by Nicole Baart
But although Abby tried to convince herself that detachment was the way to go, family ties are never easily broken. When Abby’s life started to sway in happy directions in spite of the confused muddle at home, the first thing she wanted to do was share her joy with her mother.
The truth was, Abby had an almost boyfriend. His name was Luke, and while he wasn’t a starter on the fabled Newcastle Public School basketball team, he did a handsome job of warming the bench. Luke was a junior, and in addition to being a year older than Abby, he was an entire head taller. Best of all, he had a swath of strawberry-colored hair that was so softly waved it was almost pretty. But his features were angled and distinctive; Luke was the opposite of effeminate. And he was everything Abby could have ever hoped for.
“Devastating,” Abby called him.
She whispered about her crush to her friends: his looks, his sense of humor, his inexplicable and utterly glorious interest in her. Abby lived and breathed Luke with the ardent passion of first love. And though she couldn’t articulate what she felt or why, she longed to introduce him to her family. Maybe if they could see in her what Luke saw in her, everything would change.
Surely Luke, man-to-man, in some secret male rite of understanding, could impress upon Abby’s disinterested father the depth of her inherent worth. Luke and his shy attentions had begun to convince Abby that she was a treasure. She was a small treasure, to be certain—a collection of shiny coins instead of an overflowing trove of diamonds, rubies, and riches—but a treasure all the same. If only Luke could somehow make them all see . . . He could be the impetus for change at the Bennetts’. Maybe Abby wouldn’t have to disengage after all.
Abby’s opportunity came in late January when Luke invited her to go to the winter dance with him. Of course, he had to play (sit on the bench) in the basketball game first, but after the doubleheader there was an all-school dance. Luke would escort Abby and then take her out with a large coed group for late-night appetizers at the local twenty-four-hour Perkins. Abby was ecstatic.
And she was ready to facilitate a meeting.
After the game, Abby made plans with a friend to be dropped off at home rather than wait around for Luke to shower and get ready for the dance. This would ensure not only that Abby had time to freshen up herself but also that Luke would be forced to pick her up from home. He was fine with the arrangement, and Abby excitedly began to count the days.
On the night in question, Abby floated through the front door of the Bennetts’ still-citrus two-story and practically skipped into the living room.
“How was it?” Melody asked, turning from the television with a limp smile.
“Awesome,” Abby shot back. “We won, of course.”
“The big games are always stacked,” Lou muttered. “The coaches schedule it so they play some loser team that will go down without a fight.”
Abby shrugged. Nothing could dampen her exuberance on this night, not even Lou’s cynicism. But instead of sticking around for more grumpy commentary, Abby headed to the main floor bathroom, where she brushed a fine coat of powder on her forehead and chin and reapplied a seashell pink lip gloss. She didn’t realize that she had left the bathroom door open until Hailey poked her somber head in.
Actually, Hailey didn’t poke her head in; she just materialized, all of her, out of nowhere. She hovered, a translucent fog of child that seemed to be more ghost than girl. “What are you doing?” she asked, her voice a monotone.
“Don’t sneak up on me,” Abby chided. But she wasn’t angry, nor was she surprised by Hailey’s abrupt appearance. “If you must know, I’m primping.” Abby savored the last word, knowing that Hailey would immediately understand it within context and then file it away for later use.
“What for?”
Abby could have said a dozen things. For the dance. Because I feel like it. Because I want to look pretty. But Abby ached to say the truth and she spilled her secret. “I have a date.”
Hailey’s eyes were sunken and rimmed in a pale, unhealthy blue, but she was still striking and even more so when her eyes flashed silver beneath the icy blue. “A date?”
“Yes, a date.” Abby pursed her lips and smacked them softly, watching the effect in the mirror and liking it. “His name is Luke. He’s so hot.”
