksman.

  “Anything you want to talk about today, Hadley?”

  These sessions are always brutal. The first few minutes of getting started are always the worst, followed by the horrible prolonged periods of silence when Dr. Bruce tries to force me to fill the dead air.

  “I got a note from Lila. She wants me to come home.”

  “I’m sure she does,” he says. “Do you miss her?”

  “Yes.” My throat sque
ezes every time I talk about Lila. “I just don’t know how to face her after what I tried to do,” I admit.

  He taps his pen on his paper. “You’ll find people are more forgiving of you than you are of yourself, Hadley.”

  I dig my finger deeper under my cast and scratch. “Maybe. I hope so.”

  He nods and scribbles quickly, then glances back up with bright eyes.

  “So, after the cast comes off. Then what? Back on the lacrosse field?” He mimes a toss with a lacrosse stick.

  “What? No!” My voice flares with anger.

  He startles in surprise. “Really? I thought you enjoyed lacrosse?”

  “Where’d you get that from?”

  He flips through the papers in his lap. “You were the team captain.”

  I stare out the window. Outside is an impossibly white clean slate. The sun shines too brightly on the snow, hurting my eyes. But I don’t look away. “I never want to see another crosse as long as I live.”

  I hear the scratch of his pen across the paper, as if he’s writing me a note excusing me from lacrosse indefinitely. “So no more lacrosse. Will you miss it?”

  “No.” My eyes sting.

  His silence forces me to look back at him. His silhouette shimmers like a halo from the sun glare. “Had enough of it, I guess?”

  A fist the size of a sledgehammer lodges itself in my throat.

  “Why did you play lacrosse, Hadley?”

  I try to swallow, but I can’t. “For my dad.”

  “It made him happy to see you play?”

  “I don’t think anything I did made him happy.”

  The silence stretches around us, tightening, binding us in this moment.

  “Your dad was tough on you, wasn’t he, Hadley?”

  Anger swells inside me. I glare at him. “You have the records from the ER about the bruises. You’ve always known.”