When the girl returns, she will see you’ve been crying. She will hand you a bottle and wipe away your tears. Say: “Sorry.” She will laugh, shrug, then stare deeply into your eyes. You won’t know how to explain it, this sad but happy feeling. It will start down low in your heart, a burning. Something warm and liquid will flow through your body and you will believe what you are about to do is right.
Step 3—Kiss the girl. It will last less than a heartbeat, but in that instant you will experience something worse than dread. Fear will force you to stumble back, dropping your wine cooler. Watch the red liquid foam pink. Watch it soak into the blue carpet. Curse. Apologize. Repeat. Stand aside while the girl mops it up with a beach towel. When she looks up and says, “It’s okay, don’t worry about the mess,” make your escape. Listen to the girl call, “Don’t go!” as you book it down the stairs. Ignore the grandma watching TV. Forget your coat. Run down the middle of the dark and lonely road. The girl will come out waving her arms. She will stand in the road, calling you back. Someone else will be calling you, too: your sister. But your sister seems so far away. Miles and miles away. You have to make a choice. You can’t have both.
You are not so drunk that you can’t make it home.
sixty
The library is quiet. Too quiet. I have this sickening sense that something bad is about to happen. I don’t know how to explain it, this siren wailing in my head. My scars itch—the ones on my wrists, the ones over my heart. There’s a nagging in my bones, my gut. Every little thing seems significant: the hush of cellophane as Ms. Merrill loads a cart with books; the soothing gray carpet and artificial trees and endless blond wood. It all sounds so ordinary, right? That’s just it. That’s how I know something is wrong. Watch an interview with any survivor; they all say the same thing: It was a day like any other day, nothing special, nothing new. I can’t stop this crushing panic. I should do something—run, hide, smash the alarm box and save us all. From what? Earthquake. Fire. A boy with a grudge and a gun.
You should be so lucky.
Madeline wanders over to the stacks, starts randomly pulling books off the shelves. She’s acting strange—restless and distant. She wanted to skip school. She had it all worked out. She wanted to spend the day in Autumn’s clubhouse, except I didn’t have my coat. Autumn brought it to the bus, but by then it was too late. Everyone had seen me. No one’s talking about yesterday. Not Autumn. Not Rad. They’re probably off comparing notes. I don’t know how to explain what happened.
Madeline stalks over, wearing Ms. Merrill’s shiny black helmet. It’s freezing, but all she’s got on is a tank top and leggings. She plunks down next to me, leans back in her chair, and puts her boots on the table. She’s got the visor down, so I can’t see her eyes. All I see is my own dark reflection staring back. She flaps her fingers for me to give her my journal.
Start with Autumn. Rad, I get. I knew that was coming sooner or later. But Autumn? What the hell was that about?
It wasn’t anything. I just wanted to feel something.
She’s ignoring what I’ve written. She’s drawing a feather on her upper arm with one of Ms. Merrill’s permanent markers. It’s beautiful. It looks so real.
She leans over the table. My breath steams up the visor.
Why are you wasting your time with all this? You don’t have to, you know? You have a choice. It’s not too late. It’s never too late.
My eye catches something dark crouching by the computers. There’s a flash. The pounding of feet on carpet. My heart stops. My brain screams Run! but my body goes rigid. This is it. It’s over. My life. I’m ready. I’m not ready.
You’re ready. We’re ready.
Another flash. And another. More feet. More running.
The flashes keep coming, but it’s not the end. A voice shouts, “Don’t move!” Another voice shouts, “Classic!” It’s Jess. Derek is with her, and Kylie, too. Jess with her camera, shooting pictures for the yearbook. They’re bearing down, circling me like vultures. Their yellow eyes sharp and glistening. There’s no escape.
“You look like a badass,” Derek says. He reaches out and flips the visor. Kylie plunks down on the table, beside my boots, and pops her gum. Jess flashes a sinister smile at the preview screen. Her breath smells like death, rotten like the deer carcass in the woods. “Perfect,” she hisses. “You’re gonna love these.”
sixty-one
My fingers contracted. They shriveled and curled, collapsing like a cold, hard star. Madeline crouched on the bed, on her knees, and put my fist in her lap. Her hands washed over my hand (tighter, tighter). Her fingers grazed my knuckles, swept past my wrist, circling back and over, again and again, until everything around us began to dissolve, until my heart steadied, and my breathing slowed, and I was there and nowhere else.
