That's Not What Happened

by Kody Keplinger

  Rosi was the first one who suggested I cut my hair short. We were sitting at the tiny round table near the vending machines, and she just looked at me, very seriously, and asked, “Have you ever thought about a pixie cut?”

  “No way,” I said. “I’d just end up looking like a boy.”

  “I don’t think so.” She leaned in, almost uncomfortably close to my face as she tilted her head from one side to the other, examining me. “Your face is very … angular. And you’ve got amazing cheekbones. I think you’d rock some super-short hair.”

  I can’t say I didn’t think of her that spring, the day I took a rusty pair of scissors and began hacking away at my hair. When Mom saw what I’d done, she rushed me over to her friend Gretchen, who worked at the local salon in town. We ended up buzzing all of my hair off, and as it began to grow in, I thought of Rosi.

  In some ways, keeping it short now feels like a tiny memorial to her.

  But this was supposed to be about Eden.

  Eden came to Sarah’s funeral, and I’d gone to Rosi’s. We’d gravitated toward each other at both, as everyone around us tried to say how sorry they were and how glad they were that we, at least, were okay, and how God had a plan and so on and so forth. Eden was the only person there who I knew understood. Ashley and Denny were both still in the hospital, and this was before Miles had started climbing onto my roof at night.

  We didn’t even say anything as we exchanged numbers after the service for Rosi. She’d just handed me her phone and watched as I typed in my number. Mom had pulled me away almost as soon as I’d handed it back to her. But later that night, she texted me. It’s Eden.

  We started spending time together after that, particularly as the spring began to warm into that lovely space before summer when the air is still dry and the breeze is still cool and it feels nice to just lie in the grass. She’d pick me up in her van and we’d drive down to Wargin Park, where we’d sit by the pond all afternoon. She’d draw and I’d read plays—that was the summer I decided I wanted to be an actress—and no one bothered us there.

  Most of those days by the lake have blended together in my mind now. Like a collage of pictures with no real chronology. We were there to escape, after all. To try and not feel or think for a little while. To fade into the background and leave this version of ourselves behind.

  I could tell Eden was struggling with that, though. And in my collage of memories there’s this one that stands out, in the center of the other pictures, larger and clearer, while the rest have tattered and faded with time.

  We were sitting by the lake, under a large willow tree. I was on my stomach, eyes focused on the flimsy paperback copy of The Crucible I’d purchased at a thrift store a few days earlier. I could hear Eden’s pencil scratching against her sketch pad a few feet away. I was trying to disappear. To lose myself in the text so that Lee didn’t exist in that moment. But the sound of her vigorously erasing pulled me back to reality.

  I could tell something was wrong, though I didn’t want to ask. It was in the way she gripped the pencil, just a little too tight, and in the speed of her eraser scrubbing the page. When she was finished, she blew off the eraser dust and began sketching again. I went back to my book without a word.

  But a few minutes later, she was erasing again, harder this time. And when I looked up at her, the pencil in her hand looked like it might break.

  “Eden?” I asked tentatively.

  “It’s not perfect,” she said, less to me and more to the page she was furiously scrubbing against. “I keep trying but it’s not perfect.”

  “I’m sure it’s great,” I said. “You’re a great artist.”

  But she wasn’t listening to me. Her entire focus was on that paper, and it seemed like she was trying to erase everything she’d done, not just a messy line or two. I didn’t understand. Why not just start on a new page if the drawing wasn’t working?

  “I don’t … know … why … I bother!” She screamed the last word and dragged her eraser so hard against the drawing that the page tore beneath it.

  I could sense the eruption before it came. I sat up and scrambled backward, toward the base of the tree. As Eden’s eyes darkened and her lips pressed into a tight line, I fought my own urge to flee. Nearly everything set off my flight instinct back then. But I was trying to stay calm, stay logical and rational. Eden was just upset about her drawing. Eden wasn’t a threat.

