When the Light Went Out

by Bridget Morrissey

  One by one, the others got up and shared stories of us as we used to be.

  Harrison told of the weeklong saga that was Marley attempting to build a tree house out of wood scraps we found near City Hall.

  Teeny reminded us of all the times she and Marley hosted runway shows down Albany. We’d all go into our houses and wrap ourselves up in anything we could find, then parade down the yellow catwalk painted onto the center of our street.

  Bigs brought up the time we fell asleep watching a scary movie, and Marley woke us up in the middle of the night with an air horn. She informed us we’d be sleeping outside. In her backyard, our sleeping bags filled the space between the shed and the pool. Marley proceeded to tell us ghost stories until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. Everyone crashed. Except for Bigs, we learned. Marley woke up not long after the rest of us had gone to sleep. She realized Bigs was still awake too, so she stayed with him, leaning her head on his shoulder as they kept an eye on the rest of us.

  With each story, the teller tossed a handful of dirt and closed with, “I love you, Marley. I love you, Olivia. I love all of you.”

  Aidy used her time to apologize for writing a letter trying to kick Marley out of the group. Harrison stood back up to echo the sentiment. Bigs and Teeny joined them. “We never really wanted you to leave. We just didn’t know better.” They each tossed in an extra handful.

  Nick got up. He took a handful of dirt and passed it from hand to hand. “Marley,” he started. “There’s so much we didn’t understand about you. We weren’t paying attention, I guess. Or we were too afraid to ask. I’m sorry we didn’t. I would’ve at least tried to make you laugh. You didn’t like to admit it, but I know you thought I was funny. I used to be, at least.” Soft dirt fell through his fingers. “We could’ve helped make it better. That’s what we were best at. Every memory tonight proves it.” He stopped. The rest of the dirt fell from his shaking hands. “Marley, I wish I knew to be stronger that day. I wish I had listened to Olivia. I’m sorry you wished to stop wishing, because it’s a powerful thing. My wishes are the only things keeping that day from swallowing me up. I hate thinking you knew. That you would do that to me. It makes me wish I could hug you and tell you not that it will all be okay, but that it will be easier with our help.”

  He leaned over to cup a fresh handful of dirt. His palms clasped together like the soil held power. “Olivia, you don’t have to carry her all on your own. This has always been as much mine as it is yours, and I pushed it away. Turned it into wishes. Right now, I have the power to do what I didn’t that day five years ago. I can say to you not that it will be okay, but that it will be easier—for both of us—with help.” His palms parted. “I love you, Marley.” He looked to me. “I love you, Olivia.” He looked around. “I love all of you.”

  From the second I saw him at the memorial, the mark of Marley’s work was clear in Nick’s presence. As he stood there, trembling, it was clear as a Marley blue sky in July.

  Marley wanted to release Nick. Give him back to us.

  The night was as much for me as it was for her. I’d never shared that kind of responsibility before. Never shared anything at all. It made me so light, I was glad for the hands that helped me back down, because without them, I would’ve sailed up forever, never to return again.

  Finally, it was my turn to speak. The grand finale. It was a familiar place for me to be, in front of a crowd, preparing to tell a story about Marley. But for the first time, I was going to tell the stories I’d swallowed.

  Word by word, I handed my Marley over to my friends. I told them about the melatonin cookies and the Marquez family’s car.

  Ruby gasped. “That was you?”

  I told them about all the afternoons in Marley’s mom’s closet.

  I told them about the California quail. How it was alive, even though it was dead.

  I told them everything.

  When I finished, everyone stood and wrapped their arms around me. I was patched up and damaged and a little off-center, but all myself, amazed to learn my friends were willing to hold the excess I could no longer carry.

  I was just Olivia Stanton, sixteen years old. Older than Marley would ever be. Younger than everyone else. Both a cannonball from the sky, arcing back to the ground, and a cannonball in the water, rushing back to the surface.

  I was back.

  That was the point.

