Unveiling Fate

by Jeannine Allison

  “When I met her, I knew she was just like me. We connected from the beginning. I caught her being bullied in the hallway. She became my best friend. My only friend.” I took a deep breath before releasing the next words. “And she died. On this day eight years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I heard Ellie whisper. “I can’t even imagine…”

  She waited, clearly knowing that there was more to it. I didn’t know how I’d say it though. I was surprised I was able to get those few words out.

  It felt like the time had come to finally tell our deepest fears. Our worst memories.

  Only when Ellie moved closer and covered her hand with mine, did I find the courage to tell her…

  I took off down my driveway, the December wind stinging my skin. I was riding my bike one-handed, balancing a surprise for Taylor between my other arm and my hip. She’d been feeling down the past few months ever since that douche tricked her into sleeping with him. We’d only had one good day since then. But this was sure to lift her up.

  Reaching her house, I wheeled my bike to the side and rested it against the shed. Her father was pulling into the driveway.

  “Hi, Grayson.”

  “Hello, sir.”

  He grinned and shook his head, just like he did every time I called him “sir.” He unlocked the door and held it open for me. Taylor’s mother smiled at me from her place in front of the kitchen sink.

  “She’s upstairs.”

  With a nod, I bounded up the steps, skipping every other one. I came to an abrupt stop in front of her door and quickly knocked. I heard nothing on the other side, just the soft notes of one of her favorite songs.

  “Taylor,” I said as I knocked again. Figuring she must have fallen asleep, I opened the door a crack. Sure enough, her eyes were closed as she rested. I walked in and quietly shut the door. After setting her gift on her dresser, I walked toward her.

  “Hey,” I whispered, lightly nudging her shoulder.

  She didn’t react.

  My hands found her shoulders and I began to shake her. She hated being woken up that way and usually sat up instantly. My lips pulled down into a frown. I looked at her nightstand and froze. There was a pill bottle and a few letters sitting next to it. And somehow I just knew.

  My stare quickly went back to her. Her eyes were closed and her mouth was relaxed. Looking down at her chest, I waited for the breath I already knew wasn’t coming.

  “Taylor!” I finally screamed. “Taylor.” I shook her harder, the empty pill bottle taunting me from the corner of my eye. “Taylor.” My voice shook along with her body.

  A second later her door flew open and her parents raced in. Taylor’s mom started crying as they put the pieces together.

  “Call 911!” her dad yelled. Taylor’s mom grabbed a phone and started talking. I didn’t hear the words; I just focused on my best friend and her father’s attempts to save her.

  She looked so peaceful. Death shouldn’t be allowed to look that way.

  The rest happened in a blur.

  Police and an ambulance came.

  Time of death called.

  A body bag.

  Questions.

  Tears.

  Questions.

  Tears.

  God, so many fucking questions. So many tears.

  “Did she say anything to you?” her mother finally asked me.

  I shook my head. “A couple weeks ago she asked me what I thought dying would be like. It was a little strange, but you know Taylor… she asked weird and random questions all the time. And then this past week she seemed back to normal, she even gave me—”

  Taylor had given me one of her favorite leather journals. It was empty, but she’d said she had plenty and wanted me to have it.

  “I didn’t think…” I whispered, feeling sick to my stomach. Those were signs, weren’t they? I was her best friend. I should have known…

  “You can’t think that way,” her dad interjected, making me realize I said all of that out loud. “She wouldn’t want you to blame yourself.”

  “Aren’t you?” I snapped back, the pain welling into anger. His jaw hardened and his eyes became wet.

  “Fuck,” I muttered, dropping my head into my hands. What was it about pain that made us want to toss it at someone else? Did we want them to understand what we were going through? To take it away? To share it? Or did we just want someone else to hurt the way we were?

  “I’m sorry.” My hands grew wet under my tears. “I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t know whether I was apologizing for the words I’d said in anger. The fact their daughter was dead. Or that I was responsible.

  I just knew I was sorry.

  I just knew life would never be the same.

  Later that day, as my parents talked to Taylor’s, their worried stares adding insult to injury, I escaped upstairs. Into her room.

  My eyes drifted to her corkboard, littered with photos of us. One I recalled immediately. It was two falls ago. She’d made a bucket list of all these things she wanted to do that season. We crossed off half of them that day. Taylor said it was perfect. The picture was taken at a fair outside of town.

  I let myself look at everything, feel everything.

  I picked up one of her homework assignments off her desk. It was for her literature class. I looked at the digital camera/video duo next to the paper and wondered if she’d completed what the teacher had asked. It looked like she had to take one of the themes from a recently read book and comment on it. She’d scribbled “what makes a hero” at the top.

  Opening the side panel so I could see the screen, I pressed play.

  Her bright smile lit up the screen.

  “Hi there.” She waved. ”Family is important. They’re the foundation of a person, but people seriously underestimate the power of a best friend. It’s such a great feeling to know this person picked you over everyone else. That they like you even though you have a ton of flaws. That they’re not required to love you like your family does, but they do anyway. I’m lucky enough to have both.”

