“We’re the same,” she whispered, and sat down next to me. “More than you know.”
She pushed up her sleeves and turned her arms over and held them out for me to see. In that instant it felt like the world was collapsing and expanding all at once. I guess it was shock. Her veins looked so thin, so fragile, I wanted to cry. She had the whitest skin, but the scars were whiter still, whiter than sugar, whiter than marble. My poor stone angel.
Madeline’s fingers circled my wrist again. This time I didn’t resist. Slowly, gently, like I was something old and precious, she exposed my arm to the light. I closed my eyes and felt her breath on my skin—warm and soft—and then something warmer, softer. She’d pressed her lips against my scar. The blackness exploded in a million candy-colored pieces.
“It’s like we’re meant to be together,” I said.
Madeline shook her head. “We are meant to be together.”
“I want to know everything about you,” I said.
“What’s to know?”
I shrugged. “You know—”
“No, I don’t.” She went to the dresser and looked in the mirror. “What’s it like to be you?”
“Me?” I said. “My life sucks.”
Madeline shook her head. She pulled down her sleeves and turned off the music and stood before me looking beautiful and sad. Why do I always ruin everything? What exactly did I want to know? Stupid stuff, I guess. Does she have a boyfriend? What’s her favorite movie? Has she ever tried a deep-fried candy bar? I should’ve asked something important, like why she tried to kill herself. Instead, I asked if she was popular. What a stupid question. Only someone who’s not popular asks something like that.
Madeline shrugged. “I don’t care about anyone else. I’ve got you.”
Madeline’s the most amazing girl I’ve ever met—inside and out. Which is rare. Beautiful people are usually obnoxious. She left before dark and now my dad is calling me for dinner. We spent all day together—Madeline and I—but I still don’t know anything about her, not really. She’s somehow just beyond my reach.
Does it matter? Do you ever really know another person? I thought I knew Priscilla, but I was wrong. I don’t even know my own self. Six months ago, I thought I wanted to die. Now I know that I didn’t. I wanted to escape. I was tired of my best friend acting like I didn’t exist. One day I came home from school and thought, I can’t go back, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t. But you don’t have many choices when you’re fourteen. You can stand there and take it, or you can take your own life. I wanted a way out of Jackson Middle, and if that meant the world, too …
I know I’m not any of the things people think are important: athletic, pretty, smart. The list goes on and on. Not that I’ve never tried. My mother always said I lack stick-to-it-ive-ness. I give up too quickly. But that’s not it. I’m not like other girls. I don’t like what they like. I don’t think about what they think about. I don’t know what I want to be or how many kids I’m going to have or what I’m going to wear to the prom two years from now. My father thinks that’s okay. According to him, I’m perfectly normal. He says I’ll find myself.
I think I have. My purpose is clear. There’s a reason why I survived the accident. Her name is Madeline Torus.
ten
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eleven
I don’t have to be a fake around Madeline. I am what I am: Ellie Moss. Freak. Misfit. Loser. Whatever. I don’t have to pretend to gush over the latest heartthrob or worry if my jeans taper or don’t taper. Madeline doesn’t care about cell phones or computers or if I have a pool. I’m not ashamed of my taste in music or poetry or my run-down house or my addiction to all things Pegasus. She doesn’t think I’m a nothing because I’ve never kissed a boy or shoplifted makeup or dropped the F word in front of my parents. None of that stuff matters to her. To us.
Being friends with Priscilla was work. Which is funny because she was nothing special until Natalie Paquin decided she was. Her rise was so random. (It could’ve been anyone. It could’ve been me.) Priscilla was in the right place at the right time. If she hadn’t been out walking her mangy dog past the car wash when that creepy guy tried to grab Natalie, none of what happened would’ve happened. Natalie would’ve made a beautiful corpse in an abandoned lot, and Scilla and I would’ve stayed friends forever. Instead, my best friend saved the school’s biggest snob, and the two of them became inseparable. The next thing I knew, Priscilla was hanging out with Natalie instead of me. She was getting contact lenses. She was letting Brandon Clark feel her up behind the bleachers.
“She’s still the same person,” I said. “Shallow, pathetic, a total airhead.”
“Keep going,” Madeline said. She stretched out next to me on the bed where I’d been sitting for the last hour, chin on my knees, replaying The Worst Year of My Life.
“You want to hear all this?” I said.
“Sure.” She looked at me with those big blue eyes. “You need to get it off your chest. You can’t let it eat at your soul.”
She was right. I’d never told anyone how I felt about Priscilla, how much I hated her. Not that there was anyone to tell. But if there were, I would’ve been afraid to burn that bridge. In my mind there was always a spark of hope, the remotest possibility that Priscilla would realize she’d lost the truest friend she’d ever had.
Fat chance.
A week ago I could not have said what I said this afternoon. All the loathing and disgust and anger flowed out of my heart. It’s amazing all the things you find to hate about a person when that person becomes your enemy—things that never bothered you when that person was your friend. Like Priscilla’s tuna breath. Or the way she walked like an elephant and spoke baby talk with her mother in public. I hated that she borrowed clothes and gave them back stained and smelling like her dog. Or how she said “prolly” instead of “probably.”
