Also by Bridget Morrissey
What You Left Me
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2019 by Bridget Morrissey
Cover and internal design © 2019 by Sourcebooks
Cover design by Sourcebooks
Cover image © Hanka Steidle/Arcangel
Internal design by Danielle McNaughton/Sourcebooks
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Fire, an imprint of Sourcebooks
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
sourcebooks.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Morrissey, Bridget, author.
Title: When the light went out / Bridget Morrissey.
Description: Naperville, Illinois : Sourcebooks Fire, [2019] | Summary: Seven friends reunite five years after their friend’s accidental shooting death when a box of letters from her are found.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018057113 | (trade pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: | CYAC: Death--Fiction. | Friendship--Fiction. | Memory--Fiction. | Letters--Fiction.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.M675 Wj 2019 | DDC [Fic]--dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018057113
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Part One
1
July 11
2
July 11
3
July 11
4
July 11
5
July 11
6
July 11
7
Part Two
8
July 11
9
July 11
10
July 11
11
July 11
12
July 11
13
July 11
14
July 11
15
Part Three
16
17
18
19
20
21
Acknowledgments
Excerpt from What You Left Me
About the Author
Back Cover
In loving memory of Elizabeth Eileen O’Connor.
(January 1990–January 2018)
It’s you I see in the stars.
Part One
Pliable Truths
1
Somebody somewhere decided that every five years, tragedies must be made extra important again.
For the first celebration of life, the Marley Bricket Memorial Committee printed Marley’s freshman year photo onto one of those durable foam boards designed for real estate agents to stick in lawns. At every subsequent event, the committee would prop foam Marley up on a tripod next to the food. The dust that coated her told the truth of the dank storage room where they tucked her away for 364 days of rest and irrelevance. Her glossy, level eyes said there was a better place for her to be, but she’d been forced into this. If she could smile through it, so could I.
Each July 11, long before the townspeople wandered out of their houses and over to City Hall for the annual memorial, I woke up drowning in Marley. I let myself drift to the bottom, then waited until I was buoyed up by the profound responsibility of everyone else’s belief that I was fine. Mom and Dad and my older sister, Aidy, were always sitting in the kitchen with a full breakfast spread on the table and apprehensive smiles plastered on their faces.
Reading any room became like looking at the weather forecast. Other people wanted me to be solemn but accessible. Sad but not unreachable.
Other people wanted me to be okay.
After Marley died, she showed me how pliable the truth could be. How it molded itself to serve the situation at hand. My family, my classmates, even the people paid to help me cope—they all tried to trick me into thinking her death didn’t affect me because it happened before I’d worn a bra or gotten my period. “It’s a good thing you were just a kid,” they would say sometimes, like my resiliency was all but guaranteed thanks to my age. I would also hear, “She was just a kid,” whispered in serious tones, meant to serve as the perfect excuse for any unseemly behavior from me. As these truths bent, so did I, until I was nothing more than a contortionist, squeezing myself into the box of a life Marley left behind.
I spent hours getting ready for each memorial. Washing my hair and letting it air-dry, covering my head in every product I could find until every brown strand glistened like sugar being caramelized. Pale pink blush tinged my cheeks, and a careful sweep of eyeliner widened my tired eyes. Moisturizer slicked my pale skin, scenting me like cotton candy. I smiled at myself in the mirror until my face hurt, then drove with my family over to City Hall, ready to drink from the punch bowl and eat the sweets left over from the Fourth of July.
To the other residents of Cadence, California, Marley was nothing but an event. A flower to drop outside Mr. Bricket’s front door. An extra thank-you to give to God once a year. A lesson.
To me, she was everything.
I always showed up to the memorial wearing one of her old baby-doll dresses, waving like a pageant queen at the same collection of faces I saw every year, greeting them with exuberant hellos and tight-squeezing hugs. It was incredible how much they all started to like me when I learned to do this for them. They loved knowing that the dress I wore was Marley’s, and how honored I was to have it. I would always say some variation of: “Wow, I know, I can’t believe I’m almost as old as Marley was,” which would make them pat me on the cheek with a tender hand. Adults were always obsessed with my age, my growth, my transition into womanhood. With every passing year, I’d get to change how I phrased my signature line, until finally, year five, I was preparing to say things like, “I can’t believe I’m older than Marley was,” which should’ve made them sad, but would only make them amazed, I knew. It was as if all of us didn’t age in the year that passed. Only me. And that finally growing older than my dead friend was something worth smiling about. For good measure, I’d planned to throw in a “Yes, I do hope Nick Cline turns his life around, you know, to pay respect to Marley. He’s lucky he was just a kid.”