  Her eyes dimmed, some of the sadness I’d missed in the past few months coming through.

  “I think these people are the real heroes. They aren’t the teacher who stops you from being picked on, or the cop that saves your life, but they’re there for you in the aftermath. Physically saving someone is easy, well most of the time.” Taylor smiled and shook her head.

  “But all the demons that come after, the ones no one can see but your loved ones, those are harder to fight. Heroes mean lots of things to lots of different people, but I don’t know… to me I think a hero is someone who loves you and refuses to stop. Even when you make it difficult.”

  She stood up and moved around the camera, presumably to shut it off, when she quickly skipped back over, bending down until her head was in the frame again.

  “Oh, and I know this isn’t part of the assignment, but my hero is my best friend. Grayson Mable.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut, tears immediately leaking out the sides. Taylor’s wide, trusting smile was the last thing I saw before I heard the recording end. I’d never stopped loving her, but I failed her all the same. My love did nothing for her.

  I tossed the camera on her bed and sank to the ground, my head flopping into my hands.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered to the empty room seconds before I started crying.

  She was wrong.

  I was no hero.

  I sat very still as he finished his story. It looked as though one simple touch would break him.

  “So you see, I’m not a hero, Ellie. I can help others. I can be methodical. I can keep my emotions out of it and think straight. But once everything else gets in, once feelings happen… I’m no good for anyone I”—he stopped and cleared his throat—“care about.”

  He closed his eyes as I started smoothing his hair back, my other hand still holding his.

  “I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t help her.” His voice cracked on the las
t word. My heart twisted when he turned my way, looking agonized, and whispered, “That guy she slept with… he did it for a bet. He recorded the two of them and shared it with the girls who picked on Taylor. They harassed her in the locker room. Making fun of how she looked. How she sounded. Telling her no one would ever want her. She never told me any of it. She walked out of gym every day, sat down at lunch with a smile. Like she hadn’t been humiliated.” He shook his head. “Ellie… I should have seen her pain. At the very least I should have listened those last few weeks.”

  “Some people are good at hiding it,” I whispered. I thought about all Naomi had told me about her best friend, Alara. She suffered from clinical depression and I remembered her saying the lie of being “okay” was like a second set of skin, one she felt as comfortable in as her own.

  “And you were just a kid yourself—how were you supposed to know?” My words had no effect on him, so I tried something else. “Maybe you did save her.” Now he stared at me in disbelief, and I could hardly breathe at the sight of his pain. There was so much raw emotion on his face, more than I’d ever seen. I squeezed his hand. “Just listen. What if, in another life, she hadn’t met you and she ended her life a year sooner? Or right after everything happened? Or even that day in the hall? Maybe you gave her a reason to hold on a little longer. A person can’t be saved forever.”

  I could tell he was fighting to believe me.

  “Sometimes I wonder if she thinks I failed her.”

  “Did you ever read her letter? I’m assuming one of them was for you.”

  He nodded. “Yeah. But no, I’ve never read mine. Not after that video.” Then I watched as he broke. Unapologetic tears streamed down his face.

  I immediately tucked his head under my chin, against my shoulder. I felt moisture seep through my shirt and I held him as he cried.

  We were lying on his bed. Both on our sides, facing one another without touching. His tears had dried but he didn’t attempt to hide his grief. We hadn’t said anything in over thirty minutes.

  I had been unsure when I’d first come over. Things were still a little weird since he’d forgotten our date—that wasn’t actually a date—and I’d discovered Damien had asked Grayson to watch over me. I wasn’t angry, but residual tension lingered.

  It didn’t help when he’d started pulling away. I’d been grateful when he’d answered the door earlier, but the relief I felt at finally seeing him disappeared when I really looked at him. He’d had bags under his eyes like he hadn’t slept well in the week since I’d seen him. And there was a general sadness around him, seeping from every pore and weighing him down.

  My heart was broken from his story. But I couldn’t help but think a tiny fraction of it belonged to my pain. I shouldn’t have felt that way. I shouldn’t be jealous of someone who was bullied… tortured… who saw suicide as her only escape. I felt sick and selfish even thinking about it.

  “What?” he asked, his voice raw from all the crying.

  “It’s nothing.” I shook my head, looking anywhere but at him. There was no way I was telling him about my insecurities. I was ashamed I even had them.

  “Tell me something that hurts,” he whispered, and my eyes snapped back to his.

  I suddenly felt like an idiot. All the stories we told. All the pain we shared. This was his big one, his deepest hurt. And what was mine? He probably thought I was so stupid. So my parents ignored me, so my peers ignored me, so I was forgotten. He would have given anything for him and Taylor to be flies on the wall, to be left alone. And here I was, taking my invisibility for granted.

  “There’s… I have nothing like that.”

  He assessed me again. “This isn’t a contest. What was it you said? That broken things can be fixed and forgotten things don’t stand a chance. Your pain is no less important than mine. Please tell me.”

  I looked away again, my hand drawing designs on his sheets. “One time I was low, maybe the lowest I’ve ever been. I was drunk, lying on a dirty bathroom floor, puking my guts out. It was only a couple months before I got pregnant. Damien found me that way. I don’t know how he knew where I was, but he grabbed my arm, pulled me up, and carried me out of there.” I paused, my eyes glazing over with the memory.

