by Anne Heltzel
Then he speaks.
I’m sorry for calling you crazy, he says. I shouldn’t have said that. But you are crazy, when you get up in my face like that. It’s not you anymore. You are crazy.
I stare at him. This is almost unbelievable. Time immeasurable before he speaks again. You’re crazy sometimes, but I need you. I need you, Abby. I don’t know what I’d do if I were alone. It isn’t much, but I decide to take it.
Thank you, I say. Then I roll next to him so our bodies are side by side and put my hand in his. I can see the outline of tears on his cheeks, the only evidence that he isn’t as cold as he pretends to be. I wish I could feel compassion for him, but the argument has drained me. I feel as if I am betraying myself by staying. But the thought of being alone . . . it’s too frightening to conceive of.
We used to cuddle, he says in his little-boy voice, so starkly opposite to the inhuman voice he used mere minutes ago. I roll over on my side and nestle my cheek in the crook of his chest and shoulder, wrapping my other arm over his ribs. He is so much less strong than I remember. Skinnier than I thought. When everything is falling apart, this is what it feels like: skin and bones and nothingness and defeat.
Thank you, he whispers. I kiss his chin in response.
Sam, I say just as my own eyes begin to droop, what would make you happy again? He takes a while before answering. I am wondering if somewhere, deep down, he wants me to leave as much as I think I should.
To know that we’re all right, he says. That’s all I want. His words betray the truth I’ve been suspecting and discarding, the thing I’m most afraid to believe — that in fact, Sam is as weak as I am. We fall asleep cradling each other. We are just two humans in all of this, at the mercy of the world around us. I wonder what it will take for us to be all right. I am surprised to find I’m not sure if I even want that. This fight has broken me, but it’s also woken me up. I’m not strong enough to say good-bye. My mind is still confused, cluttered with warring images and perspectives that shift and change as if I have no jurisdiction over my own mind. But I’ve gained some small piece of power by saying I would. I fall asleep knowing that right now, I am fine, but in the morning, my mind will likely deceive me yet again. My memory is so fleeting. When Sam called me crazy, I believed him. As long as my brain is unfaithful, I have no hope for a life without him.
It’s a bad day for me. When I woke, my mouth was dry, my body was stiff, and my head was pounding like it had a mallet inside. My stomach growled long and searching. Something had happened, something terrible, but I couldn’t right away quite recall what. Sam and I were curled up on Amanda’s cot. Something intangible lay between us, and even as he kissed my cheek, I felt his reluctance. Then it all came back, soaking me with a sickened feeling.
Are you still upset? I asked him.
No, babe, he replied. We’re fine now. But the effort it took for him to show affection betrayed him.
These are the things I know:
— The thing that happened between us last night was hideous.
— It has left a nasty aftertaste in my mouth, my head, and all over my body.
— Sam won’t talk about it, even if I ask him. For him, it is over; for me, it lingers all over like a thick layer of filth.
— Sam makes me wary. I can’t fully trust him.
And the things I want:
— I want my mind to be steady and strong.
— I want those days back from when Sam and I were happy.
— I want to know who I am, though it frightens me.
— I want something solid.
I wander again to my old reservoir of hope and escape. I pick up my pencil and sketch the face that comes to me mechanically by now; it’s the one thing my hand knows how to draw anymore. I trace the curves of her cheekbones, the fullness of her lips, the roundness of her eyes. And as I’m tracing, my chin rests on my other hand. The point of my chin becomes the point of her chin. I shade in her narrow nose as I slide my finger gently over the slope of my own.
And then I realize it, and it comes to me so easily I could laugh.
The reason, one of the reasons, at least, that this girl looks familiar — she looks just like me. There are the familiar feelings of fear when I see it, but I keep looking, keep realizing, keep admitting. Push through all of it for the truth.