Until the phone rang. It was probably Rad.
Concentrate. Concentrate.
I was trying, but there were a thousand distractions. There was the cold, hard rain battering the window and the wind howling. The ceiling above my desk was wet, and Rad was calling (again), and the house shook, creaking and groaning like some decrepit monster.
Babies crying, people dying. Concentrate. Concentrate. People crying, babies dying.
Headlights swept the wall. The wind caught the storm door. I heard my mother struggling. Madeline opened my fingers slowly, one by one. They unfolded like petals, blooming. My fingers were not my fingers. My hand was not my hand. I closed my eyes, steadying myself.
Stick a knife in your—
“Oh my God!”
I did not open my eyes. It was my mother. It was my mother before the accident, before the RV went through the guardrail and destroyed everything. It was my mother helpless and scared, bracing for the impact. But it was too late. The blood was running down, pooling in the crook of my arm. I heard crying. (Concentrate. Concentrate.) My mother crying, “Oh, God! No, Ellie! No! When did you … how long have you … when did you start cutting?”
sixty-two
When I got back from my run, our living room looked like the stage on one of those trashy TV talk shows. Mrs. Pulaski was yelling, and my mother was frowning and holding her belly, and Autumn was crying and bleeding.
“What happened?” I asked, wondering why everyone was crying and yelling, why Autumn was bleeding.
“Don’t play dumb,” Mrs. Pulaski said, poking her finger at my chest. “You know damn well what happened. If you ever touch my daughter again…”
Three months ago I might’ve looked at Autumn standing there a battered mess and made some snide remark about a run-in with Bigfoot. Not anymore. Autumn’s my friend. I know I still get embarrassed when Jess sees me talking to her, but I would never hurt Autumn. It wasn’t me. There isn’t a violent bone in my body. But Autumn swears I did, I swear I didn’t, and Autumn’s got the bloody nose and bruises to prove it.
“Is this for the other day?” Autumn mumbled into the bloody towel. “For what happened in my room?”
My mother (to me): What happened the other day?
Mrs. Pulaski (to Autumn): What happened in your room?
Autumn (to me): I wasn’t going to tell anyone.
I picked at the bandage on my palm.
My mother crossed her hands above her head calling for time-out.
“Calm down,” she pleaded. “Let’s all calm down. There’s got to be some mistake. Autumn, when did this happen? Where?”
“When we got off the bus, Ellie said, ‘Let’s go to the clubhouse.’ But when we got to the woods, she started whaling on me with her book bag for no reason.”
“No, I didn’t! I got off the bus and came home. I went upstairs. I—” I faltered. I don’t know what I did. Listened to music, I guess. Started my homework. Then I went for a run. “I didn’t do it. Why are you lying? Tell your mother you’re lying.”
Suddenly Mrs. Pulaski’s face turned purple and blotchy. I thought she was going to hurt me—shake me or slap me or something. “You’re lucky I don’t press charges,
” she growled through clenched teeth. My mother was standing there rubbing her belly like she hoped Mrs. Pulaski might feel sorry for her condition and dial it down a notch. But Mrs. Pulaski was furious. Hers was the kind of rage that makes your pupils huge and your veins pop out, the kind that makes you oblivious to the spit spraying from your mouth.
That’s when I tried to leave my body, to reverse time. I was back in the woods, running through the leaves and the snow, the sun through the trees warming my face. Sneakers pounding, blood pounding. My eyes fluttered open. It didn’t work. I was in the living room. Mrs. Pulaski was still raving like a lunatic. I couldn’t look at her. I couldn’t look at Autumn—bruised and sad—mumbling about how she’d tried to outrun me. I stared at my bandage instead, waiting for my mother to step in.