Hailey took turns studying her sister’s reflection in the glass and her profile in the flesh. For the first time in weeks, she seemed to be aware of the fact that Abby was moving forward while she moped around in some sorry state of self-inflicted distress. “You’re dead, you know,” Hailey finally said, breaking her silence when Abby spun from the mirror and reached to flick off the bathroom light. “Dad is going to be livid, irate, completely incensed. He’s going to go ballistic.”
Abby’s heart pumped a single shot of ice-cold blood through her entire body. She shivered and then shook the feeling off. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
As Abby breezed down the hallway, she heard her sister call, “Did you ask Dad if you could go on a date?”
The thought had never crossed Abby’s mind. Never. Last year she had attended the dance with a group of friends, so the issue of securing permission for a date was unnecessary. Boys and girls, the birds and the bees were not routinely or ever discussed in the Bennett home. There was no rule book for this sort of thing. No protocol. But Abby should have known better.
Suddenly panicked, Abby rushed through the kitchen and into the living room. She would wait by the window and slip out the door the second Luke pulled into the driveway. She’d abandon her plan to introduce her new boyfriend to her unstable family. She’d forget that she ever naively wished for some semblance of normalcy to result from the conventional unfolding of her own unimportant life.
But it was too late.
Luke was a gentleman and he had come to the door. He stood on the threshold, caught between the mild, uncomprehending gaze of Abby’s mother and the startled, hard look of her father.
“I’m here for Abby . . . ?” Luke fumbled. He was awkward, young and beautiful and guileless, obviously waiting for a girl who he hoped would be more than a friend.
“Here,” Abby said breathlessly. “I’m here.” She hurried across the room, slid her feet in her shoes, and allowed Luke to hold her coat as she twisted into it in one smooth but trembling motion. Abby had intended to say, “This is my mother, and this is my father. And there—the little girl on the couch—that’s my sister.” But she didn’t say any of that. Instead, she ushered Luke out the door.
Before the latch fell shut, Abby peeked at the still life that was her family. Melody was frozen near the door, a confused frown furrowing her lips as she watched her stationary husband. Lou was seated, but his hand was on the arm of the couch as if he intended to rise, and his eyes were dark and cold. And just as the door swung closed, Abby caught a glimpse of Hailey. She was leaning against the entryway wall, her arms crossed and her face warm with something living and bright that Abby couldn’t quite place.
Abby had hoped for change, but this wasn’t what she had in mind.
†
Abby was grounded and Hailey came back to life.
The little girl resuscitated as quickly as she had suffocated; the reversal was absolute and mostly complete by the time the Bennett family gathered for breakfast the following morning. In a way it was a relief to have the old Hailey back, but the cause of her regeneration plagued Abby. Did Hailey turn around because Abby got into trouble? Did she take pleasure in her older sister’s pain? Or was it simply the drama of the incident that breathed life back into the flagging Hailey? After all, the focus was finally off her. But then again, Hailey usually liked to be the center of attention.
The possibilities were endless, and they kept Abby busy during the homebound hours when she would have been continuing to develop her fledgling relationship with Luke. But one strange possibility niggled at the corners of her mind and made Luke a topic that she hardly even dared to think about at home lest his presence be made tangible by her thou
ghts. As Abby had pulled on her coat that unfortunate homecoming night, she had caught a startling look on Hailey’s face. The girl was examining Luke, taking him in with wide-eyed, sweeping glances that seemed drenched in wonder and admiration. Hunger? Was there something hungry in her look? Abby flung the thought from her mind.
And Hailey, bizarrely, implausibly, flung herself from the roof.
It had snowed and frozen, snowed and frozen, and Lou had propped the extension ladder against the roof so he could pour boiling water down the frozen septic vent. It was just another winter chore, and it never occurred to him to promptly put the ladder back in the garage. Who could have possibly known what Hailey had in mind?