It’s been so long since I’ve looked in a mirror. But by now I know the nuances of my face and what it feels like, what my features would look like if translated to paper. The one striking difference, I think, would be the hair. Her hair in the pictures I draw, and in the newspaper photo that I believe is her, too, is a long and unruly black. It sweeps over her shoulders untamed, as if she hasn’t even tried to train it into something seemly. My own hair is a short blond shag. It’s stick straight and messy. It’s grown out a little over the weeks, chin-length now instead of boy-short like it was when I first met Sam. But it’s different, nevertheless. I watch as a strand of it falls onto the paper below me. Yellow on black.
I’m thrust into the memory so quickly that I don’t have time to brace myself or doubt its validity. I’m thrust past the pain that always warns me fierce in my head.
Oh, sweetie, she says. Trust me on this one. The older girl is standing over the sink, running water over her cascades of blond, wavy hair. The hair I’ve always been so jealous of. It’s thick and lovely, a sharp contrast to my thin, blond mop that I keep short for lack of anything else to do.
Now, hand me that box, she says. At first I resist.
Don’t do it! I say. You’re already beautiful. You’ll spoil it.
Oh, stop being so melodramatic. We all need a change once in a while. She winks at me. I am in awe of her bravery. She’s always been the brave one, the outlandish one, the one who can make people cower. She’s dazzling. And I am meek, weaker. Just as beautiful, everyone says, but lacking in the charm she’s full of. I reluctantly hand her the small, thick box. The box has all kinds of warnings on its side: keep away from eyes; rinse thoroughly. It promises a true color. But it doesn’t promise what I know Katie wants: the thrill of a new identity. For some reason the thought of it — this little change — makes me panicky. I’ve never liked change; it shakes you up in all kinds of ways you can’t foresee.
Now, come on — help me out, she says, and I reach for the tube of cream and begin smoothing it over her hair with the small, makeshift brush that came with it. We bought two boxes in case there wasn’t enough. Her hair is so thick; she’s got twice as much as the average girl. I layer the cream with bits of foil. There’s no going back now.
I understand why she wants to do it. Sometimes I’m sick of my own skin, too. But lately she’s been doing things that are weird, unlike her. Her nose ring, her eyebrow ring, and now the hair. In school, I learned that sudden and dramatic changes to one’s physical appearance are signs of depression. But no way is she depressed. She’s effervescent.
We wait an hour before rinsing it all out. And then we do, and I am staring at a different girl. She’s a hard-edged, badass, superwoman version of her former self. She was right; it’s even better than before. Not for the first time, I am totally and completely filled with awe.
She giggles as she drapes her long black mane in front of my face. You like?
It’s gorgeous, I say. I mean it. I could never be this beautiful. Envy wriggles nasty inside of me like a worm.
She giggles again. Always so serious! She settles onto my lap and puts her bony arms around my neck. I look into the mirror opposite the cold, ceramic toilet where we’re sitting. Her long black hair against my short blond shag makes a startling contrast. I can’t help it; my heart swells with the beauty and shame of it.
Love you, I say with a quick kiss to her cheek, making up for the twinge of vile resentment that I’m sure she can see; I’ve never hidden my feelings well. But she’s oblivious. She leaps off me and swats me on the shoulder.
Stop being so sentimental, sheesh. Over a little hair dye. She shakes her head at me
. Now let’s go show it off, see how the boys like it. . . . And then she’s sashaying out of the room, and I’m following, and we leave the house on the pretext of stirring up some excitement. There’s always excitement with her. She knows how to make something from nothing. She may outshine me, but I feel lucky to bask in her glow.
Heeeeey-ay, says a skinny black boy in the street, whistling appreciatively as we walk by. She’s really working it now, strutting her stuff.
No, thank you, she calls back to him. I prefer my thugs buff. I elbow her in the ribs. So inappropriate. She gets away with way more than she should. Then we’re jogging off as the boy yells things behind us. You’re not that pretty, he says, and we’re laughing all the way. I want to hold on to her, like this, forever.