“Elanor, go upstairs,” she said, sternly. She meant my room, but I sat on the landing. Not that I really needed to hear what she was about to say. How could she stand there and tell Mrs. Pulaski that I had psychological issues? How could she tell her that this was the last straw and she would make sure I got help, treatment, some kind of therapy, because something was deeply wrong. She actually called me “disturbed.” Mrs. Pulaski doesn’t care. She said if I ever go near her daughter again, there will be hell to pay. She started to say something about reporting this to the school, but Autumn cut in, stuttering about how her mother didn’t understand.
“Ellie didn’t mean it. It was her … Ellie … but it wasn’t.”
I wanted to storm downstairs and ask, “Which is it, Autumn? You can’t have it both ways. I did it or I didn’t. Get your facts straight before you go and unleash your mom on me.” But I didn’t. I went to my room instead. Madeline was waiting stretched out on the bed—ankles crossed, back against the headboard—listening to music through the earbuds. She was wearing a short-sleeved top and adding to the feather she’d drawn the other day. There were at least a dozen now, all different shapes and sizes, trailing down her arm. She smiled and waved, kicking my book bag to the floor. She wanted me to sit, and I wanted to run. But I couldn’t move. I stood there in the doorway, my eyes locked on my book bag.
My bag. My bloodstained bag. My bag stained with Autumn’s blood.
sixty-three
M-A-D-E-L-I-N-E-T-O-R-U-S. Her name is a death sentence: E-L-A-N-O-R-M-U-S-T-D-I-E.
She’s ruining my life, destroying me through me. She’s a cancer. Her love is all-consuming, a dark dream of one-and-only devotion. There’s no room in our world for anyone else.
Don’t you see? They can only tear us apart.
It was all her. The drawing in the bathroom, the death threat, what happened to Autumn. Everything. She’s using my body against me. She’s using me to destroy my world, a world where she doesn’t belong. Trying to lure me with this: a silver sliver hidden in my journal. The tool of my annihilation. An invitation to return to the perfect void we shared in the beginning.
Yes. No. You don’t understand. There’s a plan. You’re complicating the plan.
I try to speak, but she swallows my words. I’m choking. I can’t breathe. I love her. I can’t live without her, but I don’t want to die. She’s in my blood. I have to release her. I have to get her out.
sixty-four
You carry my heart. (You carry my heart in my heart.)
Help me find you. What is your name?
part iii
the true north journal
Nobody can go back and start a new beginning, but anyone can start today and make a new ending.
—Maria Robinson
sixty-five
I hate doctors. They act like they care, but they don’t. You’re nothing but a machine to them, something to fix. The one who glued me together smelled like rotten cabbage and wore brown clogs. He measured out kindness with a dropper. The psych ward doctor is worse, with her frizzy mad-scientist hair and that clipboard of hers. She squints at me over her reading glasses like she’s examining a germ through a microscope. She interrogates me with stupid questions: Do I hear a voice? Does the voice tell me to do things, warn me of danger? Do I feel fingers touching me?
I answered her truthfully. I told her about Madeline. I told her my sister is living inside me, and she bobbed her head knowingly, like she’s seen my kind before. She’s got a label for everything: Depression. Bipolar Disorder. Early Onset Schizophrenia. (Translation: nut job.) I’m seething with the same rage I felt the day we buried my father, when the funeral director kept calling him by the wrong name. I want to scream when she calls me those things. I want to hit her over the head with her stupid little clipboard when she looks at me that way. She’s labeling it everything but what it is: possession. She promises to make me well. She thinks she’s so smart, but she doesn’t understand. I did not want to die. I did what I did to keep living. I don’t blame anyone for jumping to conclusions. I know how it looked: a girl with suicidal tendencies admitted to the hospital with multiple lacerations. I look like the victim in a slasher movie. Like that time with my hair—I started cutting and couldn’t stop.