One morning, a few days after Luke stepped into their home and broke whatever spell had cast its wicked magic on Hailey, she bundled up in all her winter gear and climbed the icy ladder to the low, flat line of roof over the narrow porch. According to the neighbor who claimed to see it all from her bathroom window, Hailey stepped to the end, lifted her face to the sky, and swan dived off the edge with her arms spread wide in some imitation of a willing virgin sacrifice. She landed prostrate, her head buried in the snow and her arms still open as if she were making a snow angel instead of lying there unconscious. Only her legs were akimbo, leaning gawkily aslant as if somewhere in the back of her mind she was a reluctant offering after all.
At the hospital the doctors determined that Hailey had sprained her right ankle, bruised a number of ribs, and split her upper lip bad enough to require six small stitches. The damage was rather minimal, all things considered, but the whole world was enraged. “If it wasn’t for the snow . . . ,” a doctor warned them, trailing off to leave room for every horrible scenario they could think up.
But Lou didn’t need help imagining the worst. “What were you trying to do?” he demanded as huge tears dripped through the five o’clock shadow that he could never quite make smooth. Lou pinched Hailey’s shoulders in his massive hands. He shook her. He thundered. But then he pressed her to himself and rocked her as if she were the tiny baby that he had held all those years ago. “Were you trying to kill yourself?”
Maybe it would have been easier if she had been. As it turned out, Hailey wasn’t trying to commit suicide at all; she was trying to fly.
When I heard them pounding on the apartment door, I panicked.
It didn’t make sense. There was no reason for me to be afraid of their arrival. After all, I had called them; I had invited them to come. And yet, when the whine of those sirens whispered almost menacingly through the thick walls of her apartment, I surged off the bed as if I was caught in the act. Of doing what? thinking about her? remembering? Or was it the content, the sad slant of my memories that convicted me?
I stood there in her bedroom, just stood still in the middle of the floor while the seconds spun away. Then they were at the door: hard fists on wood, firm voices fixed just below a shout. I didn’t go to let them in. They let themselves in.
Everything went gray around the edges. I gasped in shuddering, little breaths. I shook so hard I nearly collapsed again on the edge of the bed. They were calling for me. They found the bathroom instead. I could tell by the sudden sense of purpose in the unfamiliar voices. They would find me in a moment.
I hadn’t believed the weight of my own remorse before, but now, with them sketching edges around what she had done, drawing conclusions about when and why and how, I realized that there was only one thing that mattered. Words gurgled up from the stronghold of my throat. “I did it. I did this to her.” But I didn’t say that. My voiceless confession rang only in my head.
Substituting denial for admission, I turned from the door because I couldn’t bring myself to confront them when they did come through it. They would see the guilt written all over my face, and I was afraid of the disgust that I knew I would find in their eyes.
And that’s when I spotted it. On the bedside stand, leaning against a dog-eared spy novel behind the place where the photo of the two of us had once stood, there was an envelope with my name on it. Abby, it accused, as if she knew that I would try to defer the blame. Abby—an indictment as bold and
undeniable as her pointed finger. I couldn’t let them see it and know. I lunged for
the paper, hastily folded it in two, and crammed it in the back pocket of my jeans.
“Ma’am? Are you the young woman who called 911?”
I didn’t even get to see his face before everything went black.
VI
Abigail escaped.
The need to feel her blood pound a hard and steady rhythm consumed her. Her heart was beating erratically and she longed to harness it, to bend it to her will instead of allowing it to be swept along by emotions that she was unable to control. If Abigail couldn’t command her life, she’d discipline her body.
Thompson Hills was only a speck in her rearview mirror, and Abigail tried to convince herself that it was nothing more. It was unimportant, diminishing from view even as it faded from her life, and she would never see the stately yellow buildings again. But Abigail knew better. And the knowledge that this was only the beginning made her ache. Her foot quivered on the gas pedal.