When I finished, Madeline smiled. “Feel better?” she said.
And I did. All the cruel thoughts leaving me felt good.
“Maybe I’d feel even better if I wrote her a letter,” I said. “She deserves to hear what I think about her. Worse, really.”
Madeline rolled over on her stomach. “Why? She lives in another world.”
She was right. She’d just throw it out, or she’d run to Natalie.
Priscilla: Is my laugh really that bad? I don’t sound like a hyena, do I?
Natalie: Elanor Moss is a freak. She’s jealous of you.
Priscilla: You’re prolly right.
It wouldn’t be like it was for me. I didn’t have anyone to turn to. I didn’t have a shoulder to cry on. Scilla was my one-and-only and when she abandoned me, I had no one. Not a single friend.
But none of that matters anymore. Madeline is my world now. We’ve known each other only a few days and already we’re finishing each other’s sentences. Scilla and I were always going places: her house, my house, the library, the cemetery, the mall. Always bored. Always searching for something, anything to keep from going crazy. We don’t go anywhere—Madeline and I—but I don’t care. We have everything we want right here in my room: We have each other.
I’m never lonely anymore. When Madeline’s not here, I have my mother. It’s funny how I feel closer to her now that she’s dead. W
hen she was alive, I was always pushing her away, acting like she was annoying, a pain I just barely tolerated. I wish she could read this. Can she read this? Are you reading this right now? I can feel you stroking that soft spot behind my ear. You used to do that when I was little, to calm me down after a nightmare. I love you. You know that, right?
You would’ve loved Madeline. She’s smart and fun and beautiful—all the things I’m not. I know you’d disagree. You believed in potential. You believed in choices. (Sorry, Mom, but no one chooses to be stupid or ugly or weird.) “It’s all just a matter of nurturing your good qualities,” you’d say, “dialing down the negative self-talk. You have to learn to love yourself.”
I didn’t always love myself. But now I do. I love who I am around Madeline. We’re complete opposites, but when I’m with her I feel whole. Yesterday I tried to explain how I felt, and she told me this amazing story about some ancient Greek philosopher who believed that humans used to have four arms and four legs and two faces. We were these perfectly happy roly-poly creatures, but the gods thought we were too powerful, so they split everyone in two, condemning us to spend eternity searching for our other perfect half.
I don’t know where she gets this stuff. She said she learned it in school. I probably did, too, but I don’t remember. I was either too busy trying to survive or trying to die. That’s another thing that used to upset my mother—grades. “If I thought you were developmentally disabled (translation: retarded), I would be proud of all these Cs. You’re a bright girl, Ellie. I expect more.” Good Grades was on the New Beginning list. I guess it still is, but who’s going to care? My father? He hardly notices me now.
I think about you a lot, Mommy—all the time, really. I can’t get my head around the fact that I’ll never see you again. Probably because I can still feel you. I can’t decide if it’s a good thing. If what I’m feeling isn’t you, but some trick of my damaged brain, then it’s probably bad. But if it is you, I don’t ever want you to let go.
I’ve been trying to tell Madeline about you. I don’t know why I’ve waited so long. Probably because of the way Daddy reacted. I know Madeline is different, but I also know how it sounds: “Oh, by the way … my dead mother … she’s not really gone. I mean, she holds my hand—she’s holding my hand right now.” But I’m not crazy, you’re here. You have to be.
I love Madeline. I trust her with everything—my life, even. But this is weird. I hate keeping you a secret from my best friend. I’m not ashamed or embarrassed, it’s just that this feels incredibly private. More than the box of Old Ellie journals stashed under the bed. More than the scars on my wrists. It’d be like Madeline and I rifling through Daddy’s wallet. Worse. It’d be like telling her about when you two almost split up and I found Daddy crying in your lap, with you rocking him, hushing him like a baby.
I’ve probably already told her about you. I still have memory lapses. I know what Madeline wore three days ago (camouflage tank, shredded tutu, those amazing silver boots), but I don’t remember what Daddy fed me for dinner tonight. (Something from a can, most likely.) Or when it started raining. It’s really coming down right now, drumming the porch roof outside my window, pinging the gutters. The wind whips the tree out front, whistling in the eaves. There’s a leak in my ceiling, right over my desk. The spot swells, getting larger and larger. A drop tugs loose and lands on my photo of Lucy. My eyes drift for something to catch the next one. Instead they flicker to a figure at the window, dark and crouched, reaching a long, pale hand …
* * *
It’s the middle of the night. The ceiling is still leaking, but there’s a pencil cup under it now. Earlier I thought I was hallucinating. Ghostly fingers tapped the glass. A drowned white face swam up out of the darkness. But it was just Madeline, soaked and shivering, whispering to be let in. The frame is still painted shut, so I motioned for her to go around the side, to the bathroom. The window is smaller, but it opens. She squeezed through, wiggled over the sill, and flopped down on the floor.