  One of those things was correct. Eden wouldn’t hurt me—I don’t think she could hurt anyone, not physically—but this wasn’t just about an imperfect drawing.

  With a sharp tearing sound, Eden ripped the page out of her sketchbook. Then she was on her feet, running toward the water just a few yards away. I jumped up, not sure what she was planning to do.

  “Eden!” I shouted.

  But she stopped at the edge of the water. Then she unleashed this deep, pained yell that sent the ducks on the lake scattering and made me recoil, pressing my palms into my ears to black out the sound and the panic that came with it. I could see Eden’s arms moving, tearing at the sheet of paper with large, violent motions. Then she hurled them all into the water, the tiny white slips floating across the dark surface of the lake. Like flower petals.

  Eden kept screaming and her hands raised to her hair, grasping fistfuls of long, dark waves and pulling. It was the middle of a weekday and there was no one else around, thank God, but I knew I couldn’t let her go on like this.

  With my hands still covering my ears, I approached her. “Eden,” I said. Then yelled. “Eden!”

  When her screams quieted to heavy pants and her hands slowly unclenched from her hair, she turned to look at me. And it was like she was seeing me for the first time that day. Like she’d completely forgotten that I’d been there, right next to her, all morning. She stared at me for a long, silent moment, then, gingerly, stepped around me, moved past me, and headed back to the willow tree. She picked up her sketch pad and the backpack she used in place of a purse, and walked away. Leaving me alone at the park with no ride home.

  I called and texted her, but Eden didn’t respond. Eventually I had to call my mom and ask her to come get me after work.

  Mom was angry. “What kind of friend just leaves you there?” she demanded. “Anything could have happened to you.”

  “I’ve already lived through a school shooting, Mom,” I said, not hiding the annoyance in my voice. “What worse could happen in the middle of the day at Wargin Park?”

  “Plenty,” she said.

  I shrugged. I didn’t want to talk to her about Eden. She didn’t get it. Didn’t understand what it was like to live in our heads.

  I saw Eden a few days later, but neither of us mentioned what had happened at the park. We went on like that day had been wiped off the calendar. A missing moment in time.

  To this day, despite all the conversations we’ve had, all the hours spent together, all the emails and text messages exchanged, it’s never come up.

  Jenny and I had to practically carry Eden back to her dorm. Her legs wobbled as she walked between us, one arm slung around my waist, the other around Jenny’s shoulders. Her head rested on my shoulder, her long, wavy hair sticking to her face.

  “I’m so glad you came to visit,” she slurred near my ear. “It’s so good to see you, Lee.”

  “You too, Eden,” I said, stumbling as she leaned into me with a little more weight than before.

  “Where’s your student ID, Eden?”

  “Back pocket.” She removed her arm from Jenny, almost losing her balance before I could steady her, and reached into her jeans. She held out the ID and Jenny took it. Eden’s dorm building was just up ahead.

  By this point we were half dragging Eden up to the door. Once we got there, Jenny waved the ID in front of the small sensor and there was a buzz that told us the door had unlocked. I pushed the door open with my shoulder, and we pulled Eden inside.

  “Please don’t let the RA be here,” Jenny said with a quiet moan. “Please
, please.”

  But the RA wasn’t there. We managed to get Eden up the stairs and to her dorm room without encountering anyone, thank God. Rather than digging through Eden’s purse for the key, Jenny tapped lightly on the door. A second later, Misty appeared. She was still in her clothes from earlier that day, her dark blond hair pulled off her neck and twisted up with an alligator clip. She glanced at Eden, then turned her eyes to Jenny.

  The look that passed between them said everything I needed to know.

  This wasn’t the first time.

  Misty stepped aside to let us into the room, then shut the door behind us with a quiet click. Jenny and I eased Eden down into a sitting position on her tiny twin bed. The minute we moved out from under her arms, though, she flopped back onto the baby-blue comforter with a drunken giggle.

  “On your side,” Jenny said, using both hands to roll Eden.

  “I’m not gonna puke,” Eden said.