  Night became night that was actually morning. It was convex, pushing up from all surfaces, preparing for the next sunrise. I threw my handful dirt atop the box.

  Finally, we’d remembered her right.

  “I took this from our other box,” Ruby said.

  In her hands was a picture of the eight of us in Marley’s pool. Teeny’s eyes were closed. Harrison was midjump, his whole torso a blur. Aidy was looking at him, stern. Bigs and I were photo ready, smiles wider than our faces, arms wrapped around each other like sorority sisters. Nick was solemn. Ruby was fixing her swim top. Marley was looking up.

  It was a self-timed photo Marley thought she’d deleted from her camera roll. Ruby had secretly sent it to herself then printed it out for us to keep. It had always been our favorite, forever sitting at the top of our box of trinkets.

  Ruby held the photo to her heart. “No stops,” we said to each other, not because we needed the reminder, but because we knew we’d done it. We’d crossed our finish line. The secret picture fell from Ruby’s hands and fluttered into place atop the rest of Marley’s belongings.

  Bigs and Harrison picked up the shovels and start tossing back large piles of dirt. When they were done, we stomped the loose soil back into place.

  The seven of us went back how we came until we arrived in the upstairs bedroom of the haunted house. We unfurled our mangled sleeping bags and tucked ourselves underneath, leaving the string lights as our constellations.

  Nick wrapped his arms around me, and I pressed against his torso, no longer needing the light of an imagined sky to find sleep.

  20

  Thanks to the blackout curtains and Nick’s body, morning did not get to intrude upon me. One last little gift from our best Marley.

  Nick was stuck on me. Literally stuck. Our skin had congealed in the growing afternoon heat. I peeled myself away, leaving his white shirt drenched with the impression of me.

  “It’s hot,” I noted.

  “I don’t mind,” he said.

  I curled back into him once more.

  A few other sleeping bags were rolled into tight bundles, same as the lights. Only Harrison was still upstairs with us. He said, “Breakfast,” and headed out of the room.

  Nick and I followed the promise of food all the way out the front door and over to my house, where the rest of the previous night’s remnants had already been returned.

  “Afternoon,” Bigs said once we entered the kitchen. He and Teeny sat where Aidy and I had the day before. They were eating pancakes, just as we’d done twenty-four hours prior. Twins of circumstance, I remembered with a smile.

  “Dad made those,” Aidy told me. “I found a huge stack on the kitchen counter, along with instructions on how to best reheat them, as well as a very long, extremely detailed list of things we have to get done today if we expect to ever survive life again.”

  “Joy,” I said, still taking in the confusion of the morning, marred by a blaring headache.

  “We need to hurry. We have work in an hour,” Bigs reminded Teeny. They shoveled down their last bites. When they stood and hugged me goodbye in what felt like the same motion, my foggy brain could barely process what leaving meant.

  “Thank you,” I mouthed as they walked out. The Campbell twins were the first to be removed from me after Marley’s death, carted off to a world outside of Cadence, where they built promises for bright futures. And still they returned.

  Still they remembered.

  Still they loved m
e back.

  We didn’t require a long goodbye. Our history did it for us. Time and space could never touch what we kids of Albany had been to each other, and now that we knew our legacy was safe, memorialized in secrecy at Cadence Park, we didn’t need words to reaffirm it.

  Only Aidy, Harrison, Nick, and I remained. “Where’s Ruby?” I asked.

  “You didn’t hear her phone blowing up this morning? She was supposed to be babysitting her brothers. She ran out super early,” Harrison said.

  Aidy’s eyes narrowed on Nick. “Do you have anywhere you need to be?”

  One last remaining swig of my murk swished around the very base of me. Why did she keep us apart? There was no reason I could find, even still.

  “No,” he told her.

  “Would you mind helping Harrison do some of the things on the list? Olivia and I have somewhere we need to go.”

  “We do?”

  “It won’t take us very long. We’ll be back to help soon,” she assured Nick.

  “Of course,” he said without hesitation.