Abigail turned left at Mack’s Sweets and drove north, away from Revell. She didn’t know where she was going, but she knew what she was looking for: a deserted road. Ten minutes stretched after leaving Thompson Hills before the perfect place presented itself. Abigail slammed on her brakes to make the sharp turn and pulled down a dirt drive amidst a cloud of dust and a spray of tiny rocks. She was in a small clearing surrounded by gnarled apple trees that were years past their prime. The grove was obviously untended, and there was a weathered real estate sign declaring that the property was sold. But Abigail wasn’t concerned about trespassing. It looked as if no one had given the place a second thought in years.
Behind the trees, Abigail felt totally hidden. She parked in the shade and reached into the backseat of the Kia to riffle around in her suitcase for running shoes, shorts, and a tank top. Abigail changed in the car and discarded her carefully pressed capris and tailored, button-down blouse on the passenger seat. She removed the car key
from its key chain and stuck it in her sock, then locked the car and took off.
Abigail hit the ground at a dead sprint. Even though she knew that she should warm up or at least slow down a bit, she could no more stop the pulse of her feet than she could prevent the sun from beating down on her back. Abigail gave in. She ran.
Fled, more like it.
Fled from Thompson Hills. From Tyler. Abigail tried to convince herself that he was just another predator in a long line of selfish, egocentric losers, but she recoiled at the very thought of him. She hated what she suspected he had done to Hailey.
Hailey, Hailey. Even in death she was always there. Sometimes it seemed to Abigail like there had never been a time in her life when Hailey didn’t exist as close as her shadow, as constant as the breath of air on her skin. The few years that Abigail had existed as an only daughter were faraway and forgettable—she had been a small child. Those years were as lost to her as the months spent in her mother’s womb. They might as well have never been. In the beginning and even now at the apparent end, it always came down to Hailey.
Failure nipped at Abigail’s ankles, threatening to trip the hammers that she hurled to the ground with increasing intensity. She fought it. Let go. Let go. Let go. Abigail’s feet thundered in perfect rhythm. And then: Good-bye. Good-bye. Good-bye. A staccato of muted pain in every footprint she left in the sandy shoulder of the road. Although Abigail used her body to punish her mind, though she squeezed her heart with the exertion of her pumping arms and nearly frantic legs, she couldn’t wring out the poison of her desperation.
In the weeks after Hailey killed herself, Abigail did everything she could to rearrange what had happened and why in her mind. It was inevitable, she rationalized. Hailey had always been, well, Hailey: one small step beyond reason. Even when the doctors got involved,
little had changed. There was nothing I could have done to stop her, Abigail excused. But then, as much as she tried to convince herself, there was the truth, crouching in some corner and biding the time until she let down her guard. In those naked moments, the full force of it all would suffocate her and Abigail would know: There was much I could have, should have done to stop her.
And as if her own self-flagellation wasn’t enough, her father reminded her of her failure every single day.
Just the thought of Lou made Abigail run faster.
†
By the time the road finally curved close to the lake, Abigail radiated with exhaustion. Thinking only of the unbearable heat and the sweat that now poured from her body, Abigail slipped down a shallow ditch and wove through a few brushy shrubs as she made a beeline for the water. There were a couple of boats crisscrossing the enormous lake, but the beach here was narrow and rocky and there were no people around.
The shoreline curved away from the swath of stony sand and created a small cove. But there were no trees near the water’s edge and therefore no privacy. Abigail didn’t care. She kicked off her shoes and stood on the toe of each sock in turn to slip it off. Then she pulled her shirt over her head with one sharp tug. Her sports bra was black and so were her shorts; what did she care if a stranger on some distant motorboat suspected she was swimming in something other than her swimming suit?
Abigail was a bit shocked when she hit the water at a jog. It was colder than she had anticipated, and it stung the back of her legs with droplets as piercing as pinpricks. She plunged forward anyway, working hard to ward off the chill that tempted her to escape to the shore. When the edges of her shorts began to get wet, Abigail dived. She broke the surface of the water with her fingertips and angled the rest of her body to sweep along behind the line of her outstretched arms.