I snap out of the memory nearly as quickly as I fell into it, and I’m shaking from its vividness. I’m light-headed and weak, though my headache fades quickly, much more so than usual. Now I know with certainty that no matter what Sam says, something is connecting me to this girl in the picture, and maybe to the girl who died in that fire. The similarities between the photo I saw and my drawings are too pronounced to be merely coincidental. I was close to this girl once. I feel it. The emotions were too strong for it to be otherwise. This girl, I believe with every fiber, was my sister. I press this thought close to my heart and keep it safe there. I won’t tell Sam about this.
One thought continues to trouble me long after the memory has gone. It is the only thing that doesn’t quite fit. Am I Addison, the missing fourth? If I am Addison, not Abby, why do I have this necklace? Why does Sam call me Abby? Or am I simply wrong about everything, building a fantasy in my head?
I am so alone. Sam is with me but he wants this thing, this happy and lovey, frothy thing that was once me. It used to be so natural, but now I am warped and tangled and wizened and wrong, all wrong.
And my head is probably not mine at all because I don’t know it. I try to clutch the thoughts that flutter around inside, grab on to them like fireflies and line them up orderly in a glass jar. So I can sort them out, file them, focus. I know I live in my head, and I know Sam says it’s bad, that I’m telling myself things that aren’t true. But the more I try to go back to how we were, the more uneasy I feel. I don’t have any hold on the world around me anymore. I am lost and just drifting.
It’s as though someone else lives inside my head. A little gnome, telling me what to think when I want to think something else entirely. Or maybe as if my head is machinery separate from myself. Because my head doesn’t know one thing. It knows many, many things; yet I know nothing at all. And so I doubt myself, turn over on myself, and believe nothing.
I was happy in the beginning. It was simple. I basked in it.
I am frightened now.
My fear wedges its hideous face between me and Sam.
I don’t know what to do. My brain has become the enemy. Sam is the enemy. I am the enemy. There’s no one I can trust, not anyone, not even myself.
I know it, Sam.
Abby, you’re unstable. You’re making things up.
I’m not.
You yourself have told me you think something’s wrong.
In my head. I laugh. Something’s wrong in my head.
See? You’ve made it up. There are a million psychological reasons to support this. He waves around a copy of Jung. He’s driving me crazy. He keeps calling me crazy, and it’s making me crazy.
Babe, just relax. We can be the way we used to be.
I laugh and laugh and laugh at this.
She’s my sister, Sam. I know it. My sister!
Shut UP, Abby!
I lost my sister, Sam. I laugh. Something about this is so funny. Sam wraps his arms around me, and I fight against him for a minute, then I collapse, half crying half laughing, against him.
You’re hysterical, he whispers. Shh, calm down, my baby. His words are so remote from me. He doesn’t understand me at all.
Why are you with me, Sam? Why do you put up with me?
I love you, as complicated and strange as you are.
You really think I am making it all up?
I do, baby. I think you’re depressed. You’re unhappy with us so you’re creating a fantasy in order to escape.
What an awful fantasy, I say. Couldn’t I have come up with something a little better?
Sam laughs. You always were the morbid type.
Was I? Always?
As long as I’ve ever known you.
How long is that?
Stop asking silly questions. You’ll only upset yourself.
I’m so confused, Sam, I say. And I am. I’d thought the evidence linking me to Katherine James, the girl in the photo, was irrefutable. I thought I’d begun to solve the mystery of That Night, of Who I Am. But as it turns out, I can’t sift through my thoughts at all. They’re a bunch of tangled wires in a knot. Maybe Sam has been right all along. There is some relief in that. I sigh. There would be relief in getting back what we had, in giving up all this detective work.
I just want to be how we were, I say, and in the moment I truly believe it.
Me, too, baby. We can, if you would just let go of it all. Let me take care of you again. Let us be happy.
But Sam, you are sick all the time now. How will you take care of me?
I’ll figure it out. I’ll take care of everything.