There were tal
es of the real Marley right under my tongue, dissolving into my spit until they disappeared. It was a pill I choked down every time I went out in public. These were the unwanted truths. They carried too much weight. I tried once, at the start of the first memorial, to share them, and I was met with nothing more than teary stares and sympathetic pats on the back. The weather called for year-round sunshine in Cadence. So I never made mention of the things I held closest, like the time Marley put melatonin pills in the heart-shaped sugar cookies she baked for her homecoming dance.
“I don’t know what this will do, but it seems appropriate,” she’d said.
“For what?” I asked.
“Don’t worry about it.” She kissed my nose, dusting me with flour. When we put the cookies in the oven, we danced while we waited for them to bake. She twirled around me as I waltzed across the kitchen, the two of us pretending to be different people with different lives, trying on accents and attitudes and memories that didn’t belong to us.
I didn’t make a peep about how we’d crashed the old Cadillac that used to be permanently parked in Ruby’s driveway. Marley liked to hide inside it when she didn’t feel like being social. I liked to do whatever Marley did. She only let me hang out alone with her when she didn’t want to be around anyone else. I never passed up the opportunity. That particular day, she was telling me about how earthworms could survive being sliced in half.
“They just wiggle off in two different directions,” she said.
“Gross,” I replied, my feet atop the dashboard. I picked at a small scab covering my knee.
“It’s kind of amazing, actually.” As she spoke, she shifted the car’s gears. The engine wasn’t running, but the old boat of a car caught the downward slant of the driveway, rolling across the street and into the mailbox on the other side.
Marley and I leapt out of the car without a second thought, sprinting so fast we had to ice our shins afterward. We were back in my yard before anyone in Ruby’s house could get outside to see what happened. We pressed our hands into each other’s chests to feel our rapid heartbeats. The crash became an unsolved mystery in the Marquez family. Blamed on a ghost, faulty mechanics, or an earthquake, depending on who you asked.
I barely dared to even think of all the times Marley and I stood side by side in her mother’s closet, combing through racks of old, bedazzled gowns. Relics from her mom’s pageant girl days. We’d drape ourselves in satin and sparkles and more tulle than anyone could ever need. We’d rummage through drawers stuffed with feather boas and glitter hats. We’d step into high-heeled shoes that didn’t quite fit, stomping around until we found a hard surface. Carpet only dulled the satisfying thunderclap of the heel, and all we wanted was to make noise. Mostly Marley liked to dress me up like her mother would dress her. She’d pinch and poke and prod until my cheeks blushed red and my body shimmered like fish scales in sunlight. She’d ask me questions about the state of the world and hold a hairbrush microphone to my mouth while I made up the most ridiculous answers I could imagine.
These were the only times Marley ever accepted me without any caveats. I wasn’t Aidy’s annoying little sister in those moments. I wasn’t five years younger and more immature.
I was her friend.
Sometimes I even convinced myself I was her favorite.
These memories would only serve to prove that Marley was a complicated person, not a pure, everlasting symbol of our almost-forgotten desert town. As far as Cadence was concerned, those tales died right alongside Marley. Nothing was to get in the way of the girl they’d chosen to represent us—our greatest tragedy and only noteworthy occurrence. We’re a town that cares about things! Look at us! We had a girl die! She was blond and white and pretty! We matter!
But somebody somewhere decided that every five years, tragedies must be made extra important again.
A giant tent in the center of the City Hall courtyard enveloped the view of the barren land in the distance. The memorial committee swapped the usual punch bowl for mixed drinks, made by an attendant forced to stand behind a folding table all night. Store-bought patriotic cookies were exchanged for an entire spread catered by the local bakery. There was even music, complete with a DJ who said things like, “Rest in peace, Marley. You’re our angel now,” as he hit the space bar on his laptop. A second, enormous replica of Marley’s portrait, done in oil by the high school art teacher, was also on display, soon to be hung in the halls of Cadence High School. And the local news crew came to get their rudimentary story. CITY HALL HOLDS FIFTH ANNUAL MEMORIAL FOR LOCAL GIRL KILLED IN ACCIDENTAL SHOOTING.
Yes, five years to the day after a single bullet blew up Marley Bricket’s heart, Cadence held the nighttime spectacle of the summer. It was all designed for everyone to smile bigger. Laugh louder. Love her more.
Our sweet Marley.