  “We’ll see about that.”

  Misty picked up an empty wastebasket and put it next to Eden’s bed. It felt like I was watching a routine. Something practiced and choreographed.

  “Lee,” Jenny said, “where are you sleeping?”

  “Oh. I have a sleeping bag.”

  “Do you need a pillow?” Misty asked.

  “That would be great. Thank you.”

  By the time we got my sleeping bag unrolled, Eden had passed out. Misty excused herself to take a shower, leaving me and Jenny to take off Eden’s shoes and glasses.

  “So … how long has this been going on?” I asked.

  Jenny sighed and ran a hand through her hot-pink hair. “A while? I didn’t think much about it at first. She’s a freshman. She’s on her own for the first time, and I don’t know. Freshmen party. Except … she doesn’t really party. She just drinks. Too much.”

  “Have you talked to her about it?”

  “I’ve tried. So has Misty. But neither of us really knows what to say. I mean, we can’t even begin to imagine what she’s been through. And every time we bring it up or tell her she should see a counselor, she just shuts down. Says she’s got too much to do. And it’s not like it’s affecting her grades or anything. She’s doing fine in class. She gives these presentations every other week. Everyone else thinks she’s doing great. But then every weekend it’s … this.” She gestured to Eden’s unconscious form on the bed. “I was hoping maybe when you were here she’d try to keep it together, but clearly I was wrong.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be unloading this on you.”

  “No, it’s fine,” I said. “I’m glad I know.”

  “Misty thinks we should tell her parents, but I’m scared she’d hate me if I did. She works so hard to make her family proud.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m scared for her, Lee. I’m graduating and Misty is transferring to be closer to home. What if something happens to her? I keep having this recurring nightmare that she calls me and asks me to come help her, but I’m already back home in California and I can’t get to her. I just … I don’t know what to do.”

  I couldn’t give her an answer. I’d had no idea things were this bad with Eden. Jenny was right. From the outside, she seemed fine. Great, even. The model of what a survivor could and should be. Ashley and I had talked a dozen times about how proud we were of her. How far she’d come since high school, where hardly anyone had even heard the sound of her voice. Between the activism and her webcomic, I’d assumed that moment by the lake three years ago was far behind her.

  But maybe she was still screaming. Just in a different way.

  “I should go,” Jenny said. “I’ve got a test on Monday, which means I’m going to have to spend the weekend studying. If she wakes up, will you make sure she drinks some water?”

  “Yeah. Of course.”

  “Thank you.” Jenny leaned down and kissed Eden’s forehead before turning to leave the room.

  I sat on my sleeping bag and pulled out my cell phone. I had a text from Ashley, instructing me to tell Eden hello for her and asking how my visit had been so far. I hadn’t spoken to her since reading her essay, and I’d let her last few texts go unanswered. I wasn’t angry with her. Not exactly. She hadn’t meant to lie. As far as she knew, she’d told the truth about Sarah and the necklace. But I still wasn’t sure how to talk to her about that.

  How do you tell someone that something they were so sure of, something that was profound and meaningful to them, wasn’t real?

  I wasn’t ready to tell her, but I also knew that if I kept ignoring her texts, she’d get worried. So I typed back a quick reply. Eden says hi back. I didn’t answer her question about how the visit had been so far. I didn’t want to lie, but the truth couldn’t have been conveyed in a text message.

  I’d just hit “send” when Eden sat up, turned, and began vomiting into the wastebasket next to her bed. Selfishly I was relieved that we’d rolled out my sleeping bag closer to Misty’s bed, out of range of the splash zone. I dropped my phone and jumped up, walking over to Eden and pulling her hair back while her body expelled as much vodka from her system as it could.

  A few minutes later, she finished and wiped her hand across her mouth. Slowly she lay back down on the bed. I went to the minifridge in the corner and found an unopened bottle of water. After unscrewing the cap, I handed it to her. She tried to sip without sitting up but sloshed a bit of water onto her face and shirt, though she didn’t seem bothered.