  “Most of it’s foggy, like whenever I drank. But I remember those few minutes perfectly. I was leaning against his chest, one arm wrapped loosely around his neck, eyes drooping as I stared up at him. He looked… concerned. Scared. Like I was slipping away from him. I suppose I was. I mumbled, ‘save me,’ and he immediately changed. Determined. Focused. He picked up his pace and said, ‘always,’ before taking me home and making me better. He put me in AA after that. It didn’t stick, obviously. But I think that was the beginning of me realizing I needed help. It’s what made getting sober a bit easier when I found out about Andy.”

  Grayson reached over and covered my hand, stopping its movement. I couldn’t look at him when I admitted this next part.

  “I still don’t know what I wanted him to save me from.” He started brushing his thumb across my knuckles. “Save me from death, or from life.” Now I was crying. “It’s scary what loneliness can do to a person.”

  “You’re not alone anymore, Ellie.” He shifted closer, his hand moving to my hip as he pulled me to him. I still couldn’t meet his eyes. The emotion in his words was almost my undoing. His breath was hitting my lips and I was surrounded by his scent. But I couldn’t relish in any of it. There was too much grief around us.

  “Why do you have a hard time believing someone could want you? Could love you?” He sounded tortured by the idea.

  “Because there are two people who are biologically programmed to love me, and they couldn’t,” I admitted, even though it killed me. Grayson had given me everything he had. It was only fair I do the same. Finally I glanced up at him. “Why would anyone else? And when you grow up with your mother telling you that no one will be honest with you because they don’t want to hurt your feelings, how do you trust anything anyone says?”

  He looked at me like I was breaking his heart. And I couldn’t even focus on how hysterical and gross I probably looked because just as he had earlier, I was collapsing under the weight of my exposed pain.

  “I want to look at myself and see someone lovable. I don’t though. All I think is that people pity me or simply tolerate me. Like Naomi—would she want to be in my life if it weren’t for Damien? Would Joy be my friend if she wasn’t supposed to be? Do you really want to be here? It’s all I think about. Because I had tried… I’d t-tried so h-hard to make people see me. But I think there are some p-people that, no m-matter how hard they try, they just can’t be seen. And I’m one of them.”

  I couldn’t continue. Sobs wracked my body, stealing my breath and making conversation impossible. Grayson easily pulled me against him, our bodies completely flush, and let me cry into his chest.

  “You’re not,” he whispered harshly, reaching my ears over my cries. “I see you, Ellie. I see you.”

  THERE WAS SOMETHING ODDLY freeing about crying. Ever since Ellie and I had cried in each other’s arms two weeks ago, things had been different… better. We understood each other in ways we hadn’t before. The pain was still there. But sharing it with someone else lessened the load. Something we both needed.

  I felt especially light today. It was Christmas, and I did more than consider Ellie’s words from weeks back, when she told me to get a tree and seek out my family. I acted.

  To say my mom was shocked when I called was an understatement. To say her surprise made me feel like complete shit was a bigger understatement.

  I asked her if I could spend Christmas morning with them. She yelled at me for a solid five minutes for asking such a dumb question. I’d forgotten how much I missed her—even her scolding.

  When Christmas finally arrived, I didn’t stay long. I watched my nieces open presents before we all had brunch, and then I told them I needed to leave.

  They were disappointed, and that was the
last thing I wanted. But I felt overwhelmed. As pathetic as it was, it had been a big step for me. My mother must have known—when doesn’t a mother know?—because she stopped me on the way out.

  “Thank you for coming today.” She wrapped me in one of her warm hugs that always made things better. I sighed and buried my face in her neck while she stroked the back of my head, like she’d done when I was a child. “I know it couldn’t have been easy, and we all appreciate the effort.”

  “Of course,” I choked out. When she pulled back her face was stern.

  “We do what we can when we can. Don’t live by anyone’s pace except your own. I’ve missed you—and I’m so glad you came today.”

  “I miss you too, Mom.” The words were soft and her eyes filled with tears.

  “I know. Oh! I almost forgot,” she said before quickly jogging out of sight toward the kitchen. She returned with a Tupperware container. Despite the frosted display, I could make out two red cupcakes inside. My lips pulled up into a smile.

  “I had a feeling you might not stay, so here’s dessert, and I included an extra one for your friend.” Her entire face lit up. Seriously. We could have thrown some green on her and made her the Christmas tree.

  I smiled and shook my head. “Thanks, Mom.” I didn’t elaborate and she didn’t ask. We both knew.

  Since I’d needed my older sister’s help with Ellie’s Christmas gift, there was a high likelihood that the rest of the family—or at least Mom—knew about my new friendship. But she didn’t tease me, she simply kissed me on the cheek, told me to come back soon, and watched me leave.

  It was two o’clock in the afternoon on Christmas, and I was stopping by like I had a right to be there. Seeing my family made me want to see all the most important people in my life, and that definitely included Ellie and Andy.