I glided into the memorial like my pale pink ballet flats had wheels. “I know, I can’t believe I’m older than Marley now,” I practiced saying, working to strike the precise balance between somber and casual. As if those two should ever be balanced. The delicate daisy fabric of Marley’s old dress landed several inches above my knees and held around my rib cage like a tightened noose. Small breaths for short conversations. Each person I passed looked traced over, penciled-in changes to account for the 364 days between events. And still, like me, they wore old clothes that didn’t fit and old smiles that didn’t light up.
All was as I expected, until I scanned the crowd once more. My heart sprung up to my throat.
A large orb of a light hung above him at the peak of the ridiculous tent we stood under. And though he cowered, hoping body language alone could cloak him, he still carried the mark of a boy you couldn’t help but notice. A boy you discussed as soon as he left the room, if only to say, “Who was that?”
I once overheard my mom saying, “If Harrison would learn to look people in the eye, he’d be such a pleasant boy,” and, “If Aidy would spend more time on her schoolwork, she’d be doing so well in school.” She went on like this for most of our friends, except for Nick. Nick Cline was a When. “When that Nicky Cline grows up, he’s going to be something.”
Success wrote itself into his genetics. Mama’s boy smile, jolly upturned nose, bashful cheeks, and cheerful eyes, he’d once looked the part of a young white hero waiting for time to catch up to him. There he stood, eyes no longer cheerful but a face as handsome as ever. He’d never dared attend Marley’s memorial before. He was the one person who lived on the flip side of every Marley news piece. CADENCE NATIVE NICHOLAS CLINE, 11, FIRED THE GUN. Underdressed in a white tee and dark jeans, he kept his steady gaze on the dessert display in front of me. He started moving closer.
To me?
To me.
“Hi,” I said, before I could stop myself.
The word fireworked in the air, surprising us both.
Nick froze. “Really?” he asked, like Are you sure you mean me? and I nodded. His eyes flickered across my face and he said, “Hi,” and I said, “Hi,” again, because where do you go from there? He scuffed his shoe on the floor. I cleared my throat like Don’t be a fool or I will crack my olive branch in half and bury it under every bit of unresolved anger I have toward you, and he said, “Thanks,” and I said, “You’re welcome,” because I gave a cruise-control response before realizing how strange it would sound. I tried again with “Yes,” in a very definite way, like I, the official spokesperson for the Tragedy of Marley Bricket™ was confirming that it was indeed very nice of me to speak to him.
Then came the lull we both needed: a chance to catch our breath and climb out of the tangled web of random pleasantries we’d stumbled into, and he said “Want to,” to which I finished with “Get out of here? No. I’m giving a speech later.”
He let out a small laugh, which made things worse, because everyone in Cadence was always saying that Nick Cline could’ve been something, but he’d done a terrible thin
g. By accident, of course. But terrible. So terrible. He’s lucky he was just a kid. I’d spent years committing myself to that truth. Yet there I was blushing, forgetting to boycott him, being neither somber nor casual.
“To talk somewhere quieter,” Nick said. “I can barely hear myself think over the music.”
“It’s not even that loud,” I argued.
It was so loud. Everywhere. My heart had a beat that countered the music. The syncopation made for chaos inside and out.
“You want to talk right here?” he asked.
An unwanted truth exploded out from under my careful compression. “I’m not sure I want to talk at all.”
After the police found Nick hiding behind the dumpster of an apartment complex nearby, they brought him into the station for questioning. I was already there, bloodstained and exhausted, sitting on a bench with Aidy’s arm wrapped around me. Our parents like bookends, terrified of the weight they were expected to support, on either side of us. Nick looked right at me, his eyes even wilder than when he left me lying on the floor of the shed near the scene of the crime. He didn’t say a word. That’s pretty much how it went the day after that. And the next. And the next. And so on.
Until year five.
I’d long since decided it was his job to open the lines of communication again. But something about the extra energy in the air made it so I could be both the first to draw and the winner of the showdown. I set down my plate with calculated carelessness, like nothing was all that important to me. “What did you want to say, anyway?” I asked, trying to fold him into someone small and insignificant. Someone whose presence I could discard as soon as our conversation ended.
He dropped his voice a few decibels, almost as a challenge. You think you can hear over the music? You’ll have to get so close to me you breathe in my peppermint gum. “Marley is everywhere,” he said. He reached across the dessert table to grab my hand. “Please, Ollie.”
No one called me that anymore. I was Olivia the brave, sixteen and capable. Not Ollie the brat, eleven and scared.
When the Light Went Out Page 1