  “Where’s Jenny?” she asked in a croaky voice as she handed the bottle back to me.

  “She just left.”

  “Is she mad at me?”

  “No.”

  “Are you?”

  “No.”

  “I ruined your visit.”

  “You didn’t.”

  She groaned, and a faint shine of wetness began to form around the edges of her eyes. “I’m a mess, Lee. You wanted us to write about the truth. This is my truth.”

  “Eden …”

  “Do you think the others are as messed up as me? I know Ashley’s not. Maybe Denny is. Or Kellie. I should ask her …” Her eyes had slid shut and her voice was fading, but I hadn’t missed those last words.

  “You know how to get in touch with Kellie?” I asked.

  “Mm-hmm.” She was nearly asleep now, her thoughts fading in and out mid-sentence. “Spoke at her college … saw her …”

  The door opened then and the sudden noise made me jump. But it was just Misty, dressed in gray sweatpants and an oversized white T-shirt with a towel wrapped around her head and a shower caddy tucked under her arm.

  When I looked back at Eden, she was sound asleep again. I screwed the cap back onto the water bottle and left it next to her on the bedside table. The smell from the wastebasket was becoming overwhelming. I bent down and pulled up the edges of the bag and tied it up as tight as I could.

  “Is there a garbage chute or something?” I asked Misty.

  Misty glanced over at me and sighed. “I’ll take it.”

  “No. I can do it.” I had the feeling Misty had been tasked with dealing with vomit more than once recently. “I just need to know where—”

  But Misty had walked over and taken the bag from my hands. “The closest trash can is in the bathroom, and I need to go back in there anyway. I forgot my toothbrush, so …” She glanced over at Eden, sprawled on her bed, and I didn’t miss the look of exasperation on her face before she walked back out of the door.

  I was on my way to my sleeping bag again when I noticed Eden’s cell phone. It was lying on the edge of her desk. It was hard not to notice with its bright green case. Before I could talk myself out of it, I grabbed her phone and opened the home screen. She didn’t have a passcode set up, so I was able to go to her contacts without any trouble.

  I scrolled through, hoping but not believing I’d find what I was looking for. When I got to the Gs and found “Gaynor, Kellie,” I was so surprised and thrilled that I actually laughed.

  There were footsteps in the
hallway. I forwarded the contact to myself, dropped Eden’s phone back onto the desk, and ran across the tiny room. I was trying to convince myself that, even if she were sober, Eden would have shared the contact with me.

  Except she hadn’t. She’d seen Kellie, been at her college, and she hadn’t told me. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to know. I definitely wasn’t supposed to have her contact info.

  But I was doing something good. Trying to make things better. That made this all right. Kellie would be glad to hear from me when I told her about the letters.

  Yes, I know. It felt flimsy even to me. But it was just enough to keep me from feeling sick with guilt.

  The door opened just as I reached the other side of the room. I bent down and made to unzip my backpack as Misty stepped inside.

  “Got my toothbrush,” she said, and I heard the lock click behind her. “And I’m heading to bed in a few minutes. I hope that’s okay?”

  “Of course,” I said. “I was just changing into my pajamas.”

  Once the lights were out and I was curled up inside my sleeping bag, I pulled out my phone and checked the contact I’d forwarded myself. I now had Kellie Gaynor’s phone number and email address. Finally.

  But before I could even try to contact Kellie, I received the next letter.

  Eden emailed me late Saturday night. I’d only gotten home from visiting her a couple hours earlier. We’d spent the morning just relaxing in her dorm. She worked on Calliope while I read Equus. We didn’t talk about the night before despite her obvious hangover.

  So I was more than a little surprised when I received her email that night, and that was nothing compared to how I felt after reading it.

  Dear Whoever,

  I’m not the best with words. People have always called me shy, but that’s not really it. I just never really know what to say. I spend so long searching for the right word that by the time I have what I want to say worked out in my head, the conversation has moved on. Pictures have always made more sense to me.