“You scared the crap out of me!” I said, grabbing a towel from the rack to dry her hair.
“I missed you.”
I shook my head and hugged her and took her to the kitchen for something to eat. Madeline is crazy. I would never have the guts to sneak out. I could never do anything without my mother knowing. My father’s a different story. Asleep on the couch, he didn’t even hear us tiptoe through the living room, giggling and shivering like he was some evil ogre waiting to reach out and snap our bones. We raided the cupboards for cheese-filled pretzels for me and cookies for her, and ran back upstairs to sit on my bed and stuff our faces and dream about what it would be like to live together forever.
And now here we are, side by side, Madeline sleeping soundly, her hair fanned over my pillow. I can feel her breath on my elbow. The heat radiating from her body warms me all over. Blue veins streak her temples, reminding me of those other veins—the ones in her wrists, the ones she tried to sever—because she was sad and lonely, just like me. But she’s safe now. I would never hurt her, not in a million years. Not my Madeline. My stone angel. I will always be hers. She will always be mine. Forever and ever. She is more than a friend, she’s a part of me. Watching her sleep, my heart aches in a good way. She makes me happy to be alive. These days with her are like a dream. When we’re together, there is no past, no future, only now, the two of us in my room. Nothing else matters. When I think of all the things that could have kept us apart … I’m not going to write about it. I can’t write about it. Not now. Not ever.
twelve
My father and I had a fight this morning. Maybe “fight” isn’t the right word. It was pretty one-sided, with me ranting and raving while my father gazed blankly at me. It all started with the leak above my desk. This morning there was a giant ugly stain. I’d swapped the pencil cup for the wastebasket, but it had rained all night and the leak had shifted. Now everything on my desk is wet and ruined.
“At least it wasn’t over your bed.” My father’s pathetic attempt at humor. I was not amused.
“How long are we going to live like this?” I said, swinging my arms at the unpacked boxes, the trash piling up in the corner, the tangle of sheets strewn over my father’s makeshift bed on the couch. Even with its leaky ceiling, my room is an oasis.
My father lowered his head in shame. He always played the role of the child with my mother, expecting her to pick up the pieces of our broken lives. And now he’s doing it with me, oblivious to everything but his own pain. He didn’t even know Madeline slept over.
My father started to walk away.
“You’re the adult here!” I screamed. “Act like one!”
My stomach dropped. I froze. My father has never hit me, but I half expected him to march over and slap my face. Holler at me, at least, in his scary dad voice: Lose the attitude, Elanor! But he just shook his head sadly, fixing me with those empty eyes.
It made me even angrier.
“When are you going to start your new job?” I said. “When are you going to get the phone and cable turned on? I don’t even have clothes to start school!”
He ran his hand over his face and then fiddled with the tie on his robe. He looked tired, unbelievably tired. “Give me a couple of days,” he said.
“Days? You’ve had weeks! Mommy’s not coming back! You’re not going to wake up one morning and find her sitting at the kitchen table making her lists! Don’t you get it? She’s dead!”
And that’s when I went and dredged up the past, poking my finger in old wounds. I needed a sign he’s still here—that he hasn’t checked out for good.
“I see why she wanted to leave you,” I hissed. “She was tired of trying to do everything by herself! I’d leave if I could!”
My father stood there blinking. If that didn’t faze him, nothing would. He was gone, completely. All my anger drained away, and I was filled with the most awful realization: I haven’t just lost my mother … I’ve lost my father, too.
“This is
only temporary,” he said.
“What’s temporary? The boxes and trash and canned food? Our life—if you can call this a life—in Pottsville? This ocean of sorrow?”
My father crooked his finger for me to listen carefully.
“Everything is temporary,” he whispered. His breath smelled like ashes. I winced.
Those three little words sent me plummeting over the edge. Stumbling, as if I’d been hit, I reached to steady myself and knocked my mother’s favorite lamp to the floor. The base cracked in two, and the bulb exploded into a million pieces. The ground was slipping beneath my feet. Gravity had stopped working. If I didn’t get down on my hands and knees, I’d fly right off the face of the earth.
In my soul I know he’s right. Everything is temporary. Look at my mother. You think your parents are as constant as the moon in the sky, but they’re not.
“Let’s do something permanent.”
That’s what Madeline said after she held my head in her lap and let me cry about my dad and then cried with me when I told her I was afraid of losing her, too.
“I’m not going anywhere,” she said. “Not without you.”
I want to believe her, but she’s not immortal. She could burn up in a fire. She could tumble down a flight of stairs and snap her neck. It seems like something the gods from her story would do: Give me Madeline and then snatch her away.
“We’ll need something sharp,” she said, poking through my dresser. “A small knife or a razor.”
I figured she wanted to carve something, our names, maybe, into my desk or the floorboards or the tree outside my window. I was shocked when she said, “We’ll need some ice, too, to numb ourselves. And some towels and some gauze and tape.”
In the old days, I would’ve had to slink around the house to hide what I was doing. My mother was always spying on Scilla and me, suspicious of everything. Not my father.
The In-Between Page 3