  The four of us finished eating the chocolate chip pancakes. It was so strange and so normal, like the continuation of a well-loved story that had been interrupted by unconscious hibernation. The normalness of strange—or the strangeness of normal—begged to be noticed. What a world this was, the Stanton girls with their boys, communing at noon for a meal in the family kitchen. Every pot, pan, and plate took on a different, brighter sheen. What a world, indeed.

  I went to change. The piles on my floor had been rearranged into an unfamiliar landscape. Aidy had unearthed all my buried secrets. Even my own journal was open and lying atop my bed, with all my plans for the Adventure reading like Marley’s had, bold and nonsensical, lacking nuance.

  I snapped the journal shut and sat beside it. My dresser drawers had been spilled out, long-neglected bottom contents flipped up to the top. I rummaged through everything and put on clothes I forgot I owned. Went to the bathroom and washed my face of yesterday’s disguise. The yellow in my bruises matched the golden flecks in my hazel eyes; flickers of Marley I’d never before noticed.

  I was new.

  I was ready.

  “Your nose looks better,” Aidy said when I came back into the kitchen. “It definitely isn’t broken.” She walked from the sink to the door. “We’ll be back soon,” she told the boys again.

  “See you later, Olivia,” Nick said with a grin.

  “Okay, Nick,” I said back, about to burst.

  Aidy looked at Harrison like she didn’t understand what was so amusing, and said, “Grab the sleeping bags from next door, please.” She tugged my arm and pulled me outside.

  We walked around to the front and hit the sidewalk. “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Ms. DeVeau’s.”

  “Why?”

  “We owe it to her to at least tell her what we found.”

  Normal or strange, Aidy was Aidy, her morals skewered but persevering. An Aidy who cared about rules but kept secrets from her sister. An Aidy who hated to cheat but let her boyfriend try and save her academic career.

  My last drops of murk slipped out. “Why did you think Nick would hurt me most?”

  No longer capable of tripping her up, she maintained our synchronicity as she said, “I’ve figured out that I like to rewrite rules when it comes to the people I love.”

  We made a precise turn, like scissors cutting edges.

  “I thought changing what you two were to each other was going to fix what happened to you. There was no line between Nick and what he did to Marley. You used to wake up yelling, He killed her! Over and over.” Swift and graceful, she leapt over the uncountable cracks in the concrete. “But you’ve changed. Or I may have been wrong. Maybe both. Maybe neither. But I can see that it’s better for you now. And I’m sorry I did that. I was doing what I thought was best for you.”

  “I love you,” I said, surprising her.

  I thought for a long time that I didn’t love anything. But I loved my Marley so desperately and fully, I couldn’t see life outside of her. I chose her death as the moment that would forever define me, in spite of my therapists and counselors and neighbors and family and friends telling me I was just a kid, and I could bounce back. I could change it.

  Marley’s love pulled me up into the clouds. Other love pulled me back. It was all a balance, so fragile, always ready to tip one way or the other. I could never love people like they asked of me. Not exactly. I could only love them the best I knew how. Chances were, they’d still love me back.

  “I love you too,” Aidy said back.

  “And Harrison?” I baited her to lighten the mood. Some habits would never fade.

  “I know. What am I doing? I make no sense.”

  “You make perfect sense to me.”

  We didn’t hug. That wasn’t our style. We kept walking, understanding our rhythms would always be different and somehow forever match.

  Ms. DeVeau’s orange house stood in protest at the edge of the road. Ms. DeVeau herself was out in her front garden, squatted down, her arms gesticulating wildly, fussing over the hole Harrison had dug there the night before. I saw myself in her place, cloaked by night and guided by Marley, pulling out yellow flowers and putting a third of the journal beneath them, then tamping the bright red flowers back into place.

  Grabbing the reins before I’d even formulated a plan, Aidy called out to her. “Ms. DeVeau!”

  Marley’s mother tilted her head up and over her shoulder to see us, her taut face a grand reveal from beneath the brim of her straw hat. “Girls,” she said.