Is it your medicine, Sam? Will it make you better?
Yes, yes, I think so, baby. I need it.
Why won’t Sid give it to you?
Don’t worry about it. I’ll figure it out.
He sounds so confident that I decide to believe him. I relax against him, and as I do, I feel my mind release some of its tension. When I am not fighting against Sam, my mind stops fighting against itself as hard. It is a beautiful serenity. I can tell Sam’s being strong for me, and I only feel so guilty that he must. As I watch his face, the way it spasms and the way he sweats, I understand that he is working hard to control his own mind in an attempt to push down the sickness. Sometimes he is sick to his stomach all over the floor. Sometimes he is sick for days at a time. Some times are better than others, like now. But I wonder how long he will be strong. We are both frail creatures right now, and we must support each other. I must take care of him and stop worrying over myself.
I help him over to the couch and settle him there, then busy myself at the stove preparing him some soup. As I stir, the fragrant scent of chicken drifts up and nourishes me, giving me strength and comfort. I feel nearly happy, nearly at ease.
Then I look into the bowl and scream and scream.
Three dead roaches stare up at me with accusing eyes. They bob angrily in tepid water.
I scream until Sam pulls himself from the couch and, with great effort, takes me away from the stove.
Abby, stop, he says in the voice of someone hopeless. Please, just stop.
Where is it, exactly? I ask him. Sam’s bent in half on his bed, doubled over from the constant pain he feels all over his entire body. He’s worse than usual today.
It’s a block west of the high school, he tells me in a weak voice. Ask for Tom and tell him I sent you. It should take you thirty minutes to get there, thirty minutes to get back. Five minutes there. Be back in an hour, Abby. His voice carries an edge of warning. It’s evidence of Sam’s poor state of health that he’s willing to send me out at all, after what happened with the library. He hasn’t let me out of his sight in what feels like eternity, so it’s exhilarating even to think of taking a walk into town, but frightening, too. It means Sam is getting sicker. And part of me is worried that if he keeps getting sicker, one day he’ll fade away altogether. I push this from my mind because I know deep down Sam would never abandon me.
I troop down the familiar path through a mile of thick woods. I emerge behind the school. It is the middle of the afternoon. I walk quickly around the side of the large, concrete structure. Through the windows, I can see the outlines of kids hunched over their books in class. I r
ealize that I’ve been staring when one set of eyes catches my own. There’s something familiar in them, but it takes me a second to recognize the blond mop of the boy from the library. His green eyes brighten, and he puts his pencil down, straightening up in his seat. His lips part as if he is about to mouth something to me from the other side of the window. My heart speeds up, and I glance back down, breaking into a quick jog. It won’t do to have anyone recognize me; particularly a boy my age. But I know there’s no real reason to worry; no one will recognize me here. Sam refuses to tell me how to get to the other town, the one where he saved me that night. To protect me, he says. It can’t be far, but the woods are dense, so dense. The wrong direction could lead me deeper, until I’m lost altogether. So I stick to our familiar path.
I can feel the boy’s eyes on my back as I run around the edge of the building and away from the school. I will have to take a different route back. If he were to confront me again, start asking questions . . . I shudder at the thought. As Sam’s pointed out a million times, no one can know about our woodland kingdom-home. We are too young. We will be sent away if anyone finds out. Sam cleared it out himself, he tells me. He made it a home. It makes me love him more.
When I reach the deli, I am out of breath and nervous because the school’s still in sight. I pull open the glass door and try to act like I’m not rushing in. There’s an old man, bald, with a thin white mustache, working behind the counter. He eyes me suspiciously.
Why aren’t you in school? he asks. It’s still ten minutes till final bell.
I got an early leave, I mumble, hoping my excuse sounds convincing. Then, as he continues to peer at me closely, Is Tom here?
Tom’s in back. But the man doesn’t budge, doesn’t ring a bell, doesn’t call for Tom. Nothing.