I need a priest or a medium. I don’t need a psychiatrist. I don’t need pills with names I can’t pronounce. Drugs won’t drive her out. I can’t see her or hear her, but she’s not gone. Not really. She’s just been closed off. It’s like we’re in prison, in adjoining cells in solitary confinement. I can hear her tapping on the wall …
The only one I don’t hate here is Erika, but Erika’s not a doctor. Not a real one, anyway. She’s a therapist, which means she smiles a lot, even though her teeth aren’t that great. She’s better than the woman back in Jackson, the one I had to see after I tried to kill myself. She was into hugging, that one, like it was the answer to all life’s problems. She gave me the creeps. Erika’s not like that. She smiles, but she keeps her arms to herself. We meet in a room with a couple of plastic chairs and some inspirational posters and not much else. For an hour a day she acts like she really cares about what I have to say. I don’t know. Maybe she does. Maybe she doesn’t. She gave me this journal. It’s got a soft cover, like a spiral notebook, but with a ton of pages, like maybe she thinks all that blank space will distract her patients from offing themselves.
I have to trust her. I have to make her understand what’s going on. I’ve come clean about everything, all my secrets: the In-Between, the initials over my heart, my addiction to sleeping pills, what happened with Autumn. We talk about other things, too, like my father and mother, and how I feel about the babies and school and Rad, and the healing process. We talk about love and betrayal and death and loneliness. I talk until I can’t stand the sound of my own voice, until my throat hurts and it’s time to shuffle back to my room. After we meet, I feel good for a little while but not for long, because that’s when I start to feel Madeline pacing back and forth like a caged animal. Her silence scares me. That’s when I realize I could talk to Erika forever and take my pills and still never be whole because how can I be complete when Madeline is my other half?
sixty-six
My mother is not the most subtle person. It’s pretty obvious she’s hidden everything with an edge. All I wanted was to remove the stupid hospital bracelet before I took a shower, but I couldn’t find the scissors or the nail clippers. Apparently, I’m not even allowed to shave my legs—my hot-pink razor is missing. On the bathroom sink is a purple tube of hair removal cream.
Something else is different, too. My room. She’s been through it, I can tell. Evidence of pine-scented cleaner. No trace of blood. Everything’s a little neater. My clothes are hung, and my socks are paired, and my comforter smells like fabric softener. I checked my desk drawer. Lucy’s fur, my father’s ashes, the ultrasound of me and Madeline—they’re all gone. They’re probably with the scissors and knives. That’s fine. I understand it has to be this way. She’s probably read my journal, too, the old one, the one with the Pegasus on it. I don’t care. She knows everything already. It feels good to be rid of all those secrets.
My mother’s been productive. She c
ollected my missed assignments and weatherized the windows. She even pieced together her favorite lamp, the one I broke in the In-Between. All that while I was off “getting well.” It’s a joke, really. It sounds like I had an infection, something curable. The doctor said maybe my breakdown was the result of the accident or genetics or a chemical imbalance. Whatever. I’m still a head case. Nobody wants to visit a head case. If I’d been hospitalized for a normal reason—like pneumonia, or I had my appendix out—I’m pretty sure someone would’ve come to see me. Don’t you think my room would’ve been filled with friends and flowers and balloons? But nobody came. Not one person. I was there for three days.
“You weren’t allowed visitors,” my mother explained. “Only family.”
“Did anyone try?”
“Autumn did,” my mother said. “Autumn tried.”
Autumn? Really? Autumn wanted to see me? What about Rad? What about Jess and Kylie? Ms. Merrill? Coach Buffman?
My mother hesitated, uneasy with where the conversation was heading. Erika had given her the talk about “triggers,” and how she needs to avoid them for a while, at least until my meds stabilize. She’s walking on eggshells, treating me the way she used to treat my father. She’s tiptoeing around the truth: Everyone is afraid of me.
“Don’t worry,” I said as I shrugged and frowned and shrugged again. I told her I don’t care. It doesn’t matter. I would have been embarrassed to be seen like that: drugged up and cut to pieces. My mother even had a hard time looking at me. I know she doesn’t believe me. She thinks I’m upset, but I’m not. It’s the drugs. They make you feel this way, like the world could come crashing down around you and all you’d care about is what’s for dinner. The last time the doctors tried to fix me, my father refused to let them put me on anything. He said it wasn’t healthy. My mother disagreed. They fought about it—a lot. I remember my mother shouting, “God, Richard! Do you want her to end up like you?”
The In-Between Page 12