  “Can we talk?” Aidy asked.

  Ms. DeVeau gestured to the hole that had her so dismayed. “This was you?” she guessed.

  “Can we talk?” Aidy repeated as a confirmation.

  Finger by finger, Ms. DeVeau plucked the gloves off her hands. “Come on in.” She tossed them onto the dirt and sauntered up her two-step staircase. “To what do I owe this pleasure?” she asked as she opened her front door. We followed her into the warm orange house with the cold interior, straight back until we were in her sterile kitchen. Ms. DeVeau opened the refrigerator and took out a pitcher of lavender lemonade, pouring out a cup for each of us.

  “We found some things of Marley’s.” Aidy looked into her cup like she wasn’t sure what she was about to ingest. “We thought you should know about them. It’s kind of a long story, but Olivia got her hands on Marley’s journal, and in it she says a lot of stuff—”

  “Are you coming to tell me you think Marley might’ve known her father’s gun had ammunition?” Ms. DeVeau interrupted.

  Aidy coughed up the small sip of lemonade she’d started to swallow.

  “We read those journals a long time ago,” she told Aidy. “Gave over all of Marley’s stuff to the police for a thorough investigation. If you think her father didn’t have every hair on her hairbrush examined for clues, then you really don’t know that man. He loved Marley some kind of fierce.”

  She took a long dragging gulp from her lemonade.

  “Trust me when I tell you, we looked into every avenue. The official verdict was that she was a teenager coping with her parents’ divorce and their quote ‘unrealistic expectations’ as most teenagers do. By acting out. Stealing important things like her father’s gun, oblivious to the true consequence of such an action.” She set down her glass. “Did you ever find the money she’d been storing in one of her broken trophies?”

  It was my turn to stumble on a sip of lemonade.

  “She was saving up to leave as soon as she turned eighteen. She loved to tell me that every chance she got.” Ms. DeVeau stared into her counter. “Marley’s death was an accident,” she said softly.

  Aidy thought she’d found a last unfinished thread; unaware it was in fact the very first thread to be tied up. Ms. DeVeau’s cer
tainty swiftly answered our biggest question.

  Suddenly, Ms. DeVeau started crying. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she poured out, hugging me as if I were her own daughter, kissing and petting my head. “I didn’t want her stuck in the same life I was.” Ms. DeVeau clung onto me. “This place is all I have left of her.” Her nails formed half-moons along the side of my arm.

  “She loved you,” I assured her. Even though Ms. DeVeau had been cruel at times, Marley wanted her mother to have a happiness that didn’t exist. Marley tried to build it anyway. Much like the rest of us. Skewering rules and logic for love.

  “She loved you too,” Ms. DeVeau said.

  A truce of sorts unfolded between us. We recognized our shared ability to play grand roles. Knew it was a way to remember Marley. We didn’t agree with each other’s interpretations, but we accepted the talent. The whole exchange seemed to be the only way Ms. DeVeau knew how to admit she’d gone too far. She told it to me through her tight grasp and genuine tears; another secret hidden in plain sight.

  “I’m sorry about your garden,” I told her.

  She laughed. She knew a good transition when she saw one. “What were you trying to do out there?”

  “Finish one of Marley’s adventures.”

  “The one with the buried treasure and the map?”

  “How’d you know?”

  “I read the journals. And I know everything you kids used to get into.” She pasted on her most knowing smirk, so reminiscent of Marley, I had to do a double take. “Wasn’t it supposed to be some plan to get me back together with her father? If so, I can tell you that certainly won’t be happening.”

  “I didn’t realize that’s what it was supposed to be, so I made it about the Albany kids,” I said.

  “Trust me, no hard feelings there.” Ms. DeVeau swirled her finger around the edge of her cup. “You know what’s funny about that map she and her dad made? That’s how I chose this house. She’d marked it on there. It was vacant when she was alive, of course. Up for sale for years and years. I bought it because I knew it meant something to her, whatever that something was.”